Cooking experiments

Having picked another pound or so of blackberries, I attempted to make blackberry cordial to eke out my rather limited supplies of squash. The result is a beautiful deep purple colour, but tastes chiefly of aniseed and sugar -- if I dilute it enough not to leave a syrupy aftertaste, all I get is the star anise.

( pastilles )

( yoghurt in plastic pots )

( gazpacho )

( microwave sponge )

Jealous

A fanfiction writer I vaguely used to know has announced proudly that she has done a file-off-the-numbers job on one of her existing stories and it will now be published (in fact, she 'turned down a publishing house').

So I looked up the original story out of curiosity, and... ouch. I honestly can't tell any difference between the chapters where she said she had a beta-reader and the ones after she said she'd unfortunately lost her beta-reader. ( Read more... )

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Of course, instead of feeling bitter and jealous, what I ought to be doing is putting in some actual work on Arctic Raoul. It's very easy not to get published if you never even dare to try :-(