Why I Like the November Postcard Swap

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It’s November! Every November for the last… hmm…more than fifteen years, I’ve taken part in National Novel Writing Month. I’ve started November with an idea, and attempted to write a 50,000 word rough draft of a story before December 1st. Sometimes I’ve even succeeded.

The NaNoWriMo website is no more, sadly. I signed up for the Novel November website sponsored by Pro Writing Aid, but I don’t like their dashboard or much else about their version. But none of this is really relevant to my post, which is about swapping postcards with other writers who are also writing in November. I have participated in that swap for… I really don’t know, but I’m sure it’s been at least five years.

Why do I like swapping postcards with other writers? Getting a postcard in the mail is like getting a little surprise package. There’s a picture on one side, and a message on the other, and no knowing what either will be like. I’ve gotten antique postcards, travel postcards, art postcards. I’ve gotten a postcard of people lounging aboard a ship, a postcard of paths diverging in a park, and a postcard of a cat riding a unicorn.

A sample of postcards I’ve received

And then there’s the message. There isn’t much space on a postcard. Since we’re all writing madly, or hoping to, there’s usually something about writing. I find I’m very curious about other people’s writing projects. So many ideas, so much potential. Sometimes there’s something about why they chose that year’s story idea, which is also fascinating.

Often we send each other encouragement. “Just keep putting down words! The ideas will come.” Maybe we’re both writing mysteries, or fantasy YA, or something middle-grade. When I can, I like to choose my postcards based on whatever the writer said about their project in their sign-up info, hoping that the card may be extra inspiring that way.

Another thing I enjoy about postcards, strange as it sounds, is seeing people’s actual handwriting. How do they write–big or small, cursive or print, in colored ink or plain black? It reminds me that there’s a real person at the other end of the swap, who sat down to write me this message. Sometimes people add stickers, or washi tape, for extra decoration.

And finally, people who sign up to write postcards are always so nice in their postcards! It makes me feel good about humanity when I receive one.

And so, if you are swapping postcards with me this year, thank you! I hope you enjoy your card.

Till next post.

“Fresh Fruit Cream Cake”–even the name sounds delightful

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The kittens rampaging through my house knocked an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated off a shelf–May/June 2024. I flipped through it, on my way to reshelving it, and stopped at a recipe for Fresh Fruit Cream Cake.

Something about the phrase “cream cake” just sounds irresistable to me, so I read (or re-read) the article and discovered the author Andrea Geary started with a cross between a castella cake (which I hadn’t heard of) and a chiffon cake. The technique sounded different–and interesting! I decided I must try it and find out what it was like.

I suspect the reason I didn’t make the cake when I first got the issue is that I am not really a fan of fluffy things with fruit on top. I have always looked dubiously at recipes for pavlova, for instance. But I do like strawberries with shortcake and whipped cream, and I thought that the right cake would be just the thing for strawberry season.

(It isn’t strawberry season now, obviously. I’m just thinking ahead.)

So I tried making a half recipe. This was a bit complicated since the cake is meant to be tall, but I worked it out by using a 6″ round instead of a 9″. It was close enough. I also didn’t bake it for quite as long.

Yes, it’s so tall it needs a collar.

I’m not going to give the recipe, since I don’t feel right copying out a recipe from a magazine. However, I’m going to tell you that there is only a cup of cake flour per six eggs. The recipe relies on whipped egg whites, uses a water bath in the oven, and bakes for around an hour. The result is a very fine-grained, fluffy, spongy cake (all those eggs). Not dense like pound cake, and not crumbly-delicate like most butter cakes. This one is flavored with vanilla.

I’m also going to tell you that the whipped cream that fills and tops the cake is made with 5 tsp instant pudding mix (it MUST be instant) per 2 1/2 cups of heavy cream. There is also some sugar, and I added vanilla extract as well because I didn’t think the pudding would add enough vanilla flavor. I found the pudding mix did not incorporate as well as it should have–there was a yellow sticky smudge on the side of the bowl–but I think it did help keep the whipped cream from oozing.

I could have taken more time with the frosting…

I enjoyed trying something new. The cake was pretty good and will probably make a really nice strawberry cream cake come April. But I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to displace any of our preferred birthday cakes.

Blueberries taste good with whipped cream, but are not attractive when cut in half.

In Celebration of our Flag on Flag Day

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To celebrate the flag of our great nation, I thought I’d say something about why, exactly, I love this country.

First, though, I need to list some of the goals that I think most of us have in common–the way we want this country to be.

We want to live in a country where everyone prospers. We want a country where each person has an opportunity to contribute to society, whether in a paying job or otherwise, and where everyone who puts in a full day’s work has enough to live on.

We want a country where people treat each other with respect, and receive the same in return.

We want a country with laws that apply equally to everyone, whether rich or poor, powerful or powerless.

But having these goals in common doesn’t mean we’re going to agree on how to reach them, and indeed, we all know that whenever you have a large enough group of people, there will be disagreement. Sometimes passionate disagreement.

And yet, we have to work together somehow. So we decided on a particular form of government, one that grants everyone a voice yet makes it possible to reach decisions. It’s a foregone conclusion that not everyone will like every decision, and that not every decision will turn out to have been a good one, but we’ve agreed to go along with the decisions so long as they follow from a fair process.

We designed our government knowing not only that people are fallible, but also that power corrupts and that even good people can lose touch with what’s right. So we divided the powers among three branches, to provide checks and balances. We placed limits on how long people can hold executive or legislative power before needing to be re-elected. We added a two-term limit for presidents, because we didn’t want any one person to accumulate too much power. (And why we don’t have something similar for legislators, I don’t know… but that’s another topic.)

We designed our government with the goal of being able to correct missteps when we recognize them. It doesn’t happen by itself, but the potential is there. And that is something I love about our country.

And yeah, no kings.

Till next post.