Working with My Hands

I've finished my fifth book tentatively titled Breathing Just a Little. This book has eaten up nine years of my life, in the telling and the living and now it is in the hands of my literary agent, Chip McGregor and I am taking a break. This is laughable because I'm not the kind of person who feels comfortable "taking a break." I am a do'er. Go. Go. Always on the move. In between tinkering around with ideas for the next big project (do I work on the novel set in Italy in the 1900's? Or begin a new novel set in Dresden just before the February 1945 bombing? Or should I just do a series of essays?), I've taken to cooking. Specifically brining, and testing every recipe in this clever little book that features almond flour. I've made the chocolate chip scones, the cherry chocolate cookies and now the very vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. My waistline expands but life is short! Grape seed oil, almond flour and agave.

Over at brining central, I've put up sauerkraut (this is surprisingly hard to make), and a jar of mixed veggies (below). There's something incredibly therapeutic about massaging salt into cabbage and then waiting for the brine to release. I cannot believe our ancestors did this and survived. I have yet to make one decent batch of sauerkraut, and it's really hard to get that much brine going. who knew?  Still, I'm sticking with it though, and making sure to release that C02 build up. By the end of the summer, I hope I've cracked the code to making excellent sauerkraut, and that I have made every recipe in my almond flour cookbook, that way, when the school year starts (and I get serious about whatever writing project I decide to tackle), I'll be a pro!