Finishing, with a nod to ravioli

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Even though it is a gray morning, spring has returned at last.  Temps in the 60s, a bit of rain… after the weeks of plunging into hard freeze zones, we’ll take it. Seems strange to me how sunlight and warmth inspires activity, but there is no use in denying it.  Perhaps it goes back to the days of hibernation.  We want to burrow in when it is cold, but hunt and gather when it warms up.

I’ve set some goals, soft goals, in my mind this week as it relates to writing.  The first one is to get over myself.  I’ve started several pieces that have no endings and rather than doing the hard work to actually finish and submit, I move on to the next thing.

The next thing last week was cooking, culminating in a small dinner party last night.  The main course was ravioli, and since I have all the cool toys, we decided to make it from scratch.  Seems like homemade pasta and the stuff we all boil in water from the grocery store are two completely different dishes.

Making ravioli required a trip to the big box housewares store.  We didn’t have a former/shaper/cutter for it, and just wanted the results to be nice.  I’d seen lots of ravioli makers online that were decidedly low tech: some looked like cookie sheets with holes in them, others finished edges with a pretty crimp.  But, true to ourselves, we went for the high tech attachment to the fancy mixer. 

And if we weren’t our first time, virgin ravioli makers, it would have gone very well. The mistakes weren’t fatal, but if you decide to try it, don’t stack your noodles on top of each other waiting for their turn in the cutter, unless you have put wax paper or something between them. And be careful not to overfill… if you use the Kitchenaid attachment, it is pretty scary to clean.

 Next time the process will take less time, have less mess and result in fewer leftovers.  I forgot to take pictures so will instead post the sites where I got my base recipes.  As I believe one should always do with recipes, and formulas for most anything,  I changed things to make them more palatable for my family.  Here is the ravioli base I used: (I like giving credit where it is due.) http://www.sunnysideuprecipes.com/2010/07/ravioli-filling-3-recipes.html (What did I change? Mostly just left out the pine nuts.) and here is the wonderful marinara sauce.:   http://www.nytimes.com/recipes/1015987/marinara-sauce.html  (halved the garlic on this one, and used lots of oregano. I like oregano)

Cooking is a creative adventure, with immediate gratification.  Writing is also creative, and can have immediate gratification, if I can be satisfied with my work product as it is. The big difference for me is the finishing.  There is an end to the cooking adventure, but knowing when, and how to end a story is a little harder.  I'm working on a story set in the Dust Bowl right now.  Maybe a little more spice will get it to stop tasting like... well...dust.

The ravioli got rave reviews. Time to give the fiction a turn.

Slippers

The cold lingers in Houston, waiting just one more day to remember it is really "springtime" here, and that flowers are blooming.  I was delighted to see the poppies jump out of the pansy beds, waving their cheery heads a foot above the other flowers. 

Today the temperatures go up though, and my self imposed exile to the house will end.  I will miss my dog slippers though...

Instead, they will pull me along the sidewalk as though they are magnificent white horses and I am a recalcitrant carriage. When my joints warm up, I try to walk with rhythm, silently counting out sets of eight like we used to do in aerobics classes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 1,2,3,4; 2,2,3,4; 1,2; 2,2; 1,2,3,4 and then start over. Funny how rhythms like that get stuck in my head. Or a song I've spent time sweating to...even twenty years ago, comes on the radio and suddenly my muscles want to step into a grapevine or Charleston or Step up and down and Cross... a history of life based on the exercise dances in the gym.  

Those classes were great places to meet and bond with other women.  The high intensity gave way to low intensity, then to things like Pilates and yoga.  Now I'm much more likely to spend an hour on an elliptical reading Kindle than I am dropping into a Zumba class, but there are times when I choose a machine close enough to the gym door to hear the music.   More often though, I am the Carriage of the Dogs.  But only if it is at least fifty degrees.

I'm editing chapter one of Invisible yet again, pursuant to some great advice I got from two of my adult children.  I knew it was missing something, and they were able to spot the deficiency.  Now if I can just struggle through today, I might be ready to send this one out.  There is a manuscript contest in Texas I'm thinking of entering.  

That reminds me of the contest I won when the Houston Writer's League hosted conferences.  It was a short story, and I edited it to death after it won.  I never sent it anywhere to be published because I wasn't confident that the edits improved it.  I am thinking of posting it here, but it would break my heart to post it online and have no one read it.  The insecurities, the insecurities!