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Saturday, August 11, 2018

Cooking Again

Making more pickles today. I swore I would make no more but then the old man brought in another bucketful, and I still had some Mr.s Wage's so...

I also decided to make some jam from berries frozen over the summer and a bag of cranberries I still had in the freezer from last February. That long! Where did those months go? The jam tastes wonderful, a nice edge from the cranberries, but it is a bit seedy. But oh so good, so I'll put up with the seeds.

And I finalized my set list for Tuesday's performance. It's a process to get the right order of stories, although it might seem like an easy thing to do. But I consider the flow of the stories, how they link together or what transitions I need, where ballads fit in, the time needed for each story or song, and most important, how I want to start and finish a set.

For example, it's good to start with something lighthearted and funny, to get people laughing and tuned in. And it's good to end with an uplifting story or song that leaves the audience feeling good and satisfied. In between there also needs to be moments of lightness, surprise, and yes, darkness. All of these are part of life, after all. Balance is the key in storytelling as well as in life.

So I suppose you could call this planning "cooking" too---there is a sort of basic recipe to it, and when mixed right the performance is worth all the thinking and planning.

One other cooking note: As I was going through the fridge freezer I found a pack of apple pie mix I made last year. We had some leftover biscuits from the other day stashed in the fridge. So I sliced up the biscuits, poured the thawed apple mix over them in a casserole dish and dotted with butter. I stuck the dish, covered, in the oven for about 30 minutes at 375. until it was heated through. While it was in the oven I made some vanilla pudding to use as a sauce since we have no vanilla ice cream on hand.


The result is delicious! The only change I would make is to have made a crumble topping for the apples to have added some crunch--maybe take the lid off and add the topping for the last 10 minutes or so.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

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