Best Fruit in Miami

I’ve driven cross-country from the west coast to Miami three different times for different reasons.  It's a long, brutal drive that I never want to repeat, but we've missed our family back there.  The kids aren’t getting any younger, and we've had a pretty intense year. When I finished ROOK, we scraped together enough money to fly out, and take a much needed vacation.

Robert Is Here Website

My kids had not been there since they were babies, and coming from their home in the Rockies, they were in awe of the mountainless ocean of endless palm trees.  They built sand castle on the beach, and played in the frothy waves.  It was paradise!

My in laws live in Homestead, just south of Miami. Homestead is Miami set on slow.  There're still some strip malls and plenty of people.  However, the deeper you drive into it, the more rural it becomes.  There're horses and fruit orchards, as well as plenty of tomato fields. My very favorite fruit stand is there, as it has been for decades, and I was so happy to see it had survived the recession. 

From Robert is Here Website

It’s called Robert Is Here.  There is all the fresh fruit you could want, as well as the best shakes you could imagine. Things are fairly priced, and it's so popular that even the people watching is fun.  

But, as a writer, the best thing about this place is its backstory.  Robert is a real guy, who, as a little kid, tried to help his family sell produce.  He walked down to the busiest corner near their home where he stood all day with his cucumbers.  He didn't sell even one, and had to drag them all back home.

The next day, he came back, but this time with a sign that said “Robert is Here.”  Something about that sign gave him the magic he needed to sell every cucumber he brought.  The next weekend a neighbor added tomatoes to his table and the stand was born.  It was so successful that by the age of 14 he bought his first 10 acre property.  

Fast forward to today, and he still works there.  There are animals for the kids to visit with, and he takes the time to visit with each customer he works with.  It is a real treat to visit with him. If you ever find yourself in Homestead, you have to stop by!

Out of the Writing Cave and into the Cheese Cave

When I was a little girl, I tried the best I could to live off cheese.  No cheese was safe, and if any came up missing?  Well, there was just the one little girl they'd come after.  I remember a specific instance where my dear little brother threw me under the bus, knowing full well that I would be the only one blamed.  I guess he didn't think that one through, since I was the bigger, and none to happier, older sister.

As an adult, I've grown out of the cheddar and parmesan staples we were raised on.  That was all we ever ate, with the exception of the occasional lasagne.  When I traveled to the Middle East, I felt like I had finally found home - they devote entire Walmart-length aisles to all the cheeses you could imagine.  That is a people that does cheese right.

Eventually, I've come full circle, incorporating my childhood staples with my more mature tastes, and passed those on to my kids.

It's never enough for me to just like something.  I always need to know how to make it myself and put my own little spin on it.  I've done Cheddar in the past, and it turned out divine.  This summer I made more, but it just takes so long before there's anything aged enough to eat. Impatient, I also went for something with a little more instant gratification - mascarpone.

This is a super easy recipe, even if you've never made cheese before.  It is ready overnight, so you'll have a delicious soft cheese waiting for you in the morning.

Mascarpone
2 cups pasteurized heavy cream without thickeners
1/3 cup powdered skim milk
1 lemon, cut in half

You put your cream in a nonreactive pan and very slowly heat it to 180, using a whisk to keep it from scorching. This takes about 40 minutes, but just remember that it's the longest part and will be so worth it.  When its hot enough, turn off the heat and squeeze in the first half of the lemon. Using a metal spoon, stir until you get some solid flecks, whereafter you squeeze in juice of the other half a lemon.  Mix that up, cover, and stick it in the fridge for 8 hours.

Once it's hard-ish, wrap it in some damp butter muslin, and let it hang, twisted tightly to squeeze out the excess moisture.  Then...ta da!  Eat it.

It is so good.  We have it with crackers and strawberries. Just be sure that you get it eaten within two days or it will go bad.

Enjoy!

Stephen King: King of Craft

As a fourth grader, I was living in D.C. while my superhero parents were working on my dad's medical degree.  I say "they" rather than "he" because it was truly a team effort.  I'm sure if you're a single guy, you can easily put down roots in a library, never moving again until that day you're handed a diploma.  As a medical student with a wife, and not one child, but also a set of twins, it's impossible to complete this herculean task without a willing partner.

Still, my parents made it through those grueling years before we were really old enough to be embarrassed by hand me downs and few changes of clothes.  Entertainment was anything that was free, and so we spent a lot of time on the wooded hill behind our rental house, growing our memories from the fertile soil of pretend.

I devoured books.  Painfully shy, I relied on them to function socially in the fiction worlds in ways I simply could not in the real one. I think we can all admit that we are all a little nuts, and  most of us keep that carefully hidden in the deep inner folds our minds. A writer's mind, however, finds itself splattered without reservation upon a page, and, for better or worse, twisted writer's minds were the playgrounds where I grew up.  With my parents so preoccupied with the business of preparing for a career, there wasn't much supervision for the books I read. I found myself reading Pet Cemetery, fascinated by the concept of zombie dogs.  I imagined roadkill running around on broken limbs and matted coats.  I was horrified, yet deliciously intrigued by the idea.

Yesterday I started reading On writing: A Memoir of the Craft, written by that far less than homicidal author than childhood me would have expected, Stephen King.  The intention of the book is not to do an autobiography but to teach about the craft of being a fiction writer.  A great in the fiction world wants to teach something?  Yes, please!

It has been an utterly fascinating, brutally honest read, and one I highly recommend for aspiring writers.  I don't recommend it based on my amazing success and therefore drawing on my large deposits of credibility, but rather because it makes being successful feel like an attainable goal.  He made many mistakes, including tossing out the first four pages of his first great book, Carrie, only to be fished out that circular file by his wiser half to change their lives forever.

I stopped thinking about Mr. King's books sometime in the sixth grade, so the image of the hammer wielding psychopath curled over a typewriter was still there, still etched in my little girl imagination.  The grown up in me would never think such an absurd thing, yet I found myself a little surprised at how normal an upbringing and life he's led, and, dare I say it, enough like mine to give me pause.

So far what I've gotten out of this book is as follows:

1.  Chucking out a perfectly good book, only to go back to it later is normal.  My current book has already experienced this fate - actually completely trashing it's entire rendition two years ago.  Maybe rewriting it wasn't a bad idea after all.
2.  Your support system is crucial.  My husband has never doubted me.  In my moments of self-doubt, he becomes very seriously put out, making forceful rules about the expressions of negativity I am not allowed to say now or ever again concerning myself or my work.  He insists it's in the contract, but I don't recall that particular thing anywhere on the marriage license.
3.  It's totally normal to have no idea where your ideas come from, and just as normal to have to wait for them to show up in whatever volume they see fit.  This explains why while really busy editing - which I hate - a completely new and unrelated book to my current series has been harassing me for the last two months.  I finally have given in, becoming the shorthand secretary to the Muse until I have the time to actually flesh out my notes into something real - occasionally sneaking in a page or two while I really should be paying more attention in my Finance class.  Oh, grad school...how tired I already am of you...

My favorite quote from the book?

"Writing is a lonely job.  Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference.  They don't have to make speeches.  Just believing is usually enough."

I have the support and the ideas.  According to Mr. King, I'll be just fine.

Dog Park Wednesday

Our dog park days through the week are numbered. School is going to get started for us all pretty soon, so we grabbed our dogs (including our foster - the big yellow lab) and went to the dog park on dad's day off.

Near our house, there is a most awesome of dog parks.  It's not the kind of dog park that is essentially a fenced in football field.  Oh no! It's so much better than that!

This fenced in gully has hills and trees to climb. Best of all... there is a little stream where dad skips rocks for the boys.


The ice cold water doesn't bother the dogs.  They would swim for sticks for hours if we let them.  Try as we might, we end up about as muddy as them, wrestling the sticks out of their mouths. 



There are always little bugs to catch, and rock treasures which the kids sneak into their pockets to bring home.  But - this time the best thing was a snake.

I love snakes - they are such impossible creatures.  No legs, but with a little motivation they are faster and more graceful over land then I could ever hope to be.

I showed it to the kids, and they thought it was the coolest thing of the whole summer. It's not often we get to see critters other than dogs at the dog park.

Sigh.  I love hanging out with the boys.  I wish school would never start.