Meanwhile, While We Wait To Hear From My Editor...

I thought I would write down a brand new recipe I personally created all by myself (but if it stinks, it'll be my editor's fault).

I'm having a few friends (how few, I don't know yet, but they're dropping out like flies) over for supper and the Olympics. I was going to make Rhonda Jo's Tuna Salad (don't ask me who Rhonda Jo is; that's the name of the tuna salad in the cookbook, unless it's Ronda Jo, which is also possible) until I remembered that one of my friends who really will be here is a vegan. Rhonda Jo never had such problems.

So I invented a recipe. I am cleverly going to write it down before I even cook it, let alone have anyone eat it, so we can all just assume it turned out fabulously.

Sue's Acceptable For Vegan Shepards Pie

(If you hung out with sheep all the time, you'd be a vegan too)

Mash 4 Idaho potatoes. Notice how much mashed potatoes four potatoes makes. Choose not to think about it. Oh, and mash them just with vegan acceptable margerine.

Cook a couple of carrots and a bunch of stringbeans. Steam them if you can find your steamer, which I couldn't (my steamer that is; I have no idea where your steamer is. Heck, I don't even know where my steamer is, so how should I know where yours is). Note that you bought entirely too many carrots and stringbeans and ponder what you can cook with them when Joyce and Lew, who are not vegans, come for the weekend.

Go visit your mother. Bring her her groceries and set up her pills for the next couple of weeks.

Eat a hot fudge sundae. Inform them at the ice cream parlor that this is medicinal.

Return to the mashed potatoes. Find one of your better looking baking pot things and rinse it out because you haven't used it in four years, give or take.

Taste the mashed pototoes. Put in some salt and pepper and notice they're still incredibly bland and uninteresting. Tell yourself that your editor will not say your book idea is bland and uninteresting, and think instead about what to do with the mashed potatoes. Check out your spice collection. Notice the curry powder. Take the curry powder and mash it into the mashed potatoes. Use all the curry powder that is in the jar. In my case, there wasn't that much.

Line the fancy baking pot thing with most of the curried mashed potatoes.

Put some olive oil in your frying pan and then chop up one of those big onions and sautee it. Then chop up some portobello mushrooms and sautee them too. Chop the mushrooms in very big pieces just in case you don't like mushrooms and you want to be able to avoid them on your plate. Smaller pieces will do if you like them.

Throw in four peeled cloves of garlic. Remind yourself as you do that cooking with garlic gives you a fierce migrane. Try to think instead about how good this recipe will look in your blog.

Put the vegtables in the curried mashed potato fancy baking pot thing. Notice how there seems to be room for lots more vegetables. Consider, but not too hard, cooking more carrots and stringbeans. Instead throw in one small box of golden raisins, leaving seven small boxes behind.

Then lower some of that border of curried mashed potatoes because otherwise it's going to look like there aren't enough vegetables. Take the rest of the curried mashed potatoes and put them neatly on top of the vegetable/raisin mix. Notice when you do that, there's exactly the right amount of curried mashed potatoes and commend yourself.

Put the fancy baking pot thing in the oven and notice that you forgot to clean up the strawberry rhubarb pie spill from last night (that's dessert). Clean it off as best you can while trying not to sing "Proud To Be An American." I failed, but maybe you have more willpower than I do.

Then, before making the salad (bag of greens, avocado, red pepper and a tomato), immortalize your recipe on your blog.

My friend the vegan says she'll be here by 6:30, so 5:40ish, I'll turn the oven on to 350 degrees, because that's the temperature I cook everything at. That way it'll bake for 45 minutes or until the curried mashed potato crust is golden brown.

Okay. I'm off to make the salad, set the table, and turn on the Olympics. I'll let you know what my editor thinks about the third book idea and how supper turns out, but I don't know in which order.