Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Spring Haiku

Took this photo on a walk around the block




Rather than compete
With the lilies of the field--
I humbly stayed home.

 
This should be a fancy perfume. I discovered it around the corner.

The Black Locust tree
Blends white with black forever--
In scented glory.

 
A little breeze and all of a sudden I feel like royalty!



His hands made me Queen.
I walk through strewn rose petals,
in gardens of green. 




Has the snow melted where you are? Is it a lovely Spring? 

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Inspired by the President and Hemingway


Our illustrious Commander in Chief has inspired me to try a new marketing campaign for building my platform and increasing followers. Figure I'd jump on the proverbial bandwagon and find out what all the fuss is about. I mean, if he can tweet, then so can I. 
(Take a breath here--because my Tweets won't have anything to do with those tweets.)

 I’ll be sharing uplifting and inspiring quotes written by famous people and since I’m fairly good at writing one-liners, I’ll be sharing my sense of humor through short, silly jokes or witty remarks with the main purpose of making people smile. For free. There' no hidden agenda other than I wouldn't mind having more twittering friends. (And if you want to re-use something I wrote, please give me credit for writing it.)

My thinking is that since Twitter’s all a-flutter with high anxiety--thought I’d try the happiness approach--thereby creating more interest in my writing--naturally generating more blog readers. And who knows? Maybe I will receive some financial gravy as in book sales and writing assignments too. It can't hurt to try, right?

Although I’ve used Twitter for years, it never seemed like a serious place for an author. After all, what writer wants to be limited to 140 characters? Oh wait scratch that-- I guess Hemingway could have posted his six-word bestseller: 
  “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”


Anyway, follow me at Eve@Eve Gaal for some comic relief. When I can’t come up with anything funny, then it will be a serious quote like the one I just posted on Twitter from one of our greatest Presidents-Abraham Lincoln: “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

Do you use Twitter? How does it help you? 

Monday, April 3, 2017

Butter Biscuits & Fairy-Tales



The best part about a fairy-tale is typically the happy-ending. I remember asking so many questions about the prince and his stallion. Where did he sleep when he wasn’t near a castle? What did he eat? Where did the witch buy her supplies? Did she make them from scratch? What do you cook for gnomes? Where do Fairy Godmothers buy glass slippers? When a story mentions red lips, does that mean she wore lipstick? Do the stepsisters grow out of being ugly like the Ugly duckling? What was inside Little Red Riding Hood’s basket? And so on and so on....

 I probably drove my parents bonkers with tons of inquisitive questions but they had to enjoy the fact that they could hold my attention for a short amount of time. Sadly, they couldn’t always answer all my inquiries so I ran to the library to read as much as I could about Dorothy and her friends from Oz, by Frank L. Baum. Inhaling books by E.B. White, Antoine de Saint Exupery or books by Jules Verne and any imaginative author who mingled reality and fantasy. I also often wondered whether Huck Finn really existed and if he did--how he managed to walk barefoot all summer?

But this post is about my mother’s butter biscuits. In Hungarian folklore, there’s usually a boy like Huck Finn or a girl, going on an adventure with their knapsack. It’s the magical way our parents pulled our imaginations into the story, ala The Princess Bride. Parents know that you can't go on a quest without tasty snacks. Most likely, he/she is running away to see the world and that’s where the story begins, because inside of the knapsack are the butter biscuits, which might best be described as a form of hard tack or scones, depending on the talent of the grandmother who made them. These are not soft biscuits, but crumbly ones that can survive a journey. In some tales, they have a coating of protective ash due to the old-fashioned method of dropping dough directly into the fire. 

My mother’s tiny tea biscuits are etched into my fading memories and I couldn’t replicate them if I tried. The following recipe is a satisfactory but easy version, nowhere near perfection. Mom used yeast and sour cream, creating a light, airy dough that once baked, melted upon contact with your tongue. Truly, her Pogacsas were--in my mind anyway--legendary. Of course, Red Riding Hood’s basket contained this type of mouthwatering biscuit, because after all, a buttery, biscuit has to be memorable for it to be in a fairy tale.


Hungarian Biscuits or Pogacsa
11 ounces of Ricotta Cheese-(the small tub is usually 15oz at the store.)
2-1/2 cups flour (plus a bit more for the cutting board)
A small pinch of salt
1-1/4 cup of softened, unsalted butter
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten
(Coarse salt or caraway seeds if desired.)
Mix the flour and the baking powder
Knead in the butter, salt and the cheese until you have smooth dough.
Cover it and put it into the fridge for at least two hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and then fold it four times.
Repeat the above step of rolling and folding five or six times.
Using a small one-inch cutter, cut each biscuit and score with a fork.
Brush each one with the egg yolk and place onto a pan sprayed with Pam spray or lined with parchment.
Bake 30 minutes and place each warm biscuit onto a tray filled with either salt, caraway seeds or both.  

Now put on a pot of tea and tell a story! Enjoy. 

Did you like fairy tales too? Do you think you'll ever make these biscuits?