Life Gave Me Lemons

There comes a time when, in the course of shopping a novel around, the writer sits back and thinks,  "Is this one going to be The One? Is this going to get published at all? What do I do next as a writer and a person with a limited amount of hours in the day?" I am at this stage, and contemplating possible failure. I have one more NZ publisher to submit to, and I have already received ample advice from well-placed persons.

I spent some time mulling this over on Saturday morning. "This is a growth moment for me as a writer...I did my best and it wasn't quite it...the market for nonfiction is much stronger...I could go for some chocolate cake..."

In a glum mood, I went outside and found three ripe lemons on the lemon tree I planted 3  years ago. Grown-up lemons, not miniature ones! The day improved from there.

I'm using the lemons to marinate lemon-garlic chicken thighs for dinner with my little old lady tonight. I'm leaving the skin on, to get more calories into her. There will also be cauliflower and broccoli roasted with parmesan and breadcrumbs, some roasted butternut squash with sage from my garden (a favorite of hers) and mashed potatoes.

Surprises

When I appeared at my little old lady's flat tonight, she was amazed. "I thought you weren't coming this week - weren't you skipping for a meeting of some kind?" Eventually we untangled it that I hadn't been there last week, really I hadn't, unless the laws of space-time had been bent, and she happily put aside a tin of baked beans for dinner with me.

One of her sons had sent her some .docx files, and after I explained why she couldn't open them, we went to find the related information on the Internet. This was the program schedules for two Christian TV cable stations here. We found one of the web sites and I downloaded the schedule without any problems. Briefly, I wondered if we should sign her up for their email updates or mailing list, but then I said, "No, better not, they'll probably send you spam." Her response? "Oh, but they wouldn't do that. They're a Christian TV station!"

Also, I tried making brioche today using the breadmaker I scored a few months ago at a jumble sale. However...something was not right...and the breadmaker refused to mix. As I scraped the dough-like mush out of the machine, I realized that I had used the wrong type of flour, soft cake flour instead of bread flour. Trying to salvage it, I started to knead the proto-dough with one hand, and realized I was going to need more flour.  I tried extracting my hand from the bowl - and failed - the only way my hand was coming out was if I brought all the dough with it. Of course, this was when my flatmate came in. So I took the bowl with me across the kitchen, trying to act as if this was perfectly normal...

Brioche is also supposed to have a long, slow overnight rise, but not wanting to deal with that, I let it rise for an hour on the stove. After doing nearly everything wrong, the end result was surprisingly OK.