And it remains time to admire nature, beauty, and kindness. All those are wrapped up in Jurgen’s post (he was also linked to in this other Happiness Between Tails post) about Valentin Grüner, whose friendship with Sirga, a lioness, is as cuddly as what I had with Mooshie, a tabby house cat. (More about Mooshie in this video and here.)
Jurgen’s site also offers an excellent example of the joys of using WordPress’ Google Translate widget. It’s free to use and great for anyone with a WordPress blog.
Within Jurgen’s post you’ll find videos and more about Valentin, who is a wildlife activist. In addition, here’s a video of Kevin Richardson, who also works hard to help wildlife.
Food, nature, friendship — that’s how Persian New Year culminates. To thwart bad luck from sneaking into the year ahead, 13 days after the 1st, we’ll go picnic, play, and take walks.
Much as I love animals, hopefully no lions will surprise us. If one did, I doubt I could stay as calm as Valentin and Kevin!
Would you pet a lion? Have you?
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Screenshot from video of Khashayar and da-AL dancing Argentine Tango, un-choreographed.
Want to listen to a podcast/audio version of Happiness Between Tails? Click the Spotify podcast link above. And please give it a follow.
This week I had time to work on my novels. Yay! I’m also happy to report that my husband and I danced. The Covid quarantine put our tanging on hold. As much as we missed it, we were even more eager to see our dancing friends at last. Pre-Covid, a number of fellow students gathered several times a year for potluck and dance ranging from belly and flamenco, to tango and folk.
Khashayar and I performed two tangos for our friends last weekend. To be safe, the event was outdoors and only included friends who were vaccinated. Over the Covid interim, my hair had grown so long that during rehearsal, it got stuck in his armpit. The morning of the show, I whacked 4” of it off. When we performed for real, I was so out of shape and unaccustomed to wearing heels that my calves were cramping. All the same, the whole night was truly heartwarming and fun!
We began with a classic tango, un-choreographed as is the tradition for authentic Argentine tango…
Later we performed a milonga style Argentine tango, also not pre-choreographed, so as to adhere to convention…
Back to the subject of books — do you listen to audiobooks? I’m obsessed with them. It’s amazing how quickly moments of listening during cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, driving, exercising, brushing my teeth, and walking my dog add up to a whole book!
Author/blogger Chris Hall, who has guested here before, just produced an audiobook! She calls herself a compulsive story-teller, a cat slave, and a hen keeper who hales from England and lives in South Africa with her artist husband. Lately she’s finishing the sequel to her novel, “Song of the Sea Goddess.” Visit her blog to read her flash fiction and poems.
In her recounting of the process she used to convert her novel into an audiobook, she includes helpful links, as well as where to hear a sample of it…
“Audiobooks are becoming more mainstream, most growth coming from people using technology to find more time in their day to consume more books”. Chris Lynch, Simon & Schuster Audio.
Audiobooks have been around for almost a century in one form or another, although it was only in the 1990s that the advent of digitized recording technology saw audiobooks take off. They’re a boon for people with visual impairments and those who have difficulty with holding a book or e-reader. Or those who don’t get on with processing the written word but still love stories. And of course, they’re great for busy people who like to multi-task, all those artists and crafters, bakers, cooks and wielders of needles I know! From my hairdresser to my podiatrist, I’ve found people who love to listen to audiobooks.
There is also the opportunity to reach a brand new, younger audience. The ‘Podcast Generation’, the 18-24 year age group, are increasingly listening to audiobooks, and these are not a traditional book buying group. Plugged into their smartphones, they consume their stories on the go.
Increasingly aware of the appetite for creating audio offerings amongst some of the folk I know here on WP, where more people are converting their posts to podcasts, producing their own podcasts, and generally getting to grips with ‘all things audio’, I decided to dip my toe in the water and make an audiobook.
But which of my novels to choose?…
I decided on my most recently published novel, Song of the Sea Goddess. It’s the first book I’ve written set in South Africa, my adopted country, where in my experience, people are less wedded to the written word, but love their listening devices. It’s a book that I hope will appeal to both a local and a global audience.
Song of the Sea Goddess combines fantasy and magical realism, and contains elements of an eco-thriller. Key themes include man’s avarice and arrogance, and the human threat to the environment and to earth’s creatures (both real and imaginary). Written not long after Cape Town almost ran out of drinking water a couple of years ago, it also touches on the thirst for water experienced in many parts of Africa.
But it’s not all gloom and doom. My novel is populated by a small cast of quirky and humorous characters who reside in the charming little coastal town that I created for them, an imaginary place on the beautiful west coast of South Africa. They’re a great bunch to get to know, and very relatable to a local audience.
Author Chris Hall.
So, to the process of producing an audiobook…
A little online research led me to make my first decision: I had to find a good narrator. Even if I had that magical ‘voice for radio’, it’s a mammoth task to read and record an entire novel. Nor do I have the equipment or the skill to make a professional digital recording, and I can only imagine how many times I’d need to stop to silence my very opinionated cat! But, by great good fortune one of the teachers with whom my husband used to work is also a voice actor. I asked him to drop her an email.
Voice actor Terry Lloyd Roberts was happy to take on the project and in turn, she introduced me to Devon Martindale, Director at Audioshelf, a South African company dedicated to the production of audiobooks. From then on making the recording was easy. All I had to do was send them the manuscript and they’d do the rest. Over the next month, I received a chunk of chapters to review each week. Listening to the recordings made by Devon and golden-voiced Terry was an absolute delight. It couldn’t have been easier. You can listen to a sample here.
Armed with the finished recording, finding a platform on which to publish was the next step. Being in South Africa closes off many avenues (don’t get me started) and I was disappointed to find that ‘big names’ like ACX were ‘not available in your geographical location’. However, Devon came to the rescue and recommended Authors Republic who offer audiobook publishing and distribution worldwide.
After signing up, completing a US tax form, and adding my paypal account details, all that remained was to fill in the book details, load up the cover pic and upload the audio files, which had been perfectly prepared by Audioshelf, then finally set the price, although the distributors have the right to amend this to fit their pricing profile.
Just two weeks later, my audiobook was available via all the major audiobook retailers, including the ones unavailable to me in South Africa, like Audible and Chirp. It was also published on Amazon, alongside the e-book and paperback, which I’d been unable to do directly.
Bottom line: cost vs. sales…
Because of the time involved to read and record an entire novel, it is a relatively costly enterprise to engage a narrator and arrange the studio time. It cost me equivalent to a nice holiday! This of course, would have been drastically reduced if I’d done my own recording.
Sales are paid quarterly by Authors Republic and I’m pleased to report that I earned more royalties from the audiobook than the combined paperback and e-book sales in these first three months since publication. It might take a while (if ever) to make my money back, but it does give me the opportunity to reach a new audience. Having people enjoy what I’ve written is reward enough for me.
Would I do it again?…
Oh yes! Terry and Devon are about to start recording my adventure story for all ages, Following the Green Rabbit, which will be out in time for the coming festive holiday.
Do you listen to audiobooks? And is there something you’ve gotten rusty at due to Covid?
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Do you adore lyrical, thoughtful novels? I want to meet you! Thank you, blogosphere, for introducing me to blogger Angela Bell who I met through her love of books (especially given how I’m writing my own novels). Self-described as, “New England-born, Pennsylvania raised, and 100% Italian-American,” Angela’s posts are filled with intelligence. My favorite line of hers is, “While time marches on, life around you, if you allow it to, also becomes more interesting, more stimulating, and even a tad freer… and age, in fact, matters less and less.”
Here Angela teaches us how everyday forgotten abundance can be diverted from landfills and nourish us…
My daughter Emily is a Culinary Institute of America graduate with a nutrition certification from a Cornell program. She points out that if this (COVID19) confinement continues, we may have to learn to make better use of what we have. Recognizing that everyone is overwhelmed and probably worried about managing the household food right now, she and I had the following conversation.
Me: Can you give us some ideas for using our kitchen scraps?
Emily: Soup! If you have broccoli or cauliflower stems, dice them, add onion if you have it, and sweat in fat — oil, butter, rendered chicken fat, or bacon fat — over medium heat. When they’re soft, dust with flour and add chicken or vegetable stock. Stir to thicken, season, and puree. You’ve now made a classic French soup from kitchen scraps.
Angela performs alchemy on scraps to achieve epicurean delights.
Me: You taught me to do this with whole broccoli and chicken stock. It’s delicious—a creamy soup without the cream.
Emily: You can make a vegetable stock with any vegetables or vegetable scraps you have on hand, or make a chicken or beef stock with bones leftover from a roast. The longer you simmer the stock, the more collagen you’ll extract. Collagen adds body and may have health benefits. Add vegetable scraps to the pot with the bones, cover with water, simmer for about two hours, strain, and season. Roast chicken or turkey carcasses make great stock, as do bones from beef roasts and fish bones for fish stock. Add that meat “jelly” in the bottom of the roasting pan, too—that’s pure collagen. If you have a pork bone, just throw it in with a pot of beans or a pot of spaghetti sauce, rather than make stock with it.
Me: If I don’t have time to make stock from a roast chicken carcass, I freeze it. All the flavor in the roast chicken, from the herbs or vegetables, roasted it with transfers to the stock. I add water and let the slow cooker do the rest, then strain when it’s done, cool, and use or freeze.
Ice cube trays are handy for freezing pesto and stock.
Me: You mentioned using bacon fat.
Emily: Save rendered bacon fat after cooling and straining, and use in place of olive oil or butter. It adds so much flavor! If you’re making soup or a stew, you can sauté anything that’s going into it in bacon fat first. This is another classical French technique. Refrigerate rendered fat and use within two weeks, or freeze.
Me: What else can we do with stock?
Emily: If we get to a point where we can’t get meat because of supply chain interruptions, we’ll appreciate having stock and rendered fats on hand for flavor. You can cook rice in it, add it to beans, use it to flavor sauce or gravy. I freeze stock in ice cube trays in case I want to deglaze a pan or thin out a sauce.
Me: Some of us have loaded up on fresh vegetables, perhaps more than we can use. How can we prevent waste?
Emily: If you have vegetables ready to expire, blanch, and freeze them. Some, like carrots or green peppers, can be sliced and frozen raw. For best results with vegetables that don’t freeze well, like celery or escarole, prepare a dish and freeze that. You can also make pestos. If you have a bunch of a particular herb, purée it in the blender or food processor, along with the flavorings or ingredients you like, and freeze in ice cube trays. You may want to add a bit of oil to facilitate this. Enjoy over pasta or add to other dishes for flavor.
Vegetable soup is a great way to use up miscellaneous vegetables. The key is not to overcook the vegetables. I sweat them until they’re about half cooked, then add the liquid and simmer just until they’re done. Use water if you don’t have stock—just season it well. You can add shredded leftover meat, rice, pasta, beans, whole grains like farro or bulgur.
When you’re going through the refrigerator or freezer, use a first in/first out mentality. Before buying food, think about using something from the freezer to free up space.
Me: I’ve promised myself I’m going to use up what I have on hand.
Emily: It’s going to take some planning and thought to prevent waste. That might mean taking a look every other day at your fresh fruits and veggies, then deciding to bake some apples or juice some lemons, or make a soup and freeze half of it.
Me: If you’re blessed to be healthy and practice good personal and kitchen hygiene, you can always leave a care package on a neighbor’s doorstep.
Emily: Absolutely, and if you’re experiencing food scarcity for financial reasons or an inability to get to the store, there are programs now to address that. Check with your municipality to see what is available in your area.
Cold, sweet, and creamy! Heck yeah! All those sound absolutely refreshing any time of the year here in Los Angeles. Summer heat, though, especially makes me want to dip my toes into a whispering stream, to nap, or to sip iced coffee along the shore.
Enter ice cream! Better yet, frozen yogurt, because more people can tolerate it, and yogurt’s healthy probiotics withstand freezing. Here’ my sweeter-than-frozen-yogurt husband’s version of sheer indulgence. The photos and captions are by me. (Enjoy more of his recipes here and here and here and here and here and here.)
From any angle, this scoop grins for you!
Banana Blueberry Frozen Delight Recipe by Khashayar Parsi
* European style yogurt, plain full fat, 32 oz.
* Honey, 1.5 cups.
* Banana, 1 large and ripe.
* Blueberries, frozen, half a pound
* Butter, half an average stick.
1. Line a pasta-sized strainer with cheesecloth and and spoon the yogurt into it. Set it over a bowl deep enough to collect the water away from the yogurt while it drains and thickens in the fridge for twelve hours.
Step 1: Save the resulting fabulous liquid, a.k.a. whey, to later enhance everything from drinks and smoothies to soups and bread baking.
2. Cook the berries on low heat to reduce the juice out of the fruit for about thirty minutes.
Step 2: Frozen berries are picked at the height of their season.
3. In a large bowl, use a hand blender to combine the banana, honey, and butter. Add in the thick yogurt and fruit.
Step 3A: Ingredients other than yogurt and berries.
Step 3b: A blend of all but berries and yogurt.
Step 3c: Super dynamite yogurt meets blended tasty fruit and stuff.
Step 3d: Everything stirred together, except the berries. Sorry, I forgot to get a photo of the last step of combining berries into everything.
4. Leave in freezer for 24 hours and serve.
Step 4: Use the yogurt container to freeze the total mix in. On colder days, it tastes amazing at room temperature, too!
What kind of weather makes you want something creamy and chilly?
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Pirongia was a lovely village (by the way, it was interesting to find that as far as I know, here in the U.S. we only use the term ‘city’, not ‘village’) to spend our final night before returning to Auckland. Short as our visit to Pirongia was, our hostess, Vicky Apps, made it memorable. If you’re ever in the area and need a cozy room at a reasonable price, I highly recommend emailing her at apps@xtra.co.nz
Vicky and her charming kitty, made us feel like family at her gorgeous, spacious home. We so enjoyed sitting in her flower-filled backyard and chatting with her. Moreover, she even washed (and folded!) my clothes at no charge. For breakfast, she shared delicious homemade jams and preserves, including one that was made from a guava type fruit found only in New Zealand. (By the way, New Zealand has its own variation of sweet potato too, which I regret not getting a chance to sample.)
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash.
When I much enjoyed some of Vicky’s Anzac biscuits, an immensely satisfying sort of oatmeal cookie that was devised for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) during World War I, she generously hand-wrote the recipe for me!…
Vicky’s recipe for Anzac biscuits, page 1. Vicky’s recipe for Anzac biscuits, page 2.
Do you have a biscuit or cookie that’s special to where you live?
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Most of the week, fellow blogger Roijoyeux blogs on heroic people bullied for being gay or bisexual. Sundays he reserves to torture us with photos and recipes from his latest mouthwatering healthy/delicious yummy. Another awesomeness about his site is that if you don’t read French, he’s installed a google translate widget…
Pour mon cher ami Tauche et son mari, je réalise presque chaque semaine des gâteaux à la fois sains et gourmands et j’ai décidé de vous faire profiter, joyeux visiteurs, de mes plus belles réussites…
Cette semaine, j’ai eu envie de tester la recette de muffins aux pépites de chocolat inscrite au dos des paquets de pépites de chocolat “Vahiné”, en l’adaptant pour mes amis; Tauche souhaitait un gâteau à la banane, il me restait un sachet de noisettes en poudre, voici donc les :
Ingrédients : (pour 9 muffins de diamètre 6 cm)
125 g de farine de riz + 50 g de farine de sarrasin + 75 g de poudre de noisettes (au lieu de 250 g de farine)
1/2 c à c bicarbonate (au lieu de 1 sachet de levure chimique)
Isnt that romantic sitting by the window having a nice cuppa and enjoying the nature’s beautiful autumn colors on a chilly day😍 ? It will be a perfect indulgent treat when you are offered a delicious snack to accompany your tea. Yeah😎, I am gonna tell you about my secret recipe(cardamom coconut cake) that I ve tried for the first time ever and you know what, it turned out so delicious exactly how I imagined. If you are a fan of coconut and the aroma of cardamom, you must give this a go😊. I am sure that wont let you down. So here you go! Enjoy!
Handmade Persian embroidery given to da-AL enhances this colorful delight!
There’s no better way to end a sumptuous dinner with something lovely and just a little decadent. Get some tea steeping and reignite your guests’ appetites with buttery sweet baking aromas. The striking layers and fruity colors of this confection are sure to please most palates. (Find more of my dear husband’s recipes here and here and here and here and here and here.)
Double Pop-Over by Khashayar Parsi (inspired by Jacques Pépin)
(serves 8-12, depending on how hungry your guests are)
Note 1 : this party-friendly batter can be made in advance and refrigerated for several hours.
Note 2: As mouth-watering as this is fresh from the oven, it’s just as good later. Refrigerate leftovers, which are equally wonderful hot or cold.
Nuts can be served on the side, in a pretty bowl, if any of your guests might prefer their dessert without them.
Ingredients:
2 eggs
3/4 cup flour
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cups milk
4 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups cream cheese
1 cup honey
1 cup mixed berries
3 sliced bananas
1 cup orange marmalade
1/2 cup crushed roasted walnuts
1 cup crushed or shredded chocolate
Baking
Preheat oven to 420°F.
Whisk eggs, flour, sugar, salt, sour cream, and milk in a large bowl. Mix thoroughly until smooth.
Slowly whisk in half of the melted butter.
Heat two non-stick pans: an 8” and a 6”. Divide the remaining butter onto both warmed pans.
Pour about 2/3 of the batter into the 8” pan, and the other 1/3 into the 6” pan.
Cook over medium-high for five minutes, or until crepes take shape.
Put the pans into oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until popover cakes are fluffy and golden.
Remove pans from oven, and let them cool to room temperature.
In a separate bowl, stir honey into sour cream.
Plating
Transfer the larger cake onto a serving plate.
Sprinkle about 2/3 of the chocolate onto it.
Spread about 2/3 of sweetened sour cream over it.
Remove the smaller cake from the pan and gently place it over the center of the larger one.
Add the remaining chocolate and sweetened sour cream to the smaller cake in the same way.
Decorate the outer edge of the larger cake with berries.
Cover the smaller one with bananas.
Spoon the jam over bananas.
Sprinkle the nuts over jam.
Serve in pie-shaped wedges.
Jacques says that food is best when made with love and eaten with loved ones. That said, eating alone can be wonderful too, so long as you treat yourself with love.
Happy eating!
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Vicky Apps (with her kitty) is a wonderful hostess!
Ingrédients : (pour 9 muffins de diamètre 6 cm)
Happiness Between Tails by da-AL 