What I did during the pandemic--Jigsaws by Rhys

RHYS BOWEN: Like all of you I have to invent ways to keep myself busy at the moment. I have a house that is extremely easy to clean with distressed laminate floors, quartz counters and really no dust here in Arizona. We have a pretty little patio area, surrounded by bougainvillea and oleander so no gardening to do. It’s even too hot for weeds to grow. And too hot to be outside during the day.

So I thought a jigsaw puzzle would be a good idea.  I’m sure I have a whole closet full of old puzzles at home in California but this is my winter retreat with no leftover children’s toys. So I found a puzzle I’d once bought at the dollar store. The pieces were tiny. I mean TINY! But I was doing quite well with it until either there was a strange gust of wind or… a nameless person brushed against it and I found half of it lying on the floor—in pieces. (I have not accused the nameless person. We have to live together).

Around that time I mentioned to Barbara Peters that I wanted to try a jigsaw. So she sent me this one. Until then I had thought her one of my close friends. Not any more. It is the most fiendish puzzle ever created. One thousand pieces of identical sea and identical land. But I refuse to give up. Little by little, maybe ten pieces a day, I am adding to it. Rhys of a hundred days. I am determined to finish.

So I’m interested to know how you have been challenging yourselves. I have seen some of Hallie’s puzzles. I’m dying to see the picture of the last one but it might be censored! Who else does jigsaws? Who is good at them? What other challenges have you given yourselves?



JENN MCKINLAY : I pulled out our 1,000 piece Globe Trotter puzzle. Dumped the pieces on the table and King George, or the Notorious KG as we’re now calling him, did a flying leap from his cat tree onto the table, hooked his claws into the tablecloth and suddenly it was raining puzzle pieces. The Hooligans and I picked up the bits, put them back in the box and called it done. LOL! I think I need a “George Free Zone” if I’m going to attempt it again. Thankfully, I have a book due, galleys to proof, two proposals to write, and a book to promote so my calendar is quite full! Plus, we’ve hit optimum pool time, so there’s that!


HALLIE EPHRON: We are on our sixth 500-piece puzzle, a two-sided Springbok with Bryce Canyon on one side and Zion Canyon on the other. We’ve done Porto Fino. Seashells. Flowers. Tropical Fish. And a Monet that was brutal. In the basement is a 2-sided naked Ursula Andress puzzle and a puzzle that’s a bit of an antique with very weirdly shaped pieces and no picture to go by. Bryce is going slowly. I wish we had grandchildren to go whizzing by and knock all the pieces off the table.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Completely zero interest. Zero.  We have a couple, both given to us as gifts by well-meaning pals who thought we were normal. Truly, I do not see the lure. Crossword puzzles? Yay. Jigsaw puzzle? Baffled. Hard pass. Chacun a son gout. Other challenges? Oh, the VERY first thing I do on Sunday morning is grab the spelling bee in the NYT Sunday Magazine. They are DIABOLICAL! Some days I get them instantly. Other times, seriously, it takes the whole week.  The one where the answer was  tequila, I never got. I love them, and truly look forward to them. Any of you do those?


LUCY BURDETTE: I’m with Hank, not interested. The New York Times has a wonderful new weekend section with puzzles and recipes and suggestions for keeping kids of all ages busy. We loved the double crossword last week with two sets of clues and giant boxes for not-so-sharp eyes. We did finish though I won’t tell you how long it took! Hank, John is addicted to the Spelling Bee. And the answers sometimes come instantly and sometimes so hard that he gives up. Otherwise, I am not bored! Working, exercising, staying in touch…


DEBORAH CROMBIE: Cringing in shame here. The 500 piece puzzle I started in January is still...on my dining room table, maybe 1/10th done.. And I actually LIKE doing jigsaws! I just never seem to find the time to sit down and work on it. Actually, that is one of the issues--not sitting. Short person that I am, the dining chair puts me a little low to work comfortably on the table top. So I end up standing, bending over the puzzle, and after about ten minutes my back is killing me. Maybe I’ll try bringing in a barstool…. At any rate, the puzzle is not going anywhere, as I am not going anywhere, and maybe when it gets too hot to garden I’ll make some progress on it. I have a wonderful 1000 piece illustrated London puzzle that I ordered from Murder by the Book waiting next.

RHYS:I have to update that I did this chat a couple of weeks ago when we were stuck in Arizona. When the heat reached 110 degrees we finally took the plunge and drove back to California where the temperature means I can be outside, and I have edits on my next stand-alone and more writing to do. So no more jigsaws required, thank God.
 So what about you, friends? Who has started a jigsaw for the first time since the lockdown was imposed? Who has finished one? Who actually likes them?

Sunday Dinner for Father's day: Sesame Noodles with Sate

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Happy Father's Day! It's Sunday, and I'm at the helm, which means it's time for honorary Red Celia Wakefield to give us another fabulous recipe/cooking lesson. She made these Sesame Noodles with Sate on Friday, when my whole household was over to swim at the lake (and do a couple outdoor chores.) It was easy, inexpensive, and so hearty it filled up three hungry twenty-somethings as well as the three oldsters with plenty left for the next day!

I won’t start by stating the obvious, but I do want to give a shout out to Julia.  She has been one of the very few life lines for Victor and I during our current living situation. If you know Julia you will agree with me that she has a way of engaging, entertaining and managing to stay positive, finding a good laugh in almost any situation. 

And, I am once again delighted to join in the JRW blog, with another recipe which is well suited for our current living. It’s also a great meal for Fathers Day. Happy, happy Fathers Day to all the guys who visit Jungle Reds, to our husbands and our fathers. I have a recipe from my father, Douglas Constable, to share with you. 

Food, cooking in particular, was a place where father and I met on equal terms. In fact I may have had the edge on him there. After the Second World War, my father didn’t follow the drum, but did follow colonial ancestors by working all over the world. Our family time in Ceylon (Sri Lanka nowadays) offered curry in all its forms and he loved it. Curries were his favourite foods to cook. People in for a drink? Father would hurry to the kitchen to make up some curry puffs. Most of his cooking involved deep frying and after he painted the hall ceiling greasy black from leaving a pot of oil on the stove without turning it off, my mother banished his culinary exploits to the garage.

Late in his career, he and my mum were in Indonesia, where of course, he fell in love with the food. My mum recounted their arrival where my father was to be head of an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the special agencies of the UN) mission in Surabaya. The house had been set up with servants etc. But their language was Dutch. My mum, understanding she was being asked what she wanted prepared for lunch, said the only food word she knew, “rijsttafel”. Which a couple of hours later appeared on the dining table. This is a very complex and complicated dish where one is offered choices which include nasi kuning or regular steamed rice, accompanied by dishes such as satay, rendang, gado-gado, grilled chicken rica, red snapper in yellow acar sauce, fried shrimp in sambal, potato perkedel kerupuk and tempeh. (Julia's note: the poor staff must have thought Memsahib Constable was going to be very high maintenance!)  Kerupuk, the tasty shrimp crackers, was my father favourite drinks snack, served with Sate sauce, deep fried of course and hence the banishment from my mothers kitchen.

I wish I could make a rijsttafel for everyone, but let’s make sesame noodles with sate sauce.

This is my fathers’ recipe and serves 6-8 hearty eaters:

In addition for dinner we added these ingredients:

1 1/2# Spaghetti

1 Cooked chicken

Bunch of scallions, chopped small

Tamarind* is available in Asian markets, as are the other spices. The one ingredient not on fathers list is Chinese noodles, or as we say in Maine - Spaghetti. I doubled the Sate recipe. As we had a mix of veggies and carnivores, I got hold of a cooked supermarket chicken whose meat I shredded, which would normally be served on top of the noodles. Julia and I assembled the ingredients and followed his directions.

1)          Put on the water for the pasta

2)          Measure all the sauce ingredients into a pan except for the peanut butter and heat.

3)          Start adding peanut butter once the water boils. Turn the heat down and stir.

4)          Watch out because the sauce will thicken and needs to be thinned with more water.

5)          Peanut butter is oil, so if it splatters, it burns, Ouh!

6)          Cook the noodles or pasta as directed

7)          Drain noodles, dress immediately with sesame oil and pepper oil 

8)          Pour the sauce over the noodles and mix in well.

Add the shredded chicken and chopped scallions when ready to serve. Sesame noodles can be served at room temperature or chilled. They make great leftovers too for a lunch box.

*After tasting the tamarind, I thought freshly squeezed orange juice would be a good substitute - J.

JULIA: Here is the happy result, dear readers, with a quick slaw on the side and lashings of extra sauce, which, by the end, the kids were scooping onto crackers and stuffing into their mouths. Accompanied by a gin/vodka and tonic (the grown-ups) and ginger ale (the kids) it was a perfect meal to enjoy outdoors on a hot summer night. 

Below, we've got videos walking you though the whole process in inimitable Celia style. Take a look, and after you're done, join us in the comments with your own exotic food adventures!




 

Learning to drum: Lisa Braxton's THE TALKING DRUM

HALLIE EPHRON: Several years ago, I rode home from Boston on the subway with a young woman who'd taken my class at Grub Street. The class was on writing suspense, and the woman was Lisa Braxton. Recently Lisa reached out to me and I had the great pleasure of reading her just published first novel, and it's my great pleasure to introduce her to you.

The book, The Talking Drum, feels so current though it's set in 1971, another period of ferment and turmoil. It weaves together the stories of three young couples living in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, with race and gender politics and economic inequality taking center stage.

One of the characters is a young man from Senegal, a brilliant drummer whose dream is to start a drumming institute.  

The book takes readers into another world, seen through the lens of three young couples. I especally loved the sections about drumming, which are written  with such authority--written more like a musician than a journalist--that I had to ask her how she'd become so knowledgable.

LISA BRAXTON: When I began writing The Talking Drum, I was well into my 40s and assumed that my music lessons were long over, tucked away in the distant memory of my youth. I didn’t imagine that I would resume musical training and it would be on an instrument that I’d been under the assumption was simple to play and didn’t require much technique to perform on well. Five minutes into my first lesson I realized how wrong I was. As I was developing the character Omar, an immigrant from West Africa trained at drumming at his father’s knee to be the drumming ambassador of the world, I felt I should take hand drumming lessons to lend authenticity to the character.

I enrolled in an adult education “Hand Drumming for Beginners” class. I wanted to know the feel of a drum on my palms when played, and the emotional places where the drum could take me. During eight sessions on the goblet-shaped djembe, I learned how to execute Base–Tone–Slap, the three main strokes used to play most large hand drums.

I was curious to learn more and signed up for a drumming circle led by master drummer Mamady Keita. Born in a small village in northeast Guinea, Mamady is an international performer, recording artist and workshop leader. He brought his three-hour intensive to a city hall chambers on Boston’s North Shore.

Grand as it was, the room was a tight squeeze for the 75-plus students who showed up, drums in tow, ready to learn new rhythms from a man they revered. I was surrounded by drumming zealots. The man seated next to me kept grumbling, “People who aren’t serious about this should stay home!” I wondered if he’d figured me out, that I was an imposter, not a real drummer. I could feel my shoulders slumping in an effort to make myself invisible.

Mamady was small in stature, but commanding. The room went silent as he played a combination of rhythms. He beckoned us to repeat them. On the beat, he slowly strutted around the large circle, inspecting our hands closely, nodding and smiling slightly when he was pleased, narrowing his eyes when a tone or slap was made without confidence.

As I feared, Mamady detected my lack of mastery of the instrument. As he was making his rounds, he paused in front of me, raised a hand to get everyone to stop playing and worked with me one-on-one. After he tried again and again to set me on the right path I finally confessed in a weak voice: “I’m not a real drummer. I’m a writer wanting to learn to play to create a drummer for my novel.”

In that moment, the tension left Mamady’s face. I decompressed. He gave me a smile and continued circling the room. When he came back to me, he paused again. Was I hitting the drum wrong? Apparently not. He gave me a flirtatious wink and kept going. 

HALLIE: As Lisa was telling me about drumming, how simple it seems until you try to do it and the nuance that can be wrung from it in the hands of a master, I though it's not unlike writing. Seems easy until you try.

I heartily recommend The Talking Drum. It's a story for our times, one that leaves the reader with a feeling of hope. Which brings me to ask the question: Have you had experienced a musical instrument (in the hands of a master musician) speaking to you?

Lisa will be here today, and I hope she'll tell us more about her title and perhaps the theme of her book, "the talking drum."

Lisa and I talked about her book at a virtual book launch event with Belmont Books. 

ABOUT Lisa Braxton:
Lisa Braxton is an essayist, short story writer, and novelist. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University, her Master of Science in Journalism Broadcasting from Northwestern University and her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Media from Hampton University. Her debut novel, The Talking Drum, is forthcoming from Inanna Publications in spring 2020. She is a fellow of the Kimbilio Fiction Writers Program and a book reviewer for 2040 Review. Her stories and essays have appeared in Vermont Literary Review, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Hope. She received Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest magazine’s 84th and 86th annual writing contests in the inspirational essay category.