Cooking with Words and Spices

(Clockwise) Saffron Rice, Butter Chicken, Palak Paneer, Veggie Korma.

I met my friends John and Kay in 1972 when I started teaching in 1970. I quit teaching in 1972 and have seen Kay once since. John married Bunny and we have been intimates since meeting. This past weekend we all had dinner at my place (with little notice) after I got a surprise call from Kay who came to Vancouver to visit her brother.

My plan was to buy dinner because I am so focused on writing. (See below.) But I finished the draft of my screenplay and so I decided to cook Indian food. I used recipes from Madhur Jaffrey but the korma was not at all to my liking, so I rescued it with a spice (+ sugar) intervention. The butter chicken was perfect. But the palak paneer was amazing—even I think so. It was nothing like the paneer I get in restaurants, there were big chunks of tomato in it. Jaffrey's recipe is very hot, so next time I will reduce the jalapeño, but it was fabulous. The rice is basmati, with cinnamon, a lot of cardamom, cumin, star anise, and lots of saffron and orange rind. I love it too.

"HoMe," "Cap Café" and "Mockingbird" with Beth's book.

Above is a photo of  heaven—three scripts in the works. And that green book is friend Beth's faboo memoir of her crush on Beatle Paul and her excruciating year in Paris as a young girl. It is a great read. Her blog is here if you want to reach her to get a book.

Bliss is finishing the first draft of your screenplay on Friday and getting an email on Saturday from the artistic director of the theatre producing your play with notes about your script. I took the weekend off, but yesterday I loved diving back into my play to address the AD's awesome notes.

This is new, writing creatively and writing dialogue. It is a form of writing to which I aspired but felt incapable of producing. So to have Warren and Kim keen for my new love is really thrilling.

Every day I walk for usually three hours. My pattern: Up very early and writing by 5:00 am. Writing undisturbed to anywhere between noon (if I have a lunch date) and 2:00. Then a big walk, then rest, dinner and maybe some review of the morning's work.

When I am writing, the walks fly by because my mind is fully engaged with ideas or conundrums in the writing. Were it not for the walking, the writing would be far, far less successful in its structure. When I sit at my desk, I work on the details; when I walk, I am thinking about the bigger — the arc of the story. So a pen and paper is always in my backpack.

Cheers.