Stepping into the realms of writing and compiling a cookbook

The Bow-Wow Bowl and Delish Doggie Dishes. A recipe book for cookies, cakes, and special needs meals.

When the idea first strikes it seems a grey’t* notion: what a wonderful fund-raiser it will be. Dog-lovers around the world can send in their favourite recipe to be published. Yours truly will put it all together. Donated artwork for the cover and smiling vignette images inside will make the publication a joy. Sales can result in much needed funds for local greyhound rescue. Can anything be simpler?

As someone who had a career in project planning/management and critical path analysis, I know there’s a whole lot more to this than meets the eye. Gathering in the recipes is easy part.

The call for submissions is out now. In the public domain. Circulated among friends, social networking groups, writing groups, pet stores et al.  And at the end of this blog.

The deadline for submissions is July 1st, or sooner if the pile grows at a rapid rate. Liabilities and disclaimers are being considered. Methods of production are now identified, both for print and e-book editions.  Launches will centre around gatherings of local greyhound groups, plus an internet launch.

Upfront funding for the first print run remains a question on the table. Consideration for approaching sponsors or advertisers seems a good way to go. Organic meat and veggie producers, doggie groomers, doggie owners with local businesses, the list is endless. Once published their information will be with the book ad infinitum. A steal of a deal.

But what was I thinking? Will this consume me? Will it take me away from my own creative pursuits? I hope not. But it is doing right now and I have to make myself put on my planning hat and set aside times (and those times only) to give this the commitment it deserves. 

I hope that once done, this will become a teeny-weeny bit of a legacy, something I will leave in my life’s dust trail.  But for now, it’s time to get those dog leashes out and walk down to the point.

*grey't - greyhound family derivation of the word 'great'

Call for submissions. Doggie Cookbook.

Deadline July 1st 2013, or sooner. Submissions are already flooding in, so we may close this earlier if we have a good selection.

Do you have a favourite recipe you make for your dog(s)? Would you like to share it for a grey’t cause?

Title of book: The Bow-Wow Bowl and Delish Doggie Dishes

Possible subtitle: (cookies, cakes and a few things more)

Submit your recipes to authorsue@hotmail.com along with a photo or two (one of the dish and one of your doggie maybe) and the recipe.  Put ‘bow-wow recipe’ in the subject line.

The format for the recipe should be as follows:

Name of cookie/cake/dish etc:

Preparation time:

Oven setting and tools needed:

Ingredients:

Method:

Nutritional values:

To establish nutritional values this website is fairly good - this link, for instance takes you to the table for boiled pumpkin: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2601/2

A simple way to add the information to the bottom of your recipe is as follows:  1 serving (it is up to you to explain what one serving is) calories, fat (saturated, tran cholestrol, sodium, carbs dietary fibre and sugars), protein. You can also add the vitamin etc content also available from the nutrition site which would be especially useful for the special needs recipe. (I fthis is a problem for you, just call on us for help).

It is intended that the book will include sections for dogs with special needs e.g. diabetic, obesity, kidney problems etc. We are looking, in the main, for homemade cookies and celebration cakes, not meals as such, but if you have a favourite dish and would like to share, feel free to send it in.

You will get credit for your recipe at the bottom of your page(s). There is no payment plan in place for contributors at the present time, just know that the proceeds will got to a good cause and you have been part of it. Of course you will also have the kudos of being a published recipe contributor. It is planned that contributors will receive a free pdf copy of the book.

Please include a short (one sentence) personal bio if you like, ref your website or blog or company.  We also need you to include your permission to use your recipe for this purpose and this purpose only.

Proceeds of sales will go to GPAC (Greyhound Pets of Atlantic Canada).

Tea Party Madness by S.B. Borgersen.

heads float bobbing in teacups, wetted hair waiting for silver spoons

stirring from the sickly stupour, lifting limbs and dipping saucers

swallows sighs darts departs. Drinks the turgid tea regardless.

More Writers Abroad

My turn to write this week's blog for More Writers Abroad. You can catch it here.

More Writers Abroad

Canada Writes - By Susan Borgersen

Canada Writes - By Susan Borgersen

The 30 Day Challenge

Who can resist a challenge?  So here I go with an attempt at a 30 verse poem, writing one verse a day beginning January 6th 2012.  Untitled as yet.

1.

In his mind he sees her waiting

from his cabin on the ocean

chews his sandwich without thinking

hopes he’ll make it home tonight.

From the ocean he can see her

dressed in blue just like her eyes

waiting for his boat returning

furling foam, The Mary Blythe.

2.
By the window she is pacing

been awake since early morning

heard him leave his silent footsteps

heard his truck cough into life.

Now she smells her toast is burning

mug of tea slips from her hands

wishes she had smiled or spoken

told him of her dreams and plans.

3.

Dawn is breaking, leaves the harbour

thrumming seawards into light

stenching diesel fills his nostrils

sorry to have left his wife.

Swore he saw her by the window

as his truck pulled from the yard

wished he’d kissed her on their pillow

looked above and saw no stars.

4.

All the while she scrubs and vacuums

drowning thoughts in whining hums

folds her arms, unlocks his letters

harking back like banging drums.

Smoothing movements of cold linen

shaking memories of that bed

wondering what her life would be like

if she’d chosen him instead.

5.

Baited traps with crabs from Digby

swell is high but matters none

leaving Medway Head behind him

forges forward through the foam.

Fishing’s always been his life’s work

never was a second choice

learning from the ocean’s fathers

til’ one day he found his voice.

6.

Checks her Facebook and her Twitter

hoping still to see his name

bastes the ham and peels potatoes

feels her life is too mundane.

At the window sees the bluejays

bantering, clacking at the feeder

looks beyond out to the mailbox:

does anyone love or need her?

7.

In choppy seas while hauling traps

he concentrates on work in hand

doesn’t think about her anger

muscles flexing, heaving straining.

Dance last Saturday forgotten

when he watched her flirt about

Willie Nelson singing Nothing

I Can Do About it Now

8.

Reapplies dark brown mascara

slicks her lips with glossy purple

dries her hands on skinny blue jeans

decides against pouring a drink.

High boots zipped, slips on her jacket

grabs the car keys and her iphone

heads to town in search of answers

knowing she can’t be alone.

9.

Storm clouds bulking on horizon

checks position, checks the time

knows the risks of staying longer

but the quota’s on the line.

Thinks of her for just one moment

heaves and hauls with all his might.

Strong arms pulling, soft heart wishing

he was home to make things right.

10

In the town sits at the window

in the tearoom by the bay

stirs her latte while she’s waiting

for her life to drift and stray.

Girlfriends titter in the corner

old men’s teeth grind Timbit snacks

chatter stops; shocking in silence

as they hear the well-feared thwacks.

11.

Sea is heaving, dark clouds rolling

knows it’s time to head for shore.

Overhead the ‘copter’s whirring

turns instead to help the cause.

Out at sea a friend’s in trouble

not a moment’s hesitation

points the Mary Blythe back seaward

in his heart that strange elation.

12.

Hears the Coast Guard in the distance

heart is thumping hits the road

tries to punch in all the numbers

knows they’re busy, head still grumbles:

‘Been there, done that’ not the first time

panic hits as thoughts of ‘what ifs’

pushes idle whims to one side

should count blessings, should count gifts.

13.

Ship to shore is not responding

knows she worries, wants to hear

ploughs on through the dark’ning waters

searching life not feeling fear.

Not the first time this has happened

loves the ocean, loves to fish

a second love back there on dry land

making choices leads to anguish.

14.

Groaner’s moaning with the storm surge

cannot hear but knows it’s there

over and above her heartbeat

slamming, pounding in her forehead.

Sitting at the kitchen table

tea stone cold, her mouth bone dry

as tears delude, like summer’s

dust that always blows away.

15.

Storming through the angry seas he

sees the Coast Guard overhead

gets the message they don’t need him

turns and heads for Port instead.

Tries the ship-to-shore once more then

on his cell phone speed dials home

thankful he has got a signal

heart slams with the busy tone.

16.

Mind is racing phones her mother

always knows just what to do

wives of fishermen can handle

more than most, (she’s making stew.)

‘Heard the Groaner and I wondered’

Mother says in low calm tone

‘stay right there, I’ll come on over

be sure and keep right off the phone.’

17.

Thinking back to all the stories

guys he’s known since he was small

tales of drownings, misadventures

boats that sunk with loss of all.

Knows the perils, knows the dangers

knows the power of the sea

grabs the wheel and steers her homeward

thankful for the Lord’s mercy.

18.

Coffee gurgles sits in cold cups

waiting always makes things worse

Mother whispers eat a sandwich

drink some tea, but please don’t curse.

Cannot help the words that come forth

kicking self’s a bad cliché

wishes she could take it all back

wishes it was all okay.

19.

Traps are hauled, the wind’s still howling

seas’s as black as Nanny’s grate

Mary Blythe has little trouble

tackles swell just like his Mate.

Sees Medway light on the horizon

knows one day before too long

the light will go just like the others

removed, replaced they know it’s wrong.

20.

Ringing phones - strange cars in driveway

wonders which to answer first

for a second, then no contest

caller id - fit to burst.

‘Thank God’ she cries ‘I been so worried

are you on your way back home?’

Gives her mom big loud a thumbs up,

Mom smiles back and mouths ‘well done.’

21.

Light is failing on the ocean

sheens of phosphorescence gleam

like ammolite from far off mountains

minnows flickering through a stream.

Standing firm inside the wheelhouse

trusts The Mary to get to Port

as she’s done for year on year now

uncomplaining with all he’s caught.

22.

Now she’s in a fit and flurry

working out just what to do

first or last it doesn’t matter

wishes she too had made a stew.

Lays the table, finds the corkscrew

boils up sauerkraut with Greeks sausage

doesn’t think to check her facebook

showing that she has a message.

23.

Lets his mind drift to the old days

thinks of how things used to be

how he loved her, how they laughed

memories danced to the beat of the sea.

They were young and full of promise

exciting plans for kids and travel

hopes and dreams dissolved in time

closes his eyes, misses the channel.

24.

Darkness falls and he’s not home yet

the yard is as still as the grave.

She’s waiting for truck lights, the snarl

of his diesel as evening light dwindles and fades.

Mother’s gone, thinking all’s well that ends well

but Her mind is chilled as late supper

in the back of her mind is the one consolation:

Her Man is the best of all skippers.

25.

Caught in dreams of hidden pasts

the alleyways of life that was

he steers by stars, he drags at speed

unseeing of the decks awash.

As frozen ground the ocean’s swell

controls his path, his destiny 

he loves her well, his Mary Blythe

and calls ‘you take the best of me.’

26.

What is it that she can’t quite see?

elusive feelings out of reach

a call? a cry? or just the gulls

swooping diving on the beach.

She catches, snatches memories

of déjà vu and headless dreams

of senseless storms and missing boats

and of those lost to mysteries.

27.

He knows he loved her just as much

as Mary Blythe or so he thought

how can he tell? Is it too late?

dim moments flicker of times apart.

In the drizzle of images

in his head now, he sees her smile

tilting her chin, the light in her eyes

stepping hand in hand down the aisle 

28.

The lump in her throat has never been so hard

to swallow with her mouth as dry as

summer’s dust the news will come

she dare not think or hope or ask

if he is found, if he is gone

or if anyone has heard or seen

she dare not cry out or moan

but pulls against the guilt that’s her’s alone.

29.

What’s left to do but pray maybe

and let the life he’s led dance, flirt and flit

before his mind like in the myths oft told

by seafarers laced with spice and wit.

What’s left to do but push away regret

and hope that she’ll remember days when

life was good and smiling laughing nights

were theirs and theirs alone.

30.

By the shores of Medway Harbour

plovers trickle, seabirds swirl

waiting for the boats returning

swooping, diving, screaming gulls.

On the wharf she stands before him

dressed in blue just like her eyes.

She waves to him and blows sweet kisses

up to the heavens, into the skies.

Lament for Nelly

Lament for Nelly

Sadness at a festive time of the year seems to be especially harder to handle.  Christmas Eve in this case. The date will be forever engrained in the brain. The chill of it. You can almost let yourself indulge in a Keatsesque type of ode. That is if you felt poetic.

On Christmas Day it was ‘Poetry Tuesday” for me as always. To grab a few moments to turn internal thoughts into words. Self indulgent? But of course. And so in the dark early hours of Christmas morning, instead of searching the depths of the clear night sky for Santa, I wrote my Lament for Nelly:

Run free sweet Nell

‘cross sands and fields

and far to distant hills.

You’ve tasted honey

and lain your weary bones

on plump soft pillows of foam.

Have fun young Nell

this was no place for the old

so take flight. Take fancy

the open road is yours now

while in our hearts and minds

here you’ll always be. Nelly.

Nelly died at 7.15 pm on Christmas Eve. It was a shock. Greyhounds should live to a good age, not suddenly have their heart come to an abrupt stop at 9 nearly 10 years of age. She’d been for some great road trips with us recently too: exploring new trails; gazing across unspoiled terrain, reflecting on lakes. Then homeward bound, watching the world pass by from her comfy back seat of the Honda with her best buddy Tilly. Possibly wondering why young Aksel got to sit up front. 

We will never know why her heart stopped. Why she decided of her own accord to leave us this Christmas. But she went graciously like the lovely lady greyhound she was. Considerate to the end.

There is a big empty space in our home and in our hearts. But a new bright star in the sky this Christmas time. Nelly joins our sweet young Bentley who left us in May. They are up there with Ben, Boogie and Trevor, Yazmin and Molly.

Run free dear Nell. 

Landscape and Memory

In spite of a hectic November with transatlantic travel, my 6th National Novel Writing Month (this year a collaborative attempt), a broken tooth, and a phenomenal bout of jet lag combined with pneumonia, I signed up for a writing workshop being held at a nearby village, in a tiny café, on the banks of the Medway River.

The workshop, hosted by E. Alex Pierce (http://www.ealexpierce.com/) is called Landscape and Memory and, “takes inspiration from the environs of the Medway River as well as a number of literary works, we will write on a wide range of subjects in various voices from narrative to lyric to dramatic.”

Ah, the Medway River. Of course I couldn’t resist; I learned all about it at school in Cyprus in the 1950s.

I was a boarder at St. Joseph’s Convent in Nicosia, the island’s capital. The French convent was at Paphos Gate, the smallest of the three original Venetian-built entrances to the ancient walled city. We girls attended the Catholic Church of the Holy Cross, with its front door in the Greek side, and its back door in the Turkish quarter.

Just eleven years old, impressionable and eager; I soaked up information like the proverbial Greek sponge. Geography lessons were my second favourite after anything with an art/music element. I remember Sister Louise ‘skating’ across the highly polished platform, a raised dais before the blackboard. I use the word ‘skating’ as I can think of no other to describe how we balanced each foot on tiny pillows to move across the platform, so as not to scratch or mark, but further enhance the highly polished surface.

Sister Louise enthralled us with stories of far off places. One was Nova Scotia in Canada, a country more known for its immense lakes, prairie wheat fields, and rocky mountains. She delighted us with tales of a special river, close to a gold mine, where salmon were plentiful and royalty visited to enjoy the sport of salmon fishing.

I had no notion that, almost sixty years later, I would be sitting on the banks of that very river, searching for poetic and lyrical words. Long forgotten memories of those school days have been brought alive by this river now. I can see Sister Louise’s young face, with her pink cheeks and deep brown eyes as if she was here beside me. I can hear her melodic voice talking about a country of which she had no first hand knowledge, but of which she spoke with such clarity and conviction. I see her flip back the edges of her habit, as she often did just before telling us something exciting.

The workshops are called Landscape and Memory.  It is a powerful experience to indulge in a few hours a week of letting the river be the catalyst for my writing. Allowing the memories to flit like damsel flies. I have no control, and I delve into later school memories of an English teacher lulling us to snooze every Friday afternoon while she read to us 4th formers, in her Scottish lilt, from that century-old classic Three Men in a Boat: Jerome K Jerome’s account of a trip up the River Thames. The underrated master of language wrote:

And we sit there by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea.

The workshop series is absorbing; Alex Pierce reads aloud; powerful poetry by extraordinary writers like Dionne Brand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07LVxo31hI8  Workshop participants share their diverse writings too. Thought provoking essays are recommended reading which I tentatively explore as untrod territory with apprehension and excitement. I watch old films again, films where rivers are protagonists. And, as the month closes in, I feel that November has been generous to me.

So I write; not only inspired by the Medway River but also by the memories this workshop has stirred and which the group’s chemistry has brought to the surface. I write, at a gentler pace than normal, of unresolved dilemmas being carried away by the river, out to the sea. I write poems, many poems, about love and about lovers on the river’s banks. And I think about the incalculable power landscape has for stirring memory.

The moon’s riding high this night of all nights

when every line on your palm speaks of danger

with stillness you move

as if without breath

with no fear or alarm or of anger

Life’s written in starlight reflected in glass

while shifting through fields of destruction

finding the way

as only you can

just one world away from the ocean

S.B. Borgersen November 2012