Uncategorized – Page 11 – Caroline M. Yoachim

Making My Mom’s Cookies

When I was a kid, my mom baked cookies every Christmas. Not one batch of cookies, or two batches of cookies. My mom made double batches of several kinds of cookies which we arranged on red and green paper plates and took to all the neighbors. They were extremely popular — just yesterday a friend of mine dropped me a note saying that she was thinking about making the sugar cookies my mom always made at Christmas time (and we haven’t done the neighborhood cookie distribution for years). Everybody had a different favorite cookie — date/coconut balls, chocolate chip cookies …

Lucky Thirteen?

I’ve currently got thirteen stories out at various markets. This is an all time high for me, so I’m pretty pleased. In case anybody is curious where the stories go, here’s a list of the markets I have stories at right now:

Abyss & Apex
Asimov’s Science Fiction
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Coyote Wild
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Flash Fiction Online
Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD)
Hub
Interfictions II anthology
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
Les Bonnes Fees
Realms of Fantasy
Talebones

(This isn’t an all-inclusive list of markets I submit …

Cold Weather = Soup

Yesterday it was over 70 degrees outside. It was toasty warm. I wore a tank top. Today, at 3:30 in the afternoon, it was 32 degrees. I went out to run some errands and practically froze to death. (I wore a sweatshirt; in retrospect I should probably have also worn a jacket.) The overnight low tonight is 27. Texas weather is weird.

(While I was out running errands, I dropped a story in the mail, which gets me up to twelve submissions out at market. This is the most subs I’ve ever had out at the same time, so I’m …

Cranberry-Orange Bread

I snagged a recipe for cranberry-orange bread from tinaconnolly,* and decided to attempt it this morning, so that I can bring some to brunch tomorrow. I’d have made it tomorrow except that (1) I won’t have time tomorrow, and (2) this gives me time to come up with something else if for some reason the cranberry bread doesn’t come out.

So far, I have determined that it *smells* like delicious bread, and it *looks* like delicious bread. I am now waiting for it …

Cranberry-Orange Cheesecake

I’ve managed to snag an invitation to have another Thanksgiving dinner with Maureen and her family, and she said I could bring a dessert*, so I decided I’d make cranberry-orange cheesecake**. It has a gingersnap-graham-cracker crust, and swirls of cranberry sauce flavored with orange zest. The swirls came out quite pretty. Sadly, the cheesecake cracked rather extensively. I consulted with tinaconnolly, who had made cheesecake before, and she assured me that cheesecakes crack all the time, and that it should still taste …

Squash! Now in soup form!

I roasted up some of the squash from yesterday’s photo session and made squash soup. There is a reason most squash soup recipes call for butternut squash. Winter squashes are all hard to hack up into manageable sized bits, but at least a butternut squash has a fair amount of edible flesh inside. Dumpling squashes, while cute and pretty, have a much higher work-to-flesh ratio. There’s hardly any squash in there at all once you get the seeds out! (The dumpling squash does taste …

Squash!

For Halloween, my grocery store was selling little bags of decorative squash. After Halloween, the decorative squash went on sale (and with good reason — some of it had started to get moldy, which was disgusting). In addition to the (non-edible) decorative squash, I got a couple dumpling squashes and a carnival squash, which will hopefully become squash soup sometime in the near future. IMO, the edible squashes are prettier than the decorative ones (but the decorative ones do make nice filler).

…

Food and Flowers

stale sourdough bread + leftover maple pecan butter + eggs, milk, and orange zest =

Orange-Maple-Pecan French Toast

So this week is already off to a better start than last week :) After appointments with two docs and an occupational therapist last week, and a weekend of rest, my wrists are starting to do a little bit better. Thanks to everyone (here and elsewhere) who sent me sympathies! Peter got me some roses last week to cheer …

Not Many Posts Lately

Warning: This post was written for the express purpose of me venting.

I have this incredibly frustrating cycle where almost every time I have a sustained productive period with my writing, the extra computer time puts too much strain on my wrists. I managed to explode them again on Monday, so rather than getting work done on the three revisions I have going, or on the new story ideas I have floating around, I have been going to a series of doctor appointments and trying to rest my wrists. GRRR.

So I haven’t been blogging much lately, and will probably …

Sale!

Squee! I found out this weekend that “The Best Last Choice I Ever Made” will appear in Issue #38 of Talebones Magazine. Judging from the table of contents my story will be in excellent company!

Category: Uncategorized