Recipe by CarrieCourse: dinnerCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: easy
Servings
2
servings
Prep time
5
minutes
Cooking time
10
minutes
Calories
181
kcal
Stuff That Goes In It
1 tbsp oil
1 medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
500 g (~ 17 1/2 oz) mushrooms, sliced or diced
1 tsp smoked paprika
70 ml (~ 1/4 cup) vegetable stock
2 tbsp sour cream
Salt and black pepper to taste
4 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
How to Make It
Be excited that YOU are eating vegetarian. Meat costs so much, amirite? But also, nothing with lungs have died to make this meal. That we know of at least.
Find a big frying or saute pan and put the oil in it. Heat it on medium.
Find an onion. As you put that onion in the oil (still on medium heat) and cook it for about three minutes, wonder why vampires are anti-garlic and pro-onion . I mean, onion makes you cry. Garlic just makes you have funky breath.
Make sure the onion is a bit soft and then plop in that garlic and your happy little mushrooms. Feel badly for the garlic. It gets such a bad rap and mushrooms? People go into the woods looking for them and make entire Facebook groups about them–with pictures. Celebrating their existence.
Cook all that for five minutes and decide you need a garlic support group. It’s just so unfair.
Okay. Vow to start the Facebook group but in the meantime coat all that stuff in the pan with the paprika. It does look a bit vampy now, doesn’t it?
Pour in the stock. Plop in the sour cream. Mix it.
Make it simmer in a happy, gentle way. Cook until it’s as silky as Dracula’s bedsheets.
Wonder what’s wrong with you that you even thought that.
Put in all that salt, pepper, and parsley and give yourself some grace. We all have weird minds, right?
Notes
You can serve this on top of pasta or rice.
This recipe is adapted from Easy Cheesy Vegetarian, a lovely site with lovely recipes. They do not discriminate against our poor friend, Garlic.
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Recipe by CarrieCourse: sauceCuisine: americanDifficulty: Easy
Are you addicted to wine, raspberries, sugar, or Wordle? Do you have a microwave? This recipe is for you, baby.
Stuff That Goes In It
2 cups raspberries
⅓ cup sugar
How to Make It
Prepare to stain your fingers red. Prepare to have to go to the door even in a pandemic so that you can sign the FED EX driver’s thing to prove you are over 21 so that you can get an entire box of wine off the internet. Watch the Fed Ex driver judge you.
Okay. Here’s the recipe. Sorry about that. It was a low point recently. Another low point? Constantly checking when the next Wordle game was up and seeing gray, yellow, and green squares in my dreams.
Swear off the Wordle addiction and get a big container (2 quarts) and put the raspberries and sugar into it. Wonder if ‘swear’ would be a good five-letter word for Wordle. NO! DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT!
Put plastic wrap over the container (too many letters) and put it in the microwave (way too many letters).
Cook for three minutes.
Uncover it. Stir it. Realize you should have offered the Fed Ex driver some wine. Feel guilty.
Cook another minute. Think about winning Wordle and wine.
If you are anti-seed (let’s face it, most of us are), put the raspberries through a sieve. Wonder if you should use ‘sieve’ in Wordle. Realize no. More than one E in that baby. Wonder if the Fed Ex driver plays Wordle.
Keep the strained sauce. Do not keep the seeds or go running after the Fed Ex driver with your bottle of wine yelling, “WORDLE! WORDLE!” That would be too weird.
Eat that sauce. Get it all over your face. Trust me and do not answer the door if someone comes, not without cleaning your teeth first. Raspberries make you look like you’ve turned zombie. Not a good look. Even in a pandemic.
Notes
This was adapted from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham. It’s a big, awesome cookbook, one of my first and I love it with all my little Wordle heart. HEART! That has five letters!
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SHEET PAN DINNER RECIPE FOR WRITERS WHO ARE NOT DOING WELL
Recipe by Carrie
Servings
8
servings
Prep time
25
minutes
Cooking time
45
minutes
Calories
280
kcal
Stuff That Goes In It
2 (15 ounce) cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
½ butternut squash – peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 onion, diced
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 large carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
3 medium russet potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
1 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
2 green onions, chopped (Optional)
How to Make It
It’s happened.
You have realized it, little author.
Writing is a f-ed up business and it’s not all in your control. You’ve gotten rejected again because the market allegedly isn’t into time-traveling hamsters for YA novels. Pshaw! So go, preheat the oven 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Find a large sheet pan and grease it. Pretend it’s your readership. You want them to be prepared.
You gave up on traditional publishing and have done everything you could to sell books. Bought Publisher’s Rocket, joined Facebook groups, read a million craft books. And you’ve sold two. To your mom.
It’s okay. You’re a writer not a marketer.
Put the chickpeas, potatoes (both kinds), squash, carrots and onions on the sheet pan.
These are your books. They are all there. They are beautiful. Now drizzle some oil on them and toss them around so the oil is everywhere.
Wish them luck.
Combine the spices (salt counts) in a bowl or something. God knows.
Sprinkle onto the veggies.
Toss it all again, damn it. Cry. Think about pen names.
Think about Chuck Wendig’s latest post about dealing with the writing business where he says:
“I cannot control geopolitics and global pandemics. I cannot control whether the editor who’s had my novel on their desk for nine months will happen to pick it up on a day they ate some bad charcuterie and can’t focus because they need to run to the loo every ten minutes. I can’t control markets, reviewers, who else publishes the day my book comes out, or even (very frequently on the trad side of publishing) my covers and titles.
“But I can control other things. I control the effort I put into my craft. I’ve now written twenty-two novels, and by the time you read this, it might be twenty-three. LOOK TO THE SUN was my tenth.
“I can control whether I keep going or take a break, whether I give up altogether or come running back to the game. I am responsible for whatever ends up on my pages.”
Put the pan in the oven for 25 minutes.
Stir it.
Cook it 20 minutes more. Your novels should be done. The effort was worth it. The chickpeas are a little crisp like a good plot. The veggies are lightly browned like some nice emotional development. Call it good.
Write again tomorrow.
Add salt or pepper and green onion if you feel like it. Call it good.
Notes
This recipe is much more readable and inspired by the lovely recipe here by Kim on Allrecipes.
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Why oh why, did you have to read that blog by Mr. Mansplain I’m The Best Writer in the Universe guy? Did you want to ruin a perfectly good day? Yes. Yes, apparently you did.
Now turn the oven on 450-Fahrenheit.
Why did he think “kill your darlings” originated with him? Or “butt in chair?”
Seriously? The ego.
Spray the cooking sheet with cooking spray.
Take a deep, calming breath.
Do not go back to the website to see his smug face or read that just the term “mansplaining” mean we’re infantilizing women.
Instead, melt butter in a big ole skillet over medium-high.
Add garlic and onion.
Sauté for 4 minutes.
Add stock and broccoli. Bring to a boil; cook 3 minutes.
Do not think about the author who name drops other authors’ names every two minutes. Don’t tell them that you know all the authors they are talking about. Swoon about the workshop she took with Rita Williams Garcia. Nod nicely when she talks about her tweet volley with Salman Rushdie.
Find rice.
Heat rice following the directions on the packages.
Don’t think about the author in your workshop who won’t stop complaining about how harrowing writing is. “It’s ripping open a vein and bleeding on the page.”
Don’t think about all her sob-story tweets and how many fans she gets by complaining.
Don’t think about how she makes writing into a ‘mystical, mystical gift that drives me to penultamate heights and miserable lows, but I am compelled to fight through it and share my genius gift to the world.”
Do not give her the finger via a gif.
Instead . . .
Put the broccoli mix, panko, mustard, rice, pepper, salt, and 1/2 cup of the cheese into a big ole bowl.
Find the eggs. Put them in too and stir.
Make eight different (2 1/2-inch) patties.
Put the patties on the pan and spray them with cooking spray.
Bake at 450°F for 15 minutes.
Add the cheese on top.
Bake for 4 more minutes or stop when the cheese gets all melty.
Put green onions on it if you want.
Eat and worry that you’re a mansplaining, harrowing (woe is me) or name dropping author. Decide you aren’t and call it good. Refrain from going on the internet and looking at those authors’ accounts and getting annoyed.
Recipe by CarrieCourse: DinnerCuisine: vegetarianDifficulty: Medium
Servings
4
servings
Prep time
5
minutes
Cooking time
25
minutes
Total time
30
minutes
Stuff That Goes In It
2 cups finely chopped fresh mushrooms
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon canola oil
4 hamburger buns, split
Optional: Sliced tomatoes and mayonnaise and lettuce and raw onion and cool condiments like crispy chili
How to Make It
Stand up. Shake your fist at all those writing mentors who say, “To write you have to put your butt in the chair.”
Ha! Like it’s that easy?
Writing isn’t just about sitting!
It’s also about nourishment, nourishing the muse, and also your stomach, damn it.
Let’s make burgers! Where we don’t kill any animals.
Find a really large bowl. You can’t do that in front of your computer, can you? Well, you can, but you can’t put the first 9 ingredients into that bowl.
Combine all those ingredients. Think about how nice it is to be out of a chair.
The whole “butt in chair” thing comes from Mary Heaton Vorse who told author Sinclair Lewis, “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.”
Feel a little angry at her even though she is dead and was probably cool and stuff. But you can stand and write, too. Or flop down. It isn’t all about the chair, Mary!
Take some calming breaths and shape the stuff in the bowl into four 3/4-in.-thick patties.
Google Mary. Realize she was a novelist and social activist. Feel guilty about thinking ill of her.
She also wrote creepy things.
Find a big and heavy skillet.
Use those writer wrist muscles to lift the skillet onto the burner.
Put oil in.
Turn the burner onto medium.
Wonder if you can earn money blogging on Medium.
Decide no.
Bet Mary made a lot of money.
Add burgers; cook about 3-4 minutes on each side; they should be a nice light brown color.
Put the burgers on buns and add the stuff you want to add.
Find Mary’s “Sinister Romance” story online. Read it.
Eat standing up and toast Mary. 🙂
Notes
This recipe is adapted from Taste of Home
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Sometimes, you may get feedback that you don’t agree with and maybe that feedback is that your story is full of clichés . Those poops. This is the comforting recipe for you in that time of need. Avoid those naysayers like the plague! 🙂
1 lg red bell pepper — cut into skinny, 2-inch-long strips
½ lb mushrooms — thinly sliced
4 lg garlic cloves — peeled and minced
3 TB unbleached white flour
2½ c milk
¼ ts salt
1 ts paprika — plus more if you like to bling out your food
1 TB Dijon mustard
¼ c fresh basil — chopped
½ c Romano cheese — (2 ounces), finely grated
Pepper
Finely grated Parmesan for serving (more bling)
How to Make It
Find a large pot. Think about how that pot is as old as the hills.
Put water in the pot.
Put that pot on a burner and make that water boil, but don’t watch it! A watched pot never boils. Actually, DO watch it because you don’t want it to boil over.
Meanwhile, go find your asparagus and snap off and trash the tough ends. Imagine that you are snapping and discarding the beta reader who said you had too many cliches in your story. That jerk.
Cut the asparagus into 1-inch pieces.
Steam your asparagus for about 6 to 8 minutes, until it is barely tender and cute as a button.
Set it somewhere. Think about why your beta reader and agent hate cliches. You’d thought they were the salt of the earth. Were you wrong?
Cook the ravioli. Stir it once in awhile. Begin cooking the ravioli, stirring occasionally. Look at it. It’s in hot water.
Find a skillet. Put it on medium heat and melt 1 TB of butter in it. It’s a baptism of fire for that pour butter.
Saute the mushrooms, pepper and garlic about three minutes.
Take those tender veggies away from the harsh heat.
Get the rest of the butter and a big saucepan. Put them on medium heat.
Find the flour and whisk it into the butter and do that for about two minutes before slowly pouring in the milk. Do not spill the milk that way you don’t have to cry over it.
Keep whisking. It is what it is.
Whisk for forever, which is basically 3 to 5 minutes when whisking. Finish in the nick of time, right before your wrist falls off.
Add the salt, paprika, mustard, basil, Romano cheese, and pepper and let the good times roll!
Stir until the cheese melts. Only time will tell how long that will take.
Put the heat on super low and stir in the vegetables. Keep your chin up and ignore those naysayers.
Once the ravioli is floating, drain it, put it in a bowl.
Put a ring on it. I mean, put the sauce on it.
Toss.
And last but not least, bling it out with paprika and parmesan.
Notes
This awesome recipe is from Ginny Callan’s, Beyond The Moon Cookbook. The vegetarian bible of my youth.
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Every time you have a choice, choose love. Every time you have a choice, choose the outside. Every time you have a choice, choose treats. Every time you have a choice, ditch the leash. xo
Gabby the Dog
Here’s this week’s Cooking With an Author recipe. The man in the house is still not a vegetarian. All appears lost. 🙂 Every time he has a choice, he chooses meat.
[ultimate-recipe id=”5805″ template=”default”]
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So, sometimes you might have a new book coming out and you might freak out that nobody will read it and that is when you make this soup and try to breathe through your nose and cry. Not like I know this personally or anything. Not like I’ve been doing it all week.
[ultimate-recipe id=”4531″ template=”default”]
Man Verdict: This tastes like hope.
Carrie Verdict: Exactly
Dogs’ Verdict: Please spill some on the floor.
Big News!
I’m about to publish a super cool adult novel. Gasp! I know! Adult! That’s so …. grown-up?
Rosie Jones, small town reporter and single mom, is looking forward to her first quiet Maine winter with her young daughter, Lily. After a disastrous first marriage, she’s made a whole new life and new identities for her and her little girl. Rosie is more than ready for a winter of cookies, sledding, stories about planning board meetings, and trying not to fall in like with the local police sergeant, Seamus Kelley.
But after her car is tampered with and crashes into Sgt. Kelley’s cruiser during a blizzard, her quiet new world spirals out of control and back into the danger she thought she’d left behind. One of her new friends is murdered. She herself has been poisoned and she finds a list of anagrams on her dead friend’s floor.
As the killer strikes again, it’s obvious that the women of Bar Harbor aren’t safe. Despite the blizzard and her struggle to keep her new identity a secret, Rosie sets out to make sure no more women die. With the help of the handsome but injured Sgt. Kelley and the town’s firefighters, it’s up to Rosie to stop the murderer before he strikes again.
So, um, please go buy it. I am being brave, but that means that despite all my reasons for doing this, I’m still terrified that nobody will buy it and I really, really love this book. A lot.
DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE
This week’s podcast is up and excited to be there! Join 154,000 downloads and see how weird yet helpful we are.
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
So, my quest to make the family eat less meat and be more vegetarian is kicking mostly because meat cost so much! This made me think about presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Universal Base Income and how many cans of beans this writer could afford if I had a guaranteed $1000 a month.
But also the environment and the animals and commercial farming and all the other real reasons for me to move towards this choice.
As always – this is meant to be silly, but the recipe works and is delicious!
[ultimate-recipe id=”4420″ template=”default”]
Man Verdict: Anytime you have beans or rice I love it.
My Verdict: HE DIDN’T NOTICE THE TOMATOES! Also, I could totally afford cilantro if Andrew Yang became president.
Dog Verdict: We should probably not give the man this many beans. Evacuate!
Sparty’s Daily Doggy Wisdom
Look at how beautiful you are.
Yes you.
Nobody else gets to be you, know you the way YOU know you.
So enjoy who you are.
You’re beautiful.
Yes. You.
Just own it.
You’re made of stars and magic and imagination. You deserve snacks.
xo Sparty Dog
Writing News
I’m about to publish a super cool adult novel. Gasp! I know! Adult! That’s so …. grown-up?
The Places We Hide by Carrie Jones
I have a new book coming out!
Rosie Jones, small town reporter and single mom, is looking forward to her first quiet Maine winter with her young daughter, Lily. After a disastrous first marriage, she’s made a whole new life and new identities for her and her little girl. Rosie is more than ready for a winter of cookies, sledding, stories about planning board meetings, and trying not to fall in like with the local police sergeant, Seamus Kelley.
But after her car is tampered with and crashes into Sgt. Kelley’s cruiser during a blizzard, her quiet new world spirals out of control and back into the danger she thought she’d left behind. One of her new friends is murdered. She herself has been poisoned and she finds a list of anagrams on her dead friend’s floor.
As the killer strikes again, it’s obvious that the women of Bar Harbor aren’t safe. Despite the blizzard and her struggle to keep her new identity a secret, Rosie sets out to make sure no more women die. With the help of the handsome but injured Sgt. Kelley and the town’s firefighters, it’s up to Rosie to stop the murderer before he strikes again.
So, um, please go buy it. I am being brave, but that means that despite all my reasons for doing this, I’m still terrified that nobody will buy it and I really, really love this book. A lot.
The Write. Submit. Support. format is designed to embrace all aspects of the literary life. This six-month course will offer structure and support not only to our writing lives but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors. We will discuss passes that come in, submissions requests, feedback we aren’t sure about, where we are feeling directed to go in our writing lives, and more. Learn more here!
“Carrie’s feedback is specific, insightful and extremely helpful. She is truly invested in helping each of us move forward to make our manuscripts the best they can be.”
“Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching.”
It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
Order this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
As you know, I’m trying desperately to make the family vegetarian and I am TOTALLY failing.
But here is my recipe for Halloween pizza. Halloween is a frantic night for us because we get about 800 – 1,000 trick-or-treaters. So, I tend to make things that are fast and easy like calzone snakes or mummy Stromboli, but this… this, my friends, is the ultimate in easy. It’s sort of embarrassingly easy. Stay tuned below for the story of my first-ever ghost sighting.
Ghostly Pizza
So, sometimes I cheat because on Halloween things get hectic here.
1 lb Frozen Pizza Doug (do not judge)
1 tbsp olive oil
.75 cup pizza sauce
.5 lb mozarella slices
some little capers (for the eyes)
Realize that you have no time to make food that isn’t candy.
Preheat oven to 475ºF.
Spray bottom of a 16-by-11-inch rimmed baking sheet with the stuff that makes things not stick. Or use olive oil, but olive oil is expensive, so maybe don’t. I mean olive oil is awesome, but we’re already using pre-made pizza dough here so pretension is gone, right?
Spray the darn sheet.
Celebrate by eating candy.
Stretch that dough evenly to cover bottom of sheet.
This is a lot like stretching your 20,000-word story into a 50,000-word novel. You might have to take a couple of rounds, and rest in between to get this stretched.
Do not give up.
Celebrate by eating candy.
Open the jar of sauce.
Cry because you have no wrist strength.
Celebrate when you finally open the jar. Celebrate by eating candy.
Spread that sauce over the dough. Try to make it even. Leave a border on all sides of the rectangle. Try to make that border a 1-inch border.
Celebrate with candy.
Set a timer. Put it in the oven.
Bake about 15 minutes.
Celebrate that. Celebrate that with candy.
Now, you get to have fun! Yay, fun! Remember fun?
Scrounge up a ghost-shaped cookie cutter and cut ghosts out of cheese.
That is so cool.
Put the ghosts on the pizza. It is hot. Be careful. Obviously these ghosts have been hanging out in hell. The sauce is like red flames. And the whole scene is hot.
Celebrate liberating the ghosts from hell with candy.
Hide the candy wrappers in the garbage during the final five minutes of baking.
Take the pizza out. Look how cool that is!
Put caper eyes on each ghost.
Let is stand for five minutes. Eat it. Eat it with a celebratory side dish of candy.
Man Verdict: It needs meat and more cheese.
My Verdict: Seriously? I’m so full from the candy.
Dogs’ Verdict: We agree with the man. If you’re going to dress us up, the least you can do is add more meat.
Writing News
Last Time Stoppers Book
I love this book baby and you can order my middle grade fantasy novel Time Stoppers Escape From the Badlands here or anywhere.
People call it a cross between Harry Potter and Percy Jackson but it’s set in Maine. It’s full of adventure, quirkiness and heart.
OUR PODCAST – DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips. We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!
Writing Coach
I offer solo writing coach services. For more about my individual coaching, click here.
COOL CONTEST OF SPOOKY AWESOMENESS!
Um. MacMillan is having a super cool sweepstakes where you can win the book I wrote with Steve (IN THE WOODS) and four other scary books. Go enter! Go win! I’m rooting for you!
IN THE PAPER, BABY
I was just in the newspaper and I think the photo of my head is actually larger than my real-life head. Go figure. It was super kind of them to notice me and to write about me. Here is the link.
LEARN WITH ME AT THE WRITING BARN!
The Write. Submit. Support. format is designed to embrace all aspects of the literary life. This six-month course will offer structure and support not only to our writing lives but also to the roller coaster ride of submissions: whether that be submitting to agents or, if agented, weathering the submissions to editors. We will discuss passes that come in, submissions requests, feedback we aren’t sure about, where we are feeling directed to go in our writing lives, and more. Learn more here!
“Carrie’s feedback is specific, insightful and extremely helpful. She is truly invested in helping each of us move forward to make our manuscripts the best they can be.”
“Carrie just happens to be one of those rare cases of extreme talent and excellent coaching.”
It’s with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
Order this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?
In the Woods
Share this if you want and also because it would be super nice of you!
Writing Coach
