Menu Plannning - Keeping things interesting

 We need groceries, so before I go to the store, I need to make a plan for the week. It's a flexible plan, but I need a plan. A week of dinner plans.

I have gotten more organized over the years. On my weekly plan I note the name of the main course recipe, where to find the recipe, and what ingredients I need. 

But, we both get bored with some repeated recipes, so this week I went searching for either new recipes or dishes I hadn't made in a while. At the same time, I decided to pare down my cookbook collection. I have quite a few cookbooks; some I use all the time, others infrequently, and some in which I have not tried any recipes. I like cookbooks and tend to keep accumulating them!

I am now a pescatarian (fish and plants), but I am also lactose-intolerant. My husband cannot eat spicy food without a trip to the emergency room. So, many recipes are out for us. And I now turn to the internet more and more when I'm looking for recipe ideas. 

But, cookbooks have charm. I have a few historic cookbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries, some reprints and a few originals. Some spiral bound cookbooks published by organizations - churches, symphonies. Cookbooks from places I have visited - Colonial Williamsburg, Door County, the Pacific Northwest. One cookbook in French that I bought in France many years ago. Quite a few Chinese cookbooks! And some Italian as well. A lot of vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. I will keep all the cookbooks that I actually cook from and all the cookbooks with sentimental or historic meaning. Also my favorite cookbook authors - the Moosewood Collective, Mollie Katzen, Mark Bittman, Chloe Coscarelli, Isa Moskowitz...

What's your favorite cookbook? Or do you use the internet instead?

Harold and Hector (and a bit of Harriet)

 One of the local community orchestras, the Waukegan Symphony, was a short a (French) horn and asked if I would come and play 1st horn. I rarely play 1st horn and I had played a concert with them a few years ago and really liked the conductor. And I have friends in the group.  So I was happy to be able to do so!

The program was two unusual pieces. The first was Respighi "Ancient Airs and Dances," a charming short piece. Respighi's best known piece is "The Pines of Rome."

The second half was "Harold in Italy," by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz was French, he lived from 1803 to 1869. His most famous work is Symphony Fantastique in which Berlioz tells the story of his fictional love for a real actress, Harriet Smithson. It involves opium dreams and witches. It's a very exciting piece and is played regularly by orchestras. [Harriet Smithson came to performance and somehow realized that the piece was about her. She married Berlioz, but it was a very unhappy marriage.]

On the other hand, "Harold in Italy" is rarely performed. I learned the story behind this piece when our conductor introduced it to the orchestra. Nicolo Paganini, the famous violin virtuoso who lived from 1782 to 1840, had, according to our conductor, gotten bored with the violin and looking for a new challenge, took up the viola. Paganini asked Berlioz to write a viola concerto (a solo with orchestra) for him and Berlioz agreed. What Berlioz actually wrote, Harold in Italy, is an orchestra piece with small bits of viola solo. Paganini refused to play it or pay the commission fee. Berlioz found some other violist to premiere the piece. Paganini was at the concert and was so impressed that he apologized and paid the commission.

I can't think of any piece by Berlioz that is not programmatic. The story this piece is a young man, Harold, of course, who travels to Italy. The first movement depicts Harold in the mountains of Italy. In the second, he meets a group of pilgrims. The third movement is a serenade in the mountains, with some lovely parts for the horns! The fourth movement is "Orgy of the Brigands," though it comes across more as an energetic recap of the music that came before.

However, even to this day it is not a piece that violists choose when they (rarely) get asked to solo with an orchestra. The viola is a lovely instrument, but it is overshadowed by the violins and cellos. And pretty much every other instrument in the orchestra.

RSV Woes

 We went to visit our grandson (and son and daughter-in-law) last Wednesday. He's an adorable 16-month-old with a big smile and a mischievous glint in his eye. 

The next day our son called to tell us that the baby had RSV. Jumping ahead to Saturday morning, I woke up with a nose running like a faucet. I did not bother getting tested, I have RSV now too. It's like a bad cold - at least it is for me. I have gotten the latest shot for covid and flu but I was spacing them out in case I had a reaction - I wanted to know what I was reacting to and also to avoid double reactions - I don't know if that's a thing but I want to avoid it. So neither of us had gotten the RSV shot. 

So I moved into our daughter's bedroom - she's in Texas. I haven't been cooking and I wear disposable gloves when it seems necessary. Mostly I have a runny nose and fatigue, and the nose is letting up. 

Though I am retired I have commitments, mostly to music groups. It's not so terrible to miss a rehearsal here and there, but I have a concert coming up on Sunday. I'm missing rehearsal tonight but hopefully will be able to go to the dress rehearsal on Saturday. I'm not a regular member of this community orchestra; I'm the guest principal horn. I have parts that will be missed if I'm not there. 

I am feeling better and I think I must practice starting tomorrow. Playing a brass instrument has some things in common with athletics, in particular, if you don't play regularly you get  out of shape. I have put it off first, because I was exhausted, and then because I will have to wash the horn out after playing it. Bad stuff can hang out in the tubing - it can make you sick again. Blowing my germs into it will definitely require a prompt cleaning.

You clean it in the bathtub with a special long flexible brush. I will send a bit of listerene in as well. Years ago I read a hilarious blog post by a British horn player. He had repeated respiratory illnesses and finally realized he needed to clean his horn. The hilarious part was his reaction to what came out of the horn and then slipping on his wet floor. Fortunately he and the horn were fine, but the description of what could be hanging out in the tubing was an impetus to regular cleaning!

If you aren't up to date on your vaccines, I highly recommend getting those shots!

NaNoWriMo

 This month is the annual National Novel Writing Month (https://nanowrimo.org/). The original goal of NaNoWriMo was to write the entire draft of a novel, or 50,000 words. It has evolved since its beginnings and participants can set their own word count goals. 

I first tried NaNoWri Mo two or three years ago. I had an idea for a novel about a time-traveling musician. I read advice about plotting, and had my plot in mind. What I learned that first year was I didn't have enough plot. I realized later I was missing some other important aspects, like character development. I skipped the next couple of years. But I decided this year to try again.

Some people do NaNo as a step toward publishing their novel: I do not. I just want to write. Maybe there's a bit of sibling rivalry as well: my sister wrote a novel, unpublished, and my brother has written several nonfiction books, all published. (He writes mostly about religion and film, which is his area of expertise. If you are interested you can google him: John C. Lyden.)

Anyway, I am writing again this year. My word-count goal is so modest that once I started writing I realized I would need to revise it. I had thought a lot about why I had problems before, including not only lack of plot but insufficient character development. Thinking about those issues I decided to take a page (lol) from one of my favorite authors, Diana Gabaldon. She writes scenes as they occur to her, not linearly. Though obviously she has a story arch in mind.

I have been writing scenes of characters interacting. They may or may not be part of the story, but they really do help me know the characters better. That sounds strange, since the characters are only in my head so of course I should know them, but I don't yet. When I was writing in the first NaNo challenge I was startled to find the characters having conversations in my head when I wasn't even thinking about them. I checked with some other NaNo writers and they all agreed that this happens. And if possible, I should write down the conversations in case I want to include any of them in the novel.

It makes the writing more fun as well as productive. And fun is what I'm going for here.