Lynn Strong

Whew.

(If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the Big Parties this time of year, you’re not alone. Here’s a very Small Party for whatever level of ambition you feel like.)

I’m both delighted by Chai and Cat-tales and also exhausted before the marathon even properly starts.

I severely underestimated how much small business bureaucracy, research, form filling, and other administration would be involved in not just publishing a book but in fighting my way through at least a dozen sets of “yes this is actually me” autoresponse systems when trying to claim an author identity with a common name. I have not conquered all the paperwork, but I have gotten the essentials through.

So, it’s available now!

I am slowly assembling the trappings of a small business professional, also known as social media presence, a contact form, a newsletter, and a wide array of advertising venues that want me to pay them exponentially more money than I have taken in at this point, which, hahahaha oops.

Someday I’m going to need to break the habit of feeling like I need to post a recipe with every blog post! But that day is apparently not today, because I would also like to squee about how much fun I had making the chapter art for Chai and Cat-tales.

ETA, I also just found the chef Shai Madhur needs to hire for his tiny mouse festivals. Tiny katori and kadai and thali! Tiny charcoal cook stove! Tiniest fryer for papad and puri! Approximately one tablespoon of dal and a spice container the size of a pillbox.

I am very weak to tiny adorable things…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uZUiFadIWCI

Since I can’t see well enough to use a pencil anymore, and since the thought of AI art or writing makes my soul break out in hives, my on best bet for art is what I can remember of Photoshop from about 25 years ago, plus a Depositphotos standard license for art that authors and creators are allowed to remix and use professionally. This particular image came from assembling about 5-6 pieces of licensed stock line art over several hours of squinting at previews and careful composite editing.

In “The Potter’s Dream,” one of the three novellas in Chai and Cat-tales, Shai Madhur is tasked with trying to keep the mice out of the grain, and despite the fact that he lives in the Temple of Bastet, he’s just not good at un-welcoming anything, even the mice. So he prayed over a festival meal for the mice and made a little mandala of grain and pigments to see where they went afterwards.

The mice, of course, very helpfully left brightly pigment-colored footprints all over the grain sacks once they’d finished receiving his blessings and his festival meal.

In a different fantasy, the mice would have been obediently willing to go the other direction. But I’ve had a few too many difficulties convincing mice that no they really did not want to be in a house with both me and a cat who grew up wild and still had no qualms at all about mouse-hunting.

(I had qualms about his mouse-hunting. For many years my cat seemed determined to repeatedly and not-very-patiently teach me, his clearly hunting-impaired provider of dry crunchy cat food, what was necessary to do to turn mice into juicy tasty food. The mice were persistently stupid enough to keep providing my mighty little hunter with educational materials for his hunt-reluctant human.)

My mighty hunter has since crossed over to hunt the mice in kitty heaven. But I’m still as little inclined as Shai Madhur to hurt the mice myself. (And I adore that mouse in the art beyond all reason.)

So I’m crossing a couple streams here with the intersection of Japanese furikake and onigiri and Middle Eastern za’atar, because I think the temple mice would approve.

The Mouse’s Festival

• Either 3/4 to 1 1/2 cups (1 or 2 rice cooker portions) of uncooked rice, or leftover rice from takeout
• Shai Nanda’s lemon-rubbed cheese, if she will give you the recipe, or some feta sprinkled with olive oil and lemon juice
• Any additional protein of your choice (beef, chicken, falafel…)
• Your choice of any convenient and tasty mezze: hummus, baba ghanoush, tabbouli, dal, olives, dates, dolma, whatever you enjoy
• Your choice of za’atar, furikake, or mixed herbs
  • If you don’t have pre-made za’atar at hand, but you do have sumac, thyme, oregano, and sesame seeds: Mixing about 1 Tbsp of each of them together and toasting them for a couple minutes in a warm dry pan, then adding a sprinkle of salt, gets you za’atar. But Penzey’s za’atar is also tasty and I like supporting the Resistance.

Rice:

• If you want to shape your sushi rice, you’ll want to cook short grain sushi rice fresh. It will hold together in filled balls with ingredients tucked in the middle and/or sprinkles on the outside.
• If you don’t care about shaping it, you can use long grain jasmine or basmati, or anything leftover from takeout.

Other ingredients:

• If you have finger bowls or katori from thali or other cute small containers, plate up your protein and mezze with them. If not, you could use lettuce leaves or nori squares or just dot them wherever you like.

Time to eat:

• If you have a banana leaf, set it out.
• If you don’t, get a fancy plate or bamboo mat or something that makes you feel festive. Small bowls are fun and mouse-friendly too.
• If you like rice balls filled with tasty stuff, take fresh-cooked sushi rice and tuck your protein in the middle and shape it. (If your hands are heat sensitive, you can get an assist from a quick swipe of olive oil in a teacup, then use the teacup as a mold. If you feel particularly festive, you could use silicone muffin molds or even flowers.)
• If shaping rice balls is too much fuss, cook or reheat whatever rice you’ve got. You can entertain your inner mouse with teacups of rice covered with assorted nibbles and sprinkles with less hand scorching.
• Sprinkle your za’atar or furikake on your rice and anything it looks tasty with, for a nod toward the mouse dance party.

Other delicious stuff to do with za’atar:

• Sprinkle on Greek yogurt for quick simple and tasty veggie or bread dips
• Blend with olive oil and toast on pita or saj
• Sprinkle on pizza (especially when there are olives and grilled onions involved)