This & That – Page 3 – Muse Interrupted

Sweet Potato Recipes Filched from My Mom

Whenever I am invited to Thanksgiving dinner, which invariably occurs because I never host Thanksgiving dinner, often I am asked to provide a sweet potato casserole of some sort. Considering I hate sweet potatoes, at first that struck me as sort of absurd. I had no sweet potato recipes! Alack, alas, a mess, turns out I can steal them from my mom!

It is Canadian Thanksgiving this coming weekend. Whether or not you are Canadian, you can make of these two sweet potato casseroles what you will. Apparently, they are quite tasty. Don’t believe me? Try them out. You can’t rely on me to tell you, because the only way I can handle eating one of them is by doubling the maple syrup ingredients.

My mother insists I am remarkably talented at making sweet potato casserole, so I must be doing something right. Your blood sugar, however, may not survive.

Maple-Sweet Potatoes:

– Preheat oven to 350°F. No, I do not know what the equivalent is in Celsius. Don’t worry about it. If you are Canadian, you know darn well that your stove is not in Celsius. Just suck it up that the stoves are still in Fahrenheit. If you are American, I’m sure you are thrilled that this recipe is in Fahrenheit. You’re welcome. If you are Canadian and you have a stove that is in Celsius, then you’re a lot richer than me, because I have no idea if they even exist.

– You want Celsius? Go outside.

– Take about eight sweet potatoes. Boil them in skins until tender. Cool them and cut them into slices.

– Do not ask me what happens to the skins at this point. They do not wind up in the casserole, so I am assuming they just kind of slide off after the sweet potatoes are boiled. If my readers are supposed to peel the sweet potatoes before boiling them, somebody please let me know in the comments and I will edit this post.

– Turn the potatoes into a baking dish that can hold all the potatoes. It has been a couple of years so I cannot remember if I grease the baking dish with margarine or cooking spray, or not. I’m thinking not. But if you thive on cholesterol, go ahead.

Here comes the sauce! Warning! Warning! Warning! The sauce in this recipe may be doubled. By that, I do not mean that you may choose to double the sauce if you wish. I mean that I might’ve doubled the sauce before writing it on the recipe card, but I do not recall.

SP Tip! If there are folks in your family who hate sweet potatoes, you may get them to eat the casserole by using my version of the sauce. If everyone in your family adores sweet potatoes, go ahead and cut the sauce portions in half. I would advise you not to cut the pecan pieces portion in half. I mean, who can have too many pecans?

You need:

– 1/4 cup butter, a half cup packed brown sugar, and a half cup maple syrup. Don’t scrinch on the maple syrup. Buy the best maple syrup you can find.

– Apparently you also need a quarter teaspoon salt and some pepper, but I don’t know why. Do with these condiments what you will.

Combine the butter, sugar, syrup, and salt – there you go, a use for the salt! Still no mention of the pepper… I tend to add pepper to practically everything I make, so take that under advisement. Combine all in sauce pan and heat to boiling. Lower heat and cook, stirring constantly until clear and thick. Then slop the sauce over the potatoes in the baking dish, and top with at least a half cup of pecan pieces.

Bake until bubbly. Voilà!

Sweet Potato Casserole:

This is a mashed potato type casserole. Preheat your oven to 350°F.

I do not like this recipe as much as the first one, but considering I eat about half a tablespoon of sweet potatoes every Thanksgiving, I am not really one to judge. Try both recipes and let me know what you think!

– Boil some sweet potatoes until tender. Do not ask me how many sweet potatoes to boil, because my mother leaves such things out of her recipes. The details are beneath her. I swear, she lives to mess with my head. Again, I am assuming that the skins somehow come off after they are boiled. I don’t know, that just makes sense? I should try it sometime with real potatoes. Hmmm.

– Judge how long it takes to boil the sweet potatoes until tender. While they are boiling, combine the following ingredients in a pot and heat until melted:

– Half a cup butter, a quarter cup maple syrup, half a teaspoon nutmeg, half a cup heavy cream, and 2 tablespoons brown sugar. I do not think I have messed with these ingredients, because there is only one quarter cup of maple syrup listed. If I messed with the ingredients, there would be more maple syrup.

– Eat one of the tablespoons of brown sugar and then get another tablespoon to add to the sauce.

– Use only the very best maple syrup at your disposal! None of this using pancake syrup that is flavored to taste a bit like maple syrup instead of real maple syrup. Got it? Sheesh, I mean, we are Canadian here.

Once the potatoes are tender and the skins somehow come off, mash them. Really pound them. Destroy those suckers until they don’t have any eyes left. Potatoes are not steak. You cannot over pound them. Or maybe you can, and I just don’t know. Whatever!

Take the aformentioned heated ingredients (the stuff in the sauce pan) and beat it into the mashed sweet potatoes.

Transfer all to a baking dish and bake until bubbly. No, I do not have any conceptualization of how long that takes. Thanks, Mom.

I would show pictures, but I do not have pictures. If you use one of my recipes and it turns out, please send me a picture! If it doesn’t turn out, I don’t want to know about it.

*Blog post will be updated if I ever remember to take a picture.

Happy Early Canadian Thanksgiving!

Summer, Summer, Summer!

And so far it’s been a great one. Eldest Son returned home from teaching abroad, and we went on a road trip to see Youngest Son at his co-op job in northern Alberta. A great family time was had by all.

I put the final touches on a submission for Evil Twin and sent said sub off to ET’s editor. Being ET, the submission got caught in cyber-space, an issue that has now been rectified. ET’s editor is looking at her submission now.

As for moi, I’ve gone over critique notes for PICTURE IMPERFECT, my upcoming single title mystery romance, and figured out how I’m going to layer in extra emotional depth. A key to uncovering extra depth to the emotion came through rewriting the synopsis, for once without a care as to the length but to what the synopsis could reveal to me about the characters and their journey. I am super excited to get into the revisions (my last round before the book hits a copy editor’s desk), but, alas, first I must hie myself down to San Antonio for the RWA National Conference!

I’ve visited Texas before, but never San Antonio. I’m really looking forward to exploring what sounds like a beautiful city. To connecting with writing friends, networking with writing professionals, and attending excellent workshops.

I’m taking a small camera. I’m usually not very good about these things, but if I can manage I’ll post a picture or two.

San Antonio, here I come!

How To Turn Into A Zombie

I know I’m a little late for Halloween this year, but for you Halloween die-hards who want to gain a head start for next year or for all the zombie TV and movie buffs out there who wish that they, too, could become zombies, an actual zombie infestation is not necessary! You can easily become a zombie by following the tried-and-tested steps listed below.

NOTE: Do not abandon the process until you have achieved your desired level of zombie status! Abandoning the process requires you to start all over again, losing yourself precious zombing time (zombing is whatever you choose to do while you are a zombie, and if it’s not already a word, it should be).

Develop chronic insomnia. It REALLY HELPS if you already have a history of insomnia, particularly if you have suffered for over a decade. If you only have “trouble sleeping” now and then, then note that is it vitally important to practice poor sleep hygiene habits until your insomnia is entrenched. Poor sleep hygiene habits include, but are not limited to, sitting at your computer, TV, or staring at your tablet until right before you want to go to bed (repeating on a daily basis); quaffing huge amounts of caffeine; over-stressing, over-working, and forgetting to wash your hair; not going to bed or getting up at approximately the same time, yadda, yadda.
So, you’ve mastered the chronic insomnia. Sorry if you had to go through the poor sleep hygiene habits to get there. Some of us come by insomnia naturally. We are the lucky ones! But the trick to becoming a zombie is for any insomnia-coping mechanisms that you have developed over the years to suddenly stop, without warning and for no discernible reason. Believe me, this step, which, I admit, might require a tad of the supernatural if you are not already super and natural yourself (we can’t all be), is of tantamount importance. If you can not persuade your insomnia-coping mechanisms to abandon you, continue repeating Step 1 until you feel half-dead. Because FEELING zombie-esque takes you halfway to getting there!
Try new insomnia-coping mechanisms that plain old don’t work and just make you feel worse. For some of us, taking melantonin, which others recommend for fixing a faulty sleep cycle, will result in restless nights with Alice-in-Wonderland-like dreams where everything feels so vivid and horrible and anxiety-ridden that you’ll wish you could wake up and when you do you’ll be exhausted…well, I can’t recommend this step enough for achieving zombie status.
Stop using hand sanitation gel or washing your hands. When you see someone sneeze on a shopping cart at the grocery store, wait until that person puts away the cart and then MAKE SURE you get that very cart. Do NOT wipe down the cart handles with an anti-bacterial wipe, and, after finishing your shopping, make sure to touch your face, your lips, or even your eyes. If you need to put in eye drops often because your eyes are dry from laser eye surgery, so much the better. The dry eyes help you feel even more like a zombie!
If you have not gotten sick in quite a long time, it might be necessary to repeat Step 4 as needed, be around sick people as much as you can, and eventually, if you’re lucky, you will catch a nasty virus that dries up your sinus cavity on one side of your head, completely blocks one ear, and renders your eye drops essentially useless. So your eyes are red, you are unbalanced (zombies hate balance), you are dizzy, and your brain begins to resemble Swiss cheese, because the insomnia combined with the weird sinus-blocking virus such as you have never before experienced will, essentially, turn you into an idiot unable to concentrate or focus on anything resembling creativity. Good work!
Sometime before Step 4, book a flight somewhere to coincide with the timing of Step 5. DO NOT MISS THIS STEP. A plane trip is the perfect way to ensure that your blocked ear will remain blocked for three weeks, thus contributing to your coveted zombieism in a big way.
Plan your destination carefully. I find that if you go somewhere where you can attend three rock concerts, or stage shows, or huge musical extravaganzas, in a row, that are so loud that despite your blocked ears you believe you can still hear them – that’s half the battle. Or a quarter of the battle. I’m not so good at math, so don’t quote me. Just pummel your ears with as much noise as you can, meanwhile continuing with as little sleep as possible and also maintaining the blocked ear syndrome for AS LONG AS YOU CAN.
Through your “suffering” of the virus, do not take any cold or flu medications. They will disrupt your path to zombieism. WARNING: Do not take so much as an over-the-counter ear drop.
When you return from the trip, which hopefully required several plane changes and the necessary noisy events, have the blocked ear move from one ear to the other. Back and forth, back and forth. You get the idea. For a day, have the blocked ears nearly clear. Go to your doctor for another issue, discover you have too much wax in your ears, and he or she will wash out the wax with blasting water. This step is essential for developing tinnitus.
Tinnitus is when you hear ringing in your ears. The ringing, if you’re not used to it, can easily drive you insane. The most blessed among you will discover that your Eustachian tubes are completely blocked despite the wax removal, and that your ear tubes will remain blocked for a good two or three weeks. All efforts to unblock them prove fruitless. This is a good sign!
Just when you feel like your mind is the consistency of Swiss cheese combined with tapioca pudding is a wonderful time to develop an allergy to a substance you may have slathered all over your body. In absence of an allergen, dry shave your legs (while you’re at it, dry shave your entire self). In the absence of an allergen, the rash from the dry-shaving will make you feel most zombie-like!
For some of you, this is the point where you will feel that you have reached Zombie Nirvana. If such is the case, go out and commence your zombing. But! You might not get the full enjoyment out of your zombie status without completing the next step.
Trip and fall on your face. You might have to precede this “accident” with a previous injury to your hip just to reinforce it. The idea is that it will then feel totally natural to have to drag one of your legs behind you. If you already have an old rotator cuff injury or carpal tunnel issues, so much the better! You’ll get to drag your leg and have your arm slump! This will make you much too slow to catch up to humans, because who really wants to eat human brains, anyway, while still maintaining your zombie status.

That’s it! Thirteen easy steps to becoming a zombie. Have fun!

Fine Print: Do not attempt without parental authorization or a physician’s note. Author is not responsible for those who take her seriously (or those who do not). Author is not responsible at all.

I’m Here

Just extremely busy.

I would say why, but then I’d be complaining in cyber-public. Yeah, probably smart not to do that.

Plus, I’m sick for the first time in months. I plan to be over it by Monday. Most inconvenient! (Cough, hack).

I Acquire A New Family Member

Youngest Son got married yesterday, so I am now officially a mother-in-law. I never dreamed that one of my sons would get hitched so young. I was 25 when My Liege and I tied the knot, and I was only the second of my group of high school girlfriends to get married. Anything under 25 seemed remarkably young to me for making that kind of commitment. Y.S. is 22.

But I have to say I’m thrilled! I adore my new daughter-in-law, and she and Y.S. are a perfect match. I pretty much sobbed my way through the ceremony, which was in my mother’s back yard. Y.S. and his new wife wrote their own vows, and it was incredibly touching. The stuff of romance novels, you might say. 😉

How old were you when you got married?