Hear Deidre Gillard-Rowlings read a love poem to Jiggs' Dinner by Michael Crummey

As we get closer to Valentine's Day let's not get too close to our own kind just yet.

Hear Deidre Gillard-Rowlings reading Jiggs' Dinner by Michael Crummey from his Rattling Books CD Hard Light: 32 Little Stories, narrated by Michael Crummey, Ron Hynes and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings.

Excerpt / Recipe / Alternative to Turkey: Jiggs' Dinner from Hard Light by Michael Crummey

Jiggs’ Dinner

Out of bed by seven to leave plenty of time to dress for church. The salt beef in to soak overnight to take off the brine: put it on to boil in the largest pot in the pantry. Drain off half the salt water and replace it with fresh every hour. Clear a spot on the counter. Start the vegetables.


Potatoes
Potatoes are inevitable, like grace before a meal. You’ll want a spud for everyone eating, two if they’re smaller than your fist. The skin is mottled brown and spotted with eyes, the flesh is white and damp. The taste is neither here nor there, like its colour, it complements everything you serve. Cut the largest in half or three to avoid stony pits enduring after everything else is ready to eat.

Carrots
Carrots are the middle child, no one’s particular favourite, but well enough liked by all. A good rule of thumb is to cook more than you think you need. Never worry about leftovers: a carrot holds its flavour like no other vegetable, it tries so hard to please.

Turnip and Parsnip
Predictable vegetables, sturdy and uncomplicated, tasting of the winter root cellar, the warmth of darkness smouldering beneath snow. Turnip is served mashed with a tablespoon of butter and a pinch of fresh pepper. Parsnip served like carrot, the beautifully tapered torso laid naked on the plate.

Greens
Leaf and stalk of turnip, boiled until tender. The dark green of deep water shoals. As tart as spinach and better for you, the limp stalk wrapped around your fork like thread on a spool, a spill of green liquor on your lips with every mouthful.

Cabbage
Similar to lettuce, but heavier and more densely rounded: the quieter and more secretive of two siblings. Too firm and fibrous to be eaten raw, boil the cabbage whole until the inner leaves have paled almost to white and part before a fork like the Red Sea before the staff of Moses.

Onions
Slip the pocket of tears from its papery shell. Do not bring the knife near the flesh. Drop two or three whole onions into the pot to cook the tang from the core. Eat them by the forkful, the translucent layers soft and sweet as orange sections, every bit of bitterness boiled away.
When the church bell peals, place all vegetables to boil with the salt meat. The pease pudding is wrapped separately in cheesecloth or a piece of rag and placed last in the pot, before leaving for church at a quarter to eleven.

By twelve-thirty everything is ready. Take up the vegetables in separate dishes and people will serve themselves as they please. Ladle a spoonful of the salty liquor from the pot over your food, or dip up a mugful to drink with your meal. Protect your Sunday clothes with a linen or cotton napkin. Bow your heads before you eat.

Be thankful.


Hard Light by Michael Crummey (the book) is available from Brick Books. The section of Hard Light entitled 32 Little Stories, narrated by Michael Crummey, Ron Hynes and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings is available as an audio CD or MP3 Digital Download from Rattling Books.

Listen to Didi reading Jiggs' Dinner.
Jiggs' Dinner was also included (along with a piece each from Andy Jones and Mary-Lynn Bernard) in Three Servings, a chapbook from Running the Goat Press.

Richard Cumyn And John Steffler Read At University of New Brunswick, February 7

Richard Cumyn and John Steffler will be reading at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, on Monday, February 7, as part of the Lorenzo Reading Series. For details, click on the UNB photo.

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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' audio edition of Richard Cumyn's short story "My Future in Insurance," narrated by Charlie Tomlinson. This story is available as an MP3 download, and it is also featured on EarLit Shorts 3 , an audio book collection of short fiction.

Follow this link to hear an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio edition of John Steffler's poetry collection The Grey Islands, narrated by the author, Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins.

Ron Hynes Documentary at Empire Theatres, St. John's, Newfoundland, December 2

The Man of a Thousand Songs, a documentary film about legendary Canadian singer/songwriter Ron Hynes, will be showing for one night this week at seven Empire Theatres across Atlantic Canada. If Hynes' songs make you want to know more about the man who wrote them, take a trip to the Avalon Mall in St. John's this Thursday to see William MacGillivray's intimate portrait of Hynes' rich and rocky life.

MacGillivray used something Hynes' calls a "limbo box" for the three-day interview that comprises the film's core. The result? "When Hynes opens up about his life to the camera with warm but haunted blue eyes, the film digs into an uncomfortable darkness that regular interviews can rarely reach." (National Post)

Read what The Toronto Star, Hynes and MacGillivray have to say about The Man of a Thousand Songs.

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Everyone knows Ron Hynes can sing, but there's a strong and sensitive narrator in there too. If you'd like to hear that side of Hynes, click here to listen to a sample from Hard Light, in which the Man of a Thousand Songs, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Michael Crummey read thirty-two "little stories" by Crummey. Hard Light: 32 Little Stories is available from Rattling Books as an audio book CD or MP3 audio book download.

Death on the Ice, Cassie Brown's iconic book about the 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster, also narrated by Ron Hynes, is currently in the Rattling Books works. Stay tuned . . .

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The Man of a Thousand Songs also features Joel Thomas Hynes, Ron's literary nephew. Like his uncle, Hynes the Younger is multi-talented: follow this link for samples of Hynes' work for Rattling Books, which includes his own writing and also the skillful presentation of works by other fine authors, available as MP3 audio book downloads, audio book CDs and MP3 audio book CDs.

Robert Chafe Wins 2010 Governor General's Award For Drama

In 2004, Newfoundland playwright Robert Chafe's Tempting Providence and Butler's Marsh were shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Drama (English). Last week, Chafe won the prestigious literary award for his stage adaptation of noted Canadian poet, short story writer and novelist Michael Crummey's short story Afterimage.

Chafe says Afterimage is an "amazing kind of spare, sad, beautiful, story about this family of outcasts who have, at their core, a little boy who is . . . not an outcast." The mother of the family, Lise Lacoeur, a nurse, has psychic powers, for which her community shuns her. The father is a burn victim, who fell in love his fortune-telling nurse. Two of their three children are also psychic. One can predict the weather and the other can see the future. One child has no powers.

Read the Montreal Gazette's interview with Robert Chafe about his GG win.

Watch this video of Artistic Fraud's performance of Afterimage, in which the actors are all wired. (For electricity, that is.)



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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' audio version of Michael Crummey's Hard Light: 32 Little Stories, a selection of poems based on stories told to Crummey by his father and other family members. Narrated by Crummey, Ron Hynes and Deidre Gillard-Rowlings, Hard Light is available as an audio book CD or an MP3 audio book download.

Canadian Poet John Steffler Reads The Plumber Poem

Canadian poet and novelist John Steffler, a native of Ontario, lived in Newfoundland for thirty years. The Grey Islands, Steffler’s collection of poetry written after a sojourn on an uninhabited island off the coast of Newfoundland, has been hailed as a masterpiece of Canadian wilderness writing.

Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio edition of The Grey Islands, read by the author, Frank Holden, Janis Spence, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl Hopkins. The Grey Islands is available from Rattling Books as an MP3 download and an audio CD.

Deidre Gillard-Rowlings with Bareboards Theatre Presents Marion Bridge by Daniel MacIvor, St. John's, Newfoundland

Bareboards Theatre presents

The St. John's premiere of Marion Bridge by Daniel MacIvor

What is family? Three estranged sisters: a struggling actor, a disillusioned nun, and a social misfit discover an answer when they are brought together at their mother's death bed in this touching contemporary drama. Directed by Varrick Grimes

Featuring Melanie Caines, Deidre Gillard-Rowlings, & Nicole Rousseau /

LSPU Hall, St. John's, Newfoundland

Friday - Sunday, February 16-18 @ 8pmSunday, February 18 @ 2pmPreview Thursday, Feb. 15 @ 8pm ($10)Tickets: $12 adults / $10 students & seniors ***Buy a ticket for yourself, bring your sister for 1/2 price***Sunday's matinee is Pay-What-You-CanCall the Hall @ 753-4531 for tickets(There is a $1 surcharge per ticket for the LSPU Hall building repair fund)