Eggs in a Jiffy

Some mornings are just those mornings. We all have them!

That’s when my delicious eggs-in-a-jiffy recipe has just been a lifesaver.

I make these almost every day. It keeps me full till lunch!

When I fed these to the hubby, he couldn’t believe they were eggs!

My kids ask for breakfast at every meal so they can have mom’s famous egg scramble!

(Of course I don’t feed it to them every meal, haha, though it would be easy enough to, haha.)

This meal is so quick and easy to make you can make it in the same time it takes to make a pourover or a press coffee.

I guess if you’re vegan you can modify it by using chia seeds.

What really makes it is the EVOO! I love that rich taste with the creamy eggs. Mmm!

And of course a little bit of sea salt. The coarser texture of sea salt over table salt really makes a difference.

I think the best part of this recipe is it’s only three ingredients.

Yes, you read that right! Three!

OK I think I’ve talked up enough now that I ought to give you the recipe!

This is a great recipe for beginners but I think seasoned chefs will enjoy its beautiful simplicity.

Feel free to share this recipe with your friends or on your blog! I just ask that you credit me as your source and link back to my blog. 🙂

So without further ado…

Ingredients:

Two eggs, raw
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Sea Salt, to taste

Place a non-stick pan on medium heat. Add roughly 1-2 TBS EVOO, enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Crack eggs directly into the pan. Scramble with a fork. Once thoroughly scrambled, add a pinch of sea salt and use a silicone spatula to gently fold the eggs until they come to a creamy but not dry consistency. If desired, add freshly ground black pepper, hot sauce, bacon, scallions, garlic, or mushrooms.

Enjoy!

XOXO,

Corinne

Disclaimer: I do not have a husband or children.

Disclaimer #2: This post is a joke.

A Ghost Story

I did it. I kindled.

If I’ve been absent from blogging for a week it’s because I was caught up in a new short story idea. I’m sorry – I can’t do both blogging and fictioning at the same time. Not and have a job.

I’ve loved writing fiction since elementary school – starting with a turkey named Tom whose true love got eaten at Thanksgiving while he was in hiding. (Spoiler: next Thanksgiving he didn’t hide. I was a morbid child.) Some switch flipped in college, though, and I stopped writing fiction. Maybe it was all the writing I had to do for my history degree – maybe it was that writing facts was being hammered into my brain week after week – or maybe it was that I found new delight in writing a snarky opinion column for my university’s newspaper.

I didn’t spend much time on fiction, other than jotting down cool ideas, until about a year ago, when a friend of mine asked me to join her on a project.

Since then I’ve done NaNoWriMo and started working on multiple short stories. Suddenly, I love writing fiction again. That selfsame friend who invited me on her project, encouraged me to do NaNoWriMo, and encouraged me to try short stories (my favorite genre to read), self-published a story on Kindle last week.

That prompted me to philosophical consideration: should I, too, try self-publishing? 

You can tell how much I respect this friend by how much I take her advice and copy her actions. (We’ve been writing buddies since middle school. We even had a writing club called Inklings. 10 points if you get that.)

I decided that, at this point in my life, playing around with self-publishing would help more than it would hurt. Maybe someday writing will be my livelihood (I can only hope), but right now it’s just my hobby.

So I churned out this little ghost story.

It’s inspired by the creepy lake I grew up on (a flooded valley, a la O Brother, Where Art Thou); an old swimming hole where my grandfather grew up; and the evocatively named “Lake Lurleen” off I-20 (who is Lurleen? So much mystery.*).

There’s just something unspokenly eerie about lakes in the South. I’ve also always felt that the South is a more ancient place, with pockets of stuck time and old legends. Like in the rush for Reconstruction, things got left behind.

Because you are a faithful reader, you get a wee excerpt of the story:

I hesitated at the lake’s edge, thinking of cottonmouths. The sun was going down anyway and it wasn’t as hot. I had to do it, though. I’d challenged her. I’d set myself up as fearless and if I didn’t follow through I’d be “that city kid.” It was bad enough that when I would get back to school at the end of the summer my friends would make fun of my “hick” accent I’d picked up.

I pulled my shorts off and then my shirt, bare child chest reveling in bravery and the setting sun. It was still plenty hot, and my clothes peeled off like a snakeskin. I was standing in just my britches by the water.

“You scared?” she said behind me, taunting me back.

“No way.” I waded in. God, please don’t let me get bit by a cottonmouth, I prayed silently, closing my eyes to make my prayer more fervent and acceptable to God.

If you want to read all of Sarah Gray, you can find it on Amazon under my penname, E.J. Gandy, with a lurid and enticing description full of dramatic cliff-hangers to tempt you.

 

*Wikipedia tells me it’s named after Lurleen Wallace, Alabama’s only female governer. The magic is gone – I never should have Googled it.

To Kindle or not to Kindle?

To self-publish or not to self-publish? That is the question.

Even knowing as excessively little as I do about the world of publishing, I know that there are massive benefits for an author willing to go the traditional route. I also know that, to those in the publishing industry, the idea of self-publishing is tantamount to sacrilege. And you know, who can blame them? It’s an old, hallowed industry threatening to be overwhelmed by a tide of crappy electronic books.

Even as a reader, I get irritated by the piss-poor excuses for literature that crop up in my suggestions on Amazon and BookBub.

Sacristy! Professionalism! Quality!

When self-published e-books became a thing, I had one view of them: wannabes.

But then people like Andy Weir come along and self-publish their love-child debut novel and it goes wildly crazy popular and gets made into an Oscar-nominated movie starring Jason Bourne himself, and I stop to think…

Hmmmm….

Let’s step back a sec and pretend I’m not as good a writer as Andy Weir (ha, what hubris I have on this fine Monday).

There are still people who self-publish sub-par romances and YA novels on Kindle and they actually make money. And that gets me thinking, can I self-publish some fun pandery stuff under a pseudonym, get practice, and maybe make a little extra bit o’ money, just maybe a wee little bit?

And you know there are writers and novelists who were just brilliant but never got their work accepted by a publisher, for one reason or another. Self-publishing is a way to prevent that kind of literary tragedy. My friend just published a short story on Kindle (read it here) and I’m thrilled about it. She deserves to be read!

In the world of Kindle and YouTube and WordPress, everybody has a voice and there’s no filter except for the masses (and SEO…). Is that good, or is it bad?

What do you think? Trust the judgment of traditional publishing companies, or throw it all out there on e-book and hope it sticks?

Eureka! Falling in Love Again.

I have found it!

Last week I complained that I was just not that into a popular book, and that my inability to finish it had put a serious kink in my desire to read.

I shamelessly gave up on that book and moved on. I read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which was definitely good but ultimately more suited to analysis and discussion than pure enjoyment.

Then, it happened.

I started The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. And I fell in love.

[Just to clarify, I’m not talking about The Martian of the recent Matt Damon movie. I reviewed that book here.]

The book started out funny and slightly strange. It escalated to full-on poetic beauty by the end. Bradbury is the master of short stories, and is even more the master of short stories that connect in a larger, poignant narrative.

Sigh.

If you too, dear reader, are suffering through a lackluster book like I was – don’t stay in that bad relationship. Move on.

You will find a better love.

 

It’s not what you think It is.

Today’s post comes to you in the form of an unapologetic, unequivocating RANT.

The function of language – writing, grammar, etc – is to communicate. I’m not perfect at grammar and I don’t mind when someone’s language isn’t “correct” or “proper” as long as they’re getting their idea across. I especially don’t mind it when that person is speaking English as a second or third language (or beyond!), because that person has already far exceeded me in the language and communication department.

What I do mind is when professionals whose main job is communicating in English, their first language, make very basic grammar mistakes that they should have learned about in 3rd grade.

Like this ad I saw on Facebook yesterday, that wanted me to know “The Hunger Games comes to it’s shocking conclusion in Mockingjay Part 2!”

Seems like I see this particular mistake more and more these days. On billboards, in headlines, in publications…it’s not comma useage, people, it’s not that complicated!

It’s = It is.

Its = belonging to it.

No one understands me.

Where do you use a semi-colon, what kind of sentence structure does poetic license allow, do we need an Oxford comma – these are the difficult questions. These are the things that deserve some leniency. But if it is LITERALLY YOUR PAID JOB to write English well, GET IT RIGHT.