STORY: The Fundamental Things Apply – Part 2

Author’s Notes: Apparently, this is not going to be a two part story.  If you don’t remember what Part 1 of this story was about, you can read it here, keeping in mind that this is the third story in my ST:TOS “A Brief Encounter” trilogy.  (“Between Logic and Longing” being the second story).  Obviously, I am not telling them in order… I guess I am channeling C.S. Forester.

Of course, you may choose not to read it at all.  Possibly you are angry with me because I have not updated Heart’s Guardian in a while.  But believe me, I am working on it, but telling time-displacement stories require A LOT of pre-planning, and I have hit a wall as to how I need to proceed.  Rest assured I am working on it: it has not been abandoned.

BTW: Mistakes are mine and I still can’t convince Paramount to sell me the rights, so their characters are theirs and I do not profit from them.  So, we continue…

The Fundamental Things Apply – Part 2

Improving on a Martha Stewart (magazine) recipe

And before you cry out in outrage that it is not possible, hear me out.

I bought the latest edition of Martha Stewart Living Magazine (solely based on the cover photo… because of the fruit posters)

Anyway…

Flipping through the pages, I came to the article titled: “Easy One-Pan Dinners”.  Every single photo had my mouth watering, especially the recipes for Fried Eggs with Greens and Mushrooms and Baked Rice with Chorizo and Clams.  I am forbidden by my doctor from eating dark-green leafy-vegatables, but I can eat rice, chorizo, and clams–and that is what I made.

It was good, but not great.  Not very much flavor, which may not have been the magazine’s fault.  I used low-sodium chicken stock, so that was probably my first mistake.

As for the sausage, the only kind of chorizo my local market sells is the fresh, (Mexican) kind in the plastic casings. The recipe didn’t specify Mexican or Spanish, so I had that dilemma to overcome.  I probably could have made a trip to the local gourmet market to find dried chorizo, but that seemed a 50/50 proposition at best.  So the fresh, Mexican chorizo came home with me.

Two days later, I decided to try the recipe again. Only this time, I doctored it up, southern style, (with tomato, chicken bouillon (for the salt) and a Hatch green chile) which probably made the dish more like a Jambalaya, than like the paella that I think the “Martha” recipe was going for.

And the result?  SO MUCH BETTER!

Now, would you like to try the recipe?  I thought so.  Click this link to pull up the PDF file.  And please, let me know how you liked it.

NOTE: I typed up the recipe for my sister, who detests peas, but throw a handful of peas in there to give it a little color.

Photos of this recipe: The first ten in my Chefinista Set at Flickr.

Will these bloody cataracts and hurricanes never stop?

Although it doesn’t look like much of a hurricane (yet) I decided to foist my poor video-taking skills upon you all once again.  This is to give you left coasters and in-betweeners a slight taste of tropical storm force winds.  Hurricane force winds will come later.

However, I can hear that it has picked up a bit outside and the lights are flickering a bit.  So stay tuned.  I might have another video shortly.  Oh crap… the power…

But did you get to fight a Gorn?

My UK blog buddy, Kirsty (of boblog fame) is in California this week.  And guess where she stopped off, Trekkers?

Searching for Queen Guinevere…

A funny little thing just happened and in a way it points out the flaw in some peoples way of thinking about color and race.

I was checking my stats and saw that someone found my blog by searching for “queen guinevere” and I could not imagine how they got here performing that particular search.

I do occasionally post about Merlin, but figured that that wasn’t enough to get the search engines interested, so I plugged in the words myself. I did not see my blog show up in Google, but something else caught my eye: A link to a Queen Guinevere Barbie.

And you all know I can not resist a Barbie, so I clicked the link.

Imagine my surprise at what a saw: A Queen Guinevere Barbie Doll… that was not black. I blinked, thinking to myself: that can not possibly be right. I blinked again… and then I remembered.

In other words, Merlin has TOTALLY changed my perception of who Guinevere is. Several years ago, a Caucasian Guinevere doll would not have phased me in the slightest. Yet, this has just proved a point to me and should to everyone who dissed Gwen when Merlin first aired on television: Gwen’s color or race is not an issue whatsoever! She will be the Queen and is doing a heck of a job proving it!

I well remember the outrage that followed (and that continues some places on the web to this day) because Gwen is not portrayed as she was expected to be portrayed.  Personally, I have totally accepted Angel Coulby as Guinevere, not for the color of her skin, but for the content of her character.  I can not imagine her Merlin character being played by any other person, and I would hope that the majority of people out there feel the same way as I do.

(with apologies to Dr King)

What?

And I was just saying how much I miss Zachary Quinto.

How did I miss this?

Umm…Still my other boo

Oh, Dwayne, you know that you still have first dibs on my heart.