I thought I ordered a lazy summer!
Dear friends,
I honestly don't know how this summer got so many things in it. Did someone use a shoehorn. What is even going on with this. Wasn't there some kind of theory that summer would be a lazy, low-key time? Where did I miss the sign-up for that? ("With your entire personality, Marissa," okay, yes, fair.)
A couple bits of publication news this time around, with more to come next month. First, the reprint of last year's Sunday Morning Transport story "Exiled to Gravity" is now out in Year's Best Hard SF Stories 8. You can order it here. I haven't read it yet, but I'm pretty excited about a couple of the other things in there, and of course having additional formats is cool. Including a paperback! Nifty!
And speaking of things available in multiple formats, my poem "Panthalassa" is out in the current issue of Analog, on newsstands or available here. Ever wonder what the name for the giant ocean was when Pangaea was the giant continent? It was Panthalassa, the ancient and primordial world-ocean, and of course I ended up having to write a poem about that. Water, always water.
(We are thoroughly out of drought here, finally. I can't tell you how happy this makes me after the last three years. I know, the flooding is a worry. I know. But--it feels so wrong to have dusty drought land here, this is a lake state, and I belong in it.)
It rained for the picnic I hosted last week, and it was fine, I had reserved a picnic shelter and we had a lovely time while it drizzled outside the shelter. One of the kids got pretty wet playing on the playground, no apparent regrets. I know that my vegan friends aren't eating my vegan baking all the time, but I still feel weird if I make the same thing for them too often, so I made up a new cookie for this picnic, and here's the recipe for you. You can easily make it non-vegan, or gluten-free, or a number of other modifications.
Best,
Marissa
Banana Strawberry Cookies
2 mashed bananas
1 1/2 c sugar
2/3 c oleomargarine such as Earth Balance (butter will be fine if that's what you have/prefer)
1 T vanilla
1/2 t salt
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1 t baking soda
2 1/2 c flour (all purpose gf will be fine if you need that)
1 c chopped dried strawberries
Preheat oven to 350 F if you're in a rush.
Work the sugar into the mashed banana with a fork or pastry blender. Melt the oleo and combine with the banana-sugar mix. Add vanilla, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, stir. Add flour and stir well. Fold in chopped strawberries.
Chilling this dough will improve it (in which case do the preheating after you’ve chilled a few hours or overnight) but they'll be okay if you forget. Drop spoonsful onto cookie sheets lined with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat, leaving lots of space between cookies. (6-8 cookies per sheet was my limit.) Bake about 12 minutes. Bang the tray on the counter a couple of times when you remove from the oven to deflate. Let cool before transferring to rack or container--they start fragile.
Notes: You can halve this recipe if for some reason you only want a dozen or so cookies. If you don't have dried strawberries, then what? Well, chopped dried apricots, probably, or chopped nuts, or chocolate chips. The latter two would put it into a more familiar cookie flavor profile but not a bad one.