Cooking …

The red Bing cherries I remember from my childhood don’t seem to be around anymore. The yellow and red Rainier cherries taste much better than most red cherries I’ve had recently, but I keep being suckered, thinking that I’m just buying cherries at the wrong moment, too early or too late. Well… I bought some red cherries a couple of weeks ago, when there weren’t any Rainier cherries, and they were so unimpressive that they simply did not get eaten. Before they went to complete waste I made a cherry pie. 

I happen to love sour cherry pie but that’s not what this was. The incredible thing about some of these red cherries is that forty minutes in the oven did not even dent them. They are just as tough as they were before I cooked them. They are slightly sugared up and have some pie crust around them, so they taste better. They won’t go to waste, but I have to stop buying red cherries. They just aren’t the ones I loved when I was young. 

(When I consider the matter I tell myself that there’s probably some sort of natural fruit tree limit of twenty or thirty years, after which, new trees have to take over and they won’t be the same as the old, for many reasons.)

I use Kraft Minute tapioca and specialty vinegars in the filling, three tablespoons of each. The tapioca substitutes for cornstarch or flour as a thickener. The vinegar substitutes for lemon juice, and adds just a bit of flavor depending on which vinegar you use. Alfooz mango, Canadian raspberry, and pomegranate quince vinegars all work well. Blueberry vinegar for blueberry pie is amazing. This pie needed a bit more liquid for the tapioca because those cherries just didn’t have any.

Next up… sewing …

I made two amices, the cloth that goes around a deacon or priest’s neck, to save vestments from dirt and wear. A linen or cotton rectangle, 20’’ x36’’, is easier to wash than a whole rayon chasuble with lining and gold trim. Naturally I didn’t know what I was doing so I’m having to engineer a bit of fix-up. 

Amices have strings made of twill tape that go around the wearer twice, and then tie off in the general chest area. We measured a linen amice from Rome and the ties were five and a half feet long. This is incredibly long on a young man of medium height. However, I have seen guys who would use all that length, going around themselves twice… You just never know what extra poundage life will bring, and I certainly don’t know how long amices are supposed to last. Following the discussion of length we got positioning of embroidery. The Roman amice ties were attached on the same long side as an embroidered cross in the middle. 

After beating linen up with hot and cold water several times, I had embroidered plain white crosses it, and carefully finished all the edges. The linen came from a liturgical supply house and was, as my mother used to say, ‘a nice piece of goods.’ I also bought twill from them. It was 1/2 inch natural cotton. So It Isn’t White. It’s creamy, ivory, beige, sand, wheat, you name the non-white color. The linen is really smooth shiny white after all the washing and ironing, and it’s a weird look with the ‘natural’ colored twill. Even though the strings are totally under the vestments I’ll have to find some white twill and try again. Something less ‘natural’ I guess. (The recipient says width can be 3/8” instead of 1/2” if that helps me.) I also attached one set of strings on the opposite side of the amice from the cross, unlike the Roman example. Some experimentation and discussion has resulted in the determination that the strings must be moved. Fortunately, I did two amices, one each way. So I only have to fix one of them. I’m just going to cut the tape and then pick out the stitches. The ties will be a bit shorter.

The amices were discussed over lunch with a couple of priests who are forty years into their vocation. One of them said to use cotton instead of linen, and the other said not to shorten those strings; you’ll want them someday. Oh, well. It was only a few inches. And I’m still working on chasubles.

And last … Writing …

My Work In Progress, The Science Fair Murder, with its cast of thousands, and complicated plot, is starting to take over my brain. This is both good and bad. I might actually finish the story in some reasonable time frame, which is good. Bits and pieces of action keep floating through my brain which seems satisfactory, but can be bad. I write the scenes down and then have to figure out where they belong, if I’m even going to keep them. My word-processing program says I have more than 50,000 words in the manuscript, but I know that some of it is notes that will be expanded. (Yay!) And some of it is notes that will be tossed. (Boo!)

I’ve studied a calendar intensively so I can get the days of the week internally consistent for a real calendar year. I’ve figured out exactly when the Science Fair must take place. I’ve changed the name of the character who got called Andy Griffith, and the other one named Jerry Rivera. I never watch TV but I hear about it in various ways. Then when my brain wants a name it produces these ‘gems.’ Ugh. And I’ve worked out another villain. There are two primary conflicts and several more underlying problems. The heroine will have to distinguish between Mean Girls and Bad Boys. Will she commit to the school or quit!

I also updated my About page, which was pathetic. It had no links for my book on Dante or my fiction about Jessamyn, two books that I’ve written in the last few years. Not smart.