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National Empanada Day 2023
Looks like a pierogi, but the article on National Empanada Day says they can be filled with meat, cheese, vegetable or fruit fillings. Time to fire up the air fryer, y’all…
Good 🥚 Egg
A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked. ~Bernard Meltzer
I have the good fortune to have a true friend. I have the better fortune to say that she’s even more cracked than me.
Neither of us can really judge the other because we’re cracked in slightly different ways.
While nobody is perfect, she is perfect for me. I’m very blessed to have her in my life. She is a genuinely good 🥚.
Beef Empanadas | Gordon Ramsay
As for the empanadas, I’m genuinely curious.
I saw a nifty gadget the other day in an ad somewhere. You make the dough circle, put it on the spot, fill it and then that part folds in half to seal the dumpling.
It’s mildly captivating to watch it in action, but you can just cut a circle out of dough with a cup or saucer and use a basic dumpling press to do that.
Whether it’s an empanada, a pierogi, a pasty, an uncrustable or any other kind of dumpling, I’m all about it.
Fruit ones, veggie ones, meat and/or cheese ones all have their virtues and I wouldn’t mind having a batch this weekend.
🥚 Wascally 🐰 Wabbit 🧺
Here Comes Peter Cottontail
So, in the spirit of rehashing my childhood, there is a stop-motion animation program without which I cannot fully enjoy Easter weekend.
Rankin & Bass mastered the art of taking innocuous holiday characters and giving them full character arcs as narrated by some august celebrity.
Christmas got Burl Ives, Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney and Jimmy Durante. New Year’s got Red Skelton. Easter got the profoundly comical Danny Kaye.
Danny’s role as Mr. Sassafras was one of a sort of quest-giver. Peter, played by Casey Kasem, had overslept on Easter morning due to an equal mix of Peter’s hubris and villainous skulduggery by January Q. Irontail, played wonderfully by Vincent Price.
Mr. Sassafras provides Peter with a cheerful ditty to lift his spirits, an outrageously French caterpillar (also Danny) and a time-machine that looks like a Model-T suspended from an enormous balloon. Naturally, Peter redeems his mistake and is appointed as the new, official Easter Bunny by Coronel Rabbit (also Danny).
This is probably one of the only R&B specials in which the senior famous actor who serves as narrator plays additional key characters in the show.
Danny had an incredible variety of roles, most of which were comical, prior to this holiday special. Naturally, movies like The Inspector General demonstrated his ability to play varied characters in the same story, while movies like Hans Christian Andersen and White Christmas showed off his singing skills.
I still love watching this silly program to get me in the Easter frame of mind.
Rotten 🥚 Egg?
An experienced slush-pile reader doesn’t need more than a few seconds to see if a story has potential. You don’t need to eat all of a rotten egg to determine that it’s rotten. ~Gardner Dozois
Ah, the slush-pile. Where random books go to die. This is one of the many reasons I decided to start my own publishing company.
Instead of worrying about not getting a fair shake from a bunch of random editors at some possibly genre-appropriate publishing houses, I can deny myself a fair shake.
The advantage of going TradPub is that, if your work gets plucked from the slush-pile, they shoulder all the expense and the risk.
The advantage of Self-Publishing is that you retain all rights to your work and derivative products. The money is all yours, both in and out. This is a mixed blessing, naturally. If you don’t have a pile of money to put in, you’re going to have a devil of a time getting money back out.
I’ve heard from some people that even traditional publishing requires a large burden of marketing on your own part.
Obviously, if you’re Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, the publishing house is throwing a ton of ad money at guaranteed winners.
Also obviously, only Stephen King and J.K. Rowling are Stephen King and J.K. Rowling respectively.
The rest of us are not and the onus is on such authors to self-promote.
How to Edit a Book (Reedsy)
In either case, I’ve got my own slush-pile. I don’t have to worry about getting lost among a pile of aspiring authors. I have to worry about actually getting any writing done.
The slush-pile is generally my brain. After a long day of data conversion and special projects work, I barely have enough mental capacity to stumble off to bed under my own power.
For me, it’s a struggle to maintain a modicum of mental energy that I can apply to writing anything. I have gotten some new words out lately, but most of my creativity has been applied to data conversion and report design.
That’s it for this Easter 🐰 Weekend. I hope you enjoy the holiday however you enjoy it. Here’s me wondering if National Egg Salad Sandwich Day is coming up next week…