So it turns out that most fudge recipes require a candy thermometer. (See the comments below the post "Beginner's Crepes.") I don't have one of those, which made a great excuse for a trip down the road to Williams-Sonoma.

The trip produced an imitation of an antique candy thermometer for $35, which seemed exorbitant for something that would function perfectly well without the retro styling. So I decided to put off the thermometer purchase, and instead I browsed through the cookbooks for free until I found a thermometer-free fudge recipe that was simple enough to memorize. (It was in the book entitled "Sweet Treats," designed for kids.)

Now, I'm not a big fan of plagiarism, and posting their recipe on my blog would have been WRONG. So I decided to play around with the recipe to make up something of my own.

Leaving Williams-Sonoma, I was almost killed by a Barbie look-alike in a white minivan. Fortunately I managed to dodge her frazzled suburban blitz for the parking lot exit. Surging with adrenaline, I tossed her a gesture of frustrated outrage that I picked up as a Jersey kid. Despite the Georgia/Jersey cultural divide, I think I made myself clear.

So here's the fudge recipe that almost cost me my life: EM Sky's super secret recipe for
CoCoNuFf (Chewy Coconut Nuclear Fudge).

Step One: read through all the rest of the steps ahead of time so you know you have everything you need. That's ALWAYS Step One.

Step Two: line a refrigerator-safe container with tin foil (an 8"x 8" baking pan works nicely, but you could use Tupperware just as easily) and GREASE the tin foil with COOKING OIL. That's to help the fudge come out when it's done.

Step Three: put TWO CUPS of mini marshmallows, and ONE CUP of sweetened coconut together in a bowl. That way when the chocolate is perfectly melted you don't have to mess around with measuring stuff, accidentally letting the chocolate cool and messing up all that melting work.

Step Four: put ONE 12-OUNCE BAG of SEMI-SWEET chocolate chips in a MICROWAVE-SAFE bowl along with ONE 14-OUNCE CAN of SWEETENED, CONDENSED milk. Nuke them in the microwave to melt the chocolate. (That's the nuclear part.) I tried to melt the chocolate by itself, but it didn't go very well. The condensed milk really needs to be in there. This step took a few minutes, nuking the mixture once for 90 seconds and then 30-45 seconds at a time, and I mixed it up in between each heating. You want to MELT the chocolate, but not boil it. The point is to melt it without changing the texture.

Step Five: mix the bowl of mini marshmallows and coconut into the melted chocolate. When it's all mixed together, spread it into the tinfoiled container.

Step Six: top it with some more coconut (or skip that part for a more "traditional" fudge look) and put the mixture in the fridge for about 30 minutes (until it sets--it will take longer if you spread it more thickly in a smaller pan). Then take it out, cut it up, and eat it! (Um, I mean serve it.)

By the way, the fudge doesn't seem to have quite the same consistency as "traditional" fudge. I'm going to refrigerate it overnight to see what happens. At the moment it's a bit gooey, but it still tastes wonderful.

And one last note: substituting some Rice Krispies for some of the marshmallows doesn't work well. The Rice Krispies get all soggy in the melted chocolate and lose their crunch. Trust me, I tried it. I thought it would be really cool to add something crispy, but I'm going to have to think of something else. If you come up with something, let me know.

Steven's son Triston--the delightful hero of the batting glove story--has apparently promoted me. He's six years old, and he's trying to work out the nuances of family relationships. He understands the "traditional" varieties: Mom, Dad, Sister, Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, Grandma, Grandpa. But he can't quite figure me out.

For a few weeks now, he's been asking whether I'm his aunt, his stepmother, his backup mother (in case his own mother died--he happens to be working out both death and relationships simultaneously)... anything he can think of. Although Steven and I aren't married, we've been together for five years so I've been in Triston's life for as long as he can remember. To Triston, I'm FAMILY, and he's figured out that family relationships all have names. But he doesn't know what this one is.

We've tried to explain to him that there's no word in English for "unmarried life partner of my father." I am definitely family, but I don't have a category. But in the logic of six year olds everywhere, this response is entirely unacceptable and therefore must be wrong. (Triston is also starting to work out the times when people can be expected to LIE, and it's making him suspicious of our vague responses. Six is a big year.)

Apparently he's finally given up on getting a straight answer from anyone, so he's simply promoted me to my very own category. The kids have always called me by my middle name (long story), so now when Triston talks about his family he describes his mother, his father, his sister, and his michelle, as in: "My dad is a firefighter, and my michelle is a writer."

I'm not just Michelle anymore. I'm a michelle. More specifically, I'm Triston's michelle. I've never been more proud.

Taylor (Steven's daughter) at age eight, on learning about the Cyclorama (the circular diorama in Atlanta's Grant Park that depicts the Civil War):

"The South lost???"

apocryphal adj. 1.Of questionable authorship or authenticity. 2. Erroneous; fictitious. 3. Apocryphal Bible Of the Apocrypha.--apocryphally adv.

--The American Heritage dic-tion-ar-y, Fourth Edition

No reader's journal could possibly be complete without an overwhelming abundance of quotes from Alexander McCall Smith, author of the wildly popular The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

It would be utter lunacy to include every one of my favorite McCall Smith quotes here in The Eclectic Reader, not to mention that the sheer volume of the writing would constitute an egregious violation of copyright law, as virtually every line of every McCall Smith novel is eminently quotable. I shall therefore do my best to limit myself to a few quotes that happen to include GRE-level vocabulary, starting with this one:

'Accounts of attacks by black mambas are often exaggerated, and stories of the snakes' attacking men on galloping horses, and overtaking them, are almost certainly apocryphal. The mamba can manage a consderable speed over a very short distance, but could not compete with a horse.'

--Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, purportedly quoting The Snakes of Southern Africa

"By the end of the evening, Horseman was flying. His manner became imperious; he played to the hilt the part of an English butler and announced new arrivals as though shouting over hundreds of people. He was magnificent."

--Monty Roberts, The Man Who Listens to Horses

So it's already the 20th and I haven't posted anything here since the 16th. But just for you, my loyal readers, I'm going to backdate a few posts here to fill in the gaps.

So where have I been? Well, cooking for one thing. I'm in the process of picking up cooking as a new skill, and it turns out there's quite a bit to it.

I'm not talking about heating up spaghetti sauce in a pan or boiling eggs, you understand. I'm quite capable with the basics. But lately I've been wanting to learn how to make dishes with more interesting names, like beef stroganoff or creme brule. Things that would impress people at parties. Not that I go to any parties. I can't remember the last time I went to a party. But I'd still like to be more impressed with my own cooking, so I'm branching out.

Today I tried crepes for the first time, and I'm sorry to say that there are good number of "hints" that got left out of the Better Homes and Gardens recipe. Perhaps people with better homes and gardens already know these things, but I'm clearly not in the loop. I think the editors of this rather voluminous tome ought to come out with a "beginner's edition."

Crepes may not seem like a "beginner's" dish, but there's a first time for everything. Just because you can make pancakes does NOT mean you can make crepes. Trust me on that. Here are a few "translations" I think the editors should have included...

1. "Heat a lightly greased 6-inch skillet..." Butter works better than canola oil. I didn't try any other oils, but I suspect the results would have been similar. The butter sticks to the pan and really greases it, but the oil runs all over the place and doesn't coat the pan very well. It would probably work fine if you didn't mind letting the pan cool between crepes or using some heat-resistant tool to do the greasing, but if you're more of a "just tilt the pan around" sort of person, you should really use butter. Also, "heat" on an electric stove labeled from 1 to 9 means somewhere between 3 and 4. I guessed pretty well on that one.

2. "Invert over paper towels; remove crepe." This sounds a lot easier than it is. My first two crepes came out in shreds. I got far better results by running a spatula under the edges of the crepe to loosen it before inverting the pan. Nonetheless, there was one inexplicable spot in the middle that insisted on sticking every single time. Using a non-stick pan would probably help tremendously, but I was using a crepe pan of traditional steel--should we call these "stick pans" now, as opposed to the "non-stick" variety? For more hints regarding the stickiness problem, see number 3.

3. "Repeat with remaining batter, greasing skillet occasionally." Here, the word "occasionally" is being used in the sense of "every single time." I am reminded of The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." I tried greasing the pan "occasionally," and every crepe after the first one stuck to the pan. So grease the pan every time, no matter what the directions say. (Unless of course you're using a non-stick pan, in which case the word "occasionally" may be appropriate. But the directions specify a lightly greased pan, not a non-stick pan, so I felt somewhat led astray.)

4. "Makes 18 crepes." Yeah, if you've never made crepes before and you're still willing to stand in front of a hot stove and go through this crepe-making process 18 times in a row, then my hat's off to you. Seriously. My recipe made about 7 crepes before I packed up shop and stored the rest away in the fridge. It's also worth mentioning that a beginner will be lucky to get three or four really good crepes out of the first batch, so make your first ones for practice. Don't take on a dinner party until you've gotten some crepe-making experience under your belt. Enough said.

So that's my first contribution to the beginner's edition of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. Anyone else? (Or if you have a request, let me know. I'll try the recipe, and then I'll be sure to let you know everything that can possibly go wrong, just to save you the trouble.)

I really love Yann Martel's writing. My reader's journal racked up quite a few entries from his Life of Pi. Mr. Martel commands a formidable vocabulary, and he uses it well--which is to say sparingly, but to great effect.

Far too many of the "great" literati use their vocabulary more as an ego boost than an art form, but Martel's writing encompasses a highly effective blend of the esoteric and the mundane, making his work oh so delightfully readable. Take a look at this beautifully descriptive passage from page one:

I had the great luck one summer of studying the three-toed sloth in situ in the equatorial jungles of Brazil. It is a highly intriguing creature. Its only real habit is indolence. ... The sloth is at its busiest at sunset, using the word busy here in the most relaxed sense. It moves along the bough of a tree in its characteristic upside-down position at the speed of roughly 400 metres an hour. On the ground, it crawls to its next tree at the rate of 250 metres an hour, when motivated, which is 440 times slower than a motivated cheetah. Unmotivated, it covers four to five metres in an hour.

I love this passage not only for its obvious descriptive talent but also for its ability to tell the reader so much about the narrator while ostensibly talking about sloths. There's so much personality packed into less than half a page.

I feel obliged to mention the fact that the book is not for the squeamish. I have no interest in divulging the plot, so enough said. But if you're interested in some wonderful writing (and a fascinating story), pick up Life of Pi and read the first few pages. I was hooked in two paragraphs.

I'll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

--Yann Martel, Life of Pi, at 28 [Harcourt, 2001, first U.S. edition].

For some years now, I've been in the habit of keeping a "reader's journal." I like to write down my favorite passages from whatever I'm currently reading, including any vocabulary and/or word usage that particularly appeals to me.

I don't do this for every book I read, and I must admit that I have several books in my "backlog"--my favorite passages are marked with sticky notes but they haven't yet been transferred to the journal. Still, I find that it's a worthwhile habit. I like to go back from time to time and read over my old favorites.

I'm introducing the "eclectic reader" category within the Cobblestone Cafe in order to share some of my favorite passages and also to provide some gratuitous promotion to authors whose books I have profoundly enjoyed. So if you're looking for a good read, check out the eclectic reader for my personal recommendations.

Happy reading!

In the spring of 1994, I spent four months living in Toledo, Spain. Every day, during siesta, I used to walk through the cobblestone streets of the historic district to a little cafe I had discovered there. It was at least a mile away from the school where I was studying -- too far for the other students to bother with -- so I was always assured of anonymity and a solid dose of local atmosphere.

I would while away the afternoon drinking the house specialty -- a preternaturally sweet concoction of coffee and condensed milk -- and, of course, writing.

I have always loved writing. I love everything about it. I love books and bookstores and libraries. I love old typewriters and sheets of blank paper piled in an expectant stack. My love for pens and journals borders on the absurd.

When I was in Spain, I allowed myself to indulge profoundly in the luxury of writing for the first time in my life. For four months, I was free of all responsibility. I had no car, no job, no errands, no bills. The classes I attended were purely voluntary. I had nothing but time... time to dream, time to contemplate, and time to write.

In honor of this special chapter in my life, I've introduced a new category to the blog: The Cobblestone Cafe.

Here you'll find interviews with some of my very favorite people, both real and fictitious, sometimes even side by side. Authors and characters alike will show up for a friendly chat and perhaps a cappuccino, and we'll find out first-hand how these folks feel about each other, and about their mutual projects.

From time to time, I might even post an excerpt or two, or an original story or poem. You never know what's around the corner.

So come enjoy a quiet Spanish siesta in the Cobblestone Cafe, where life slows down and the mind can drift away...

Welcome to Mind Unbound's newly "reconditioned" Virtual Press!

This blog is a hodgepodge of personal stories and amusing commentary and essays on writing, on society, and on life in general... Whatever we feel like writing from day to day.

You never know what we'll be up to next, so every day is a new adventure. (Hey, we love adventure. Especially when we don't have to spring for the plane ticket!)

And if you sign up for our free newsletter, we'll send you hints on where to look for "hidden gems" and other buried treasure here on the Mind Unbound blog. So sign up and stay tuned!

I'm back from vacation (woo-hoo!), and I'm very pleased to announce that the new Mind Unbound website is NOW LIVE!

Check it out at http://www.mindunbound.com.

Look for the blogs to change accordingly sometime relatively soonish...

The word of the year is focus, focus, focus! We're focusing in on our literary niche, and the Mind Unbound blogging "empire" is going to reflect that development.

For one thing, I'll be folding all of these blogs back into one. The new blog (still at blog.mindunbound.com) will focus on books, writing, and literary-related design, and will of course continue to feature my own literary essays on anything and everything that strikes my fancy.

So stay tuned for the new developments, and thanks for reading!