Today is Small Business Saturday, and yes, I know the idea is backed by a certain credit card company, I like the idea anyhow. But pay with cash at your local small business, or to the person who makes the homemade gifts or grows the homegrown food, because when you pay cash, trade or barter, there are no fees, you are directly helping out your community, and you don’t get any deeper in debt.

If you are too far away to shop at your local Barritt’s store, contact me (leave a comment here or email me) for info on how to get your signed copy inscribed personally to you, or if you are buying the book for a gift, to your gift recipient. Merci!

“The idea of Time was of value to me for yet another reason: it was a spur, it told me that it was time to begin if I wished to attain to what I had sometimes perceived in the course of my life, in brief lightning-flashes, on the Guermantes way and in my drives in the carriage of Mme. de Villeparisis, at those moments of perception which had made me think that life was worth living. How much more worth living did it appear to me now, now that I seemed to see that this life that we live in half-darkness can be illumined, this life that at every moment we distort can be restored to its true pristine shape, that a life, in short, can be realised within the confines of a book! How happy would he be, I thought, the man who had the power to write such a book! What a task awaited him! To give some idea of this task one would have to borrow comparisons from the loftiest and the most varied arts; for this writer- who, moreover, to indicate the mass, the solidity of each one of his characters must find means to display that character’s most opposite facets- would have to prepare his book with meticulous care, perpetually regrouping his forces like a general conducting an offensive, and he would have also to endure his book like a form of fatigue, to accept it like a discipline, build it up like a church, follow it like a medical regime, vanquish it like an obstacle, win it like a friendship, cosset it like a little child, create it like a new world without neglecting those mysteries whose explanation is to be found probably only within worlds other than our own and the presentiment of which is the thing that moves us most deeply in life and in art. In long books of this kind there are parts which there has been time only to sketch, parts which, because of the very amplitude of the architect’s plan, will no doubt never be completed. How many great cathedrals remain unfinished! The writer feeds his book, he strengthens the parts of it which are weak, he protects it, but afterwards it is the book that grows, that designates its author’s tomb and defends it against the world’s clamour and for awhile against oblivion.”

From the French Pleiade edition translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff  and Terence Kilmartin, First Vintage Books Edition, September 1982

Thank you to everyone who came out to Knotts Island for the Artisan Festival, and especially to everyone who came to my book signing table there. A big merci to all who purchased a copy and after you read it, please let me know what you think of it, and if you feel so inclined, write a review onAmazon and/or Goodreads- that would be greatly appreciated as well.

Merci beaucoup, a la prochaine!

Willowgait Farm

On October 30th, 2011, I’ll be at Willowgait Farm on Knotts Island, NC, for their annual Artisan Fair, with my book to sell (and to sign, if you wish) and some artwork and maybe even some greenery, courtesy of my husband.

My book, also now available in a Kindle edition

My table from 2010 with artwork in baskets

If you come, be sure and speak a howdy to me.

Parisian by Heart

“I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

 Henry David Thoreau

“From her home on an island in North Carolina, a mysterious longing for Paris, France, leads a budding writer into the world of her dreams and imagination – or so she believes. Her guides and companions on this trip include two writers and an artist who drew so vividly from their lives and imaginations that the world cannot forget their visions. They share stories and memories of times together, and the discovery that their lives are intertwined in unexpected ways. The writers are Marcel Proust and Charles Dickens, and the artist is the tortured and driven Vincent van Gogh.

The story begins in our traveler’s home, within her familiar surroundings, but as the tale unfolds the line between the real world and the realm of dreams ultimately disappears. She finds herself in very different places across the ocean with very different people. She converses with Marcel Proust at his favorite meeting place, the Hotel Ritz inParis. She shares a meal with Vincent van Gogh and watches while he paints in the Arlesian sun.

And she meets with a writer by the name of Charles Dickens who gives her a manuscript in which a woman finds herself humbly serving the needs of a group of well-positioned elderly ladies who have gotten together at a remote guest house to play bridge when they know the night will bring a full moon rising over the water. Before they are finished they have a very unexpected visitor with the strange name of Samael. He knows things about them and offers to make a bargain.

Our lives are marked by our memories, written or unwritten, but which lives and what memories? PARISIAN BY HEART tells the story of one personal journey of discovery and revelation.”

The above (except for the Thoreau quote) is the “pitch” I wrote for my book as its entry into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The book made it into the quarter-final round, but sadly, no further. If the above pitch piques your interest, and you’d like to read more, it is available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Parisian-Heart-Mari-Mann/dp/1453679553/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314284764&sr=1-1  and you can ask for it at bookstores as well. Kindle edition available here. Merci, mon amis, et merci beaucoup, Marcel.

Doesn't that look delicious?

You know you want this t-shirt...

Look! An old tractor!

Where can I get a quilt and a coot?

At the Knotts Island Peach Festival, of course. You can eat peaches, see antique farm equipment, play games, listen to music, browse among craft and food vendors, eat peach pies and ice cream, watch (or participate in) a pie-eating contest, bid on a quilt, a coot, some photographs and other items in a Silent Auction….June 25th and 26th, 2011 at the Ruritan Park on the island. More on Facebook.

In a stockpot in the kitchen, resting on a heating pad, are fifteen Bantam eggs due to hatch tomorrow, St. Patrick’s Day. If any do hatch, I plan to baptize all the babies with Irish names, like Fiona or Fergus.

In the bathroom, in a real incubator (as opposed to a stockpot), are 18 eggs from our hens, due to hatch at the end of the month. If any of these babies hatch, I’ll call them April Fools.

In trays in the kitchen, the living room and the greenhouse (now there’s a novel idea), are seeds in potting soil, waiting to turn into seedlings and then make the transition to the outside, when they are old enough and it is warm enough. I plan to name them Lunch and Dinner. Maybe Breakfast.

And tomorrow I have named Spring Chicken and St. Paddy’s Day Art Gathering, which I invite you to attend, details here.

Rutabaga Ramen Stir-fry

2 pkgs Ramen noodles

Ginger, chopped

Onion, chopped

Garlic, chopped

Grated rutabaga

Greens

Tofu, cubed (optional)

Soy sauce

Stock

Peanut oil

Garlic pepper

Sesame oil

Grate rutabaga. Marinate cubed tofu in soy sauce. Brown ginger in peanut oil, then add rutabaga, onions and garlic. Add stock, steam until tender. Steam greens. When done, set aside and cook noodles in the hot water from the greens. When noodles are done, add greens, tofu, and rutabaga mix, season with flavor packets, garlic pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce to taste.

I made this recipe up because I was given two huge rutabagas and two equally huge turnips awhile back and was searching for ways to use them. I’ve made this recipe 3-4 times now using either grated rutabaga or grated turnip, with and without the tofu (get organic tofu that’s been made from non-GMO soybeans), and using different greens (collards, spinach, kale, etc).

Now here’s my problem with Meatless Mondays: have we really become so spoiled that we have to have meat every day, at every meal, so much so that there has to be a movement just to get us to consider not eating meat for one day a week? Yes, spoiled, because previous generations of Americans didn’t have meat every day, because they couldn’t afford it, for one thing, and because it wasn’t so easily available as it is today. A family might consider themselves lucky to have a meal with meat once a week. A President was even elected partly because he promised everyone “a chicken in every pot”. That sounded good to a lot of Americans in 1928.

But it’s not 1928 anymore and not only do we have chickens in every pot, we have chickens and cows and pigs and fish on every street corner and every other place in between. They’ve been raised for us (in mostly horrible conditions) and killed for us (oh excuse me, I mean “harvested”) and either packaged for us to take home and cook for ourselves or prepared for us and handed out the window at the drive-thru. Cheap, easy, and quick.

And unsustainable, unhealthy, and all too often cruel. These reasons and others are why we, my husband and I, eat meatless most days of the week. Once or twice a week we eat small, sustainable fishies, like sardines. But like I said, everyone’s gotta start somewhere, so if you’re a Meatatarian and just want to dip your toe into going a little meatless, try the recipe above. Not only is it cheap, easy and quick, it’s sustainable, healthy and cruelty-free. Oh, and it tastes good too.