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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.

Mom’s birthday bash

Posted on by Patrick
Mom and the kids

For my mom’s very recent birth­day, we got togeth­er at Hecla, a cou­ple hours north of Win­nipeg. I’ve post­ed most of the pho­tos on Face­book, but Mom does­n’t have a Face­book account.

  • Cribbage time
    Crib games is seri­ous times.
  • Coffee break
    Kath­leen takes a quick break from advis­ing G. on her crib hands.
  • Hammock time
    I. in the hammock.
  • C. at the quarry
    C. down at the quar­ry beach
  • The old lighthouse
    The first (?) light­house at Hecla.
  • Gramma
    Gram­ma lean­ing on the mer­maid rock.
  • The Little Mermaid
    I. doing a call­back to an ear­li­er, leg­endary photo.
  • Sue and G
    Sue and G went off explor­ing, but I have a long lens.
  • Down at the beach
    The fam­i­ly down at the beach near the old lighthouse.
  • Sunset
    They call it “Sun­set Beach”.
  • Sunset
    They call it “Sun­set Beach”.
  • C and the sun
    C decid­ed he need­ed a swim at Sun­set Beach.
  • Sunset Beach
    C swim­ming in the twilight.
  • The Moon
    Cropped shot of the Moon, at 250mm.
  • Star trails
    Star trails at the beach at the Light­house Inn. 20 sec­ond expo­sures x 85.
  • Mom and the kids
    All three of us, with Mom.

No meteors

Posted on by Patrick
Star Trails, Aug. 12, 2018

I went out to try to get some mete­ors dur­ing the 2018 Per­seid show­er, and I don’t think I cap­tured a sin­gle one. (I saw two, but they were where my cam­era was­n’t pointed.)

But at least I got some nice star trails, on a dark and moon­less night, despite the smoke in the air.

Eventually, there might be a Swanwick/Link interview

Posted on by Patrick
Wood type

…and it’s sort of my fault.

It start­ed with a request for book sug­ges­tions: Nik­ki was look­ing for books that “cap­tured [my] soul”.

https://twitter.com/AngelycDevil/status/1024443328497156096

I made a sug­ges­tion, nam­ing a cou­ple of my favourite short-sto­ry authors. (FYI, Kel­ly Link goes by @haszombiesinit on The Twitters.)

https://twitter.com/pjohanneson/status/1024718385152765952

Michael Swan­wick, as is his wont, replied.

I offered up my 2‑year-old review of Get in Trou­ble.

https://twitter.com/pjohanneson/status/1024736641510989825

Mr. Swan­wick agreed with me.

Kel­ly Link chimed in.

https://twitter.com/haszombiesinit/status/1024773299199307776

And then it all kind of snowballed.

https://twitter.com/haszombiesinit/status/1024856030046384129

So I’ve got that to look for­ward to. I hope it comes to pass; I think it’d be a fas­ci­nat­ing interview.

Wrap-up

Posted on by Patrick

My goals for my writ­ing retreat, 2018 edi­tion, were pret­ty simple:

  1. Get at least 10,000 words writ­ten in Trans­la­tions, prefer­ably more like 12,500.
  2. Do some astropho­tog­ra­phy and just gen­er­al photography.
  3. Do some kayak­ing and bike riding.

How’d I do?

At the start of the week, my nov­el sat at 65, 968 words. As I write this, I’ve just crossed the 80,000–word mark. So I man­aged 14,055 new words in this first draft. I’m hap­py with that—especially con­sid­er­ing that I essen­tial­ly took Fri­day off from writing.

Also, I got a pile of pho­tos tak­en. I had hoped for some good shots of the Milky Way, but the moon was near­ing full, so the skies were too bright for that. I did get a cou­ple nice star-trail shots, though.

  • Star trails above a pond and field, near Minnedosa, MB.
    Star trails above a pond and field, near Minnedosa, MB.
  • Star trails
    Star trails above what appears to be an aban­doned house
  • Field of sunflowers
    A sun­flower looks back at me, while all the rest face the sun
  • Bright red berries; possibly chokecherries
    I think these might be chokecher­ries, but I’m not sure enough to try and eat them.
  • Bison at Minnedosa
    Bison at Minnedosa
  • Aurora Borealis
    A bit of a light show, between Minnedosa and Erickson
  • Clouds at sunset
    As the sun set, it lit the clouds to the east.

I also went to Win­nipeg, for Chad­wick­’s book launch, and had a love­ly chat in the evening with Mike & Michelle, a cou­ple friends I haven’t seen in a long time.

As far as kayaking—well, the weath­er did­n’t coop­er­ate. It was con­sis­tent­ly around 20°C here this week, which is a bit chilly to go out on the lake. It’s sup­posed to hit 27 or 28 Mon­day, but by then I’ll be back at the office. I did go for a few bike rides, which was nice, and as I write this on Sun­day, I’m plan­ning one more before I pack up and leave.

So, on the whole, I’m going to call Writ­ing Retreat 2018 a suc­cess. It’s been a pro­duc­tive, fun, glo­ri­ous time, and I’m going to miss it.

Same time next year.

Series: Writing Retreat 2018

The entire series: Writ­ing Retreat 2018: Sun­day; Writ­ing Retreat 2018: Mon­day; Writ­ing Retreat, 2018: Tuesday–Thursday; Writ­ing Retreat 2018: The Week­end; Wrap-up.