Mat Twassel: Blog

Yesterday I posted two stories about two. "Two Dog Dawn" and "Two Girls Texting." Today I posted the same story twice ("Pour le Piano") except that one version was illustrated. Don't worry: I'm not hopeless stuck on two. In two days I've got a story scheduled called "11 Seconds." On the 16th there's one called "3 Dreams." You'll have to wait until March 18th when "two" returns (twice) with a story called "Body Doubles."

Okay, before I start the laundry, here's the question: for those of you who read or looked at or thought about "Pour le Piano," both the illustrated and non-illustrated versions, which do you prefer? And why?

Grape Cake

The other day I added a story to the SOL posting queue (Donut Run) and marked, perhaps improperly, "food" as a story code. I hope no reader is badly misled. If there is sex with food, it happens shortly after the story ends. (How important are story codes in your decision to read a story? For that matter, what are the main reasons you choose or reject a story?)

In order to make up for any potential reader dismay, I am providing one of my favorite recipes, my grandmother's grape cake.

1. Cream two sticks of no salt butter with 1 cup sugar. I guess it doesn't have to be no salt butter. Two sticks is one-half pound. It works best if the butter is very soft before you start.

2. Beat in three large eggs.

3. Mix in one teaspoon vanilla extract.

4. Mix in two cups of sifted flour and ¼ teaspoon baking powder.

5. Spread batter over the entire bottom of a spring pan (ten inch or twelve inch). The pan should be thoroughly greased with butter first.

6. Press seedless grapes, red or green or both, into the batter. Cover the entire cake. If you don't have grapes, other fruit will work. Apples cut in smallish slices, for instance.

7. Bake in pre-heated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 40 minutes, or until top is golden brown.

8. Cool and then refrigerate. I like it best if it's been in the refrigerator overnight. It should keep for several days.

I've made a smaller cake using a seven inch spring pan (seven and a half or eight inch should work) by halving the recipe (using two eggs, but all the vanilla extract and baking powder).

Nice and sunny out the last couple of days and the snow has melted off the streets, so instead of staying indoors and doing flights of stairs I can go out jogging, which I did. The first day it was 44F. Today, for my second run, I improved my time by one second, and the temperature was 28F. Now, if I can continue to chop one second off my previous time, after a month of running, thirty-one days, the temperature will be -460F, absolute zero, at which point all motion will stop, and I can relax.

First of all, let me be clear. I find racism abhorrent.

Yesterday I read about a law professor who was relieved of his position after he included in the text of an exam question the sentence:

Employer's lawyer traveled to meet the manager, who stated that she quit her job at Employer after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a "n____" and "b____" (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.

That very day a nearby school district dropped Mark Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn from the high school curriculum because the word nigger appears more than two hundred times. The school board decision was unanimous and no English teacher disagreed with the removal.

Obviously there is only one cure for this sort of ludicrous and misguided PC run amok. Strike the affronting letter from our alphabet.

Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as sow.
Ad everywhere that Mary wet
The lamb was sure to go.

With story Cupid's Arrow which I've posted today, I've completed the February runup to Valentine's Day.

You can find the Valentine's card I'm delivering to my special honey here:

https://mmtwassel.wixsite.com/stories/valentine