Lynn Strong

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  • Spice blends: Atraf al-tib

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    (Part of the recipe collection in Haroun and the Study of Mischief)

    The dividing line between food, perfume, and incense was much blurrier in the medieval Middle East than it is in many places today; you can find recipes for breath mints that can also be burned as incense, or for spice blends that also appear in hand washing powders.

    Atraf al-tib takes a similar role to garam masala in that everyone has their own blend and it was commonly sold by vendors. In Charles Perry’s Scents and Flavors, he notes, “The name aṭrāf al-ṭib, ‘sides of scent,’ referred to the paper packets in which the spices were sold in markets. A maximum recipe is spelled out in Chapter 4 but not all the spices listed there were obligatory; the aṭrāf al-ṭib in §2.14 are merely ginger, cardamom, and a bit of clove.” That’s quite similar to European poudre douce, a sweet spice blend which is also one of the precursors of pumpkin spice.

    The recipe he gives in chapter 4 lists ingredients but not proportions: “Since ‘mixed spices’ are repeatedly mentioned in this book, a detailed description is in order. They comprise a mixture of spikenard, betel nut, bay leaf, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, clove, rose hips, ash tree fruits, long pepper, ginger, and black pepper, all pounded separately.” (Scents and Flavors recipe 4.4)

    In the introduction to The Sultan’s Feast, Daniel Newman writes that aṭrāf al-ṭīb “is used in about ten per cent of dishes, often alongside mint, rue or saffron. It is not usually called for in meat or fish dishes; instead, it is found in beverages, sweets, pickles and fragrances.” (It is, however, called for in one of the six and a quarter zirbaj variations in the book!)

    Based on the notes that there are some simple core ingredients and you can add more of them as your spice cabinet allows, this recipe is like Ashar’s rose-scented chai in that I’ll list some essentials and some optional stretch goals.

    The core notes:

    • 1 part ginger (powdered, not fresh or candied)
    • 1/2 to 1 part cardamom
    • 1/8 to 1/4 part clove

    Optional additions as you like:

    • 1 to 2 parts dried rose petals depending on how fragrant they are
    • 1/4 part nutmeg and/or mace
    • 1/4 to 1/2 part long pepper and/or black pepper
    • Bay leaves to taste (either left whole in the jar to remove from the cooking later or thoroughly powdered to blend in)

    A challenge, and possibly not advisable in the modern world:

    • Betel nut is not available in many locations because of concerns about potentially hazardous compounds.
    • Spikenard seems to be more available as an essential oil than as a powder, and the rest of these ingredients are dry.
    • For many years and many translations of cookbooks, some folks weren’t even sure what lisān ʿuṣfūr was. Perry and Newman’s “ash tree fruit” should be taken in the context that Old World and New World varieties of ash trees are different. Ash tree fruits (long and green) are not the same as mountain ash/rowan fruits (small, round, and red). And, of course, the emerald ash tree borer means that ash trees are very endangered.

    If you blend some of this up and store it in a well-sealing jar, you can try it out in some of the cheese and/or pickle recipes below. (Or the zirbaj!)

  • Sharbat for the Shahzada

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    (One of the recipes from Chai and Cat-tales)

    This is based on several historic recipes, most particularly sharbat e badam. Sharbat and sekanjabin and ‘aqsima / oxymel are very old beverages. Similar syrups were recorded by the 11th century’s Canon of Medicine by ibn Sina (known in much of Europe as Avicenna), with further details mentioned in the Persian Zakhira-i Khwarazmshahi, written for the shah of what is now Khorasan.

    You’ll also find ‘aqsima variations in the thirteenth century Syrian Kitab al-Wusla, translated as Scents and Flavors by Charles Perry, and the fifteenth century Egyptian Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa by ibn Mubarak Shah, translated as The Sultan’s Feast by Daniel L. Newman. I owe both of them a considerable debt of knowledge, both for their research and for their choice to make their books available in digital form.

    (At the time of the original book, I’d been on a failed multi-year quest to achieve legible-to-me ebook access to Nawal Nasrallah’s works. I have partly-legible access now, though I’m struggling with how the ebook edition has both mangled the diacriticals in the Roman alphabet and decided to write every bit of the Arabic backwards. The quest for truly legible access continues…)

    Most of the sharbat and ‘aqsima variants involve making sweet flavored syrup concentrate, sometimes with vinegar or acid, and later diluting to taste to serve. (Yes, in essence we’re talking about medieval Kool-aid or Ribena here.)

    This particular variant is a little fancier, as befits the table of the shahzada. In my world-building, food and drink in the God-Emperor’s court takes many of its taste and scent cues from the Ayubbid and Abbasid empires, occasionally ranging into Mughal tastes as well. The boundary between what you call perfume, what you call incense, and what you call spice for food was more flexible in the medieval Middle East than it is in most places today.

    So I’m putting together sandalwood and vetiver and other incense notes with the more familiar cardamom and almond, and of course a shahzada’s table would be graced with saffron.

    But as a disabled person who can’t stand over a stove for an hour anymore, and with friends who are vegan, I’ve also got an easy-mode variation and a no-animal-products variation.

    (Many variations use kewra or screwpine essence where I’m using sandalwood. If you have access to it and you like it, enjoy! I don’t have access outside Rooh Afza, which brings a lot of red food coloring that knocks out the saffron gold.)

    The formal version

    The formal version makes about 4-6 servings:

    Optional, to brew overnight and strain ahead:

    • A couple pieces of food grade (not blended or preservative treated) sandalwood, or about ½ tsp powder, or alternatively a few drops of kewra concentrate if you have it and like it
    • A good sized pinch of vetiver roots, or khus concentrate (ideally undyed)
    • 1 cup hot water in a container with a lid

    Cautionary note: If you have any questions at all about whether your sandalwood is food grade, don’t make tisane of it. Instead, just burn it in an incense burner while you’re sipping your wood-free sharbat e badam, because scent is its entire purpose here.

    So, once you have guaranteed food safe ingredients here:

    Make a cup of very hot water. Let the woody parts steep overnight in a covered container on your countertop. Pyrex or a mug is often good for this.

    In the morning, strain the pieces from your sandalwood and/or vetiver tisane. If you used sandalwood powder, a coffee filter or cheesecloth may help with grit removal.

    Keep the liquid.

    (Decide whether the solids will dry nicely for a second brewing or if they’ve given their all. You could also set them out in a cup to scent your room.)

    Possibly also overnight, almond milk:

    • If you have storebought almond milk, you can use that. Skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you don’t have almond milk, choose whether you’re going to use almond extract or make almond milk. If you’re going to use extract, skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you want to make your own almond milk: Soak about ¾ cup almonds in water overnight. (This can be scaled up if desired.) Blanched peeled almonds will be faster; if you start with regular almonds you’ll want to rub the skins off in the morning. In the morning, after draining and/or peeling the soaked almonds, blend them in a blender, adding somewhere between ¼ and 1 cup of water, to make a smooth paste. (You can make a larger batch if you want to make the finished sharbat entirely vegan.) Pour the almond milk through cheesecloth or a flour sack towel and squeeze the almonds to separate the milk from the grit. (If you like oatmeal or cereal, you can scatter the leftover almond paste into that.)

    Making the sharbat:

    • Either 1 cup of your prepared woody tisane, OR 1 cup of liquid and a nearby incense burner
    • 1/2 to 1 cup of your almond milk (or another liquid with a drop or two of almond extract)
    • 6 green cardamom pods, cracked open and black seeds extracted, OR about ¾ tsp cardamom powder
    • A pinch of saffron threads
    • About ½ cup jaggery, brown sugar, or white sugar, with about 1 tsp reserved for grinding the saffron

    In a pot, add most of your jaggery or sugar to your tisane or water and bring it up to a simmer. Save 1 tsp for grinding.

    Put the remaining 1 tsp of your jaggery or sugar in a mortar with most of the pinch of saffron, reserving a few threads to top the glasses with.

    Use the sugar to grind the saffron into fine bits and add it to the pot.

    If you have cardamom seeds extracted from the green cardamom pods, grind those well in the mortar and pestle. Then add them to the pot of sugar water too.

    Add as much of the almond milk as you like to the pot and simmer until it’s reduced by about half and is a bit thicker, likely 15-20 minutes. Keep stirring to prevent scorching.

    Remove from heat and cool.

    For each glass:

    • 2-3 Tbsp of your chilled sharbat e badam concentrate, or to taste
    • 1 cup cold milk of your choice (cow, almond, coconut)
    • A couple of saffron threads on top
    • (Optional) Light an incense burner with some sandalwood if you have it

    And, as promised, there are simpler versions.

    Simpler Sharbat e Badam (vegan friendly)

    For 4-6 servings:

    • 4-6 cups almond milk OR cow milk/coconut milk with a few drops almond extract added
    • ¾ tsp cardamom powder (or ground from pods if you have ambitions)
    • About ½ cup simple syrup, to taste (can be store-bought or can be made by melting together equal parts sugar and water and stirring until clear)
    • Optional: kewra and/or khus concentrate, to taste
    • Optional but nice: pinch of saffron and 1 tsp sugar

    The night before, or whenever you can, grind your saffron with the sugar, add a few drops warm water, and stir until the sugar dissolves and the water turns golden.

    Add the saffron sugar water, the cardamom, and any flavoring extracts to your chosen milk.

    Sweeten to taste with the simple syrup.

    Refrigerate for a while.

    When ready to serve, stir and pour as is. (No dilution needed since we didn’t make the concentrate.)

    Add a couple threads of saffron to the glass if you have them.

    Light some sandalwood if you feel like it.

  • Zulabiyya for the Eldest Archivist

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    As part of my quest to make recipe post with history notes available for all the book recipes, here’s another from the Chai and Cat-tales collection.

    This one is everything from historical to modern. Zulabiyya is one of the recipes that has the “peanut butter and jelly” problem, in that everyone assumes everyone knows how to make it so they describe it as already understood. You get consistency directions in tenth-century cookbooks that assume you already know what “the texture of zulabiyya batter” is when it’s used as a reference point for some other recipe.

    Apparently the taste for sweet fried yeast-fluffy dough drenched in even more sweet stuff is pretty long-standing, too. Zulabiyya / zalabiya have direct connections with jalebi, zlabiya, mushabbak, and (probably) funnel cakes.

    In Daniel Newman’s translation of Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa, the recipe for Cairene qahiriyya is described as applying zulabiyya batter over a sun-dried almond pastry ring and then deep frying the whole thing. I have dreams of someday being functional enough to try that one out. In the meantime, though, simple is helpful when cooking while disabled.

    Zulabiyya generally come in three shapes depending on the region and the chef’s tradition. Some of them are lattice-style, some are little round balls, and some of them are pillowy beignet-shaped bites of deliciousness. (The featured image here looks like it contains both the beignet-type and the funnel-cake-type variations on zulabiyya, so I was happy to find Raju Alam’s photo.)

    Old school:

    If you’d like a look at the historic version, Daniel Newman shows a video of himself making yeast-leavened and saffron-dyed zulabiyya on the Durham University YouTube channel.

    Simpler version, pillow style:

    My mother made a fast no-rise variation that’s similar to the Egyptian beignet-like fluffy pillow style, when we were young and she was busy and premade yeast dough was a time-saver:

    She’d buy ready-made yeast biscuits in a tube, snip them into quarters, and deep-fry them while simmering up the hot sugar syrup to dunk them in.

    Simpler version, lattice/funnel cake style:

    If you’d like to make your own but don’t feel confident with yeast, a box of pancake mix (mixed to a suitable consistency with water; leave aside the eggs and oil) will get you a self-rising sweet dough that responds nicely to frying. You could add almond extract, rosewater, orange blossom water, or anything else that pleases you before you cook it.

    If you feel like saffron, grind it up with a teaspoon of sugar before stirring it into the batter; it will distribute more thoroughly that way.

    For the latticed version, you’ll want to make the batter a bit thinner than for the pillow version. If you have a coconut shell handy, it provides both measurement and drizzling. (Funnels are fine too, of course!)

    For the ball or pillow version, you’ll want it a bit thicker and something like a scoop or ladle to measure dollops into the oil with.

    Once they’ve fried golden brown, fetch them out with a slotted spoon and set on wire racks or paper towels to drain until you’re ready for the sugar syrup.

    Sugar syrup:

    You can use half and half sugar and water, or you can heat up honey until it’s thin enough to drizzle.

    (A splash of rosewater and a pinch of cardamom in the syrup makes it even more delicious in my book.)

  • Warm comfort: Golden milk and chai

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    This was the second roughest holiday season of my life, and my plans for 3 weeks mostly of writing and editing… the universe said Ha, and kept laughing. I’m… probably not okay. But I need to keep impersonating it, because there isn’t a good alternative. When you grow up undiagnosed autistic with complex trauma and then become a theater major on top of that, are some things you learn about the functional value of masks that keep you together somehow when the show absolutely has to go on.

    I also realized that I made fundamental mistakes trusting WordPress’s defaults 3 years ago. But the amount of time and work needed to correct them is time that won’t go into writing new books.

    So here’s my patch between what I didn’t know about WordPress three years ago and what I can hopefully sustain going forward: the new Recipes section, collected by book, which I hope to add to gradually, reusing content that’s already written in the books and cutting down on the volume of paper needed in paperback editions. (If only in focus photos were not my nemesis!)

    Chai and Cat-tales has the least-intimidating collection of gaps to fill, so I’m going to start there.

    And, really, I’m willing to bet a fair number of folks are in need of some warm and soothing comfort lately.

    Golden Milk and Golden Chai

    Haldi doodh, turmeric milk, is an ancient drink from India. I can’t give you anything resembling a date, though. Every reference I’ve found has said Ayurvedic medicine has used it for “thousands” of years, and while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s in the Manasollasa or Lokopakara manuscripts, I don’t have legible access to either of them.

    So in this case I’m blending history with a twist of modern knowledge: cucurmin’s bioavailability goes up dramatically in the presence of pepper and fat, and cinnamon and ginger and many other spices are potent anti-inflammatories (as well as being delicious). And if you’re adding chai masala as well, the difference between golden milk and golden chai comes down to whether you also simmer in some tea.

    The resemblance between dry chai masala, medieval poudre douce, and pumpkin spice is striking. I have a whole rant about the historical intersections between pumpkin pie spice and chai masala and poudre douce, with tangents through “things women are regularly mocked for enjoying, with or without pepper,” “things megacorporations time-limit and access-control,” and “things I want to enable more people to enjoy for themselves whether or not it is corporate-and-or-patriarchy-approved.” But that rant is not so cozy!

    Personally, it took me a while to warm up to turmeric drinks. In my quest for inflammatory symptom relief that wasn’t NSAIDs, most of the turmeric tisanes I’d tried tasted like I was licking my ochre art pigments. But once I found a concentration I liked, it got easier. And also tastier. 

    I’ve seen modern recipes going from “a pinch” to “a tablespoon” (!) of turmeric per cup of milk. My own balance point hits around a quarter to half teaspoon in my big 24 ounce mug, because on bad days I want to just make it once and sip on it for hours. 

    On a bad day, I’m also not going to be up for freshly hand grinding every spice. So I pregrind my chai masala. Then I use about ½ tsp chai masala to ¼ tsp turmeric, or sometimes half and half when I need extra ouch-fighting power.

    If you’re fond of skim milk or you’re using a fat free nut milk, you’ll likely want to either add a bit of coconut oil to the hot liquid or sip a spoonful of olive oil on the side. 

    I know some people enjoy “bulletproof coffee” with butter in it. And I’ve made and drunk Tibetan tea with butter and salt. But both of those strike my own taste buds as “We’ve crossed the beverage-versus-soup threshold here.” So I don’t suggest blending olive oil into your turmeric and milk, or you may find yourself wondering where the rest of your dal makhani ingredients are.

    Some useful dry chai masala / poudre douce variants 

    Easy mode: Get something already fine ground like pumpkin spice and add extra cardamom and black pepper.

    Easier mode: Use something like the Blue Lotus chai powder mentioned below, though it includes powdered tea so you will get some caffeine.

    Handcrafted for storage:

    • A couple dozen green cardamom pods, cracked and with the black seeds crushed. (Or 1 Tbsp powdered)
    • 3-4 cinnamon sticks, preferably Ceylon cinnamon, bashed up enough to fit in a spice grinder. (Or ½ Tbsp powdered) 
    • 1-2 tsp black peppercorns (or long pepper if you can find it)
    • 1-2 tsp dried ginger (not crystallized or fresh here; powder keeps longer)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp nutmeg, ideally fresh grated
    • If you can find them:
      • ½ tsp grains of paradise
      • A couple chunks of galangal
      • ½ tsp mace

    If they’re already powdered, mix them up.

    If they’re still whole, grind them all up together. 

    If you enjoy the brewing process, it doesn’t need to be ground too fine. 

    If you don’t want to have to strain it, make sure to remove the green hulls from the cardamom pods and extract the seeds before grinding. Then grind all the spices as finely as possible.

    Put the ground spices in an airtight jar and date it so you know how fresh it is. (Best within a few months; it won’t go off, it just won’t be as fragrant or as potent.)

    When you’re ready to drink:
    • 1 or 2 cups hot milk from cows or plants
      • (If skim, add a bit of coconut oil or a sliver of unsalted butter) 
      • (If you want it to be chai rather than hot milk, simmer some CTC black tea like PG Tips or Jivraj in there too)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • ¼ to ½  tsp chai masala / poudre douce above, OR pumpkin spice plus cardamom and pepper (to taste) 
    • 1 to 2 tsp honey, jaggery, or sugar (to taste)

    Simmer for 15 minutes or so, strain if needed, and serve warm.

    Scale up or down based on the size of your mug.

    Ready to drink easy mode: 

    When I’m having a bad day, my super-fast, get-it-done, not-sure-I-won’t-burn-the-milk-today version goes:

    • 1 or 2 cups hot water (not boiling)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • Half a container of Orgain’s vegan vanilla meal shake (brings enough fat for bioavailability, a lot of creaminess, a lot of vitamins, and enough sugar that I don’t add more)
    • Your chai masala / poudre douce equivalent of choice:
      • ¼ tsp your home blend, if you ground it finely enough not to need to strain it
        OR
      • ¼ tsp something like Blue Lotus original chai masala per cup
        OR
      • ¼ tsp pumpkin spice plus ⅛ tsp cardamom and several grinds of pepper per cup

    If I’m out of meal shakes I swap in 1 Tbsp milk powder and 1 tsp sugar per cup.

  • Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season

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    Anyone else remember the old Looney Tunes “Wabbit season!…. Duck season!…. Elmer season?”

    Somehow I have pulled off the posters and found “Pumpkin Spice Season and Conference Season.” And for the love of mercy, someone needs to thin the herd somehow!

    I don’t think I’ve ever hit a schedule of 9 conferences in 5 weeks before. Flights of Foundry was two weeks ago, Rainbow Space Magic was last weekend, HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away are this weekend (I’m both presenting and running tech support), next week is WordPress Global Accessibility Day, the weekend after that is the Self-Publishing Advice Conference, and that’s before I start listing off the too-personally-identifiable conferences at my university.

    I’ve just finished making the “In case of excessive virality, break glass and transfer the load to Google” emergency backup spreadsheet of book links for the Cozy the Day Away sale, because previous sales have caused the Bluehost server to struggle under the weight of thousands of cozy fantasy fans wanting at 90some books… and this time we’ve got 160 plus the attention of the entirety of HearthCon!

    So if the server says “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” I can throw out the spreadsheet link. The spreadsheet is not beautiful and filterable and personalized by each author… but Google can take the kind of load hits most other services can’t and keep on ticking. Still, here’s hoping cache tuning and view size reframing will buy us some breathing room? I am not actually a server admin, I am a user interface and metadata structure person. But I’ve hung out with enough server admins to have a vague idea of which words to look for in case of viral-necessary tuning?

    Anyhow, I should find a recipe to post with this!

    I have been vastly amused by the Cookbook Diss Tracks being laid down between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. Ishaq al-Mawsili’s grudge chased Ziryab from Baghdad to as close to the far end of the continent as he could get without falling into the ocean… and then Ziryab turned around and set up cultural court in Cordoba and laid down the culture and etiquette and personal grooming and fine dining standards that have lasted most of the next thousand years. But that needs to be a future blog post, because I have now formally Pumpkin Spiced Myself FOR SCIENCE.

    Self, I thought, how can you call yourself a cozy fantasy writer if you have not tasted Starbucks’ own legendary Pumpkin Spice Latte? You should do that for HearthCon.

    Self, I also thought, you have not previously done this because your body really, really hates coffee. Do not do food sensitivity-adjacent biological experiments during a two day convention where you’re also tech support.

    So, last weekend and not this weekend, I turned myself into my own lab critter.

    The lab notebook annotations include:

    🎃 “Pumpkin spice” as a spice doesn’t technically have to have pumpkin itself in it, but yum! Very much nutmeg-forward on the spice blend, or else the sprinkle on the top was. I’ve been contemplating how I might add pumpkin-per-se to my own chai and reading up on how different folks recreate the pumpkin-having parts of Starbucks PSLs and came up with the variations below.

    🫠 Really, Starbucks? 21 different modification dropdown menus with over 100 options for a single beverage? My low vision self made brain-frying noises trying to navigate through the system and I just hit the “default order” button on the iced pumpkin spice chai, because there was no coffee in it (theoretically).

    🍦Have you ever accidentally melted Culver’s pumpkin ice cream and then drank it anyway? The default-settings iced pumpkin spice chai tasted very much like that to me. 

    😵 Some mistakes were made. I’d wondered if Starbucks might have enough Ambient Coffee in their water system for my food sensitivities to protest? Some empirical experimentation later: 

    🤭 Yeah it was a good thing I did this the weekend before HearthCon and Cozy the Day Away tech support, because my body went into full-on “As per my LAST EMAIL…”

    🔬 Still. Food science has been scienced, complete with accidental biohazards. For SCIENCE!

    If you’re not from the land of home-baked pumpkin pies…

    The overlap between the ingredients in chai masala, poudre douce, and what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice mix are pretty high. Generally speaking, you’ll take out the black pepper and cardamom and add more nutmeg, but here’s what you get in a jar of McCormick’s pumpkin spice (which does not include pumpkin itself):

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Nutmeg
    • Allspice
    • A sulfiting agent

    Compare that to versions of poudre douce from Le Menagier de Paris:

    (One version)

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Nutmeg
    • Grains of paradise
    • Sugar

    (Another version)

    • Cinnamon
    • Ginger
    • Cloves
    • Bay leaves

    And then compare that to the simple base and complex variations of atraf al-tib from Kitab al-Tabikh:

    • Cardamom
    • Ginger
    • Cloves
    • (optional) Bay leaves
    • (optional) Rose petals
    • (more options if you like them) Nutmeg, mace, black pepper, spikenard…

    I haven’t seen bay leaves or spikenard listed in a chai masala blend, but all the rest of it, including cinnamon and black pepper, have made appearances in different chai masala variations I’ve seen.

    I currently live in the state that produces more pumpkins than anywhere else on the continent, and lived downwind of a pumpkin packing plant for quite a while. Somehow it smells much better coming out of the can than it did going in, and I don’t know what alchemy is necessary for that to happen. But as a result, there have always been cans of pureed pumpkin available year round in my area.

    If you don’t have that available? Acorn squash or butternut squash make pretty good substitutes when you sweeten them and puree them and toss in some of the aforementioned pumpkin spice.

    Or if you enjoy egg custard, the relationship between custard tart spice and pumpkin spice is pretty high too. And an American-style (sweet) pumpkin pie is much closer to a sweet custard tart than to a savory quiche.

    When studying in the UK, the hosting university tried very earnestly to throw us a Thanksgiving feast complete with “pumpkin pie.” It was, yes, technically a pie containing pumpkin. But it was a savory pie containing slices of roasted pumpkin, skin and all, and — spoiler alert — you can’t roast most large orange carving-style pumpkins skin and all the way you could do with an eggplant. The big carveable ones have been bred to be tough enough to stand up to both overenthusiastic kids with serrated knives and squirrels delighted by the newfound entrance to the juicy meats inside, once that annoying candle in the guts burns itself out.

    So a can of pumpkin puree and a pastry pie crust is how most folks start their pumpkin pies around here. But if you don’t think you can use a whole can of pumpkin puree, or if your neighbors are avid gardeners and you haven’t locked your porch/patio/garage/car trunk/anything in which a box of squash may be “helpfully” deposited and you’re desperate for something to do with the overflow?

    Homemade pumpkin or other squash puree

    For additional Starbucksification of your hot caffeinated beverage, should you so desire.

    (The low spoons way for me to do this is to buy a can of puree, but that may not be as easy elsewhere, so…)

    • A squash or two
    • A baking dish which will hold them both when cut in half
    • Enough water to fill about 1/4 inch of the baking dish for extra steaming

    Preheat an oven to 350 F / 175 C.

    Halve your squash and take the seeds out.

    Put about 1/4 inch of water in the bottom of your baking dish.

    Put the squash cut side down on the baking dish. The water should help it steam rather than brown and glaze.

    Roast your squash for about 45 minutes to an hour, until soft when poked with a fork.

    Let it cool enough to handle, then scoop the innards away from the skin.

    Mash it up with forks, a potato masher, or a blender, your preference.

    If it’s a stringy squash you might want to press it lightly through a wire mesh sieve to extract the pulp and leave the strings behind.

    You can either spice it to taste now or add spices later. I tend to add the spices later once I know what else is going into it (eggs and cream for a pie or tart, or tea/coffee for a beverage, or maybe I would make a big bowl of Carmarthenshire Welsh stwmp with as many mashable root vegetables as I could lay hands on, in which case I’m not going to want it pre-sweet-spiced for lattefication.)

    Refrigerate until ready to use.

    Imitation Starfaring Beverage with Pumpkin And Spice

    • Pumpkin puree (as above or from a can), about 2 Tbsp per beverage
    • La Lechera squeeze bottle (easy mode) or a can of sweetened condensed milk, about 2 Tbsp per beverage
      • Avoiding cow milk? Nut or soy milks plus some sugar will be thinner but taste similar
      • Egg nog flavored non dairy creamer can also bring a very similar spice profile, in which case you probably won’t need as much pumpkin spice
      • If you aren’t using sweetened condensed milk, you may want honey or simple syrup.
    • Pumpkin spice blend (McCormick or home-blended to taste), about 1/4 tsp per beverage
    • Hot beverage of your choice (coffee, masala chai, hot milk, hot milk alternative…)
      • Making tea or masala chai? You may want to brew it stronger than usual to stand up to the extra pumpkin and milk-or-alternative.
    • Ground nutmeg to dust the top with
    • (Optional) Whipped cream or alternative
    • (Optional) Whichever of the 100some other Starbucks additions makes you happy!

    For a 12-16 oz mug:

    • 2 Tbsp ish pumpkin puree
    • 2 Tbsp ish sweetened condensed milk (squeeze bottle or can)
      OR
      Non dairy milk and sweeetener to taste
    • When preparing the hot beverage, stir the dry pumpkin spice in so that it gets a chance to cook along with the tea leaves (or the milk simmering or coffee brewing).
    • Fill most of the rest of the mug with your hot beverage.
    • Stir vigorously to blend together, and taste test to check the sweet-to-spice balance before topping.
    • (Optional) Apply whipped cream or whipped non-dairy alternative to the top of the hot beverage
    • (Optional) Dust with nutmeg

    Sip, purr, repeat.

  • Book release: “Haroun and the Study of Mischief” Gets Unleashed!

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    Or at least it does if I have correctly flipped all the switches and clicked all the clickables!

    Haroun’s book is really personal for me. I share disability spectrums with both Shai Madhur and Haroun, and I have a lot of friends who share intersectional communities, so the afterstuff is longer than it was for Chai and Cat-tales, but the story itself is also well over twice as long even before I added in 50-some pages of recipes.

    I am also drowning in small business minutiae on very little sleep; please pardon typos. Yesterday (9/6 as I’m prewriting this), I tried to do the marketing grind and also port my whole mailing list to a new provider because the current one decided this was the perfect month to halve their free tier and start charging more than I earn in an average month from book sales. And my brain just would not cope. Neither would my body or my eyes. So instead of being on the laptop juggling spreadsheets and logins, I was flat on my back with my tablet two inches from my nose, gleefully chatting zucchini/courgettes with Lacrima Mundi, QuiteBrief, Matt Mason, and Steve Hugh Westenra.

    QuiteBrief and I both live in what I colloquially refer to as zucchini country, meaning the part of the world where at certain times of year you know you must lock your car, your porch, and/or your garage to prevent drive-by depositing of boxes of tomatoes and various gourds of a size that double as blunt instruments which were discovered under overgrown leaves by avid gardeners.

    I have had to deal with 20 pounds of assorted squash in an entirely too short time window, and so zucchini bread, many soups, many stir fries, and mad fusion crossover food like potato-zucchini fritters and Carmarthenshire Welsh-meets-Korean variants on stwmp have made it into my experimental recipe collection. Matt has some delicious looking Greek variations in that thread and QuiteBrief’s chocolate zucchini bread also sounds intriguing.

    We also bonded over a mutual appreciation of shiso, which features prominently in both Japanese and Korean food, and it makes a delightful substitute for mint with a delicate pink color (even when you use the green shiso variant) in sekanjabin. Unfortunately it doesn’t dry very well, but it’s essential in Japanese umeboshi pickles (at least in my opinion). Sekanjabin uses up a lot more of it than umeboshi do, though. I’ve also considered a shiso pesto sort of notion to blend shiso leaves with an olive and sesame oil blend and freeze in ice cubes for later use. (At some point I’m going to blog the medieval form of za’atar from Haroun’s bonus recipe collection, which is basically pesto made with thyme and walnuts instead of basil and pine nuts, and this is a note to future me to come back and link this in.)

    I confess the chat did not make my small business obligations any shorter but it was a joy and a relief to just talk about food nerdery because I wanted to, not to grind more social media marketing performances because I was obligated to.

    And since I have 50 pages of not-yet-blogged recipes from Haroun to choose from, here’s one of them! One of these days I really will get around to the mega-post about sharbat, sekanjabin, shrub, switchel, and various international variants on “sugar + acid + flavoring = beverage,” but in the meantime, here is a sweeter version of Najra’s Crimson Witches’ Brew.

    Grandmother’s Karkadeh for Good Boys, Good Girls, and Good Folks

    Technically karkadeh could be made as a sharbat, like the shahzada’s fragrant almond, khus, and sandalwood sharbat from Chai and Cat-tales. But Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is at the other end of the scale from a sharbat even though it’s based on karkadeh. A sharbat is a sweet syrup with a particular flavor used to make drinks and sometimes dressings, karkadeh is a sweet hibiscus drink, and Najra’s Crimson Witch’s Brew is the sourest combination of hibiscus and other tart things that you’re willing to put in your mouth.

    There are folk tales that the pharaohs also drank karkadeh, but unfortunately I haven’t found any references more concrete than “everyone says”-type marketing materials. I wouldn’t be surprised if hibiscus drinks have been made and consumed for that long – I just can’t document it.

    Here are three variations based on whether you’d like to store sharbat concentrate and dilute to taste when you want to drink it or whether you’d like to make a cup at a time.

    A pitcher for a party like Haroun’s:

    • 1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
    • Up to the same amount of sugar (optional but customary)
    • 2 quarts of water
    • Optional: A lime or some lime juice
    • Optional: Some rose water and/or mint sprigs

    Simmer the hibiscus flowers and sugar together until the liquid is bright red and the sugar (if you’re using it) is dissolved, usually 5-10 minutes. (If some people in the party want sugar-free, you could also make the tisane without sugar and serve a container of simple syrup on the side for folks to use or not use as desired.)

    When the color and flavor are as strong as you like, strain the petals out of the karkadeh with a sieve or cheesecloth.

    Chill until you’re ready to serve.

    Taste when cool, because temperature makes a taste difference. You might want to adjust the tartness with lime and/or simple syrup at this point. Add any rosewater after chilling, so that the flavors won’t evaporate with the steam.

    Decorate the pitcher or glasses with mint sprigs if desired.

    (If you plan to serve it with ice, use less water in the simmering to start with, so it will be less diluted by the ice melting.)

    For sharbat concentrate to save and dilute later:

    Low spoons? Monin sells a tasty hibiscus syrup that’s likely intended for tea shops, but I drink enough chai to be my own tea shop. So if you need any encouragement to become your own tea shop too, go forth and brew with all the tasty benedictions!

    Making your own: Instead of making the sugar 1:1 with the hibiscus, you’ll want sugar 1:1 with water (or 2:1 with vinegar for some sharbats), so that you have a condensed syrup that you dilute to taste later. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a no-sugar alternative for this type of syrup.

    • Up to 3 cups sugar, separated
    • 2 cups water
    • 1/4 to 1/2 cup dried hibiscus petals (or, if you have them fresh, as many as you can wilt into the pot)
    • (Optional) Juice and zest from 1-2 limes, about 2-4 Tbsp
    • (After cooling) Rosewater and/or mint sprigs if desired

    First, simmer the hibiscus petals and any optional lime zest for 10 minutes or so, in order for the flavor and color to be extracted. Use a sieve to strain out the petals and give them a good squeeze with the back of a spoon to extract all the liquid into the simmering pot. (I recommend removing the petals before adding the sugar because of how thick the syrup will be; you’ll lose a lot of syrup if you let it cling to the petals.)

    After the petals have been removed, while the hot hibiscus tisane is still simmering, add 2 cups of sugar gradually, stirring so that the sugar dissolves. This will be a thick syrup when cooled.

    Once 2 cups of sugar are dissolved in and the liquid is clear, adjust the sweetness/tartness with the lime juice.

    You can taste test with a tablespoon of sharbat in about a quarter cup of cold water to assess whether you’d like it stronger or sharper. Don’t entirely cool the syrup until you’re sure you have the balance you want, though; you might overcorrect the tartness with the limes and need to dissolve some of that third cup of sugar in.

    When you’re satisfied with the sweet-tart balance, cool the syrup. If you like rosewater, add a splash of it now. Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

    When serving, plan for one part syrup to three or four parts of cool water, more or less. (Again, taste testing is your friend! I use a couple tablespoons of syrup per cup of water. If you use carbonated water, you have your own karkadeh soda.)

    For a sugar-free alternative, individual servings:

    • 1-2 tsp dried hibiscus petals
    • 1-2 cups hot water
    • (Optional) Sugar-free sweetener of your choice
    • (Optional) A slice of lime or sprig of mint

    I do like hibiscus tisane without any sweetener in it as long as I don’t stack too many other bitter-makers into it. Everyone’s tastes vary, of course! You can also make a sugar-free batch at the pitcher size and offer simple syrup on the side for those who partake.

  • Oh My Dog… two weeks to unleashed!

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    So, uh. Note to future me:

    Don’t schedule three sales on your existing book, cover finalizing on two more books, final book generation on a ready-to-launch book, and writing the last 2-3 chapters on the first piece of a trilogy for the same week as the start of the university semester ever, EVER again, got it?

    (The whimpering sound you hear is the faltering remnants of my coping mechanisms.)

    I have probably gone off the wall with fifty pages of bonus recipes in the back of Haroun. But there’s a whole marketplace full of delicious nibbles, and Upaja’s cauldrons, and Grandmother’s karkadeh for good boys and good girls who are much too innocent to drink her kumiss. I wanted a lot of fun stuff to counterbalance the less-fun parts of the notes about living with multiple disabilities and how that informs both Haroun’s method of navigating a world he can’t see and Madhur’s method of navigating a world without motor vehicles when he owns very little other than his priest-cloths and his walking stick.

    Anyhow, I’m trying to wrap up the business-and-advertising pieces with my three-hours-of-sleep brain in order to unplug everything and force myself to finish off the three chapters that have been fighting me since June. It’s tricky to figure out exactly where to land Chai and Charmcraft’s plot plane when it’s the first book of a trilogy, you have to leave certain connections unresolved for the next two books to have launch points, you also have to have a satisfying-for-this-book pause point, and your main character is a prophet!

    So, if the universe does not laugh too loudly (I say while knocking on both wood and my skull to avert mishaps), I’m hoping to release (or unleash) Haroun on September 13.

    That’s if the proof prints come in acceptably and if I haven’t too badly bolloxed up the existence of both an Amazon paperback and a Draft2Digital-to-many-places-and-it-might-try-to-horn-in-on-Amazon-I-don’t-know-yet paperback with different ISBNs which I have heard both “it’s fine” and “you have set yourself up for an irretrievable and expensive identity hairball” about from different sources?

    I would very much like to make paperbacks available to libraries who won’t buy from Amazon! But if this all goes sideways, the non-Amazon edition is going to be what has to go. 95% of my sales come from Amazon, and less than 1% of those are paperback. So if I get caught in the middle of Dueling Paperbacks, 1% of 5% means I’m unlikely to sell more than one non-Amazon paperback every five to ten years, and at that point it’s not worth the bureaucratic combat.

    So, a pickle recipe sounds very, very appropriate for the current situation, wouldn’t you say? Somehow “pickle” is turning out to be frequently associated with “paperback complications” in my life!

    Salted Lemon Pickles

    Salted lemon pickles are a staple ingredient across much of the lemon-producing swathe of the world, from California to Africa to Vietnam. We find recipes from the tenth century onward, and I’m pretty sure they were making them before anyone wrote it down in a copy that survived.

    Nawal Nasrallah’s Treasure Trove’s recipe 607 in the Google Scholar preview is very like Daniel Newman’s Sultan’s Feast recipe 226, and these are very similar to how I’ve seen modern bloggers describe the making of salted lemons: cutting them in quarters and covering with salt and lemon juice and then topping with olive oil (or otherwise making sure the jar is full and airless).

    Out of spoons? You can buy jars of salt preserved lemons online as well!

    The Sultan’s Feast recipe 226 says: “Score lemons crosswise and fill the cuts with salt. Layer the lemons on a platter and weigh them down with stones. Cover and leave for three days [Kanz 607 says two]. Then take them out, put in a large glass jar and take the liquid. Dye it with saffron and take out the pips. If you want [more] lemon juice, add some. Then tightly pack everything in a jar, making sure [the lemons] are immersed. Seal with good quality olive oil, put a lid on top, and store.”

    Some key details here:

    • You need a lot of salt. Probably more salt than you’d guess. Kosher salt or sea salt is better than iodized salt for this purpose; medieval cookbook writers didn’t have iodized salt.
    • You need a lot of lemon juice too. They really do need to be submerged. A pickling weight can help keep them under the surface. (You can get the extra juice from standard lemons since you won’t be eating the peel of those.) Because the peels are included and most Western recipes assume you aren’t eating the lemon peel, you may want to look for organic lemons to avoid pesticides and preservational waxes applied to the surface of standard lemons.
    • If you can find doqq, boussera, or Meyer lemons, which are generally small and round they’ll have thinner pith and more flesh than the longer and pointier varieties of lemon.

    Christine Benlafquih of Taste of Maroc has an excellent article with helpful photographs of both homemade and market-bought salted lemons at different lengths of pickling. I admit I’m one of those not-in-plastic purists, though, and a pint or quart Mason jar is easier for me to calibrate by than “whatever your nearest empty container happens to be.”

    For one quart or two pint jars, ideally sterilized before use:

    • 6-12 Meyer lemons or similar round lemons, preferably organic
    • Additional lemon juice from whatever’s handy, possibly a cup or more
    • A couple cups kosher or sea salt (non-iodized)
    • Saffron if you’d like Even More Yellow
    • Optional but helpful: Two nesting glass or ceramic bowls that fit together neatly, or two plates with a lip to catch juices, very clean
    • Optional: Olive oil to separate the lemon juice from the top of the jar(s), if the jar lids are metal rather than glass or plastic

    Wash and dry your lemons thoroughly to remove any contaminants from travel.

    Cut your lemons in quarters, not quite all the way through.

    Scatter a couple tablespoons of salt in the bottom of your bowls if you have them, or your pickling jar(s) if you don’t.

    Coat every surface of your lemon with salt, including stuffing the insides of the cuts.

    If you have nesting bowls or plates and want to try the Sultan’s Feast edition, spread your to-be-pickled lemons among the salt in the lower bowl, then place the upper bowl on top of them and weight with a couple cans (or rocks). Keep in a cool, clean place (refrigerator recommended) for a couple of days.

    When your weights have pressed some juice out of the lemons into the salt, transfer everything – lemons, juice, salt, and all – to your pickling jars.

    (If you don’t have the nesting bowls / plates arrangement or want to get things refrigerated sooner, just begin the whole process in the pickling jars, in which case skip straight to the step below.)

    Layer salt and lemons in the jar, pressing down firmly as you go to compress them and remove empty air. Add more salt and more lemons until you can’t fit any more in, but make sure the last lemon is below the surface of the jar so that it can be covered.

    If you’d like to add Even More Yellow, this would be a good time to sprinkle a few saffron threads in.

    Pour over as much lemon juice as is needed to submerge the lemons.

    If your jar lid is metal rather than glass, you’ll want to separate the acidic lemon juice from the jar lid somehow. The Treasure Trove suggests topping the jar off with olive oil, but then you can’t move the jar much until you plan to use it. One modern recipe suggested using a piece of waxed paper to separate the lemon juice from a metal lid. Some glass jars come with swing top glass lids and rubber gaskets that wouldn’t need the acid protection, but air is your enemy here, so you do want the jar as airless as possible until you decide to use your lemons.

    Refrigerators didn’t exist in the Middle Ages, but they do now, and they’ll buy you time to eat through your lemon stash. Because they’re so tart and salty, you may want to rinse the salt off before eating them. Some people dispose of the flesh and mince just the rind for use in cooking.

  • Ranveer, The Next Book, and The Dagobah Swamp Ramen

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    I’m working on getting Haroun and the Study of Mischief ready for publication — that isn’t the book I thought was coming next! But it went from 0 to 60 in 8 madcap days over spring break for the Cozy Quill Pitchfest, and then I had a finished standalone book! And I’m still figuring out what to do with its existence now that I know more of what I should have done before Chai and Cat-tales.

    (Chai and Charmcraft is still coming! It’s just probably not coming first.)

    So I was chatting with my editor Dove this morning, and we got to talking about the implications of italicizing non-English words, what happens when different characters speak or don’t speak multiple languages, and Ranveer.

    The conversation about italicizing non-English words gets extra complicated when you have native speakers of at minimum three different languages as narrators! If you’ve noticed that I italicized court-sourced words like shahzada and phirni and habibti, but I didn’t italicize chai and dal and haldi and sahib? The reason for that is that the “common” language of Tel-Bastet considers those words native to itself. And on the other hand Rahat is speaking the court language when he calls Ashar ya majid, ya rafiq, ya hasan. From Ashar’s point of view, he doesn’t exactly know what those courtly poet-words mean either, but he knows chai, and he knows dal.

    And then we get to Ranveer, who speaks the common language, has frantically studied spellbooks written in the court language, has probably never heard it spoken, and didn’t actually realize that the court wizards didn’t write down the minor details like vowels in their spells or their records.

    Ranveer is the self-taught student of life who can’t afford a university, who’s trying out the word “visionary” for a job title on the business cards that don’t exist in Tel-Bastet. He already discarded “alchemist” when his landlady threatened to end his lease if his acid pots gnawed any more holes in her floors or ceilings or building foundations. And “inventor” has the unfortunate implication that people would expect the things he creates to actually, you know, work.

    Ranveer is as close to a teenaged self-insert as I’ve ever come in fiction. In this day-and-time he would absolutely be a queer theater kid who loves cats and books and magic of both the theatrical and the literal kind. He would have improvised his flight spells by running the magic-and-court-language lyrics of “Defying Gravity” through Google Translate and coming up with something that he knows can’t possibly have the right number of vowels in it, but he can’t translate the spellbook for himself and he doesn’t know any fancy court-trained magicians and he really desperately wants to know so many things he hasn’t got a teacher for.

    That’s how I started osmosing Japanese five years before I had access to lessons, and how I started cooking things I’d read the descriptions of before there was an Internet, let alone any English language authentic cookbooks (as opposed to the 1950s-housewife-with-extra-Jello don’t-worry-it’ll-be-fiiiiiine cookbooks) that would be available in my small rural area. The thing I invented that I thought was supposed to be something like yakisoba was actually more like lower-fish-sauced pad thai. I didn’t know that for several more years, until I finally got the chance to see and taste the real thing.

    But on the culinary front, my all time winner of the Honorary Ranveer Prize for Jumping Up And Down On The End of the Loveseat Hanging Out The Fifth Story Window and Figuring Out The Flight Spell On the Way Down? That wasn’t the burnt Kool-aid, because the burnt Kool-aid was never technically meant as food. The Honorary Ranveer Prize Winner was Dagobah Swamp Ramen.

    I feel like I can poke fun at Ranveer more than my other characters because I have been there and done that. Before there was commercial Internet, I wanted to know things from other places so badly, and there wasn’t a way to get there, and there wasn’t a way to find a teacher in the tiny rural nowheresville town I lived in. So I had books. Sometimes they were in languages I didn’t read. So I taught myself how to read languages I couldn’t speak in order to read more books, because the library usually had starting language-learning books for languages that we didn’t have teachers for — and remember, this was before the Internet, this was before YouTube.

    Now it is so much easier to learn languages from real people who speak that language! Now it is so much easier to meet people from around the world from wherever you are! Now it is just a few clicks to watch other languages’ media and have them translated and start osmosing the way the language works! But as a queer, neurodivergent, theater-kid outcast in the 1980s in the middle of uber-conservative rural nowhere? I didn’t know that queer and autistic (and even not-conservative) were things I could be. I just knew that I didn’t fit anywhere with anyone, and not even the teachers were safe.

    So I had books. On paper, without a search function!

    Throughout history, education has been hard to get. And for many people it’s still hard and expensive to get formal education, even if the informal education for the dangerously self-motivated like Ranveer and me has gotten easier.

    So, here and now with the resources I have, I am all about talking to real people who live different lives and have different experiences. And while I was physically able to do it, I was also all about experimental archaeology: learning what it was like to sleep in a tent made of cloth held up with sticks instead of super modern ultraengineered performance plastics, learning how long it took to weave your own clothes and cook your own food, learning the hard way how likely it was I would have died before I turned 5 thanks to the array of lung problems exacerbated by camping in canvas tents that were likely mold vectors. Learning By Experience “like you do,” right?

    I remember being Ranveer. I remember that if I had had a way to stick a loveseat out my bedroom window and escape, I would have done it even if I didn’t know whether the flight spell was going to work until gravity took hold and I was on the way down. I remember being that hungry for knowledge, that hungry for freedom.

    I only made it about 40 miles, but that was far enough to get to a university with a community and friends that have changed my life.

    Dagobah Swamp Ramen is the product of the first year in that university town, where they had six international grocery stores! And dozens of international restaurants! And eight libraries! And so many books I had a crisis of the soul knowing I could never manage to read them all in my life.

    I was free for the first time in my life. My life was my own for the first time ever. But I had never been the only person in charge of my life before, either. I had never lived alone in an apartment with no meal plan, bills in my own name, no savings, and no one to ask for help when the oven broke and your landlord refused to fix it.

    (The landlord refused to fix it for the next decade. I moved out before he fixed it.)

    I was a theater kid with more intellect than common sense, and admitting failure would mean I had to move back in with the family of magats and do the socially expected thing for the gender I was assigned at birth, and so failure was not an option.

    So I taught myself to rewire the broken electric stove to get one of the burners working. And it didn’t catch fire, which was a win!

    And I bought a rice cooker, because I knew Japanese food didn’t depend on ovens. I lived for ten years with one working burner and a rice cooker and all the ovenless Japanese recipes I could try to recreate.

    During part of that ten years I actually had a foray into semiprofessionally teaching cooking classes, as in people paid me to teach them how to make things you could eat. After all, if I could make things edible with one burner and one rice cooker, I could probably help university students feed themselves in similarly disreputable apartments (with possibly the same landlord).

    Dagobah Swamp Ramen is what happens when you go to an international grocery store where everything is labeled in the appropriate language for its country of origin, and you don’t read enough of that language yet, because a lot of it was Korean rather than Japanese. And you kind of guess based on what you can see through the packaging, and you buy things that you think you might know what they are, and you take it home to try to figure out how to make it edible because the restaurants were too expensive for everyday and the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. (This is also how I lived on lima bean not-quite-curry not-quite-salad for several weeks.)

    Oh, and the key part: Dagobah Swamp Ramen is what happens when you recognize that nori is seaweed from having seen it on sushi. But you do not recognize the difference between nori and konbu. And you did not know that more than one kind of seaweed was edible. But you had your bag of groceries and your rice cooker and one working stove burner, and a whole lot of determination to make it work somehow.

    I’m still really hella motivated to make it work somehow. If you need help figuring out how to make food suit what your dietary needs are and your physical capabilities are, I am what happens when you combine really wild ingenuity with really limited capacity, so let’s brainstorm.

    Dagobah Swamp Ramen*

    *Honestly, not recommended.

    But I guarantee Ranveer would have made this if he lived in an era with university students, grocery stores, ramen, and nori.

    • One package of some kind of noodles that you can’t read the label on, but which look like they’re about the right thickness and waviness?
    • One package nori — you can’t read the label on this either but it’s got a picture of being wrapped around rice, that’s gotta mean it’s seaweed, and seaweed is seaweed, right?
      • If this is a small rectangular package of nori in Korean, it might even have sesame oil already applied! Flavor bonus!
    • Some green onions or chives if you can find them, no worries if you can’t
      • If you have some dried or frozen small-cut vegetables, this is an opportunity for ~*~*~nutrition~*~*~ too
    • Flavor splurge: Some sesame seeds or a container of sesame oil that is actually labeled in a language you speak**
      • **and also does not have a picture of a chili pepper on it, speaking of Learned By Experience
    • An egg, if it’s not too expensive
    • Some soy sauce — this does come labeled in a language you can read, probably, and might be left over from a restaurant takeout
    • A sugar packet or two, possibly left over from having ordered tea with your takeout
    • A bouillon cube maybe?
      • Or maybe your noodle packet has something silver in it, and when you open it and sniff it it hasn’t burned out all your nose hairs?
    • One working burner
    • One pot
    • One bowl, spoon optional
    • ~*~*~Determination~*~*~

    Get some water boiling in your pot on your burner.

    Cook the noodles and any available vegetables until pulling a noodle out and blowing on it and tasting it suggests it’s cooked.

    If you’ve gotten hold of an egg, crack it in and stir it through so it will kind of cook and shred on the way. (It will not look attractive. There is a reason we have called this Dagobah Swamp Ramen.)

    Eyeball the difference between the size of your pot and the size of your intended bowl, and tip out some of the boiling water so it’s reasonably likely to fit.

    Add a spoonful or so of soy sauce, a sugar packet or two (otherwise known as 1-2 tsp), and whatever tastes right for any variety of sesame you may have acquired.

    Stir and taste.

    If it needs more flavor, cautiously sprinkle or crumble in your bouillon or ramen packet until you hit a good balance between flavor and oh-my-gods-salt-lick.

    Brace yourself.

    Open the package of nori.

    Crumble some of it into the soup pot, and watch in horror as it disintegrates into green slime.

    Apply contents of pot to bowl. Make sure the burner is turned off.

    Eat, and taste ~*~*~determination~*~*~.

    (It may taste better with your eyes closed.)

  • Paperbacks and Pickles

    So, uh, it’s been…

    yeah, it’s. Uh. Insert the thousand yard stare here.

    Setting aside the dumpster fire… I seem to have a finite capacity for word generation, much of which has been soaked by work, organizing efforts, required social media, and required newsletters. Oh, and also in April I lost my restraint and kinda wrote 50,000 words in 8 days. It doesn’t look like it was chosen for the pitchfest I was hoping for, but I have a first draft and hope that I can polish it enough to get it out this year? It’s not Chai and Charmcraft, that one seems to be requiring all three books to be written in unison in order to make the prophecies work. But it’s got familiar characters from Chai and Cat-tales, and I sincerely hope that I can get one or the other published by October?

    Anyhow, I am scraping the bottom of the spoon drawer more than usual. So here’s the current bookish news and the recipe!

    The paperback news:

    Chai and Cat-tales now has a paperback edition available from Amazon thanks to Joan Grey’s kind Seeing-Eye Human services of cover wrangling!

    I’m sorry it’s only Amazon, in the current situation, but Amazon continues to be 98% of my sales. I have not sorted out the complex interdependencies needed to get paperbacks available in other locations, but the ebooks cdo ontinue to be available everywhere. I’m doing as much as I can, I promise. But I figure more people would rather have a new book written than to have the rest of my spoons going into small business bureaucracy.

    (Celia Lake has a helpful explainer on the ins and outs of indie publishing in various venues. The short form: The more venues you add, the more micro-differences you have to manage, sometimes one at a time, sometimes via different stacking platforms’ dependencies. I added itch.io under pressure a month ago and still can’t get paid from there. And the time I spend on juggling infrastructure is time I’m not making or editing new words.)

    The Cozy the Day Away Sale May 16:

    Looking for more cozies, whether ebook, paperback, audiobook, or cuneiform tablets* ? The Cozy the Day Away sale is back! On May 16, check out https://cozyfantasysale.promisepress.org for at least 70 and possibly over 100 cozy fantasies on sale in as many formats as we can manage.

    (*Note: cuneiform tablets not yet dug up, but who knows, weirder stuff has happened this year already, I am not counting anything out at this point)

    The recipe: Quick pickles

    I have lost track of which of the historic cookbooks I first saw “oh wow, that looks like my mother’s pickle recipe” in, but when scratching my brain for something to quick-recipe for a blog post, quick pickles made the top of my list.

    There’s a fundamental difference between quick pickles (meant to be refrigerated and eaten within a week-ish) and preservation pickles (with sterilized jars and sealing and carefully calculated chemistry). I sure don’t have the spare wattage for carefully calculated chemistry and pressure canning right now, but quick pickles of many species are delicious, and they’re all over the world.

    I learned the basic version at home when I was about 8 and we were having summer picnics with the cousins, but every time I look around I find more variations on the same theme, ranging from Mediterranean areas like Lebanon and Jordan and Turkey to Vietnam to Japan, and bouncing back and forth in time.

    The general idea:

    • One part vinegar
      (white, apple cider, and red wine may benefit from dilution; rice vinegar probably wouldn’t need diluting)
    • Zero to one part water depending on how sharp you like the liquid
    • A pinch of salt
    • Sugar if you like a sweet note in your pickles
    • Additional spices to taste: Sumac, black pepper, lemon rind, mustard seeds, anything that sounds tasty

    The process:

    • Chop up a bunch of vegetables
      • Cucumber and onion are classic together
      • If you use a red onion, sumac, and/or a pre-pickled beet you can get a lovely pink color.
      • Carrots, radishes, daikon, and cabbage have all seen use in various places and times
      • If you’re feeling fancy, you can heat up the brine to pour it over and soften the vegetables, or you can blanch the vegetables and put them in the cooled brine
    • Throw them in your vinegar brine.
      • You want enough brine for your vegetables to be covered in a glass jar or to float in a bowl. Depending on how many veg and how big a bowl, your “one part” measuring unit could be one to three cups of vinegar and water.
    • Leave the vegetables in the brine for at least half an hour if your intended meal is that day, but overnight in the fridge lets them mellow together.
    • Eat within a few days. Refrigerate when not eating.
    • Bonus mini-recipe: A half cup to a cup of your brine with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a couple of sugar makes a tasty pasta salad when you add cooked pasta and cherry tomatoes to any leftover quick pickles.

    Sorry for the delay, friends, this year has been A Lot. I’ll try not to let it go six months between posts next time…

  • Cozy the Day Away and Lassi Nog

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    So, wow, it’s been a year, hasn’t it. I’m still trying not to think about 2025.

    If anyone else out there is in need of an introvert break between big holiday events, I think Karryn was pretty brilliant with the timing of the last Cozy the Day Away sale this year, which is happening tomorrow when I’m writing this (aka Dec. 29)

    In the general lull between big events? Check.

    Introverts wanting recharge time before the next round of big energy events? Check.

    Some folks with gift cards they’d like to find joy with? Check.

    Some folks in need of respite for the soul after too many sharp edged family or other encounters? Hoo boy, check.

    So yeah, if you need a bit of escape time on the 29th, check out the sale.

    I also sold another story that’s coming out next July! And I’ve got about 42,000 of what I’m guessing will be about 60,000 to 80,000 words written on the first book of the trilogy, with some wild ambition to try to finish a first draft in January. Not sure if that’s going to happen, but knock wood?

    When putting together the playlist for Shai Madhur’s mouse party with Emily Goss on Bluesky, I encountered the notion that it’s possible I’m the first person to put together the idea of egg nog and lassi? I’ve found egg nog, eggless nog, and, uh, I wish I was kidding about celery nog.

    But egg nog was hard to find this year — it looks like electing an orange fascist actually does nothing to miraculously lower the price of eggs, increase the availability of egg products, or solve the avian flu pandemic spreading among agricultural birds and cattle, go figure.

    I can still find yogurt, though. And people who are less allergic to corn than I am could have easy mode eggless nog with Bird’s custard powder. I do miss Bird’s, it was delicious when I could still eat it.

    So for folks who can handle either egged or corn-starch-having eggless nog, Ranveer Brar has a video with both varieties.

    Here’s my egg-free and corn-free lassi nog for the rest of us.

    Lassi Nog

    For each cup:

    • 1/2 to 1 cup sweet vanilla yogurt (or regular yogurt plus 2-3 drops vanilla and simple syrup to taste)
    • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
    • 1/8 tsp nutmeg
    • A few threads of saffron
    • A few drops of rum extract or brandy extract if you want familiar flavor without the alcohol
    • 1 Tbsp water (plus extra water or milk to thin the texture… or a shot of brandy if you prefer)

    Start the saffron soaking in 1 Tbsp water while preparing the rest.

    Put some yogurt in a container with spare stirring room and stir until soft and blended.

    Add in your cinnamon, nutmeg, and chosen extracts or alcohol, then stir through.

    When the saffron water has turned golden, stir it in as well. (Usually I would recommend grinding saffron into sugar for hot chai, but I’m not confident the sugar would dissolve well in cold yogurt. If anyone tries it that way, let me know.)

    At this point, assess the drinkability of your beverage and decide if you’d like it thinner (more water/milk/alcohol) or thicker (more yogurt).

    If you’re patient, refrigerate it for a few hours to let the cinnamon and nutmeg meld in.

    When ready to serve, grate a bit more nutmeg on top of the glass.

    I am not patient and it smells delicious, so I drank mine straight away. (Clearly I will need to experiment with larger batches for leftovers.)