Spinach Fritters

A writer has to be healthy, right? Well, I don't know about you but spinach isn't one of my favourite vitamin-packed foods. So I was pleasantly surprised when I tried this recipe - and actually liked it! It's slightly spicy (but not overly-so) and makes a fairly easy side-dish. I have my own small twist on the recipe.

Lentil Spinach Fritters

3/4 of a cup cooked lentils - drained (You can use a can of lentils if you want to make things easier)

3 1/2 cups spinach - chopped

3 Tablespoons water

2 Tablespoons green onions

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 Tablespoon cilantro - chopped

3 Tablespoons Flour (or more)

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 garlic clove

Directions below.

1st you want to process the lentils in a food processor with about 3 tablespoons of water. I don't have one so I use a blender.

Chop the spinach into small bits and add it to the lentils.

 Next, add the  green onions, cilantro and other ingredients.

 

Now, this is where I add my own twist. In the original recipe you do not process the other ingredients, you just mix them with the lentils. I, however, found that the fritters did not cook as well when that was done. You can just mix the other ingredients in if you like but I prefer to blend them so the batter looks like this:

 Add extra flour or water until you are satisfied with the batter's consistency.

Next, add oil to a heated pan and fry the batter like pancakes until they are light brown.

I am sorry that this picture is so low quality, it makes the fritter look burnt, but it is actually dark green.

Serve them warm with sour cream. 

Enjoy!

If you opt for the un-processed spinach it'll look like this:

Editing, You Plague Me

*Gasps for breath* Well, I've been running a marathon! An editing one, that is.


Yesterday I realized, to my despair, that I had to do some major editing in certain areas of my book Silver Blood. Cutting, pasting, fitting, dissecting, ect. Or, as I told my husband "I am going to preform surgery!"


It is very difficult to completely remove an element from a book. In my case I had to remove a character (minor but scattered throughout the book) and move information from the middle of the book to the back.


Airith, one of my main characters, falls in love with X-Sayda, the wild daughter of an Outland chieftain. She encourages Airith but then betrays him by marrying someone else for power. After her husband is poisoned (suspicious, anyone?) she decides that she wants Airith after all. By then he has realized what sort of person she really is and refuses her. Though the Witch Queen encourages Airith to marry her to gain power and influence.
Originally X-Sayda is only met or mentioned a few times in the book, her and Airith's past relationship is only hinted at.

I decided: "I should add more of their relationship to the book." So I did.
Then I realized: "By adding all these extra parts I am making my word count higher than I want. And how am I supposed to make this all time-consistent?"
So I said: "I'll just take her out completely!" Then I realized she was involved intricately in a major part of the book. So....I made her a minor part again. Sigh.

Have you ever had to remove parts from your book/writing or add parts that gave you grief?

Ode to the Crow - Poem

This is one of my poems that I am pleased with. It's about how I feel when I hear a crow's call in the early morning. It's an eery sound and hauntingly beautiful feeling.

Ode to the Crow

by Grace Pringle

Ode to the crow in her sturdy nest,

Ode to the morning’s peace and rest.

Ye be a bird of dark intent,

You are the silence’s torment.

Yours is a lonely lament,

A call to shake, rip and rent,

The dawn’s slumbering calm.

Early light in the waking night,

The morning and darkness unite.

Stirring softly and glowing bright,

The peace takes flight,

Shattered by a harsh bird’s cry.

Ode to the crow, ode to the morn,

One cries out in scorn,

The other, to be born.

Nature Museum

Where does the inspiration that fuels your writing come from?
Movies? Other books? Dreams? Conversations?

Mine can come from all of those, inspiration seems to hit when you least expect it. Today I went somewhere I never thought to go for inspiration - a nature museum.
 In my family it used to be tradition on birthdays to go to the museums here in Ottawa (Science and Tecnology Museum, Nature Museum or the Aviation Museum) Of all of those my favourite was the Nature Museum or "The Castle Museum" as we liked to call it.

Can you guess why?

I, however, had not been there in years. So, I made a point to visit it since I now live in Ottawa. Today was National Museum day so my husband and I got to visit for free!

To put all your fears at rest, that was not a REAL dinosaur, despite what you may think...

At one point I was looking intently into a display case and saw some vesuvianite (the green crystal). I though my husband was standing behind me so I cried out excitedly: "I have some of that at home!" as I turned towards him. Then I realized that it was not my husband behind me as I had thought. It was a woman who ran off rather quickly O_O

They had some of my favourite kinds of birds; loons, falcons and hawks!
One of my characters is named Falcon :)

I also saw a kestrel for the first time and was imediately reminded of Lloyd Alexander's book: "The Kestrel."
He was a favorite author of mine when I was younger.
 

Have you ever visted somewhere and unexpectedly found inspiration? If so, where? 

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke - Review

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke- my all-time favourite book! And here is why:

The Covers for the whole series are amazing. I was the first thing to attract me to it. It captures the feel of the books without giving anything away.

The Quotes at the beginning of each chapter pertain to the plot. I enjoyed studying the quotes and trying to guess what would happen next.

The Plot was brilliant: Mo, Maggie's father can read characters out of books! He accidentally reads a particularly evil one out and reads his own wife in! He spends years trying to get her back. Maggie discovers she has her father's gift and they both find themselves on an adventure that usually only happens in books.

What reader hasn't fantasized about meeting their favourite fictional characters?

The Descriptions, next to the plot, were my favourite part of the books. Cornelia Funke has a wonderful gift for description, some times I would re-read parts just because I loved the way she made words come alive.

The Characters were 3D, you really fall in love with their quirks and even though Dustfinger, the fire-dancer, can frustrate the reader, the story would not be the same without him.

I Disliked the swearing. Mild swearwords though they were, I was shocked to find them in a children's book.
The plot was wonderful but the story's pacing was not very good. In the first book Mo, Maggie and Dustfinger get captured and escape too many times. The book felt dis-jointed at some parts.

The Verdict: well, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Inkheart is my favourite book. So, I absolutely love the series!

"Incarnate" by Jodi Meadows - Review

Where have I been?
I'm not entirely sure. See, I've been working and editing... and... well that's all I can remember O_O Oh! Yes! I've also been reading!


I started a fantasy book that I decided 3/4's of the way through - sucked. So, while I was looking for a birthday present for my husband at Chapters the other day (where else would I look?), I glanced around for a book to read. To my dismay, all I saw were.... fairy, vampire and werewolf books. *Sigh* I think my generation doesn't have good taste in books. Not that I have anything against paranormal books, but the obsession that goes along with them doesn't sit well with me.
Then! I remembered... "What was that book...? That one I read about on the author's blog...?... Ah-ha!"


And that, my friends, is how I bought "Incarnate" by Jodi Meadows.

 Synopsis:
Ana is the first "newsoul" to be born in Range. For thousands of years people have lived, died, and been born again while keeping the memories from their previous lives. Ana, however, replaced someone. She was never supposed to be born. Her mother hates her and many are afraid there will be more like her that will replace old souls.
At 18 she travels to Heart, the city where most of the population of Range lives. Along the way she is rescued from drowning by Sam, a music composer. His body is around the same ages as hers but he has lived and died hundreds of times.
He watches out for her and takes her to Heart with him. There, Ana searches for the reason for her existence.
The counsel, however, isn't as eager as Sam is to receive her and she is subjected to their rules. They claim it is for her safety and benefit. But she asks too many questions about things others think she shouldn't. She finds herself in danger of being killed. Ana and Sam form a strong attachment through music which quickly becomes much more.



What I liked:
It was unique. I'd never read a fantasy book about reincarnation before. The book kept me engaged all the way through.
I liked that Ana accepted help from Sam. Most female characters tend to try to be too tough and it's hard for me to relate to them when I am frustrated with them every time they get into a conversation with their romantic interest. Ana, however, had a nice balance of independence while still relying on others. Her character development was well paced.
The imagery in the book was also quite good. Imagery is something that I have always found hard to write but Jodi Meadows had enough description to give me a vivid picture in my head without overwhelming with details.
The book is well written.


What I Didn't Like:
I appreciated the idea that a soul isn't defined by it's gender but I wasn't a fan of the idea that people's souls were reincarnated into both male and female bodies, depending on the life-time.
Sam and Ana make some suggestive comments to each other near in the latter half of the book. In my opinion, books for teens have far too much of that these days. “Intimate” scenes are uncalled for, especially in books for teen girls (I ought to know, I'm still one myself). I prefer to read and suggest a book to friends without being uncomfortable about parts in it. I returned "The Graceling" by Kristin Cashore to Chapters for that very reason and ranted to my friends about how annoyed I was.


Verdict:
Over-all, I liked “Incarnate” and look forward to the sequel!

Thinking too Much

Back when I first met my husband he sent me a story that he wrote using only dialogue, which inspired me to write one of my own. This is what I came up with:

Thinking too Much  
by Grace R. Pringle 

“What have you been doing?”

“Huh?”

“You, what have you been doing.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, YOU.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“For the past hour? The whole time? What in the world could be so important to think about so much?”

“That’s the thing, there is nothing important anymore. I was thinking about how there should be more important things to think about.”

“What are you talking about? There are plenty of important things.”

“For YOU maybe, not for me.”

“Come on, there must be something, at one time or another, which you thought was important.”

“Sure, but that was before, I’m talking about now, what’s important now.”

“That’s easy, it’s all still important, just because time has passed doesn’t mean the importance of important things has changed.”

“That’s because you think important things are important, see, I just think unimportant things should be important because they aren’t.”

“Alright, fine. As long as you still acknowledge that there are important things to think about.”

“Do you think thinking is important?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”

“I dunno, it just seems that there are other, more important things to think about instead of thinking.”

“I think that all depends on what degree of importance thinking is on.”

“But if something is important (whether or not it is very important or just slightly important) isn’t it all still important and should be treated as important even if the other thing is more important?”

“Yeah.”

“You stopped.”

“Stopped what?”

“The flow of conversation. We were talking and then you said ‘yeah’ and you stopped.”

“I couldn’t think of anything else to say, you were going in circles. At least… I think you were.”

“Why didn’t you just say; ‘you’re going in circles” then?”

“I thought it would be rude.”

“Then you should have said “I don’t mean to be rude (or do mean to be) but either way, you’re going in circles.’”

“That would be your statement, not mine.”

“Well, it would have been yours if you had said it first.”

“I would not have thought of it because it was meant to be your thought, not mine.”

“How do you know it was meant to be mine if you had said it first?”

“That’s stupid, there isn’t such thing as “what could have been” it happens the way it happens or is thought the way it is thought and there are no exceptions because there was no other way to go about it even if there appears to have been.”

“That’s what you think, it isn’t what I think.”

“Doesn’t one of us have to be right? I don’t think there can be two rights about a one, don’t you?”

“I have not thought about it. Mostly because I wasn’t sure if thinking was important enough to think about thinking it.”

“Let’s just say it is all true and leave it at that.”

“But it has to be solved; if we say there are two rights but each of us is convinced there is only ‘one’ doesn’t that create a paradox and collapse time and space and thought and all that is important about there being “one right?”

“I don’t know… maybe we should think about it.”

“I was before you asked me what I was doing.”

“… And you only spent an hour thinking about it?”