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Obviously attempting to write 50,000 words in a month puts a crimp in crafting and cooking. But things that don't take very long, or take more time in the oven than on the counter work just fine.

I'm thinking a lot about edible presents for the holidays, so today I tried out Ina Garten's granola recipe. I fiddled with it a bit because I'm not nuts about coconut, or cashews. The oven turned it lovely and golden brown:

Once it cooled it crunched up, and I added toasted pecans, dried cherries, dried cranberries, and chopped dried apricots, nectarines, peaches and apples. Then put it in a glass vacuum jar, but not before I poured a bit over yogurt to make sure it was ok

It was delicious and crunchy and melty all at the same time. Now to come up with an attractive and air-tight way to package it for gifts!

I also have the slow-rise, no-knead bread recipe from Mark Bittman's column in the New York Times sitting in my kitchen in a bowl, hopefully rising. It would be fun to bring fresh-baked bread to the dinner party we're going to tomorrow, however, while I know it is supposed to rise slowly, I think I must have messed something up because every time I check on it is is just lying there in the bottom of the bowl. Ah well, I'll give it the requisite 18 hours before I scrap it and try again another time. If it works out, I will show you!

While I've typed away today, I've been listening to the blues. Lately my biggest source for music is television shows. The background music just keeps getting better and more compelling. It takes a bit of tracking down, because most shows don't immediately post a list of songs played, but usually you can find whatever it was that they played three bars of and left you humming the rest of the night. Last night's excellent episode of Supernatural was based loosely on a song by Robert Johnson, a blues singer of the '30s whose music and life is shrouded in mystery. In Key West, my mother and I talked a lot about how much we love old school blues, so of course I took the episode as a sign that I must immediately buy King of the Delta Blues on iTunes, and make a blues station for myself on Pandora too. Pandora, by the way, is another amazing source for music. If you have trouble finding new or different music that you like, hie thyself over there immediately and set up a few stations based on your favorite bands. Suddenly you'll have all kinds of ways to spend your music money.

Ok, back to the NaNoWriMo blues...

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