But I don't want to work harder!

 I'm still working on the same book I was working on back in October - and slowly, slowly, it comes together. This one has been more research heavy, including but not limited to Rhodesian Fire Force tactics and how ships bunker (refuel at sea.) But I'm closing in: the recon team in is overwatch on the terrorist camp, and the exploration team is almost, almost to the coastline of the country they need to infiltrate and explore. 

(It's very strange to compile everything and realize that all this research is still going to be a rather slim novel, almost a novella by the time I'm done. I feel like it ought to be a goat gagger for all the work, but the length of the final product is not indicative of the work put in. No doubt it'll expand after the beta read, when feedback from the distaff side tells me I need to slow down and put more explanation in.)

Anyway, last night I was sitting by my husband's feet as he sat by the fireplace, and talking about what I had planned upcoming in the book, to get them from the smuggler's ship they'd bought passage on into the actual country. (I'd just built the fire. I could claim I was monitoring it, but all y'all over a certain age or mileage know I was really just waiting until the pain from getting up was less than the pain from sitting on the floor.)

And my dearest Calmer Half said, "No, it wouldn't work like that. You could do this, or you could do that. In fact, it'd be best if you went back and had them procure these things, and arrange for them to be loaded on the ship before leaving harbor, and then you have this third option, with these operational concerns. And you need to keep this in mind..."

I did not want to go back and change three chapters, one of them so badly I'd have to rewrite from scratch. I did not want to have to do the more complicated way he was saying. I am already slow enough on the writing; I don't want to lose the momentum I have to rewriting. So I grumbled, "I don' wanna rewrite. And I really don't want to change my blocking for the next chapter!"

My darling Calmer Half, whom I love very, very much, gave me this look. You know the one. And replied mildly, "Well, you can write it how you want. It's your book." Softer, mulishly, he added, "But when I had occasion to do similar things, we used the scenarios I outlined."

Fooey. Darnit. Botheration!

I don't want to rewrite. But I'm going to, because he's right. You know, it'd be so much easier to be cheerfully wrong (until my betas caught it) if I didn't live with a subject matter expert!

After going off to my office and doing some grumbling, then fixing a nice hot cup of coffee loaded with Godiva's dark hot chocolate powder, and possibly a more than a little Bailey's as well, I sat down in front of the fire, and sighed. "You are right and I am wrong. All right. Now that I've got my temper tantrum out of the way, what am I doing?"

Clam Chowder slightly more Southwest

This recipe started life as "Cheater's Chowder", because it was a way to make a keto variant of clam chowder in about 15 minutes. But even when not trying to diet, I like this enough to keep making it, because it's quick, it's filling, and it's tasty. (Also, chunky not smooth, because Calmer Half prefers that.)

Then I moved to Texas, and the spices started to change. As well as the "what do I have in my fridge?" All measurements are rough guesses.

Quick Clam Chowder Slightly More Southwest

1-2 onions, diced
1-2 poblano peppers, diced
1 cup celery, sliced thin
1 cans clams (do not drain)
4 cups chicken stock (or water + better than bullion)
1/2-1 cup bacon crumbles (real, not fake bacon. Saute and dice if you don't have crumbles)
1-2 Tbsp bacon grease (or olive oil, if you're out of bacon grease and have crumbles)
1 Tbsp thyme
1/2 tsp mesquite-smoked salt, or to taste (depending on the saltiness of your stock and bacon)
1-2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp chipolte powder
1Tbsp minced garlic
2 cups half & half
1 steamer bag riced cauliflower, or 1 small-medium head of cauliflower, chopped fine (yay food processor)

First, chop your cauliflower, if needed. Put in a bowl, add a splash of water, cover with plastic wrap, poke a few holes in the top. Pop in microwave for 8 minutes. Or, you know, put steamer bag in there and follow directions.

Put heavy stockpot on the stove - I prefer an enameled cast iron dutch oven, but whatever makes you happy. Beware: this recipe can grow. Throw lump of bacon grease in, set to med-high heat. If you don't have bacon crumbles, chop frozen bacon into diced bits and toss in to fry. If you have thawed bacon only, fry, then pull out to crumble when cooled. Cook twice as much bacon as you need, so you can snack while working. Cook's privilege!

Dice poblanos, toss in to saute. Chop celery, toss in, stir. Chop onion, toss in, stir. When fairly sauteed, toss bacon in, stir. Add the salt, spices, and garlic, stir. When the garlic is nicely mellowed, add bay leaves, stock, and the can of clams, and stir to get all the browned bits off the bottom. When it comes up to a simmer, add the half & half. 

Pull the cooked cauliflower out of the microwave, carefully open bag / pull cover off, dump in soup. When it comes back up to a simmer again, taste and adjust spices/ salt if needed. Serve!

Turmeric Rice in the rice cooker

Calmer Half: "Why are you putting whole spices in the rice?"
Me: "Because that's what the recipe calls for, and I have them? This is my first time with this recipe, so I'm following the directions."
Calmer Half. "Ah."
An hour later, after a meal of tandoori chicken with date chutney on a bed of peas and turmeric rice, Calmer Half rendered his verdict. "Do you have everything you need to make this again? Do I need to pick up anything when grocery shopping?"

All right, I'll call that successful. And will use whole spices in turmeric rice again (or in the case of the cardamom pods, smashed-open.)

Rice Cooker Turmeric Rice:
3/4 tsp turmeric
2-inch stick of cinnamon
4 cardamom pods, smashed open
3 cloves
2 cups rice, rinsed until running clear
2 cups chicken stock + water to bring it up to the line
pinch salt

Put in rice cooker, start. Next time, I may add a pat of butter, because it seemed like it could have used it.

One variant of the recipe had throwing frozen peas in the rice cooker, but I was dubious, so I made them in the microwave and spooned them on top afterward. It worked!

The tandoori chicken recipe is very simple: grab the tandoori paste jar, follow the directions to make marinade with yogurt and chicken. Marinade a few hours. Pull out after starting the rice cooker, preheat and bake in oven at 350 for 25 minutes for boneless skinless chicken thighs. No recipe recorded here, because... really. It's on the jar. I can look that up, if I have the jar. 

 

Not all of my cooking is high-falutin' recipe stuff!

 

Wish for a crust of bread, be handed a banquet

I'm writing a thing, and it took a turn I didn't expect. (Several, actually.) First, it wanted to be a short story. Then, it kept going, and picked up two additional viewpoint characters. I thought I finally had a sequel on my hands, but it turned out I had written the first three chapters of a novel, and at least one needs rewriting to a different point of view. 

F*ck It, Drive On, as they say. I kept writing. Well, the problem with a military POV is that the guy in question is going to go off and do military things, independently of the rest of the cast (though they will matter to the plot later.) And those military things will include assaulting a terrorist compound. 

I'm not military. I will never claim to have been such. What's a girl to do in a situation like this?

If you belong to the North Texas Writers, Pilots, and Shooters Association, you spend a while grumbling on a mapping program, then print out a topo chart on a piece of the earth whose terrain matches kinds sorta what was in your head, and take it to dinner.

And then the guys decry your choice of both compound site and nearby town location, and move them, and then proceed to wargame the heck out of it. 

I am very grateful I have Calmer Half to provide love, support, direction, and I'm sure that was a snicker when I stomped to the tea kettle grumbling "The Appalachians are all folded the wrong way!"

I am also grateful for LawDog, "Your insertion site needs to be back here, and then hike at military crest... you are aware that's not ridgeline... to observation points here, here, and here..."

And Old NFO "You are not moving the LZ. Wheat fields were made for landing!" 

And Aepilot Jim "You're gonna have the mortar guy carry his equipment four klicks? What kind of second lieutenant plan is this?"

And Jon Laforce for the "Yeah, no, pack weight is now that much for regular soldiers." And 155m howitzers' guy viewpoint.

And John Van Stry for encouragement and chocolate cake, and Monalisa Foster for sympathy at the "where did that come from?" characters and POV recommendations...

And last but not least, Alma Boykin for geology help, and commiserating via text afterward on being assigned homework prior to next week's meeting. And laughing at me. 

Truly, I am blessed in subject matter experts, who also make great food. Now I just have to write the thing, to standards high enough to pass beta reading...

Old NFO's take here: https://oldnfo.org/2021/01/17/heh-7/

Bad timing

 Some days, I have all my ducks in a row. Some days, I don't even know where my ducks are, and they might have been shot and are already being plucked by a happy hunter by the time I notice they're missing. 

Like yesterday. I headed out to the kitchen at 4pm to start cooking, only to find the leg of lamb I'd pulled out of the deep freezer to finally cook had not thawed, and I'd underestimated just how many pounds it was.

"Hey, hon?" I looked at Calmer Half through a haze of exhaustion due to piling doctor's appointment on top of being ambitious at the gym that morning. "Can you check my math?"

"Yes?" He looked up from his computer, with a patient "I was in the middle of something but you need help" look. 

"Thirty minutes per pound, for six pounds, is three hours, right?"

"Yes."

"And if we add half an hour of resting afterward, and thirty minutes for prep, that's four. And the directions say the roast should be at room temperature when it goes in the oven, but it's still semi-frozen despite being pulled out at noon, so that's at least two more..."

"You're up to six hours." He was still smiling, with the 'and this is why we have backup plans' sort of laughter in his eye.

"So it'd be ten o'clock before dinner's ready... how do you feel about going out to Mexican?"

He didn't miss a beat. "I'll drive. Let me know when you're ready to go."

Background information

One of the difficult - but often entertaining - things about eating and conversing in public places is that I find it hard to mentally filter out the conversations that are taking place near me. (This is also why I don't like a tv on in the background.) 

This means I get to hear a lot of conversations whether I want to or not. And while it's certainly helped flesh out minor characters in stories, it also provides a very interesting glimpse into the tenor of places and times. Life has a rhythm to it, and there's a certain set of pitches and tones that come with places, an expected range of conversational topics that define normal. 

This weekend, Calmer Half and I went on a road trip. About noon, we found ourselves in a county seat, on the courthouse square. Not an especially big county or population for Texas, but not by any means one of the smallest, either. As I was desperately under-coffeed, we stopped in a nice coffee bar that we'd been in before. Lovely place, even if it'd be hard to get more hipster outside of Austin or Portland. 

The kind of place where conversations often are about designer this and coding that, about somebody's book club or what the article in the New York Times said. Or how terrible it is to be in such a small town compared to the action elsewhere, but cant be helped. Solar this, wind that, the unfortunate reality of oil revenues, always absinthe never whiskey...

There was something wrong to the atmosphere, and it wasn't the baristas being in monogrammed masks. No, that wasn't unexpected, nor were the overly-artisan sweets (that were delicious. They do great food and coffee.) It was the subtle change in body language among the people sitting at the tables. It was in the lowered pitch in the conversational hum, the startling absence of the hipster nasal whine in the background noise. 

It was the backpack slung on the seat near me when I sat down was pure military. In fact, the young man sitting next to his backpack was well muscled, ramrod straight spine, haircut clipped so closely I could see the scalp underneath below the ridiculous bowler hat that must have fit back before he gained 75 pounds of muscle. 

Across the table sat two weedy late teenagers... they might have been very early twenties. And conversation was clearly that one of the gang had Gotten Out Of This Place via the military, and was catching up with his hometown buddies. The kind of kids you expect to see working gas stations and pizza delivery and trying to figure out what they want to do with their life. Indeed, one was contemplating joining the military like his buddy. 

I sat, trying to be lost in my coffee, but pulled away from my conversation with Calmer Half by phrases that kept catching my attention.
"Man, the price of .223 is insane! I used to be able to find it for..."
"We're stockpiling supplies in case..."
"Yeah, she broke up with him, and you know how much it costs to get rid of the tattoo?"
"...against the principles of the constitution!"

If the hair on the back of my neck weren't already on end from the things leaking past the heavily censored and carefully curated national pravda, it would be now. Never, in my adult life, has the hipster nasal whine disappeared from a full coffee shop. And never has a low angry hum replaced it...

The last time I heard a crowd hit this low tone, they were on the verge of going from a mob to a riot, and I don't mean anything near as cuddly as the mostly peaceful protestors in DC. And this wasn't a crowd with any point or purpose beyond coffee on a weekend morning.

Stay safe out there, and I don't mean wearing any damn masks. I mean carry, and keep your head on a swivel.

The Body Language of Competent Men

 Over coffee with a friend last week, we were discussing unfortunate mistakes in males in our pasts, and what she wants to find in the future. (Me, I found a man who's better than I deserve! I hope she may yet find such happiness for herself.) But one thing that came up was how we judge men upon first impressions, including their body language. 

And I realized that while she'd learned the hard way that what the media presents as "strong man who can protect you" generally actually represents "arrogant asshole with control issues", she didn't yet really grok what body language she should be looking for. She had no military background or experience, so most of my explanations were falling far short for lack of common ground.

Thankfully, we live in the age of the internet! I queued up two interviews of Highly Interesting men who'd been there and done that for a living - a retired Chief Warrant 4 who'd been a seal before joining 160th SOAR, and a retired Command Sergeant Major who'd been Delta. And while the content of said interviews was highly interesting (to me, at least, which is why I remembered them), all I really wanted her to do was to see their build and watch the body language. Because if I'm going to be showing examples, go for extremes so it's more obvious, eh?

Very few of the interesting men I've met were heavily muscled - most interesting gents are all whipcord. They range from thin and wiry to built solid, but not obviously heavily muscled (unless you notice that the neck is roughly the same circumference as their head.) The bodybuilder muscles-on-their-muscles look is far less common than the wiry rock-climber or very symmetrical compact swimmer build. 

And as for body language, unlike the macho, arms akimbo, chest puffed out body stance with the aggressive undertones you see in the movies, these two gentlemen were relaxed. Very relaxed. Not slouched, but there was nothing rigid or aggressive in their stances - almost hilariously so in one case, compared to the young army kid doing the interviewing. Both very relaxed, very calm gentlemen were still sitting with their feet positioned in a way that meant they could be out of their seats in a fraction of a second... But relaxed.

They also kept their hands centered and close to their chests when gesturing, and, as my friend noted, they were extremely calm, humble, and understated when talking about being truly interesting places and doing incredibly tough things. I was catching more dry humour than she was due to familiarity with the military, but she caught some of the jokes - and the way that a brief squint of the eyes and tiny lift of the mouth was their version of a broad, teeth-baring grin. And those eyes? They never stopped moving, scanning the environment between checking in with the person they're talking to. 

Because she was watching so closely, she caught the nervous tell on one - and turned to me in amazement. "He's more disturbed by retiring and entering the civilian world than combat?!?!?"

"Well, yeah. Transitioning out of everything you've known into a lack of structure is really tough, and scary." She boggled a little that something so familiar and everyday to her could be scary to someone who's been shot at with malice aforethought, and kept watching.

A minute or two after we'd paused the videos to talk over the astounding difference in what actual men who are tough and competent and protective are like versus the media portrayal, my husband came over and to ask me about something unrelated. As he and I talked, I saw her looking at my Calmer Half as if she'd never really seen him before.

As if she had just noticed for the first time that my darling gent is always very calm, very relaxed. Very. Relaxed. And he's quiet, and humble, and has a very dry, understated sense of humour, and his hands almost always stay centered around his chest even when he's gesturing, and his eyes never stop scanning the environment...

And she looked at me. 

And I smiled.