Where I’ll be
While I’m blogging lots this week, and because I won’t be blogging much (I suspect) in the week or two ahead, I’ll take this moment to highlight another tab, above, on my web site: Upcoming Events. It’s not new. But it’s handy. It’s where I keep track of readings, speaking engagements, festivals, launches — everything book-related.
For starters, next week I’m heading to the Sunshine Coast Festival in Sechelt, B.C. This is my first time at the festival, which I hear is amazing, and my first time on the Sunshine Coast, and my first time bringing the whole family along to an event like this (they likely won’t come to the reading itself, but the organizers have kindly invited our family to several other events and found us a family-friendly cottage by the ocean to stay in, while we’re there — see, amazing!). This is also our first major summer family holiday ever. The last time we flew somewhere together, we spent Christmas in Nicaragua — and we only had three kids. That’s a long time ago. (Note to self: must find a way to return to Nica again; I’ve visited once a decade since childhood.)
Then, in September, I’m going to Spain! I’ve been invited to the Hay Festival in Segovia, with the Spanish-language version of Girl Runner: La corredora. This trip will be a whirlwind, hosted by my Spanish publisher, Alfaguara, which is launching the book this fall. (The family is staying home; sorry, guys.)
I return home in time to visit the Halton Hills library, which has chosen Girl Runner for its One Book: One Community program (very exciting!), and then just a few weeks later, in October, I’m flying out to Victoria (solo) where I’m a guest speaker at the Victoria marathon. Sadly, there’s no way I’ll be in shape to run the marathon, but in my dreams I somehow manage to conquer the half. This hasn’t been a high-mileage summer. I’ve been averaging three runs a week, rarely more than 10km, often less. One change is that I rarely run alone anymore. Almost all of my exercise is social, right now: meeting a friend is motivating, and it’s fun. But if I’m going to add more miles, I will have to do some longer solo runs.
Kevin is recommending that I start listening to podcasts while running. He’s become a convert to the short story form by listening to The New Yorker fiction podcast while running around the neighbourhood with the dogs. I listened to one just this morning, while making poached eggs for Fooey (it’s her Birthday Eve!): a story called “Love” by Grace Paley, as read by George Saunders. If you think you don’t like short stories, try out this podcast. It combines the reading of a story with a conversation afterward between a well-known writer and the New Yorker story editor: it’s like listening in on a really informed book club discussion.
Love is poaching eggs for your almost-ten-year-old; love is kicking a soccer ball for two hours with your seven-year-old; love is watching a leader’s debate (Canadian version) with your twelve-year-old; love is driving back to camp to fetch your fourteen-year-old; love is sharing earphones and stories with your husband.
Hm. That was really cheesy. I feel compelled to apologize a) for writing it and b) for not erasing it. But hey, maybe you’ll want to make your own list? Enjoy your weekend.
xo, Carrie
Announcing new FAQs page: one question, sort of answered
I’ve started a new FAQs page. You can find it here, or under the Extras tab, above. So far, I’ve published the answer to just one question, but when I started writing the answer to this one question, I realized it was also the answer to another question and another question. Which probably proves that I’m really bad at FAQ pages. Or that I wouldn’t be able to write a wiki-how page to save my life. Anyway, here’s the first question, and my answer.
Q: How do I find a publisher? (a.k.a. How do I make money as a writer?)
Dear writer,
You want to know how to get published. I could answer you with the traditional find-an-agent + agent-finds-publisher = publish your book. This is what worked (and continues to work) for me. But with the rapid rise of self-publishing, about which I know nothing, my experience has come to seem quaint, old-fashioned, and possibly irrelevant. Will the traditional model work for you? I don’t know.
Also, I suspect it’s not the question you’re really asking. The question inside your question is: how do I make money as a writer?
It’s assumed that publishing a book is the surefire way to make money as a writer, but here’s an unscientific breakdown of what happens when we drill down into the esker of being-a-writer and examine the striations: very few writers make a good living by publishing their books; some writers make a modest living by publishing their books; many writers make a token amount of money by publishing their books; and a number of writers make nothing, or indeed spend their own money, publishing their books.
So, I’m going to ask you to put aside the money question, and the publishing question, just for now. The only thing I can tell you about with any authority, or usefulness, is how to be a writer.
There are a variety of ways to develop your craft. Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Write in a journal, sit in a public place and write observational notes, compose essays, short stories, poems. Earn a degree in literature, if you can. Ask others, whom you respect, admire and most of all trust, to read and critique your work. This is imperative! Be brave. Critique your own work after letting it sit quietly untouched for at least a week, or a month, or even a year. Revise what you’ve written. Read, read, read some more to study how your favourite writers shape their sentences, find music and harmony in language, and develop narrative. Remember you are learning a craft. Writing is not like thinking or like speaking. It is its own medium. You can’t dictate a great idea onto a page; don’t worry, no one else can either.
Send your stories and poems to literary magazines. Do not be flummoxed by rejection. Hope for helpful critique that will serve you as you write with ever-greater clarity, toward a purpose you alone can achieve. What do you want to say? What do you want to make people feel and think? What are the stories you want to tell — that you feel compelled to tell? If you pursue a creative writing MFA, do it not with the goal of getting published, but as a means of deepening your craft in a concentrated, challenging, and hopefully supportive environment. Learn how to defend your choices; learn how to be open to criticism. There is always more to learn. You are a writer because you are curious, and open, and never done with learning.
Okay, Carrie, enough already, this is completely impractical, you’re saying: How will I have time to read, read, read, and write, write, write, when I’m trying to finish my degree and working two jobs and looking after my family and struggling just to get by?
Yes. I say to you. Yes, dammit, yes!
I wish I had an answer to your question. There’s a gap between being an aspiring writer and becoming a published writer, and then there’s another gap between becoming a published writer and being recognized as an established writer, and there’s yet another gap, which no one ever tells you about, between being an established writer and feeling like an established writer. Complicating all of this, there’s no single direct path to follow, as any published writer will tell you — but what makes it all the more difficult is that supports along the way are few and far between, especially in the early years of developing your craft, but even in the middle years, even in the latter years. (This is also a really old problem that never seems to go away: how to support and develop artistic talent? Especially difficult because art doesn’t make money in a straightforward way, like, say, drilling for oil does; although it could be argued that both are equally speculative ventures, with uncertain outcomes.)
This brings us to grants. The first grant I ever earned as an aspiring writer was from the Ontario Arts Council: it’s called the Writers’ Works in Progress Grant. If you’re from Ontario, look into it. If not, there may be equivalent grants for artists and writers in your community. When I received this grant, I was 27 years old, I’d earned a BA and MA in literature, had worked full-time for several years at a newspaper, and along with publishing a handful of poems and stories in literary magazines, had completed a novel (never published) and a volume of short stories, and had acquired an agent. In other words, I was already quite a long way down the path of aspiring writer. I applied for this particular grant at least three or four times before earning it: selection is by blind jury. I could apply now and not receive it. The point is, grants can fill a gap, but applying takes time, energy, and is something of a crapshoot. (Prizes are a more glamorous subset of grants, but are an even greater crapshoot.)
The other point is, you can be an aspiring writer for what may seem like a very long time; a ridiculously long time; even a foolishly long time. When I go to literary festivals, I sometimes feel like we’re sizing each other up back-stage, sussing out with mutual pity and secret sympathy the heartbreak and delusional determination that each of us must be carrying to be in this vaguely humiliating position of professional, published writer.
But then, I read a really fine book by a completely brilliant writer that fills me with love and joy and admiration and awe, and I think: Who cares! Who cares if it’s pitiful and foolish to want to be a writer, to continue after all these years to write, write, write, and read, read, read. Because this is possible, after all. It is possible, maybe, to write something that will fill someone else with love and joy — or even simply divert someone, entertain someone, amuse someone.
Which brings me around to why anyone would want to be a writer. You might tell yourself that you’re writing for yourself, to please yourself alone, and in some ways, yes, you must do that. But that’s not the only reason, or even the most important reason. You’re writing also outwardly, to reach out, to connect with an ongoing and continuing conversation, out of a long tradition of written work, trying to speak to your moment, which is cast here in time. You’re writing to be read, you hope. We all hope, all of us writers. And maybe we will be, and maybe we won’t be. But please, please, I urge you: don’t write just for yourself. Think about how what you’re writing can reach out — think beyond yourself.
Think of writing as a gift. It’s a gift you’ve been given, if you have a talent for it. And it’s a gift you can offer, if you have a talent for it. A gift is something that resides beyond you. You don’t get to decide how it’s received. And you don’t get to choose what you’re given. This is where grace enters in and takes this whole answer of mine to a place that has nothing to do with money, or success, or any practical, useful measure, socially or culturally or otherwise, and which may explain why making art is not like drilling for oil and never can be: you’re writing for reasons that have nothing to do with money or success. We’d like to connect the two and say that if you are deserving, you will be rewarded; but we also like to define what a reward is: money, success, fame, a fat publishing contract, The New York Times bestseller list, a movie deal.
And so it may be. And so we may wish.
But if it’s not, that doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. You’re a writer because you chase the words, you polish the sentences, you seek out the core of the story, and you never seem to tire of it. You may never be entirely comfortable. You may never be entirely satisfied. You may always believe you could do better. You could rightly call this restlessness, anxiety, obsession; but you could equally name it urgency, hopefulness, and openness. Don’t worry about what it is: it’s what fires you to do the work. No matter the reward.
So that’s my admittedly impractical, useless, absolutely-no-money-back-guarantee formula. Read, read, read. Write, write, write. Do the work. It’s a gift.
Respectfully yours, Carrie
Fifteen minutes, location: front porch
Photo unrelated, but perfectly summery.
A wall of green hides me, hangs over me, stands before me. I am hidden from the people walking by on the sidewalk, but they are hidden from me too; I have to duck my head, crane my neck, follow their movements deliberately. An old man on a bicycle, pedalling vigorously, upright, with a wicker basket on his handles and a sunhat, and sunglasses. A student carrying grocery bags in each hand, heavy, his backpack loaded and heavy on his shoulders too. Cars are a steady stream, accelerating and slowing, accelerating and slowing, their engines grumbling, whining, squeaking, roaring.
A white butterfly darts through the bright green branches of the lilac, which leans into the porch before me. A car waits to turn the corner, blaring top forty pop: I recognize this song but can’t name it.
A woman walks by with her crying baby strapped to her chest, pushing an empty buggy—a fancy big-wheeled buggy like Princess Charlotte would be pushed in, which looks impractical. An SUV knocks a construction sign set in the street near our house and the vehicle sounds like it’s losing a part from its undercarriage.
“No you’re not. You are being punished. You don’t get what you want.” The woman in a floral print shirt, brown khakis and sandals speaks to a small child whose hand she is holding. The woman is so much larger than the child that I see nothing except for his or her shoes, pink sneakers. They are already gone and out of sight. Her voice was loud, irritated. I’m sure I’ve spoken to my own children with such loudness and irritation at times, although one rather wishes not to do so, especially in public. It depends on the day one is having. It depends on the patience already drawn upon, how deep the well. You don’t know, you haven’t been with us all day, you don’t know how many times I’ve kept my temper—sometimes I would think this as I would hear myself speaking with irritation to a truculent child.
But my memories are rose-tinted now, and I can hardly remember children being truculent or me being irritated, I only remember the luxurious pace of our hours, pushing a stroller with a child on a tricycle before me, pushing her along with the front of the stroller, slowly slowly progressing home from the library. Caroline Street was so hot in the summer. We would look for the pool of shade under the lone mulberry tree. I wasn’t sure the children should eat the berries that fell from the tree: “We can look it up when we get home, so we know for next time.”
A man drives by in a silver sedan, both hands on the steering wheel, a cigarette on his lower lip, his mouth open, big black headphones over his ears, sunglasses over his eyes. Why does his image stick in my head after he’s flashed past?
The leaves of the lilac are enormous, very bright where the sun strikes them. Ivy clings to the roof of the porch. By summer’s end it may trail across the roof and along the bricks by the front door. I love the way it hangs, green leaves cascading from thin brown vines.
A wall of green. The birch tree with leaves hanging heavy. The young maple tree in the front lawn beyond ours. The dark green of a coniferous bush by our front window. Green grass and clover in our yard, and a green and white hosta with tall searching stems atop which white flowers may bloom, soon.
The porch boards are grey, and dirty. They should be swept.
I haven’t cleaned anything in a very long time.
Cars roll by, cars roll by, cars roll by. And there is a bird, cheeping madly in the branches or wires over my head. Another bird, a different call, calmer. A woman in running shoes going for a brisk walk, determined.
A pair walks by on the opposite side of the street, boy and girl, the boy has a full-sleeve tattoo, which seems almost ordinary these days, if I may say so without sounding elderly, and I suppose that I can’t. Kids these days … The pair walks in perfect lock-step, though I doubt they know it. Step, step, step, their legs scissoring together and apart in perfect rhythm with each other.
The hum of insects rises, falls way. I wonder why it rises. I wonder why it falls. A child is shouting and running, a very small child in a yellow t-shirt, running with his arms pumping strongly, shouting words I don’t understand. He stops and walks. His mom and dad walk behind him, and he waits for them to catch up. “Ryan, you want Brother to move out?” “Just till my birthday, and then he’ll come back …” Maybe they aren’t mother and father after all. I can’t make sense of their conversation. They are past me. No one stops on the sidewalk and finishes their thought for my benefit.
Would these strangers mind if they knew I were writing about them?
Why do people accelerate their cars so enormously when they can see a stop sign coming up ahead? Isn’t it a waste of energy? Delusional, almost? Thinking they can get themselves to their destination faster if only they press the pedal to the floor between stop signs and turns? Do I do the same thing?
A truck rumbles noisily.
A man carries a cellophane bag of washed baby spinach in one hand, a cup of take-out coffee in the other, rubber sandals, white t-shirt, brown khaki shorts, and sunglasses on his head. He looks peeved, but I think that is just the expression he carries between his eyes, the crinkle, because of the sun. Why doesn’t he put on his sunglasses?
A woman with dark skin and long curly hair also wears her sunglasses on her head. She is staring at her phone and walking briskly, head inclined downward, dressed all in black, black pants, black tank top, black glasses, black phone. She treats the phone as if it were part of her hand. She is not thinking about walking down this sidewalk, she is somewhere else, thinking abut something else, somebody else. Smiling, the edges of her lips lightly upturned.
This is not a story. It has no end.
xo, Carrie
Storm
Yesterday, I drove my eldest to camp and dropped him off. The weather was sunny and hot. The car’s thermometer said it was 30 degrees outside. But as we came closer to our destination, a wall of grey cloud rose up on the horizon. Rain could be seen falling in sheets from a distance, lightning flashing occasionally. Albus took it in good humour—it always storms when he’s at camp. He had to go for cover during a severe tornado warning, several years ago.
We carried his gear to the dining hall along with everyone else who was arriving, and it soon started to thunder and lightning, and rain. After a brief introduction, the kids began gathering into their cabin groups, and the parents were sent on their way. I had brought an umbrella, and walked to the car in heavy rain, feeling chuffed with myself for being so prepared. But the air was cool, and I felt almost chilly in my t-shirt and knee-length leggings. When I started the car, I saw the thermometer now read 17 degrees.
I turned on the radio and found CBC as I left the camp grounds and headed east on the small country road, then south on the slightly larger country highway (Grey County 10) that cuts down to Clifford, through Hanover and Neustadt. But I didn’t get very far. Eleanor Wachtel was engaging three writers in a conversation on George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which kept my mind occupied, even as I watched the ominous shelf of heavy cloud to the west, which seemed to be blowing my way. I accelerated to pass several cars, because I had the impression that I could somehow outrace the storm. I was in a strip of clear sky overhead, no rain, no wind, as I drove down the strip of paved road between vast stretches of fields, punctuated by little clumps of thickly treed areas, a few houses, fences, barns, but mostly fields and trees.
I crossed Highway 21, which goes to Southampton, and Lake Huron. I remember glancing to my right, again, to assess the location of the cloud, still thinking I could outrace it, if only I could get past this slow-moving trailer-home in front of me. Only a few hundred feet out the passenger window, I glimpsed a stream in amongst trees, the whole of the scene stirred into a whirl, as if it were being thrashed by an invisible force. I can see it right now in my mind’s eye: a grey force, rattling the leaves and branches, bending the trees, stirring the water, within a rapidly descending fog. It’s that near to me, I thought. I’ve got less than a minute and it will be here. And then it struck the tiny car full-force, a powerful wind, heavy rain. My windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. I kept driving like an automaton, not sure what else to do, following the trailer-home. We crossed a small bridge that took us between a thick patch of trees planted close to the road, and I could see debris flying, and the car was struck with a branch, the treetops were whirling, and I knew, suddenly, that this was very dangerous weather. But what could I do?
I must stop somewhere with less trees, I thought. The trailer-home pulled into the gravel at the side of the road, and other cars coming from the opposite direction were doing the same, so I pulled over too, coming to stop in an area with a few trees far enough from the road that I didn’t think they could fall on me. I didn’t even notice the power lines overhead. On the radio, making it all the much worse, a siren began sounding, interrupting the voices of the women talking about George Eliot, and an automated voice informed me that the area in which I was driving was under a tornado watch or warning, and that I was being advised to take shelter immediately.
Take shelter? Where? I’m sitting with the car still in drive, my foot on the brake pedal, my body shaking uncontrollably, asking the automated voice where exactly would it advise me to take cover? My new car felt approximately as substantial as a tin can. At moments, the blasts of wind seemed to lift it almost off the ground. I imagined it spinning through the air like a blown piece of trash. I realized that there was no point in keeping the car in drive, and that my muscles must relax in order to stop shaking. I geared into park, and remembered that I had a cellphone.
I began texting Kevin. No response. Here is my series of (completely over-the-top hysterical) texts to him:
I’m in tornado.
No shit.
Can’t find hazards
Should I leave car and get down in ditch?
How big is storm?please help if you can
The reason I considered abandoning the car and getting down in the ditch was because only a couple of days ago I heard a news report about a massive tornado in western Canada that ravaged an area for hours, and two teens, brothers, recounted how they abandoned the pickup they’d been driving and lay flat in a ditch waiting for the storm to pass—should I do the same? Is this what one does? It came to me that I possessed zero survival knowledge in this situation, and that my instinct was paralysis, essentially: to freeze and fearfully hope for the best. Hope that I wouldn’t be the unfortunate person who finds herself in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I could find the hazards! I dropped the phone on the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment to find the manual. The car is new enough that I’d not yet had occasion to use the hazards, and couldn’t have found the symbol if my life depended on it—couldn’t even remember, in my state of mind, what the symbol for hazards looked like. In the index I found the page listing: “Page 176,” I said out loud, which curiously made me feel better, and I turned to the page, and read that the hazards are conveniently located near the radio controls.
Ah. That’s it. I pressed the button and felt more in control. I’d forced myself to behave in a calm and rational manner. The storm was not abating, however, so it occurred to me to phone home. My elder daughter answered, and I freaked her out while trying to sound calm, and then Kevin came on the line. He looked up the storm on the radar. Yes, I was right in the heart of it, but it was one long narrow path running north to south, and should be by me soon. He assured me that it was nowhere near camp, which eased my mind enormously. I kept thinking of how I’d left my kid in a camp dining-hall in what was maybe a tornado.
The trailer-home pulled out. I decided to pull out too.
I stopped once more when the wind got heavy again, parked in the shelter of a driving shed with another woman in her vehicle, both of us glancing at each other but what else could we do? Then I resumed driving again. The sky was alight with flickers of lightning, almost constant. I started to think I was imagining them. The storm didn’t seem to vanish, as promised. A utility pole that had snapped in half dangled over the highway on wires. It occurred to me, as I passed it, that I shouldn’t have parked underneath the electrical lines, earlier. I listened to a call-in show on the newly-called federal election, but I was hardly listening. I was in a dream-state, really. My focus on the road, my emotions pressed down deep. I chased the storm all the way home, kilometre after kilometre of tension and rain and wind—at one point tracking west to try to escape it, only to finish in Waterloo, on the homestretch, under a torrent of hail, and thick rain.
As I drove down Bridgeport, minutes from home, the sun came out and shone in my eyes—but it was raining heavily. The contrast was comical. Then it stopped suddenly, suddenly clear. The street ahead was blocked off by emergency vehicles, so I took a detour, and finally, I was in our driveway, home. On our front steps I leaned down and picked up a piece of hail that was quickly melting, as big as a quarter. I was jelly-limbed. Kevin fed me burritos. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. When I lay down, I couldn’t rest. I felt both drained and wired all at once.
It wasn’t that I thought I was going to die—not really. But it did occur to me that this was a situation in which death would not be a completely unreasonable outcome. “Don’t let anyone publish anything I’ve been working on,” I instructed Kevin over the phone. “It’s not ready. It shouldn’t ever be published.”
“Um, okay,” he said.
I didn’t feel a need to give him last-minute instructions on child-rearing, because he knows what to do and what could I say in a ridiculously cliched phone conversation in the middle of a storm to make a worst-case scenario outcome better? But my publishing legacy—that seemed important to try to control.
Is it sad that I’m in the middle of projects that are incomplete, insufficient, unready? It isn’t that sad. I’ve published some good things, and it would be fine to leave it at that. It also isn’t sad because the potential of the incomplete and unready is good, when a person is around to fulfill it, and here I am, alive and well, sitting with earplugs in, listening to my daughter play and sing a song she’s composed on the ukulele—she’s even printed out the lyrics and chords—and I’m writing something, even if it’s only this. I’m here and I can keep working away at these ideas and projects and can hope, eventually, maybe, to finish something else I’ll be proud of, worth sharing.
When I walked through the door, safely home, I was drained of emotion. I’d spent the last two and a half hours trying to feel nothing at all—or instinctively feeling as little as possible, emotions useless in the situation, because they’d only overwhelm rational action and thought. I felt removed. The sensation was physical—that was why it felt so peculiar, so particular. It was like my eyes and ears couldn’t transmit deeper information to my brain, like there was a fog of rain between my brain and my body. My body was this blurred heavy weight that I was dragging like stone, but it was also me, I could recognize it as me. But this was a me that was blurred, heavy, indistinct. I couldn’t feel myself. And I didn’t care.
And now, let me be a little less melodramatic: passing through the storm was a minor trauma. Had I not been alone, it might not have seemed so dire, in truth.
After devouring the burritos and drinking several enormous glasses of water, I binge-watched Brooklyn Nine-Nine with AppleApple. Later, I played the ukulele in the dark, somehow recalling lyrics and chords to a vast number of Leonard Cohen songs, which made me feel 18 again—exactly 18 years old, when Leonard Cohen songs were my summer soundtrack and longing and love were fresh and his lyrics made perfect and perfectly romantic sense: “I loved you in the morning, your kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm. Many loved before us, I know that we are not new, in city and in forest, they smiled like me and you. But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie, your eyes are soft with sorrow, hey that’s no way to say goodbye.” (Except, I see now, in looking up the lyrics, that I’ve remembered them wrong, and the love or chains line comes in a later verse… but it is a good line, possibly the best in the song, so I’ll leave it as it is, and sing it like that, when I sing it again, in the dark.)
xo, Carrie
Two summer salads
It’s bloody hot this week in Canada. So we’re working with a salad theme for supper, and it’s been both easy and quite pleasant. If you have a favourite recipe, pass it on, please. I still need salad ideas for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Note: I haven’t done a post on recipes for AGES, because a) Kevin does a lot of the supper prep now, and b) we almost never make anything exciting or original. So these recipes must be good to have inspired me to note them down… Either that or the heat is addling my brain and I’ve got nothing else of interest to write about.)
Taco salad
Combine in your biggest mixing bowl: one head of lettuce, torn and washed; several cups of cabbage, chopped; half of an onion, chopped; two cobs’ worth of fresh corn kernels; one can of black beans, rinsed and drained; one green pepper, chopped.
To make the dressing, whirl together in a blender the following ingredients: between 1/2 – 3/4 cups buttermilk; the leaves off a bunch of cilantro, washed; one peeled clove of garlic; one scant teaspoon of sea salt; one tablespoon olive oil; the juice of one very juicy lime, or 1/4 cup’s worth; 1/2 teaspoon chili powder.
Pour the dressing over the salad. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir in one cup of grated cheese (or more). Serve with corn tortilla chips at the table, letting each person crush his or her own and add to the salad on the plate.
::
Peanut & ginger pasta salad
Cook up a 450-gram package of pasta in salted water. I made farfalle, because that’s what we had in the cupboard. Drain, rinse, cool, and toss into into a larger serving bowl. Add nicely matchsticked veggies like: red pepper, cucumber, carrot. Or grated. Fresh peas or corn kernels would be good too.
Cut a block of tofu into cubes, place on baking tray, douse with olive oil and tamari sauce, and a sprinkle of salt, and roast in the oven until delicious. (Bake at 425 for about ten minutes, shaking the tray now and again.) Add tofu to pasta.
For the dressing, mix together the following ingredients: 1/4 to 1/2 cup of peanut butter; two tablespoons of hot water; one clove of garlic, finely chopped; one tablespoon tamari sauce; one tablespoon of ginger root, finely chopped; the juice and zest of one lime; several green onions, chopped; one teaspoon sugar; salt and pepper to taste.
Pour the dressing over the pasta, add extra peanuts if you’d like, and some greens (I didn’t), and serve.
And then forget to take photos of either salad because you’re about to rush out the door to some early evening soccer-related event or another.
xo, Carrie
PS Bonus Recipe: Bean Salad!
I have to add a third recipe, a dressing for bean salad, because my mom had some when she was here on Wednesday (our third day of salads), and she LOVED it. She’s now taken the recipe to Tennessee, where my aunt and uncle loved it too.
You know how to make a bean salad. I used canned beans: black, red, and chickpea. Fresh corn sliced off the cob (about six cobs). Half an onion, chopped. Spinach. Green pepper. Some green onions too.
For the dressing: 1/4 to 1/2 cup buttermilk; 1/4 cup olive oil; 1-2 teaspoons sea salt (to taste); 3 cloves garlic; 1 to 2 tablespoons oregano; 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar; the juice of one lemon; black pepper to taste: whirl all ingredients in blender. Pour over salad. Leftovers taste great too, as you can imagine. If you want to try making this vegan, substitute a ripe avocado for the buttermilk. (I didn’t have a ripe avocado, or I would have tried; therefore, I cannot personally vouch for this method.)