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Roasted vegetable soup

Posted on by Patrick
Roasted vegetable soup

This is where the long-ass sto­ry goes, right? The one you scroll past, mut­ter­ing Just show me the freakin’ recipe! under your breath.

It was cold out­side yes­ter­day. I had lots of CSA (com­mu­ni­ty sup­port­ed agri­cul­ture) veg­gies in the house.

OK, sto­ry’s over. Here’s the recipe, such as it was:

1 large gold­en beet
2 onions
4 small pota­toes
2 car­rots
2 bell pep­pers
1 mid­dlin’ zuc­chi­ni
1 large pat­ty-pan squash
1/2 car­ton of left­over veg­etable broth from the back of the fridge
1 block of ice frozen in the veg­etable broth car­ton (my fridge gets cold at the very back, appar­ent­ly)
1/2 car­ton of left­over beef broth
1 cup of water

So here’s what I did: chopped up all the veg­gies, into cubes or slices about 1″ thick. Roast­ed them at 425°F for var­i­ous times, till they were all nice and soft­ened. The beet took about 45 min­utes, all told; the pota­toes, onions, and car­rots took 30 min­utes; the pep­pers and squash, about 15.

Then I pulsed ’em all in the food proces­sor, till they were smooth but still a bit, well, rus­tic. I spooned the veg­gie pâté into a stock pot over medi­um heat, and stirred in the broths, the chunk of ice, and the water. Heat­ed till it start­ed to boil light­ly, stir­ring every so often.

Served with ched­dar-onion fougasse and fin­ished off with a deli­cious slice of pump­kin pie, both from Chez Angela.

Parallel Prairies review

Posted on by Patrick
Parallel Prairies cover

This is the first review I’ve come across for the new made-in-Man­i­to­ba anthol­o­gy Par­al­lel Prairies, and I’m glad to say the review­er appears to have enjoyed my short sto­ry “Vin­cent and Charlie”.

Anoth­er rur­al close encounter of note in the col­lec­tion is Bran­don-based Patrick Johanneson’s Vin­cent and Char­lie. The sto­ry explores the con­cept of alien telepa­thy and mem­o­ry manip­u­la­tion from inside a mind descend­ing into demen­tia. Johan­neson finds an art­ful bal­ance between sus­pense and sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty and adds a soupçon of Men in Black for good measure.

Sarah Jo Kirsch, The Uniter

Read the full review here.

Par­al­lel Prairies launch­es Oct. 11, 2018, at McNal­ly Robin­son Book­sellers in Win­nipeg, and Oct. 13, 2018, at Bran­don Uni­ver­si­ty’s John E. Rob­bins Library.

You can order the book from McNal­ly Robin­son, too, if you’d like (there will be copies avail­able at the launch­es, of course).

Dark Sky—Riding Mountain

Posted on by Patrick
Star Trails

I went up to Rid­ing Moun­tain for the Lights Out event.

My friend Tim was camp­ing up there, too, so I went up a bit ear­ly and stopped in to see him. We went elk bugling—a birth­day tra­di­tion of his—but the elks weren’t hav­ing any of it. Oh well.

After that I went to the park in Clear Lake, where the lights were well and tru­ly out. It was dark enough that, more than once, I near­ly stepped on some­one because I could­n’t see them. Per­fect conditions!

First I snapped some Milky Way shots. This one’s my favourite:

Milky Way
The Milky Way, with an ever­green for scale.

Then I set up for some star trails. I set my timer for an hour, set my cam­era to take 15-sec­ond expo­sures, and sat down on a bench to lis­ten to my shut­ter click.

After sev­en min­utes, the lights came back on. Sodi­um lights, too, so it washed out every­thing, mak­ing the trees and the beach look orange.

So the head­er pho­to is 7 min­utes’ worth of Earth­’s rota­tion, instead of the hour I was hop­ing for. Oh well. It still turned out pret­ty good, I think.

Prints are avail­able. Con­tact me for details.

Something upcoming

Posted on by Patrick
fountain pen on notepad

A cou­ple lines from my get­ting-clos­er-to-com­plet­ed first draft of Trans­la­tions:

Gen­er­al Armitage gave me an amused look. “Oh, but you’re not Daniel Sny­der,” he said. He held up a pho­to of my father: “This is Daniel Snyder.”

—me

Head­er pho­to by Aaron Bur­den on Unsplash.