Amish Friendship Bread: Chain Mail with Food!

If you've read my blogs for awhile--or if you just know me--you know my low opinion of those "forward me" e-mails that never seem to die. You know--the kind that beseech you to pass it on to 5 or 10 or 50 of your "closest" friends--but only if you truly love them? The gift that keeps on cursing!

Little did I know that the Amish have their own low-tech version of the "forward to your friends" curse.

At after-Mass fellowship early in December, Rob brought over a bag full of dough and a sheet of paper: Amish Friendship Bread.



"Thought you might like to try it. Could be fun," he said.

Warning bells should have gone off. After all, was he going to make the bread? Was he going to clean up afterwards? Did he read the instructions? But no, naïve and trusting, I thought, "Sounds neat," and took the little bag of trouble home.

And actually, it was kind of fun. For five days, all you do is squish the bag. Kind of takes you back to when you were a kid and got to play with dough--only not as messy. Day five, you add more ingredients and continue to squish the bag for five days more. (And of course, realize that I have not read ahead in the directions.)

Day ten, they drop the bomb--or, to keep it Amish, swing the scythe.

Now you pour the bag into the bowl, add more ingredients and separate out four more bags of the stuff to give your friends!

It's a chain letter with food guilt!

It gets better: The instructions for actually making the bread are more complex than any I've worked with in a long time--with 11 ingredients, plus the starter. One of the ingredients is Instant Vanilla Pudding! (So much for being Amish. Or did they take pity on us "gentiles"? So Amish women really make vanilla pudding from scratch just to toss into this bread recipe?)



I was a sport. I made the bread. It's not bread. It's dessert! It's so wonderful, it's almost sinful. If I'd been on a diet, it would have ruined it totally. I decided to save one bag of starter for myself and give the other three away.

Did I mention that most of my friends are long-distance? By the end of the week, I'd only managed to find two victims--er, friends--and those were the boys' teachers, who would never turn down such a loving gift from such a sweet face. (The boys', not mine.) Meanwhile, squish, squish, squish.

Christmas rolled around, and I still had two bags of the stuff. I decided to go ahead and do a mega-bake-off, cook the entire contents of one and split the other. I'd give folks a completed bread and the starter and the instructions--with the additional instruction of "If you don’t want to hassle, just toss it. I won't be offended!"



That was three days ago. I've managed to give one bag away.

Which reminds me. I'd better go squish the dough.

Like fantasy, mystery and humor? Have I got an offer for you!

Hi, everyone,

I'm doing a special deal on my DragonEye, PI website in anticipation of the first novels coming out in 2009. If you register on the website before December 1, you will get a free DragonEye, PI story, plus a special offer on "Christmas Spirits," a DragonEye, PI holiday mystery.

What's DragonEye, PI? It's fantasy mystery in a noir style starring a cynical dragon detective, Vern, and his partner the Church mage Sister Grace. Mysteries solved. Lost treasures found. Universes saves...you get the picture. Their cases range from the deadly serious to the wildly ridiculous, sometimes at the same time, and Vern's unique POV makes it fun to read. (Think Dresden Files meets Myth Adventures.)

In addition, you'll be subscribed to the Dragon's Eye View, an every-other-month newsletter with Faerie Facts, a note from Vern the Dragon Detective, and news on upcoming publishing and story deals from Karina Fabian.

It's easy to do! Just go to www.dragoneyepi.net and register (look under the blindfolded smiley or where it says REGISTER on the top center column. Follow the directions, and you're in!

Blessings,
Karina Fabian

A Laptop, a Good Idea and Thou: The Romance of Collaboration

People laugh sometimes when I tell them that my idea of a romantic evening with my husband is collaborating on a story. However, when we are working together on a story, I see again all the things that made me fall in love with Rob.

Rob is an attractive man, but that isn't what drew me to him. From the beginning, it's been his humor, his analytical skills and his ability to apply his encyclopedic knowledge that I've found admirable and, yes, sexy.

As we married and our lives joined not only spiritually but in the mundane realm of shared experiences and common goals, there was still a lot to talk about and share, but rehashing what went on at work and what the babies had done that day can get old. We've always been great communicators--a result of spending our first two years of marriage with an ocean dividing us--so when we did go on dinner dates, we needed something new to talk about.

So we started making up stories.

Our first venture, nearly 10 years ago, happened while I was writing a series on different orders of nuns and Rob was involved in Artemis Society, a group trying to establish a commercial presence on the moon. Those common experiences got us thinking that someday, humans were going to have a viable commercial presence in the solar system, and the Catholic Church would want to follow--but how? We decided on an order of intrepid nuns who did dangerous search and rescue work in outer space. By working for "air, supplies and the Love of God," they undercut the commercial competition in the S&R field and forced a path for religious in space.

"Leap of Faith" was our first story. That story has led to others--indeed to a whole universe!--and to three anthologies: Leaps of Faith (coming Summer 2008 from The Writers' Café Press), Infinite Space, Infinite God (Twilight Times), and Infinite Space, Infinite God II (accepting submissions now!)

The creative process is exciting for us. As we bat ideas back and forth and hammer out problems, I get to see Rob's mind in action in something that isn't just work related (which gets familiar and old). I can toss the most unlikely things out at him--how do you have a fistfight in microgravity? In fact, much of our collaborating is the two of us hammering out the plot, me writing, and him providing "tech support".

We laugh a lot, too, but we do that, anyway. Still, it's nice to do something with our unique (well, okay, odd) humor beside banter puns.

The key, though, and maybe it's selfish, but when we collaborate, he's focused on something that is just ours--not his and work, not ours and kids'--just his and mine together. And my focus is there, too--not on the house, the obligations of my other writing--just on what we're doing for fun. He challenges my mind to keep up with his, finding new angles, posing new situations. I feel smarter and stronger when we collaborate--and that's romantic (even sexy), too.

The past few years, Rob's work has taken away from our collaboration time, and I find I have to fight to get "storytime" with him. But he's always there when I have a question or a conundrum--and always with an answer that blows me away. We steal what time we can, and dream of the days when kids are in college and Rob's retired and we can really write together.
It's going to be amazing.

Confessions of a non-shopper

My name is Karina Fabian, and I don't like to shop.

There. I've said it. It's out in the open for all to see: I am an affluent woman who thinks spending hours in the Mall looking for that perfect sweater is second only to the experience of sitting in the waiting room, anticipating root canal. Or trying to work with Microsoft Office 2007--but nothing can really compare to that torture.

It's not that I have anything against getting new stuff, but I already have so much old stuff that adding to the menagerie feels...oppressive, somehow. It's even more true since we're in the military and need to pack, ship, unpack and put away the entire house every one to five years. Stuff means hassle. In fact, in our house, we go through a quarterly "culling." We get rid of one item in four or five. This mostly applies to clothes, books and toys, but somehow, we never run out!

My mode of shopping is this: wait until I need something. If it's technical, get Rob to research it on the Internet. Wemble for a couple of weeks about whether I really need it. Go to the store and buy it. Occasionally, I'll wander about the store, out of some misplaced feeling of guilt or obligation, I suppose, but otherwise, it's in
and out.

When I was in the Air Force and stationed in Japan, I had the chance to go to Korea for a conference with another (male) officer. Naturally, we were told we HAD to take an evening to shop the markets. Markets are a lot more fun than Malls, yet I could go into a stall, gaze about, decide it didn't interest me, and move on. My friend announced that he thought all women should shop like me.

There are two exceptions to my usual shopping style: when I need an outfit and when I'm shopping with the kids. I'm a very picky shopper about clothes and for some reason, my body seems to defy normal sizing--outfits are too revealing or too short, too tight in the wrong places or just look odd on me. So I can grab a dozen things off the rack and reject them all in the dressing room. Fortunately, my tastes are timeless, so most of my clothes are stylish even a decade later. Now if my body had just remained the same size as a decade ago...

My new size has nothing to do with kids--I got to 120 after my fourth was born, then put on 35 pounds after he turned two--but they have changed my shopping. Kids have needs and wants and in our house, money, so many times, we'd be on a shopping spree so they could spend allowance or gift money. I know they enjoy it, but two minutes in the toy aisle, I'm ready to bolt. They see the newest Pokemon Chibibananarokian playing figurine; I see a $10 piece of plastic that will be in two pieces, each in separate parts of the house, within a week.

I'm a very blessed woman. I don't lack for stuff, and I don't have the desire for more stuff. The only time this ever seems to be a problem is during the holidays, when my husband and family are tortured to find the perfect gift for the woman who doesn't want things.

I keep hoping they'll pool their funds and get me a PR firm. Or how about a housekeeper? That'd be nice.

Someone to keep track of the stuff we do have.

Karina Fabian writes fantasy and science fiction that seldom have anything to do with shopping. Check out her stuff at www.fabianspace.com.

Making and Keeping New Year's Resolutions

*****This article ppeared in Fredericksburg Parent, Jan 2005.*****

Tips for Making—and Keeping—New Year’s Resolutions
by Karina L. Fabian


New Year’s resolution-making is a tradition over four thousand years old. The ancient Babylonians made resolutions as part of their New Year’s celebrations, according to Charles Panati, author of Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. The favorite resolutions of this ancient people were to get out of debt and to return all tools and household utensils they had borrowed the year before. (Remember that rake I borrowed…?)

Getting out of debt aside, modern New Year’s resolutions seem to have gotten more complex. We want to lose weight, have a calmer family life, find new success in our careers, write a best seller--or all of the above. Is it any wonder so many resolutions flag after a month?

The bad news is that many of us make and break goals, in the form of New Year’s resolutions and otherwise, throughout our lives. The good news is that the problem often lies in the resolution itself. It may be unrealistic, unclear or somehow at odds with another life goal we’ve set for ourselves.

If you’re willing to try a resolution or two, consider these tips:

• Set attainable goals. Goals must reflect your abilities and resources, not someone else’s idea of what you “should” do. That woman in the magazine might lose 50 pounds in 3 months, but unless you have the time and will (personal trainers, organic garden, etc.) she had, perhaps losing 15 pounds in 4 months and keeping it off all year would be more realistic. When you determine your resolution, examine your life: what changes will you need to make to meet this goal? Are you willing to make those changes? If not, find a new goal.
• Set clear, measurable goals. A nebulous goal like “play more with the kids” is easy to set aside. “Spend one afternoon a week just playing with the kids” is something you can schedule, plan for—and meet. State your goal in terms of time, deadlines, measurements, or other concrete details.
• Expect setbacks. No one learns to run or read or balance a checkbook perfectly the first time, yet we continue trying until we have some mastery. The same goes for resolutions; remember that two steps forward and one back is still progress.
• Examine failure. If you constantly break your resolution, particularly if you’ve made and broken the same one over years, examine what’s keeping you from your goal. Does some other goal conflict with it, such as spending more time with your family conflict with your goal of becoming sales manager of the year? Is the goal contrary to your purpose in life—you find you can’t make yourself clean house every day because you’d rather make Play Dough sculptures with your child? If you find a conflict, re-set your goals to something more realistic, or, if the goal is more important than what it conflicts with, make some changes.
Sometimes, we have a subconscious reason for breaking our resolutions. Psychologists and communicators Richard Bandler and John Grinder assert that every aspect of our personality, even our bad habits, exists for some positive purpose. For example, a married woman may subconsciously believe that if she works out, she’ll draw the attention of other men--and attract the jealousy of her husband. Subconsciously, then, she believes that by staying out of shape, she is preventing conflict in her marriage. In such cases, the person needs to find some other way to meet that subconscious goal—in this example, if jealousy is an issue, they may need to resolve with marriage counseling, or she may convince him to join her in a her work-out program, so that they build their relationship along with their muscles.
• Get help. Resolutions are easier to keep when someone else helps you keep them. Instead of vowing to work out at home, make a deal with a friend to walk on certain days, or get a personal trainer at the Y. If you’re writing that best-seller, recruit a friend, co-worker, someone involved in the topic to read it—and deliver them a certain number of pages each week. Then you have a promise to an outside party to motivate you, as well as a person to get you moving again if you stall.

If you’re not a person for resolutions, don’t worry; you’re in good company--though giving back that rake wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Ten reasons Why I Didn’t Blog About Working At Home Today:

In no particular order. From the Home Office of Karina Fabian:

Kids kept interrupting me for help on their schoolwork. (If I have to spell “privacy” one more time…)

Steven was yelling at Liam because Liam hit him, but that was because Amber was kicking him because he (Liam) was in her spot and she couldn’t see the TV, and besides, Steven is grounded from TV and Alex even told him so, but he wouldn’t move so Liam hit him but…

The toilet backed up, and I’m the janitorial staff.

My friend IM’d about a problem she was having with her latest story, so of course, we worked on that and then we chatted about moving and kids… They should call it Yahoo! Watercooler.

I couldn’t concentrate, so I took a long shower to think about it. Had a great idea for a story and wrote that instead. Took another shower to think about the blog.

I went to make a pot of coffee and realized the dishes hadn’t been put away. Putting away the dishes reminded me I still had clothes in the dryer, and as long as I was folding them I may as well put another load in…Did those ever get put in the dryer? I’d better check.

Husband came home “frisky.”

The dog wanted to play. Who can resist a dog with a squeak toy in her mouth?

It was 90 out and the pool looked sooooo good!

Oh, wait—I just did it! Never mind.

Intro: Karina Fabian

I'm Karina Fabian, one of the bloggers for Branches of Life. Lately, I find myself increasingly "styled" as a writer of religious genre fiction, but that's not all I write or do.

Branches of Life is an appropriate blog for me, since I seem to branch out into a great many things: science fiction, religion, humor, homeschooling, pregnancy and parenting, health, simplifying your life... (Go ahead, laugh at that one. I do.) I'm like the bushes in our front yard: no sooner do I trim them back than they're already overgrowing the sidewalk again. (I get the feeling Lea is the same way.)

Last year, I did a major pruning of my writing, cutting out most of my non-fiction work in order to concentrate on my fiction. Ironically, that did nothing to trim my workload. Instead, I've merely branched out into book marketing and promoting, faith in fiction, critiquing, virtual book touring, ancient legends and modern investigative procedures, airship construction, the art of mummifying chickens... I'm busy promoting Infinite Space, Infinite God, an anthology of Catholic science fiction; publishing Faith-Filled Fiction, a newsletter about writing religious fiction; hosting a Thursday night author chat (FabChat) and writing five--now six--blogs. I own three websites, am President of the Catholic Writers' Guild and moderator of Catholic Writers Online, am active in two blog rolls, plus I have regular writing "gigs" with Montana Catholic and Hereditas Magazine. In addition, I write cross genre fiction, humor, slice-of-life, and still a little nonfiction/how-to. Oh, and I'm working on a game for the Little Flowers Girls' Club. (On the non-writing side, I'm a military wife and homeschooling mother of four.)

Writing it out this way probably makes me look like a good candidate for Ritalin, but I don't think I'm so unusual. I'm a writer, and writers live to learn about our world, dream about the possibilities, then synthesize that information and dreams into something new and hopefully entertaining. It also means--despite the stereotypes--that we're busy, involved people, especially thanks to the Internet.

I know we're going to have fun with Branches of Life. Come join us as we climb a tree, go out on a limb, maybe even get nutty.

(Did I mention I like puns? Now there's a story... Later. Maybe even here, on Branches of Life.)

Blessings!

Karina

More about Karina? Check out:
www.fabianspace.com: Karina's author page with her blog, bio, writings and more.
http://isigsf.tripod.com: The official website of Infinite Space, Infinite God with stories, author bios, interviews and media information.
www.freewebs.com/dragoneyepi: The website of Karina's character, Vern a dragon detective. When magic and technology unite to cause trouble, it's time to hire the services of Dragon Eye, PI. Wisdom of the ages, knowledge of eternity. Virginity verified. Flights, extra.
www.myspace.com/karinafabian: 'Cause ya gotta be on MySpace.
www.shoutlife.com/karinafabian: MySpace for Christians. I blog religion in fiction there/
FabChat: A moderated live chat with authors. Every Thursday night at 8 PM Eastern Time (US). Go to www.fabianspace.com and click on FabChat for a list of guests.
Faith-filled Fiction: A writing tool for those who write religious fiction or want to add religion (real or imaginary) in their stories. writing tips, markets, educational articles. Contact Karina at karina(at)fabianspace(dot) com