All About Jane's Ranch

I love this picture of a bookstore/cafe in the historic center of Mexico City. I imagine, but I’m not certain, that the cafe is on the second floor, and that (if I were there) I could buy a book, climb the stairs, order an espresso and read a novel well above the hustle and bustle of the narrow streets.

But I’m not there. I’m sitting at my desk slooooowly proofreading my book. I remember a well- known mystery writer telling me he always held carrots in front of his nose at this point in the novel writing process. “Eight pages and I can get up and play with the cat. Eight more pages and I can make some tea. Eight more pages after that and I can check the mail.”

In order to speed things up, I’m forgoing blogging about life on the ranch this week so that I can put up another chapter. Since each one takes me about three hours to proof and post, and since life on the ranch doesn’t come to a dead stop just because I need time to do this, I’m going at a snail’s pace. But, I really want to get this book up on Amazon sooner rather than later, and in order to do that, I have to apply seat of pants to seat of chair and not drift off into some dreamy state. In my case, it’s eight more pages and I can go fill the cattle trough!

Writing is fun, but copy editing . . . uh, not so much. That’s why there were some glitches in Chapter Eight. I wandered off. The glitches have now been corrected. If you haven’t gotten that far, then just ignore this message. If you have, well I’m sorry for the pronoun confusion — there’s a reason that happened. However, now you can go back and take a look.

Rest assured that after I’ve gone through all this, a professional copy-editor will have a go at it. Then it’s off to the e-book formatter and up on Amazon. com.’s Kindle store.

I suppose this is always the kind of thing you see if you lift the hood up and take a look at the engine of any creative endeavor. All that sort of messy stuff. Still, the engine is not what I want my readers to see. Kind of breaks up the narrative dream. While that’s all very post-modern and stuff, it’s not my style. I’m a traditional women’s fiction writer through and through.

But, back to the chapters at hand . . .

If you’ve been to Mexico City, you’ll know the Plaza Tolsa where Lili is having lunch. If you haven’t been, well, here’s a photo on the right.

You’ll get the feeling.

And just to nudge your imagination a bit more, here’s the restaurant Los Girasoles on the left where she’s dining.

BTW—Fabulous food. Great margaritas.

Before I sign off here, I’ve got a little announcement. Any of you within range of KVRP Public Radio (FM 89) can listen to me read El Tropical, an excerpt from my novel Bird of Paradise. It airs February 8 at 7 pm. Hope you’ll tune in.

Okay, so I’m the last person in America who hasn’t heard about Vision Boards.

Now that I’ve done a little internet digging, I see they’ve been all over Oprah for years. There are Vision Board classes, even Apps.

What can I say? I don’t get around much. At least not with what’s on TV. That’s part of my plan.

However, undaunted by the fact I’m a bit late to the fiesta here, I’ve been looking for images of older women, women I might like to be like or whose footsteps I’d like to follow, something to put on said “Vision Board” and not an image of a movie star, either.

Wow! Are they hard to find.

And then something wonderful happened. I clicked on my hometown newspaper — the Charlotte Observer — and there was an article (with a picture!) about a local poet — Julie Suk. Eighty-seven years old and still writing.

Not only is she writing, but writing what many critics (Galassi of the Paris Review to name one) consider to be the best poetry in America. And to top that, she really didn’t start publishing until she was in her fifties!

I’ve been digging into her poems the last week like someone starved. I had no idea how I longed to hear the voice of someone older, especially as I list into that territory myself.

Once I turned sixty, I started to feel a little like someone driving familiar roads in a dense, tule fog. Even the oncoming headlights — admonitions to “Live Your Best Life” or “Achieve Your Dreams” — blur in the grey cloud, blur and pass, as I try to move forward. I know I want to go somewhere, am going somewhere, but what guides me now? What path will lead to a vibrant old age?

And then I found Julie Suk’s poems.

Read her no matter what your age! She has a lot to tell us about both the light and dark of life.

Rounds

When I held my first son,
how perfect he seemed.
Driving home late,
we would sing rounds
O how lovely is the evening
his head nodding to my lap.

Blessings on that third
of our lives spent in sleep,
the plots of the day
left dangling.

Once I drove by a woman
clinging to a viaduct’s ledge,
police, priest, and the curious
crowded below, the road
curving past into a benign
vista of cows and trees.

Blessings on those moments of reprieve
grabbed before dropping into nightmare.

How could my son fracture,
unaware of the split?
Ominous, the day I waited
on his porch, cake in hand
as if food could assuage
a mind reeling off.

Get out! Get out! The door slammed.
What I dread is a stand-off,
barricades, guns, police
with no choice but to shoot.

Blessings on the daughter
who ripens with a life
that turns us around again,
this time, we hope,
the helix of notes
descending in tune.

For a while we let pass
what Aeschylus said,
how at night
the pain that can’t forget
falls drop by drop
upon the heart.

The moon floats off,
the dog whimpers under the steps.
How lovely the evening
with a child on my lap,
a circle of us singing
heedless of the dark taking aim.

— The Dark Takes Aim, Autumn House Press, 2003
© by Julie Suk. Used with the permission of the poet.

In my organizing frenzy, I discovered some chilhuacle chilis that I grew and dried last summer hidden on a back shelf behind the flour and sugar.

Now, I’m looking for a fabulous recipe for the famous Oaxacan yellow mole. Most American recipes use pasillas or guajillos, because chilhuacle chilis are impossible to find here unless you grow them yourself. (They sell the plants at Berkeley Horticultural Nursery last I checked.)

This got me thinking about a wonderful meal I had with friends last November in Mexico City at Patricia Quintana’s fabulous Restaurante Izote on Avenida Mazaryk in Mexico City.

Very glamorous . . . and the food!

We sat upstairs on a sunny autumn afternoon, the window lending a view of the delicate pepper trees outside and the large synagogue across the street. When the waiter brought a platter of sopes de camarones in a chipotle sauce and perfect margaritas, we were all in heaven.

(Here’s Patricia Quintana herself on the right. I would love to live in a place where I could dress like that everyday! Que alegria!))

I know that you are hearing terrifying story after terrifying story about Mexico City. All I can say is that with the same precautions I would take in any large city in the world, I feel safe. Safe and also having a fantastic time!

Anyway, I’ve just posted two more proofed chapters of Palace of the Blue Butterfly on this website.

Now, I’m a little closer to my goal of getting it on the Kindle. You’ll probably want to go back and read Chapter Five before you continue just to refresh your memory.

And since in the novel I mention Vivienne dining at Restaurante Izote, I’d thought I’d show you all what it looks like.

Now I’m wondering what sopes de pollo en mole amarillo would taste like, and if Sra. Quintana would approve.

Well, it had to happen sometime. I’m late with the post. First time in almost two years, but I have a good excuse. I embarked on a cleaning-out-all-drawers-and closets rampage, all inspired by a necklace Dave bought me at the Plaza del Angel Antique Market in Mexico City, which you see only a small part of above. Think Marche aux Puces in Paris only in Mexico City and in Spanish.

Anyway, the necklace is so perfect, goes with everything I own, can be worn on any occasion with jeans or a black dress, that I almost don’t need anything else.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if I could pare my life down to only the necessary and the beautiful? It’s something I’d been dying to attempt for a long time. After the sensory overload that was Christmas, January seemed like a great time to start

When Dave decided to go to the Bay Area for three days, I knew it was my big chance to up-end the kitchen and throw out everything I don’t use. No stopping to make dinner. Nothing in the way.

Seize the moment!

It’s just that it took a lot longer than I thought—hence late blog post— but I reorganized every cabinet in my kitchen. So satisfying!

The next day, I just wandered around opening cabinet doors, gazing at the platters and pans all stacked up, the duplicates stored away or tossed. Bliss.

Then it was onto the bureau drawers. Wow! so much stuff I don’t use. I either have to start sleeping in silk PJs or throw them away. Did I actually have a life once in which silk pajamas were even feasible?

It’s just there was one nagging little problem with my virtuous activity. Part of me knew I was procrastinating. I have to get back to the copy-editing of my novel to get it up on Amazon, but I’ve been a little discouraged lately.

Every time I see an article on Mexico, it’s all about the drug war, the dead bodies dumped on the town square, in the middle of Mexico City, by the side of the road. Just a constant barrage of horrible news.

Why, I started to wonder, would anyone want to read about the place?

Then a funny thing happened as I got rid of old stuff, excess 13 by 9 inch pans and the like, as I pulled the souffle dish back from it’s exile at the far end of the cabinet, as I boxed up jewelry that I haven’t worn in years—those chandelier earrings— to give to my daughter. I felt more confident of my own story, knew that it was in some way truer than the numbers and statistics about the bloodshed.

In fact, Dave I spent a lovely two weeks in Mexico City this November, and here we are alive and well.

And I scored the silver and amethyst Fred Davis necklace, which was the inspiration for my cleansing frenzy.

After the last post, I decided to create some sort of collage, images I can keep in mind as I move toward my goals. I didn’t know this idea was called a vision board, but, on the same day it seemed, something happened and I learned.

I got an e-mail from an agent letting me know that she was moving to a new agency, one that developed self-published books.

Could have knocked me over with a feather. How times have changed.

I decided to take a look at some of the books this outfit published. Lo and behold, there was a book on How to Create Your Vision Board. Turns out it’s a lot more complicated that just sticking up a bunch of pictures. And the first step? De-cluttering! Which is, I guess, what I was doing.

Anyway, the book was interesting, so I downloaded onto my iPad. I’ll be following some of the steps over the next few weeks.

Anyway, the necklace, when I look at it, is an image of what I know to be true about Mexico… about Americans going to Mexico and becoming artists, about how Mexico nurtures that no matter what else is going on and has for years and years.

Just take a walk on a lovely Saturday afternoon around the Plaza del Angel in the Zona Rosa and you’ll see.

They say, those good folks who are studying the science of happiness, that you can actually increase your own happiness by taking a few simple steps.

In brief, here they are.

Savor moments of each day. Don’t emphasize the importance of material things. Take the initiative. Have a goal. Value friendships, family and community. Exercise. Eat right . . .

And the one I’m thinking about today –

Don’t compare yourself to others.

As it is that time of year when we traditionally take stock, I like others, started listing the ways I did not live up to all of last year’s resolutions.

Did I mediate each and every day. Well . . . not exactly. And that dream notebook that was so interesting . . . I let it languish. As far as doing all the chapters of The Artist’s Way . . . uh. You get the picture.

And then I thought, “Jane, Jane, Jane. If the point is to increase your own capacity for happiness, and maybe bring a little of that joy into other people’s lives, you are not headed in the right direction. Time to meditate on Quan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion and Mercy. Or, as we say on the ranch, “Let’s just back this truck up!”

Better to focus on the things I did do. Much more inspiring.

I have a friend who tacks images that inspire her writing up on her office bulletin board. Once, at a low point in her spirits, she covered the board with photographs of all the things she’d achieved in her life — college, wedding, birth of kids, big garden, remodeled kitchen, recovering from cancer treatments, Bay to Breakers race, a special anniversary, pets, Thanksgiving dinners.

Nothing of historical importance mind you, but when she stepped back and looked, what she saw was a life well-lived, rich in family, friends and creativity. Do you really need any more?

Before we moved out here, when I was waffling and scared to buy the property, another friend said, “Are you nuts? Of course, you should do this. Ever since I’ve know you, you’ve wanted two things: to write and to live in the country. You can do this.”

So in honor of my friend’s inspiring idea, these are some things that are going on MY bulletin board just to remind me how far I’ve come.

I’ve gone from this on the left (below) . . . To this on the right (below).

I’ve gone from being scared and wondering if I’d lost my mind to being certain that I hadn’t.

And I’ve gone from this — a book in a box — to a podcast. So this years resolution: From a book in a box, to a podcast on the computer, to a novel on one of these little gizmos, that’s the resolution.

Now, back to meditating every day, keeping a journal . . .
I have a whole other year.

I’ve had a bit of writer’s block — too much to write about, not too little — so I’m a bit late putting this up.

This past week, I would be all set to write about one thing that was going on around here when something else would snag my attention, and off I’d head in that direction.

Today, since I was down to the wire, I just decided I’d go with whatever thought I seemed to light upon the moment I sat down at the computer.

Here’s how that went . . .

Coffee cup in hand, I clicked on the San Francisco Chronicle first to get the weather report. We are longing for rain, snow, mist, fog, anything at all resembling precipitation. We’re in the midst of a strong La Nina out here, which means cold and dry. Boy, is it dry.

However, in my ADD mode, a headline grabbed my attention away from the weather report. “Neighbors Up In Arms Due To Heinous Noise from Hospital” it read.

Dear God, I thought, thankyou thankyou thankyou that I don’t have to go through that anymore. San Francisco may be a beautiful city, but the thought of living next to a massive, humming air filter system that sounds like a giant leaf blower and makes using your backyard impossible is enough to turn my blood cold.

And at just the moment I was mumbling my little prayer of gratitude, I remembered a poem by Mary Oliver, who seems to be an insomiac like me. About that she writes: “Not quite 4 a.m., when the rapture of being alive/strikes me from sleep,”

A good way to deal with insomnia, I’d say.

Besides, It’s so much easier to feel that way when not woken by a giant, humming, hospital air- conditioner, or whatever it is, that has a tendency to kick in at 3 am in the morning. Again — thankyouthankyouthankyou.

For me, this poem captured everything that was going through my mind — the longing for snow, the lovely sound of the owls when I wake in the middle of the night, and the excitement, tinged with, if not dread, certainly concern for the coming year.

And also the poem gave me the comfort of knowing that, no matter what happens in 2012, La Nina will turn again into El Nino, and I will once again be able to hold my hand out to the glittering snow or the cold rain.

And you will, too.

Here’s a poem to welcome in the coming year.

Snowy Night
by Mary Oliver

Last night an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something, and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever was knowable — would have hurried
over the fields
to name it — the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

My daughter and son-in-law are arriving tomorrow for Christmas.

I’ve got trees in all the rooms, and everything is merry and bright!

When I saw how this picture turned out, I realized this was a perfect place for a family Christmas recipe, so here’s my little gift for you, dear readers. I think I might have married Dave just to get my mitts on these cookies!

Grandma Winnie’s Christmas Sandies

Ingredients:

2 sticks of butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup of sugar
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 tsp salt
2 cups of flour
Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 325.
Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla and incorporate. Stir in pecans and mix well.
Sift dry ingredients and add to butter/sugar/nut mixture about a 1/3 of a cup at a time until well mixed. (Don’t over-work the dough)
Form the dough into “fingers” about the size of your thumb, maybe smaller, and put on ungreased cooking sheet about an inch apart.
Remove from oven when slightly golden colored and roll in powdered sugar while they are still warm. Roll in powdered sugar again when cooled.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Happy Holidays from Jane

Pioneer Woman has what she calls her lodge — a place where she cooks and entertains — and so do I. Okay, so compared to PW’s lodge mine is more of a lodge-ette.

Most of the time (and when we don’t have guests), this place is sports central for Dave and his buds. Every Tuesday morning, you’ll find me vacuuming up the cloud of popcorn and chips left on the floor. What can I say?

However . . . once a year I gussy this place up and give a girls’ luncheon for some of my Sierra Mountain sisters.

I’ve spent the better part of a week decorating both houses, so consequently, no new chapters up. Sorry. ( See New Year’s Resolutions come January 1.)

I love the fireplace in my “lodge-ette”. It’s made from stones which come from the creek near my house. Talk about building local!

And here’s a picture of part of the view from . . . well, from THE LODGE. Maybe that’s what we’ll call it. See if it sticks! Up to now, it’s been called “the house on the hill” to distinguish it from what we call “the house in the valley”.

Anyway, for this luncheon, I made Paula Deen’s “Chef Jack’s Corn Chowder“.

Girls, I made it MINUS the addition of the extra butter. Just read the recipe and you’ll see why! For ten ladies, I doubled the recipe. While Paula Deen’s recipe says it serves 8-10, that must be 8-10 first course sizes. Just so you know.

And I did serve it with the suggested Chardonnay.

But my favorite part of the meal was the salad I served as a first course— Spinach Salad with Mandarin Oranges and Candied Almonds. ( Wine pairing : a dry Riesling from Washington State.) The salad is adapted from Pam Anderson’s cookbook Perfect Recipes for Having People Over.

Here’s the recipe!

Boston Lettuce and Baby Spinach Salad with Oranges and Candied Almonds

Ingredients:

10-15 cups of greens–spinach, arugula, Boston Lettuce, or a combination of them.
1 cup of sliced almonds
1/3 cup of sugar
3 small cans of mandarin oranges
1 medium red onion
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
3/4 cups good olive oil
salt and fresh pepper to taste

Directions:

Thinly slice the onion and soak it in the vinegar for a half an hour. No more! Save the vinegar.
Drain the oranges and add to greens.
Add the onions and the candied almonds. (recipe for almonds follows)
Toss with reserved vinegar, oil and salt and pepper.
Add more vinegar if it does not taste sharp enough. Add more oil if the greens are not nice and shiny.
That’s it. Serve immediately.

Candied Almonds:

In a dry skillet, toast one cup of almonds until fragrant and golden.
Mix 1/3 cup of sugar with 2TBS. of water until dissolved.
Pour the sugar water over the almonds and toss until coated.
Cool sugared almonds in a pie pan.

Here’s a toast to all y’all from all of us!

There’s a poem by the German poet Ranier Maria Rilke that begins “Lord it is time. The huge summer has gone by . . .” which I kept thinking about as I walked around the ranch looking for the cows.

The good news is that Big Mac is better.

The other news is we have a new female calf named Lightbulb. Here’s a kind of blurry picture, but you’ll understand the name.

She seems to be very happy these days with her little herd.

Anyway, about halfway up the hill I heard a meowing sound. It was Dudley the cat, following me on my walk. He wanted me to wait up for him.

It takes over an hour to walk around a little loop road we’ve carved out for ourselves. The road goes through a meadow, up a hill to a grove of blue oaks, down a path covered with buckeye, past a hill of ceanothus and bay laurel near the pond. There are lots of hiding places for bobcats and coyotes, and Dave even saw a mountain lion once, sitting on a rock cleaning his face with his paws.

I don’t really like Dudley to follow me this far because of all the wild critters, but I wasn’t turning back now. I figured I could just carry him through the wooded places.

Anyway it was such a beautiful, warm November day the two of us stopped in the meadow to take in the view, which is where Dave found us and snapped this picture.

I should be in my office adding more copyedited chapters to my novel for you all to read. You’re stuck on Chapter Five, I know. But, it was so beautiful out can you blame me? I keep hoping for a really rainy day.

Well, rain or no rain, I promise in the next few days I’ll have a couple more chapters up.

Meanwhile, here’s that Rilke poem I mentioned.

AUTUMN DAY

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

– Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

I’ve been a bit under the weather the past couple of weeks, so that combined with the longer nights gave me the perfect excuse to curl up on the sofa and bury myself in a great adventure novel.

Ever since this summer when I held a big tapas party on the lawn and we all stayed up ’til the wee hours drinking Spanish wine in the moonlight and listening to Paco de Lucia, I’ve been on a big Spanish kick—food, film, music, wine, and so on.

Spain, I’m told by people who know these things, is the new Tuscany.

I loved For Whom the Bell Tolls and have a soft spot in my heart for those brave folks in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the ones who tried to stop Hitler before he could destroy Europe. And who doesn’t love Casablanca?

So when Goodreads e-mailed me about this hot, new, word-of-mouth novel by Maria Duenas called The Time In Between, which is set in Spain and Morocco during the Spanish Civil War, I had to read it.

BTW if you are a book junkie, and you don’t live anywhere near Vroman’s, or Book Passage, Powells or Elliot Bay Books, get on the Goodreads site. Since I live up here in the sticks far from any great bookstore, Goodreads meets a lot of my bookstore-browsing needs.

The Time In Between is 600 fabulous pages long. Perfect for winter. It tells the story of Sira, a young Spanish seamstress forced to live by her wits when a passionate love affair and the Spanish Civil War strand her in glamorous, dangerous Tangier.

The rest you’ll just have to find out on your own.

It’s beautifully written and so sensual—you can feel the hot sun beating against the closed shutters, smell the orange bossoms at night and taste the ice-cold champagne at the El Minzah Bar (see the stairway on the left), which was the model for Rick’s Cafe in the movie Casablanca.

Here’s what the Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa had to say about The Time In Between: “A wonderful novel, in the good, old tradition, with intrigue, love, mystery and tender, audacious and well-drawn characters.”

Who could want more?

And speaking of all things Spanish, I’m including my recipe for my go-to date night dish—Gambas al Ajillo.

Many years ago when we needed such a thing, Dave and I realized the futility of trying to get a babysitter in Berkeley on a Saturday night, so we just lit candles, put on music, made a fancy but easy dinner and pretended we were dining out. The perfect dish for such an occasion? My friend Lynda’s Gambas al Ajillo. Plus, the dish goes well with Champagne, or Spanish Cava, as the case may be. A nice Albarino is good, too, but hey—it’s date night. Splurge!

Gambas al Ajillo

5 TBS. Olive oil ( I use a spicy, Spanish olive oil for this, not an Italian)
1 tsp. hot pepper flakes
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled
4 cloves of garlic, very thinly sliced. (Sometimes I just put the garlic through a press, which results in a stronger garlic flavor.)
2 TBS. Italian parsley, chopped
Sea salt or kosher salt optional. ( Taste and see.)

1. Swirl olive oil in a pan until hot but not smoking.
2. Add hot pepper flakes and shrimp and cook a matter of seconds, just until shrimp are pink.
3. Add garlic and cook for a few seconds to a minute until garlic is golden. Do not burn.
5. Toss in the parsley

Pour shrimp into a warm cazuela, taste for salt, and add if you want ( Be careful. Not too salty) Serve with plenty of good bread to sop up the sauce.

The whole menu is something like this. Champagne, olives and Marcona almonds to start. Cook the shrimp while you sip champagne. Serve the gambas and bread, and for desert have seasonal fruit and a young manchego cheese.

A perfect meal for when they make The Time In Between into a movie! Then again, We’ll always have . . . Casablanca, as another great date night option.