Jenyfer Matthews

It occurs to me that many of you might wonder why it is that I am writing about pumpkin bread and jam making, given what is going on in Cairo right now. Frankly, I don’t have very much to add to the discussion and I’m trying to keep a low profile in more ways than one: bloggers who have been too vocal / critical have actually been jailed.

Happily, my own quiet suburb has remained that – quiet. It seems to me that there are more police around now, in places where I do not usually see them loitering, and they have a more experienced and seasoned look about them as compared to the young nose-pickers who are usually napping on the end of their rifles (yes, really) The police are watching and waiting like the rest of us.

As for the rest of the city / country – is there room for improvement in Egypt? Yes. Do the demonstrators have legitimate complaints? Yes. Will their demonstrations lead to change. Maybe. My main concern is that if they indeed they do succeed in removing the current ruling body they may not get the change they want. Without a strong fair leader who is ready with a plan of action to step into that vacancy, things could get a lot worse before they ever get better. Nothing happens overnight but there are better and worse paths to follow.

All I ask is that if it comes down to it, they allow me to depart of my own free will at that point.

For now I am sticking close to home and watching to see what happens.

Edited to add: If my blog isn’t updated as usual or you don’t “see” me on Facebook, etc, the internet has been up, down, and S-L-O-W lately with all the “excitement”. It apparently takes a lot of bandwidth to organize a protest…

At last – the pumpkin famine is over! My local grocery store had double cans in stock this week (for a mere $5.67/can) so after checking the expiration date, I bought three cans. Yes, it’s a bit steep for canned pumpkin, but in the end it boils down to how badly do you want it – as it does for many things in life. And I wanted pumpkin bread, not sweet-potato-substitute-bread.

Pumpkin bread really ought to be called pumpkin cake for all the eggs and sugar it includes. I admit I tweaked the recipe a bit – I cut the sugar by a cup and replaced one of the three remaining cups with brown sugar. I also replaced some flour with ground flaxseed and wheat germ. Ssshhhh! My children haven’t noticed one bit of difference. It’s just vitamin enriched cake now.

This batch didn’t take as long as you might think either – my oven will bake 24 muffins and a loaf pan simultaneously. I love my oven.

While I was in the kitchen I also decided to take advantage of the fantastic strawberries available locally now and make some jam. I don’t have canning jars or fruit pectin or experience, but I wasn’t going to let any of those things stop me! I decided to make freezer jam because it was the best option for a novice like me.

Did I follow the recipe? Sort of. The basic recipe was 4 cups of chopped strawberries, 4 cups of sugar, and a splash of lemon juice (to supply the pectin). I cut the sugar by half – strawberries are sweet enough on their own. It wasn’t such a radical departure on my part – the recipes I looked at varied a lot by how much sugar they used. I used more lemon juice however – more pectin seemed like a good way to go.

I hulled two packages of strawberries, about 800g per package, so probably ended up with about 3lbs all together. I didn’t weigh them, I just guesstimated how many cups there were once I gave them a spin in my food processor. It was more than 4 cups but probably not quite 6 cups. I compromised and used about 3 cups of sugar. It’s kind of appalling how much sugar you have to use, but it helps to preserve it and also makes it set.

It doesn’t take so long for the juices and the sugars to dissolve together. Once it boiled, I let it cook, stirring frequently, for probably 15-20 minutes. If you have a candy thermometer, good for you. I boiled it until it was thick enough to start gelling on a cold spoon, but short of crystallizing into hard candy (been there, done that!)

Did I mention that I didn’t have any equipment or canning jars? Here’s where I went all pioneer woman and improvised. With freezer jam, you can just put it in a container and throw it in the freezer. I did that with some, but I also wanted to try a nifty trick I saw mentioned in the comments of a recipe I looked at and create a seal with a regular old jar – I used an empty pickle jar. Obviously I could have used a smaller jar had I had one or I could have filled this one up more, but I didn’t have a smaller jar handy (I had to get the pickle jar out of our recycling!) and I was hedging my bets! I didn’t want to ruin all my jam, if the jar trick didn’t work out. I boiled this jar to sterilize it and kept it in the hot water until I was ready to fill it using my (sterilized) ladle. I kept the jar inverted for about 15 minutes before I put it in the fridge.

I’m happy to say there was a satisfying pop when we opened the jar this morning.

The jam was thick but also wonderfully spreadable. It’s definitely a spoonable jam. Fairly sweet, but hey – it is strawberry jam. I’d be curious if I could cut the sugar a bit more, but I suspect if I wanted to do that I should just make sure and buy some fruit pectin when I am back in the US in the summer. This jam would be equally wonderful on waffles or ice cream. It certainly was great on my morning toast.

I am totally applying both of these things toward my recipe goals: one new recipe and also dessert for the week…

Except a long to-do list.

I have a few thoughts I want to develop into blog posts, but no mental energy or time to actually do it. I’m nearly finished with proofing ONE CRAZY SUMMER for re-release and then get to go on to the last book, ALL THE WAY HOME. Then I get to do all three again, because that is just the way it goes with typos. You never seem to get them all in one go.

It’s not as if life doesn’t go on however. I still have to get the kids out to school every morning, keep up with the usual housework, cook, run errands, and keep up with two active children and their individual schedules. If all that wasn’t enough, it’s Book Week at school.

I hate Book Week. Obviously, I am in favor of books and reading. I just wish the school didn’t require costumes to drive the point home.

Every year for the last four years, I have suffered through Book Week and the necessity to not only think up a character for the children to dress-up as but also to find the proper attire to convey that character, which is much more challenging than you might think. The first year my daughter was the Troll from the Three Billy Goats Gruff. The next year, my daughter dressed as Zorro and my son was Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk. Last year, my daughter was Fern from Charlotte’s Web and my son was Peter Pan (though everyone though he was Robin Hood).

This year? My daughter said that she and two friends were going to be the ugly stepsisters from Cinderella and my son has agreed to be Huckleberry Finn. He would make a wonderful Christopher Robin – and just think how easy it would be! – but he won’t cooperate. I think it was only the hobo stick I promised to make him that sold him on the Huckleberry Finn idea.

It was much, much more fun to come up with the clothes for my daughter to wear to the retro-80s dance party she was invited to over the weekend. In the end she looked much better than I ever looked in the 80s, that’s for sure! It was also astonishing how much older she looked and how pretty. I’m going to have to get a bat to keep near the front door to greet any of the young men who will no doubt start hanging around soon.

And guess what? My son came home with a tooth in his front pocket so it looks like I have a night shift tonight as well…

My husband and I were invited to a Coptic Christian wedding this weekend, the first since we attended a wedding the first winter we lived in Egypt. Unlike the last time, I actually have several choices of appropriate evening dress clothes – I went shopping after I had to borrow items from three different friends to put together an outfit the last time! – however this time we are not attending. The pretty cocktail dress I wore to the Women’s Fiction Festival in Italy a few years ago will have to wait a little longer for an outing (I added a picture from the conference just for you guys, scroll to the bottom).

Given the recent tragic incidents in the last few weeks, not to mention the political instability in Tunisia, my husband and I think it best to maintain a low profile. The tension between the Muslims and the Coptic Christians in Egypt is nothing new – I have been hearing stories of people being prevented from converting from one religion to the other for years now and it was ongoing well before I arrived. Maybe the stories are true, maybe they are propaganda – hard to know in a place like this where there is no real, trustworthy news source. What is real is that some fanatics are taking things to a new level by targeting Christians with bombs and bullets.

I know that by not attending we are “giving into the fear” and in a way, the terrorists have won. I suppose that is one way to look at it. However, there are degrees to this argument. I still walk the same streets where I have heard many reports of purse snatchings in recent months, for instance, because I need to get from place to place. I take what precautions I can by wearing my purse cross body and always looking purposeful and being aware of my surroundings and who is about. I’m also allowing my children to attend a school activity in Alexandria. The wedding however is not for family or even close friends – we were invited as a courtesy by the mother of the bride who is a colleague of my husband’s. I truly hope that the wedding is a peaceful and joyful occasion for all, but I do not wish to risk being caught up in a bad situation because some lunatic decides he is going to seize the moment to make some copycat religious / political statement.

I myself have not sensed any trouble or unrest in my tiny corner of Cairo, and in fact most of the regular Egyptians I know have gone out of their way to express how dismayed they are by the attacks on the Christians here. Let us hope that this sort of reasoning prevails. While I do think that there is room for improvement in the government here (as there is in most countries) I hope that it doesn’t take a civil war to change things. In the meantime, I’m just going to keep my head down and my eyes and ears open.

We’ve been invited to another Coptic wedding in April/May. Perhaps we will feel more confident in attending next time…

My daughter reported to me that she had a loose tooth before school a couple of mornings ago. She is notorious for NOT wiggling loose teeth and basically letting gravity pull them out for her, which can often take weeks, so I was surprised when she came home with the tooth in her pocket later that day.

Along with the tooth came the question: “The kids at school say there isn’t a Tooth Fairy, or a Santa, or the Easter Bunny, that it’s just your parents. Why do they say that?”

It’s not as if I hadn’t been expecting this question from her – she is 10 1/2 years old after all. But the tone of voice in which she presented it – not as a statement of fact but rather as a plea for me to prolong her desire to believe in magic is what decided me on my answer.

I told her that the children at school also told her that the world was going to end in 2012 so what did they know about anything? She went away happy.

I told some friends of mine about the conversation and most of them congratulated me on having made a good save – but one friend asked me why I persisted in lying to my child. She has four children and never led any of them to believe in Santa, etc and they had never suffered for it. What was wrong with the truth?

As a parent I don’t go out of my way to lie to my child. When they ask me questions, I do my best to give them as much information as they require and can process. However, with regard to Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy I take a pass. Some of the best Christmases I can remember were the ones where I was waiting up to hear Santa arrive. The biggest thrill about loosing a tooth was finding the money under my pillow the next morning – handing it over to my mother in exchange for the same money just would not have been the same.

I can also remember what a hurry I was in to grow up – how I dressed older, acted older, and dreamed of what I would do when I was finally grown up. What I wouldn’t give now to go back and take it all a bit slower! I’m sure I’m not the only adult who feels that way – in fact I *know* I’m not. When I finally did realize that Santa and my mother had the exact same handwriting, I didn’t say anything to her about it (lest the Santa-train stop!), but it did take away some of the thrill of Christmas morning for me.

What’s so great about reality anyway? Children have their whole lives to learn the ugly truth about life – that it isn’t always easy or pleasant – but only a very short window in which to live in innocence. As adults we escape reality all the time within the pages of a book or by watching a movie. What is so wrong with letting children believe in a little magic for what is essentially a very short time in their lives?

So, in that vein, I have decided that I am not lying to my children, per se – I am facilitating their childhood. It’s all part of being a good mother in my opinion.

And when my word no longer has weight over the friends of my daughter, I’ll threaten / bribe my daughter to keep her mouth shut for my son’s sake…

I was doing pretty well on my latest story, writing a couple of pages a day, and then I hit a wall somewhere near the end of September. I knew where the story was going, but I started to get bogged down in the details of the setting. Things started to feel out of balance to me in terms of the emotional content of the story and the narrative that needed to move things along and as a result I lost confidence in the whole thing. I liked the story premise, but would anyone else? Would anyone want to read a book set in Minnesota? Maybe I shouldn’t bother finishing it, maybe I should just start something new?

I decided that what I needed to do was take a step back and get some feedback. So I sent off what I had written to a few friends and my critique partner. About the same time I also entered a The Emily writing contest. I didn’t expect to win, but it seemed like a great way to get objective opinions from three complete strangers.

I got the results from the contest back in December, when I was feeling particularly down at the thought of my first holiday season without my mother. I hadn’t written anything but my blog and lots of email in all that time. I was a bit anxious (and hungover) when the email arrived in my inbox one morning while I was in Germany. I had no idea what to expect since my own view of the story had become so myopic and negative.

I did not final in the contest, but it must have been close. Of a possible 100 points, I got 100/100, 94/100, and 93/100. I was pleased with the scores, but it was the comments that really gave me a boost:

Judge 1:
This is a really strong entry with lots going for it! One of the strongest elements, I feel, is how well the author writes from her main character’s point-of-view. The heroine feels so authentic to the reader. We truly empathize with her—even as we suspect that she’s operating under a degree of shock and denial.

Judge 2:
The situation facing your protagonist is truly compelling and handled realistically and sensitively. The decisions Abi makes propel the story forward in a logical way. The opening chapters give just the right amount of hint of things to come: the mysterious blonde, the sight-unseen lodge, the issues with the girls and the likelihood that there’s unexpected romance lurking somewhere in Minnesota. Good job!

Judge 3:
Dialogue and characterization are fantastic. This is what’s going to get you sold. Everything else is window dressing. Your voice is killer!

These judges didn’t have all of what I had written up to the point when I got off track, but with such encouraging words I feel more confident that I can go back and pick things up again – and use their suggestions to make it a stronger story yet.

The other thing that happened in December was that the rights to my three romances with Cerridwen Press reverted back to me. I knew that was going to happen and my plan had been to have all three of those books proofed and formatted so that I could re-release them myself as soon as possible after the new year. Well, you know how things go… I hadn’t done a thing on any of them until the children went back to school after the holidays. Then this weekend, I got my new covers. To say I am thrilled with them is an understatement.

I have never liked faces on my book covers – even half a face was a problem for me on my first cover for Here to Stay because I didn’t like her hair, not to mention she looked like she is wearing a pointed hat! I didn’t care much for the font either. Needless to say I like this new cover so much more.

I truly loved the cover for One Crazy Summer and was sad to think of changing it. How thrilled was I that my designer was able to capture the same mood with the new cover? I shouldn’t have been surprised – she did the original cover as well!

Again, I really loved my original cover for All the Way Home, but I am equally pleased with the new cover. Again, my designer at Croco Designs did the original cover and yet was still able to top herself with the new cover. How does she do it?

Having survived the holidays and bolstered with the wonderful comments from the contest in addition to three beautiful new covers, I am more than motivated to get busy on writing again. I can’t wait to make my first three books available both digitally and in trade paperback. Ebooks have really taken off in the years since Here To Stay was first published and I’m hoping that setting more reasonable prices and having them available in a wider variety of outlets will get them a bigger audience this time around.

I’m almost done with the proofing for Here To Stay. One down, two to go!

My birthday party was a complete success. The cheese ball was awesome (and I declined to share the recipe, HA!), the hummus was perfect, the chocolate cake I made was moist and decadent, the truffles were a hit, and the bakery didn’t drop the cheesecake on their way up the stairs to my place. There was enough food, but not too much, and I didn’t forget to put anything out this time (I made a list!) People ate, mingled, laughed and no one sat in what I think of as the “dreaded circle” – you know, where everyone ends up sitting in a circle around the couches or a ring of chairs and tried to participate in a stilted group conversation about some boring general topic like the weather or their job.

I was a bit worried in the afternoon because the sky had an ominous look about it.

The last time I spent all day cleaning to have people over there was a thunderstorm complete with hail that ended up flooding my living room. Nothing like a levee made of beach towels to add a bit of ambiance. I am happy to say that though there was thunder and a bit of rain, all the puddles stayed outside this time!

I might even do it again in ten years

With the party food, I more than met my dessert resolution for the next couple of weeks, but I’m beginning to think that I need to revise my previously announced goals because so far they aren’t all working out.

1) Make one dessert per week. Yes, I have been doing this. My children love love love it. They are however driving me insane with requests for truffles and cake for breakfast! I had thought that they might get used to the treats in time and calm down but I think that they are stronger than I am in this matter. I may have to cut back on the frequency of this goal.

2) Take a walk after I put the children on the bus in the morning. Hasn’t happened once. It hasn’t even occurred to me to do it. Why? Because walking in my neighborhood is not fun. It is in fact a serious risk to life and limb. The one sidewalk that I was planning use is now torn up with construction. I am still doing power yoga twice a week and am considering adding in one more morning yoga class. Yoga and housework and my usual walking to get around will have to do.

3) Eat better / more fruit. I’ve done pretty well on this one actually. It’s easy when strawberries and citrus fruits are in season.

4) Time Management. So far so good. I’ve been able to get myself moving to do the things that must be done around the house by lunch time so I can have the quiet afternoon hours before my children get home from school to do some computer work. I’m happy when I feel like I’m getting things done, even it sometimes it means vacuuming and laundry!

I ran across a resolution that I really liked on a fellow author’s blog and I think I’ll adopt a version myself. Essentially, she has set herself one goal per month. Obviously, I will pick different goals, but I like the concept. I might even pick a goal a week – it would depend on the goal because some are more involved than others. For instance, this week I need to scrub the tiles in my shower. Not fun, but necessary. For February, I’d like to finish up one more baby quilt and take what I have in stock to a local boutique to see if they’ll take them on consignment. This sort of rotating goal is something I could definitely get into.

How are your resolutions going – or shouldn’t I ask?

And I’ll ban children if I want to. It’s actually kind of funny how shocked my children were when I told them they had to stay upstairs in their room during my party this evening. It’s not as if they want me to participate in their parties in anything other than a servant / organizer capacity so why are they so surprised that I wouldn’t require their participation in mine?

Don’t feel too sorry for them: they will be setting up a “tent” in my daughter’s room and watching a movie I rent for them. An indoor camp out. They’ll be fine.

Other than cleaning up, I am mostly ready and I even made two new recipes this week. I finally used the “secret” cheese ball recipe that a good friend gave me years ago, after I promised never to use the recipe for a potluck function that we were both attending. Not a problem now that I live in Cairo and she lives in Qatar! The only thing I did differently was to put the mixture into a pretty bowl rather than roll it into a ball. It will get smooshed down anyway so I just skipped a step to keep it tidy!

I also made my step-mother’s truffle recipe. It was easier than I thought it would be, though it was a multi-step process. I melted the chocolate in the microwave which worked well. I used a bag of mint chocolate chips and a dollop of Bailey’s for the filling and dark chocolate for the coating. They. Are. Divine. I can see how making truffles could be a dangerous talent to possess however!

Other items on the menu: mixed nuts, hummus, baked tortilla chips, fresh strawberries, and a mushroom quiche that is coming from the bakery along with a blueberry topped cheesecake. I may also make a chocolate cake just to be sure that there is enough cake to go around but that’s easy. I’m getting hungry just thinking about all the wonderful food and I haven’t even had breakfast yet!

I’ll post some pictures soon. Let us hope they are not accompanied by a funny disaster story!

I’ve been thinking on and off about movies we can watch for family movie nights. Usually this involves thinking about movies I watched and enjoyed as a child. Let’s face it – movies made in the 1980s were in general much tamer than movies made today. I don’t always remember them in minute detail but they are usually safe choices in terms of violence, language, and sexual content.

One movie I watched repeatedly was Gremlins. I really liked that movie – the Mogwai was so cute and it wasn’t his fault that his new owner Billy accidentally broke the how to “rules” of how to care for him and nearly destroyed his entire town. As I remember it, the movie was funny and scary both and there was a tremendous sense of relief when it all ended well.

I have no idea how the movie has aged since 1984 but given how easily spooked my daughter is, I doubt that she would enjoy it. I think it might even scare my son – he was spooked a couple of years ago by the music Peter and the Wolf and has only recently consented to go upstairs by himself! If the movie itself wasn’t enough to give them bad dreams, let’s do a little comparison. Here are two stuffed animals my daughter has in her room:

Cute, right? Now look at the Mogwai:

Am I the only one who sees the similarities – particularly the big eyes and cuddliness. I’m sure she’d like the Mogwai just fine, until he spawns this:

If I can see the similarity between her cute little animals and the Mogwai, surely she would make the leap from there on to the Gremlins. She would probably never sleep again and I’d be escorting my son up and down the stairs to his room until he’s 10!

I am planning to rent them a movie to keep them occupied upstairs during my birthday party tomorrow, but it will probably be animated!

I decided I wanted a Boston Cream Pie for my birthday cake. I looked up a few recipes…and then improvised. Perhaps cheated would be an even more accurate word. When will I learn not to take short-cuts?

I have never had much luck with making yellow cake from scratch so I decided to buy a mix. And I didn’t want to take chances with making custard from scratch for the first time and risk ruining my birthday cake, so I bought a couple of pots of vanilla pudding. The instructions to make the chocolate glaze didn’t look *that* difficult, but I’m more than a little phobic about frosting. The only successful frosting I have ever made from scratch is cream cheese frosting for carrot cake. All my other frosting turns out just a bit gritty so I normally just buy it in cans (shame on me!) This time was no exception.

I made the cake first thing in the morning. Traditionally, you are supposed to cut one layer in half and spread the custard as filling. The cake mix made two layers so I did that instead. In fact, I don’t have two 9″ pans so I used one cake pan and one pie dish – they are roughly the same size. While the cakes were cooling, I went out to buy the frosting.

The only frosting available was milk chocolate or triple chocolate. I wanted a chocolate more on the semi-sweet end of things, so I went with the triple chocolate and thought that if it wasn’t the right flavor I’d either add some melted dark chocolate to the frosting or just try and make the glaze.

First mishap occurred when I was transferring the first layer to the plate. I lay a dinner plate across the top of the pan, flipped the cake out, then attempted to transfer it to the final cake plate, top side back up. This method has worked well for me in the past but not this time. This time the top of the cake stuck to the plate and a big chunk came off when I lifted the transfer plate. No problem, I thought – I just replaced the chunk and spread the pudding over the top. No one would notice, right? I used a bit of wax paper when I transferred the second layer and that went a bit better.

Because the cake was so moist and the top so sticky, I realized that spreading frosting was going to be hard (especially for me). Also, the frosting I bought had visible chocolate chips in it. I tossed it in the microwave to melt the chips and then stirred in a bit of milk. Voila! Chocolate glaze. I poured the frosting over the cake. My plan was to add a few cut strawberries to the top and around the edges of the plate for decoration when it was chilled and set. It would be beautiful.

And then the trouble started.

The top layer of the cake developed a crack. Hmmm… I filled it in with frosting and mentally added a few more strawberries. I put the cake in the fridge and hoped the cold would set things. Nope. The crack widened and grew. Soon it was more of a canyon. A crevasse. The San Andreas fault of cake cracks. No strawberries were going to camouflage this fault line.

I wasn’t going to take a picture of the cake because it wasn’t pretty, but then it became so absurd I had to take a picture.

We have dubbed it the Earthquake Cake. Isn’t it ridiculous? The incredible self dividing cake! Or perhaps it was attempting to clone itself??

In spite of its lack of aesthetic appeal, it was at least a very tasty cake. And lesson learned: next time I’ll make my own cakes from scratch!

And one might wonder what a smart man gets for his wife on such a milestone birthday. My husband played it safe and went for jewelry. But not just any jewelry – he got me a necklace from Azza Fahmy, a very prestigious Egyptian designer.

I love it. My picture doesn’t really do it justice. The chains are silver, the charms are white and yellow gold. It’s the kind of necklace I can see dressing up jeans or pairing with a fancy dress. I’m going to wear it to tennis later today (with jeans) and I’ll definitely be wearing it for my party on Friday – but I’m going to buy a cake for that event!