Today we march.
All of us, here and gone.

You Ancient Souls,
Bones brutalized by
torch and noose and stones and
worse,
Hearts brutalized by a nature
unnatural to a
narrow mind,
Rise Up, Ancestors;
Your long evaporated tears being
now the blood in our hearts:
Today we march.

You Masters of Deception,
Lives
painted in shades
of the perfect white
  - collar
  - wedding
  - picket fence
  - House
your fearful pallor mistaken
for prestige,
Rise Up, Hopeless;
Your long silent tongues
now lead the choir:
Today we march,

You Martyrs of a Cold Country,
Minds and bodies weaponized
in defense of an All American Dream
then rendered sleepless by secrets,
Rise Up, Sacrificed;
what blood you bartered
for only half a freedom,
now strengthens our hands
clasped:
Today we march.

You Slain by Neglected Disease,
a virus mistaken for righteous,
a plague mistaken for justice,
a hospital bed made colder by shoulders
that should have been there for crying on,
Prejudice never killed so cleanly on behalf of it's Parishoners, but
Rise Up, Wronged;
the silence that let death creep into your body
breaks under our rallying cries:
Today we march.

You Battered Spirits,
cut a thousand thousand times by the first, worst
weapon of the human tongue
unmatched by any configuration built of sticks and stones,
tortured by
what thoughtless minds perceive as cuts too small for paper
(because society's gone paperless)
tormented by
the infections those lacerations allow to access
heart and mind and soul,
Rise Up, Enduring;
the thin balm of a promise that it will
Get Better
is now the mortar for the bricks beneath our feet:
Today we march.

Today we march
down the aisle.

Today we prise wide our mouths
to utter oaths
at last older than fear.
Today we make naked our wounds
and bandage them with bands of gold
more powerful than hate.
Today the wedding bells
and the bells of freedom
are finally one and the same.
Today, at last, we march.

- Z.D. Gladstone

      With Father's Day upon us (like, right now), many of you may be wondering what the heck to make your Dad for breakfast. Sure, he likes bacon, and he likes doughnuts--but he eats those at least once a week. Is there nothing else to offer? Nothing just a little more...well...special?
      I offer you: Joe's Special.
      If you've heard of it before, you're probably going, "Oh yeah, I forgot about Joe's Special!" If you haven't heard of it, you're going, "That sounds like something from a small town diner, invented as a way to use leftover meatloaf." And you would be wrong on both accounts.

It doesn't have to look pretty to taste freakin' fabulous.

     Joe's Special is an egg scramble with spinach and ground beef, and it's also one of those simple dishes where the finished flavor is even better than the sum of it's parts. And it doesn't hail from a small town diner, it hails from San Francisco's finest restaurants. In fact, they argue over who had it first! There are no accurate records of this inventive breakfasteur Joe, nor when he first served up his classic eggs, but we do know it was at least a hundred years ago, somewhere in the bay area.
      Everyplace that serves Joe's Special has their own twist. Some use onions, some use garlic. Some toss in some chopped bacon, others add mushrooms. Some use parmesan, some use swiss, and some omit the cheese all together. And they can get away with it, because the definitive ingredients for Joe's Special are: eggs, ground beef, spinach. The rest is all a matter of preference.
      I like to make mine with some minced sweet onion and fried mushrooms, and I leave a wedge of parmesan on the table for grating. I also like to make extra beef mixture as leftovers, because whenever I eat Joe's Special I always want it again a few days later. As a good friend of mine likes to say, my future self will thank me.

Z.D.'s Favorite Way to Make Joe's Special
serves 4*

Ingredients:
1/3 lb ground beef
kosher salt
8 large eggs
1/4 C whole milk
2 Tbs olive oil or clarified butter, divided
1/2 C finely chopped onion
8 small cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 C (packed) clean baby spinach
Freshly ground black pepper
Parmesan cheese (to serve)

If the kitchen looks dim, that's because we were making this at 5:45am. When you have a four-legged feline for an alarm clock, don't expect her to understand the concept of "sleeping in" when that doesn't align with "kitty breakfast."

Directions:
 - In a large frying pan over medium heat, brown the ground beef, adding just a pinch of salt. Do not stir it too much or it will become tough, and it won't get nice browned spots. When fully cooked, remove to a side bowl.

I prefer 93/7% lean/fat ground beef. You need butter for the veggies & eggs, and too much beef fat can make this scramble unpleasantly greasy.

 - While beef is cooking, crack eggs into a medium bowl. Add milk and whisk until an even color and consistency.

To review this method for this preparation of scrambled eggs (what I call "company eggs"), see my first breakfast blog post.

 - Add 2 tsp of oil or butter to pan, still over medium heat. Add the onions and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fully translucent and beginning to brown. Place onions in bowl with beef.

I like sweet onions, but red onions are great in this dish you have the time to really cook them down.

 - Add 1 Tbs of oil or butter to pan, and increase heat to medium high. Add mushrooms to the pan in a single layer, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Allow to cook without stirring 2-4 minutes, until golden brown on one side, then stir/flip and allow the other side to brown, 1-3 minutes. Then place mushrooms in bowl with beef and onions.

As Julia would say: "Don't crowd the mushrooms!" Give them space and time to do their browning thing, and they'll turn out perfect every time.

 - Turn heat to low, and toss the spinach into the pan. Cook, tossing often, until just barely wilted. Place spinach in bowl with beef. If you have a pan that retains heat well, remove from heat for a couple minutes and let it cool down.

This is really as much as I let these cook, the residual heat in the eggs does the rest.

 - Add remaining oil or butter to the pan, and place over your lowest heat setting. Pour in the beaten eggs. Gently stir/scrape the bottom of your pan with a silicone spatula, just until soft curds start to form (about 3-5 minutes). Then increase the meat to med-low, and continue to stir, scraping the bottom and flipping the curds over as they form.

Tender eggs & spinach, satisfying beef & mushrooms, and savory sweet onions. Top it off with some salty cheese...*drools*

 - When the eggs are about half done, add in your beef mixture. As you continue to stir and flip your eggs, this will become mixed in. Your scramble is done when the eggs are about 85% cooked--they will finish cooking from residual heat once you take them out of the pan. Sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan.

I feel healthy just looking at this.

      Serve with fresh fruit and savory buttered toast (I like pumpernickel rye). This is a high-iron, high protein breakfast that makes a great start to a day outdoors. Seriously, you will be surprised how much you like this--most scrambles I could take or leave, but Joe's Special is...well...special.


*If you're very observant, you may notice some discrepancy in the volume of eggs in these photos. That's because I made beef mixture for 4, but only eggs for 2. Remember what I said about leftovers? Guess how I'm starting my Monday? :-D

      My breakfast post will be up either late tonight or early Monday morning. It seemed very important to me to put up this thought today, instead.
      People say that Father's Day is a "Hallmark holiday," invented just to sell more cards. I don't care whether that's true or not--human beings seem to need these kinds of calendar reminders to take the time to do and say the things that we really mean. Most of us are fortunate enough to have father's who love and care for us, and I think most of us would also agree that stopping to thank and hug the people we love is one of the most important things in the world.
      Not everyone has a loving, wonderful father, and some who do have lost that man. Today, my thoughts are in Charleston, South Carolina. There were fathers and adult children among those who were killed not even a week ago. I have had loss in my life, and I know the pain of waking up every morning and remembering that recent death. With this holiday so close on the heels of that tragedy, my heart breaks for those who must been feeling that pain so, so keenly. If empathy and wishes and prayers were enough to undo the tragedies of life, I have no doubt that the Emanuel AME victims would all be back with their families today.

Photo Credit: http://ktla.com/2015/06/18/south-carolina-church-shooting-pastor-ex-state-senator-idd-as-one-of-nine-victims/

      I'm sick. Not sniffly, puppy-dog eyes, tucked under the covers sick. Nor achy, low-feverish, tea-guzzling in front of the TV sick. I'm blowing my nose 'til it's bloody, exquisitely-painful sore throat, dropping from the exhaustion of non-stop coughing sick. And every time I think I'm getting a tiny bit better and I dare to do something that resembles a normal life, this virus laughs sadistically and knocks back my recovery time by 48 hours.
       Normally when I get sick, my energy level drops, but my sense of humor kicks in and I fare tolerably well. But when I get THIS sick, I alternate between darkly cynical and melodramatic. And - if I'm under the influence of OTC cold medication - really, really weird. The melodramatic kicks in at the end of a coughing fit, when I have visions of clutching a handkerchief to my lips and swooning back onto the fainting couch, Victorian-style.

I can collapse after a coughing fit WAY more melodramatically than this chick. She's not even holding a trembling hand to her clammy brow, or clutching a handkerchief to her suspiciously visible bosom!

      I suppose these notions are appropriate since the manuscript I'm re-visiting at the moment takes place in an alternate Victorian-era London. But I only have the energy for a couple hours of typing a day at most, so that's not getting as far as it should. And smelling salts aren't helping.
      The cynical means that I brood a great deal on the origins of my diseased state. I contracted this plague from my husband. He got it from an elderly woman who sat behind us on our flight from Seattle to Ohio a couple weeks ago. She was hacking almost non-stop the entire freaking flight--AND she wasn't covering her mouth.* So it's no wonder that the infection made it's nefarious way into my household. As I lay here on the couch, torso aching from coughs, I daydream about inventing time travel. I would go back to SeaTac airport and abduct this woman before she could get on the plane. I would strap her to a gurney, stick a sign on her that says "Drug-Resistant TB Suspected: ISOLATE IMMEDIATELY," then drop her off in front of a hospital and run away, shouting, "I serve the greater good! I serve the greater goooood!!!"
      The weirdness, of course, is a result of sleep deprivation (from all the pointless fucking coughing!) and the variety of over-the-counter symptom treatments I have tried (none of which are working--this virus laughs in the face of such paltry weapons as Tylenol, Robitussin, and even NyQuil. I fear for our future). Today, this weirdness made itself known over breakfast, where I growled to my husband that I didn't believe we had fallen victim to the typical chest-cold. No, what we are suffering seems to resist every OTC treatment relief we can find, lingers interminably, and sucks one's energy with vampiric appetite.
      "This is no typical robovirus," I muttered darkly into my tea.
      He looked at me strangely. "You mean a rhinovirus?"
      "Yeah. That. It's not that."
      "No, it probably isn't," he confirmed, finishing his egg. "Rhinopharyngitis invariably begins with acute nasal congestion and...."
      He kept talking about technical medical stuff, as medical professionals are wont to do, but my drug-addled brain was already elsewhere. That's where the weirdness comes in, you see. I was musing on the oddity of having one's ass handed to one so very thoroughly by something so small it can't seen, not even with a regular microscope. As modern science will tell you, a rhinovirus looks like this:

I guess that's kind of creepy, if you're a science person.

      But I have to admit, when I'm sick with one, I rather envision it looking like this:

By Z.D. Gladstone, © 2015, all rights reserved.

     Note the cell-piercing tail, DNA-devouring tentacle-mouth, and generally vicious demeanor. Imagine millions of THOSE flying out of your mouth every time you cough! Damn straight, you'd better cover your mouth!**
      But the silver lining to this affliction is two-fold: first, my cat becomes even sweeter and more cuddly when we get sick. She's more patient and lap friendly. And she stops waking us up 15 minutes early, demanding breakfast--instead she let's us sleep in, and then eats along with us. Anybody who thinks cats are selfish creatures simply hasn't earned the love of a cat yet. Trust me.

I get to spend my day snuggling THIS pile of fluff!  Feeling jealous?  Yeah, you are so jealous right now....

      The other silver lining? Major catching up on reading. I plan on posting at least three book reviews on Goodreads by the end of the week...if I ever get my act together and stop drawing crazy mutant rhino monsters....




*Not that it really helps all that much on a 5 hour plane ride with recycled air, but one would hope that the general habits of good hygiene would be reflex-like by that age.

**Alas, I lack sufficient energy/talent to draw the "robovirus" that my brain first came up with this morning. Imagine this little devil crossed with the T-800 from the "Terminator" movies. Now if that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

      I'm honestly worried nobody will read this post because of the rather...bizarre...title. There is a good reason for it, however: nobody can agree on the name for this British breakfast staple. It's essentially just pan-friend bread with a fried egg in the center, but I've heard it called several different things, including "Eggy in a Basket," "Toad in the Hole," and "Tiger's Eyes." That last one may be from the British colonies in India back in the day, since my husband's grandmother learned how to make them while raising kids in India. As such, my husband insists on calling it a "Tiger's Eye," even though I think that may be the least representative name so far.

I am tiger, see me glare.

      Regardless of what you call it, this simple dish is a major comfort food. It's also one of the few things my husband knows how to make really well, and since I am sick, he's been making it for himself quite a bit. It's so simple it doesn't really need a recipe, so I'll just walk you through it.

Like all good things, it starts with butter.

      Melt a good quantity of butter in a pan over medium heat. Keep the butter dish close at hand, you may need more later--this is not a low-fat breakfast option!

To quote one of our favorite doughnut places, the Magic is in the Hole!

      Take a slice of sandwich bread (I'm using wheat here, but my favorite is actually potato bread) and cut out/tear out a whole in the middle. Here's another area where my husband and I disagree. He likes to just free tear, but sometimes that makes it too small or too large. I prefer to use a juice glass, make an imprint, and then tear. You can do whatever makes you happy.

There is something absurdly tasty about bread fried in butter.

      Slip your bread - and the missing hole - into the pan of butter, and let it sizzle for a minute. Then, carefully crack and eye right into the center. Odds are, you won't get the whole egg in the middle but try to get the yolk in there. Let it fry for another minute or so, depending on how you like your eggs.

And there's the toad, gone in the hole. Or the egg in the basket. Or the tiger's...whatever.

      Now, you may want to add more butter to your pan, because when you flip your bread over, you want there to be plenty of butter underneath to brown and cook nicely. So add your butter, take your pan-friendly pancake turner, and flip the bread with the egg in the middle (and your missing piece)! Let this cook for just a minute or so, then remove onto a plate. Break the yolk, season with salt and pepper, and voila!
      My significant other likes to dip the fried missing piece into the egg yolk. I like to break up the yolk and smear it all over my toast, then enjoy the missing pieces last with a tiny dollop of jam (have to get my sweet fix somehow). There's really no wrong way to eat it. Or make it, for that matter--if you don't mind the smoke and the splatter, you could pan fry some bacon, then cook your Tiger's Eye in the remaining grease. That sounds tasty! Unhealthy, but tasty! In any event, serve this with some tomato slices, maybe some melon, and a cup of English Breakfast tea. Lots of tea. And stay in bed. With tissue close at hand. And try not to get anyone else sick.

      If you've been listening to Shadows on the Sound, then you may have heard me mention that my husband insisted that I defeat Resident Evil 4 before we could get married. I think he was joking (I hope he was joking), but it was moot point because I loved the game, and completed it accordingly. You may wonder why the man was so fixated on this particular task. Was he that obsessed? Was it a gender-reversed contemporary version of a fairy tale ultimatum? Was he buying himself time, maybe hoping I wouldn't finish the game?
      The only video game console I'd owned up to that point was a Super Nintendo, and the only game I'd ever played to completion was Mario Bros. 2.* There was a long stretch of no video games, then a weird work situation where I was thrown into playing Mario Kart for the N64 almost every day. I got pretty damn good. Then, another long, barren stretch. To my video game obsessed significant other, this presented a big concern: how could he know that I would support his passion, if I was so out of touch? I understood--after all, if he hadn't liked eating the food I make (one of my passions), I wouldn't have wanted to marry him! So the whole RE4 thing was a test of compatibility...and also one of taste.

  

I'm not happy until I have the Hand Cannon.

P.S. - Sunday is National Strawberry Shortcake Day. Go to your farmer's market, get some berries, and do the right thing. And if the fact that I just finished a blog post about a zombie franchise with a statement about fruit desserts doesn't qualify me as an eccentric, I don't know what will.


*I still love that game.

**Yeah, that's right--I just used an anime series as a point if comparison for a live-action movie & video game franchise, using the famous tagline from Highlander. And I stand by it.

      A poem for you today. Because poetry is awesome.


Sometimes, when I lick my lips,
I taste hints of Madness.
It lingers on the edge of my words
to be caught and brought on an intake
of breath,
savored and mistaken for a
sought-after decadence.
Only my teeth, snapping in sentences,
rearing in laughter,
grinding as the guardians of my mind
ward it off--
make it lie naked on the page for my
acceptance or dismissal.

Except in sleep.
In sleep, sometimes, my lips part:
an unconscious sipping of the darkness.
Then sometimes Madness
which lingers on the edge of my smiles
like a particle of dust creeps into my lungs
blood
brain
and dances forcefully in my dreams.

      Really fast, before we get to the Munch-tabulousness, I'm happy to announce that Camela and I have decided to increase our podcast frequency to once a week! Basically, we have so much fun finding guests and geeking out, we decided to do it more often. So check out "Shadows on the Sound" on iTunes, or follow the links on my blog, right here.

Now, WE BAKE!

My husband has a new camera, and he took this shot for me. I'm thinking I should have him take all my food photos from now on!

      When it comes to breakfast pastry, one of my favorites to mess around with is banana bread. It's a wonderfully versatile baked good: it can be sweet as cake, or mellow as fruit. You can spike it full of goodies, or just let the bananas shine. It can be light and fluffy, or dense and decadent. And - my favorite part - it freezes like a dream.
      Now that summer is here, I don't like to turn on my oven very much. So when a cool day slips in I try to seize the opportunity to bake a few things for freezing. Then I munch on them until the next break in the heat. Yesterday was one such day, so I went ahead and tried a new variation on banana bread. This recipe was inspired by Molly Wizenberg's Banana Bread with Crystalized Ginger, as printed in her book A Homemade Life. It's an excellent quick bread in and of itself, and I use her recipe as a template for a lot of experimentation. Yesterday I was craving something cocoa-y, so I rummaged through my pantry, and raided by spice stash.
      Note that I said "cocoa-y," and not "chocolatey"--there's a difference. When I want chocolate, I want chocolate, meaning the primary experience for all five senses should be nothing short of chocolate liquor blended with cocoa butter, sugar, dairy, salt, and some traces of support flavors such as vanilla. But when my taste buds are tending towards cocoa, that means I'm looking for that distinct, roasted Theobroma cacao flavor. And I'm happy to say that this recipe delivers. I kept the crystalized ginger because I love the zing, and I added some cocoa nibs for crunch (and a pinch of caffeine--this is breakfast we're talking about). If you prefer something more chocolatey, I recommend replacing one or both with finely chopped chocolate chunks. Or, if you're lazy, purchased morsels. It's your kitchen.

Z.D.'s Cocoa Banana Bread with Crystalized Ginger

Ingredients:
3 oz unsalted butter
1.5 Cups AP flour
1/2 Cup cocoa powder
3/4 Cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt, generous
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 Cup crystalized ginger, finely chopped
1/4 Cup cocoa nibs
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 over-ripe bananas
2 tsp vanilla extract
Whole milk, as needed.

Directions:
 - Pre-heat your oven to 350º F, and grease two medium-size loaf pans (I like to use clarified butter for greasing, but each to his/her own). While your oven is warming up, cut your butter into 1/2 inch pieces, toss them in a heat-proof container (such as a Pyrex measuring cup) and leave it in your oven. By the time the oven is the correct temp, your butter will be melted!

You can take it out while there's still a few bits of unmelted butter, they'll continue to dissolve in the residual heat.

 - In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, salt, and baking powder until very thoroughly mixed. Stir in the ginger and nibs.

The ginger is chewy, the nibs are crunchy. That's a win-win combo in my book.

 - In a medium bowl, mash together the eggs and bananas. Then beat in the vanilla and butter, until you have a well-mixed concoction.

It's Ok to have some banana chunks, they add nice flavor bursts in the bread, and won't mess up your texture.

 - Pour your wet mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir until thoroughly combined. This is a thick batter, but if it seems TOO stiff (in other words, if it holds it's shape instead of slowly oozing when you stop stirring it), add whole milk by Tablespoons until you reach the desired consistency.

Depending on the size and mushiness of your bananas, the stiffness of your batter will vary. It's not really a problem, but if you want a more consistent result try to aim for the same moisture level in every batch of batter.

 - Scrape the batter into your two loaf pans, and bake for 34 - 38 minutes, or just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pans on a rack.

A classic snack. I like this with cheesy scrambled eggs and a fruit salad of berries dressed with honey and lemon juice, topped with fresh mint.

      If you're eating right away, slice and enjoy with tea. For extra decadence, spread with Nutella. If you're going to freeze, don't slice it, but wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Then either pop into a zip-top bag and suck all the air out, or wrap in a second layer of aluminum foil. These will keep in the freezer up to three months, just take 'em out and thaw at room temp for a few hours before munching.

      In case you hadn't figured it out yet, I dearly want to publish a novel. I've got a lot of stories inside of me, and I want to do them justice in the written word, and then I want to share them with strangers!
      When I write it out like that, it looks kinda weird...but also accurate.
      As of today I have three full novel manuscripts. The first one I submitted to a single publisher with the full expectation of being rejected (my expectations were duly met). The second I submitted to several agents (and received no takers, which was also my expectation). The most recent work is in the middle of being edited by beta-readers--that's the zombie one you've heard me mention a few times. It is my fervent desire to have a satisfactory final version of this zombie manuscript to submit to agents by the end of this summer. That means I'll need to finish editing, research agents, write synopses, and compose cover letters. All in the next 14 weeks. So in the hopes of making this happen, I am going to completely ignore the manuscript for a month.
      Right now some of you are going, "Huh?" And some of you are nodding your head with sage expressions of understanding.
      If this doesn't immediately make sense to you, allow me to explain. You know that movie you loved as a kid, and you watched so many times you could recite it from beginning to ending?* Then you didn't watch it for years. Later, in adulthood, nostalgia pulled you back to that film, and in watching it anew you went, "Wow...I didn't remember that line/scene/joke/bit at all!" And now this new perspective has forever changed the way you think of that movie.

For me, that movie would be "The Music Man." After the better part of a decade without a viewing, I recently watched it afresh, and all of a sudden I realized I'd misunderstood some words in the songs. That, and I finally got the marbles/marshmallow gag in the library.

      The same phenomena applies in writing. When you create every word of a tale, it becomes a distinct vision inside your head, and when you work on it over and over that vision becomes deeply intrenched--just like your beloved movie. It's not until you take a long enough break to let some of that vision fade that you're able to come back with clear eyes and edit the damn thing properly.
      I'm not alone in this. In his semi-autobiographical masterpiece, "On Writing," Stephen King declares he quite deliberately takes breaks of several weeks from each new manuscript he writes. Only last week I read that section and a lightbulb of deja-vu blinked on in my head.** "Oh yeah, I used to do that!" In the past (when my drive was primarily to write rather than publish), this time away from a story was natural for me; it was an organic process as I shifted from one tale of interest to another.*** But my new focus on the reality of publishing had rather banished the idea from my head, and a more "time is of the essence" attitude took hold.

Even as I write this blog post instead of working on a novel, I seem to hear the admonishment, "Tempus Fugit," delivered in Eulalie Mackecknie Shinn's deliciously distinct tones. To which I reply, "Not one poop out of you, Madam!"

      But I don't just want to write a book, I want to write a good book. So taking the necessary time and giving myself every advantage in editing is a luxury I will force myself to accept. And in the meantime, I intend to take King's other advice, and focus on a different project. Namely: my first manuscript. It's long, and complicated, and frankly I love the thing. I haven't so much as peeked at it for over a year, so I'm looking forward to going back with fresh eyes and seeing what I've really got. Who knows, maybe I'll decide it's closer to being ready than my more recent project, and try to get that one out to agents this year. Or maybe I'll decide to scrap it. Or maybe I'll get inspired to do something else entirely...and turn it into a musical! The possibilities are endless.





*And probably tried to do, on more than one occasion, most likely during long car trips, which resulted in one or more of your parents accessing the hotel bar?

**To muddle my phraseology just a tad.

***The result of this frequent shifting is 118 incomplete manuscripts (at last count), ranging from twelve to over two hundred pages in length. Apparently, I have commitment issues.