Writer's Grove

(This update has been updated!) Hey y’all, thanks so kindly for your donations to Ayesha’s care and the sweet messages you’ve been sending along. We appreciate you so much. I have some updates!

1. Ayesha is currently out of the hospital after the first round of chemo to get the leukemia under control. They’re going to move forward with bone marrow transplant now, but that’s a long process.
2. We sent out the first big batch of books just before Christmas, sent the next big batch after the new year, and now we’re on to the third big batch!
3. If you’d like to donate $50 to Ayesha’s medical expenses (because American healthcare is hella expensive), I’ll give you a signed book from my author copies, shipping included, for every $50 you donate. You just donate here, screenshot your receipt, and email the screenshot along with a shipping address (that’s very important) and your book request to treats@kevinhearne.com. (And yes, we do ship internationally, we’ve already sent stuff to Germany and Norway.)
4. Because the first books in series are (for obvious reasons) the first to go…I’ve run out of those. But I have good numbers for a lot of other titles! Please see the list below to aid you in making your request. And thank you so much again.

Key:
HC = Hardcover from Del Rey
SP HC = Subterranean Press Hardcover edition (exclusive cover and interior art)
TPB = Trade Paperback (larger sized paperback)
MMP = Mass Market Paperback (the “normal” smaller sized paperback)

Hounded: 0 (Sorry, out of stock)
Hexed: 5 TPB
Hammered: 13 SP HC, 7 TPB
Tricked: 17 SP HC, 8 TPB
Trapped: 20 SP HC, 6 TPB
Hunted: 25 SP HC, 8 TPB
Shattered: 27 TPB
Staked: 25 TPB
Besieged: 19 TPB
Scourged: 1 HC, 24 TPB, 5 MMP
The Purloined Poodle: 0 (Sorry, out of stock)
The Squirrel on the Train: 0 (Sorry, out of stock)
A Question of Navigation: 2 SP HC
Ink & Sigil: 5 TPB
Paper & Blood: 12 HC, 23 TPB
A Plague of Giants: 0 (sorry, out of stock)
A Blight of Blackwings: 17 MMP, 15 UK editions (TPB)
Kill the Farm Boy: 4 HC (out of stock of the TPB)
No Country for Old Gnomes: 5 TPB
The Princess Beard: 3 TPB

I’ve written a few books, y’all, and the author copies have piled up over the years. There are literally piles of them now in my guest room. Makes it difficult to have guests.

You might like a signed copy or five for yourself or some buds. You might like a signed bookmark too, heck, why not? And, it turns out, I have a friend in need. Kimberly’s best friend, Ayesha—maid of honor at our wedding, an awesome nurse and spiffy mom—has had a rough few years. She discovered she had breast cancer at the start of the pandemic and beat it, but now she has leukemia and is currently undergoing chemo and soon after that, a bone marrow transplant. That’s expensive stuff. So maybe we can all help each other a bit here? You get signed goodies, Ayesha gets some help, and I get my guest room back. Here’s what we’ll do: I’ll pay for the shipping to wherever you are. You donate $50 to Ayesha’s bills for each book you want, screenshot your donation receipt, and email that to treats@kevinhearne.com along with a request for a book (or books) and your shipping address, and we’ll get it in the mail. And Ayesha will get better. Thank you so, so much for considering it.

EDIT: My inventory of what’s available has changed, please see the list on the update post.

So this dude had $44 billion, and instead of helping people with all that money or even allowing his workers to unionize and earn a decent living, he decided to buy and destroy a social media platform.

I’m honestly okay with it—Twitter was already toxic and unfun. The ability of things to go viral was occasionally a good thing, but more often what happened was people dogpiled and harassed and spewed inflammatory stuff to get engagement and…yeah. It was icky. So my account is active, but I don’t visit it and it’s just gonna sit there until such time as Twitter becomes viable again (which may never happen).

In the meantime, I’m still on Instagram (username @kevinhearne) but have also set up a space at Mastodon. My username there is @kevinhearne@ohai.social if you’re already tooting. And if you’d like to sign up for the platform—you can use any server and still follow me—here’s an invitation.

What I’ve started to do—and will continue to do—is check out some hashtags to find folks who will be sharing nature photos and giving them a follow. I’m following a few journalists as well. I’ll of course be talking about books and tacos and so on too, but mostly I’m interested in this new space that’s sort of designed from the ground up to limit toxicity. I’m not sure how to find other writers very well yet, but hopefully I’ll get that figured out soon. I hope to see you there.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist. That is all.

Today I became a Canadian citizen. Still an American citizen, of course. But I guess you could say I’m able to Dual Wield now. My family’s incredibly happy about this, as am I.

From time to time people ask why I moved, so I thought I’d write this post as an answer so I can just deploy a quick link whenever it comes up. The list of reasons is in no particular order. Here we go:

1. I haven’t paid a dime for medical insurance in five years and even if I get sick, I’ll never go medically bankrupt. Not writing a check to ghoulish profiteers and not worrying about how much my rates are going to go up this year and not worrying about what’s covered is the fucking best for reals. Like, seriously, USA, you should try this shit. It feels great. Also? People in Canada live longer. Argue about systems all you want, throw around words like “socialism” as if that label automatically disqualifies something from being considered seriously, but you’re likely to live longer in Canada, period. So Canada wins.
2. Did you know that kids in Canada go to school and don’t have active shooter drills? And that when the rare mass shooting does happen, the government responds with more than thoughts and prayers? Gun ownership is allowed in Canada, but it’s heavily regulated. And so folks can reasonably expect to live their whole-ass lives without getting shot. One less problem to worry about. And again: It feels great.
3. Regarding college, Canada doesn’t get the sweet deal of many European countries where it’s basically a few hundred Euros a year, but compared to the US it is a bargain. The yearly tuition of where my kid was going to go in the US was $24,000. But in Canada, my kid is attending college for $7400 a year. So that’s less than a third of the cost. They can graduate without crippling debt. Holy shit! Does that feel great? Yes, it does.
4. Human rights are superior in Canada, and both rights and freedoms are quantifiable things. There’s a Freedom Index, in fact, that breaks it all down, and Canada is the sixth freest nation in the world. The US, which has that bit in the Star-Spangled Banner about being the Land of the Free, isn’t even in the top ten. It’s number 15. And I’m sure that ranking is going to drop next year, once they take into account all the rights and freedoms that have been taken away from women and LGBT folks this year.
5. Canadian citizens get to vote. You don’t have to register and you don’t have to worry about one political party trying to throw up obstacles to your vote or purging voter rolls, because you’re registered automatically and Canada sends you a postcard with details about where and how to vote and that’s it. No shenanigans! When I mention voter suppression tactics my Canadian friends are like, wait, what? That’s a thing? And of course it absolutely is in the US. Voter suppression, along with gerrymandering, Fox News, and insane amounts of dark money, is how the GOP has engineered their minority rule so far out of step with the general population’s wishes.
6. There’s no Fox News. I mean, yeah, there are right-wing batshit white supremacist folks here—some really nasty ones too—but there’s no major network steadily poisoning the minds of millions with fascist propaganda. It makes a huge difference in political discourse. The general vibe here is some spirited argument about how do we make things better for Canadians. In the US you have one side trying to be as cruel as possible to anyone who isn’t straight, white, rich, or Christian, and the other side is just sorta fundraising off that, as in “help us stop them from being such huge dicks. We won’t do anything helpful or progressive, but we’ll at least stop those dicks if you send us money.” I cannot emphasize enough how nice it is not to have the national conversation entirely consumed with HERE’S HOW WE’RE GONNA BE DICKS TODAY versus OH NO YOU DON’T YOU DICKS. People actually talk about art and music and improving public transportation here, and it’s so gentle on my psyche compared to the daily bloodsport in the US.
7. Water. Sorry for the incoming bummer, but uh…climate change is going to be kicking our asses for a long time. And if you look ahead, fresh water is going to be scarce. The American west is already hurting for it and it’s not going to be better next year or the years after that. Where will all the fresh water be? Canada. And where, in general, will it be more pleasant to live as things heat up? In the north.
8. This isn’t a thing I moved for, because how could I know? But dealing with drivers licenses and registration and stuff is far simpler and cheaper here than the US. I remember pissing away four hours of my life waiting at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Haven’t had to wait for anything here more than ten minutes—and that’s when I couldn’t do things at my convenience online.
9. Butter tarts. Until you’ve tried them you won’t understand.

None of the above should be taken to suggest that Canada is perfect. It ain’t. I think most Canadians would agree. There are lots of issues to work on here. And there are lots of wonderful things about the US that we love and miss sometimes. But items 1-6 are why we moved, why we love living here, and why we’re happy to be Canadian now.

If you happen to be someone who’s interested in moving, here’s what we did that might help you out: We used an immigration lawyer who charges a flat fee with a money-back guarantee. In other words, if they accept you as a client and you follow their instructions and somehow don’t get in, you get your money back. So obviously, they won’t take you unless they’re positive they can get you in. If you head to their website, they have a free questionnaire you can take that determines whether you’d be a good fit or not. Go visit Abrams & Krochak if you want to check it out. You become a permanent resident first, and then after three years you can apply to be a citizen. We wish you all the best, eh?

Available now: The Super Mega Turbo Spiffy Ultra Rad editions of the Iron Druid Chronicles, books 1-3!

The whole series will be reissued this year in groups, and each book has been revised/expanded and almost every one also has bonus material never in print before—a total of seven short stories and three novellas. Here’s the release schedule and what they’ll have:

Available Now:
HOUNDED: “Kaibab Unbound” and “Clan Rathskeller”
HEXED: Grimoire of the Lamb
HAMMERED: “A Test of Mettle”
June 14:
TRICKED: Two Ravens and One Crow
TRAPPED: “The Dead Flea Scrolls: A Sirius Prophecy of Poochism” (Oberon’s religion for dogs)
HUNTED: This is the only one with no bonus goodies, just revised/expanded text
September 13:
SHATTERED: A Prelude to War and “The Book of Five Meats”
STAKED: “Granuaile’s Notebook”
BESIEGED: “The Naughtiest Cherub”
SCOURGED: The Buzz Kill

The ebook editions will also contain these bonuses. Audiobooks will not, though those of you who are already longtime listeners will recognize that almost all of those bonuses in print are already available in audio. There are four short stories up there, however, that aren’t, and won’t be, in audio. These print editions are basically the deluxe cat’s meow. But don’t tell Oberon I said that.

The cover art will be all new and consistently designed on the spine so you won’t have the titles and name switch at book seven. YES! Cover artist Sarah J. Coleman and designer Ella Laytham have done absolutely gorgeous work on these and I couldn’t be happier.

Basically, these editions are the equivalent of “The Director’s Cut” in movies, since we are including all the novellas and putting them in chronological order for you. I hope you’ll enjoy them, get a full set for yourself and your buddies, maybe another full set for your dog, and sort of quiver and hum happily whenever you see them on your shelf.

Thanks so much for reading and please give your doggies a belly rub for me. May harmony (and sausage) find you.

Juuuust in case you’d like to try it—Stove Top ain’t doing it for you, or whatever—here’s the recipe my family has always used from my late grandmother (who was the inspiration behind the Widow MacDongah in the Iron Druid Chronicles). It uses basic stuff, nothing fancy, because it’s a recipe born in the Great Depression. It just requires a wee bit of planning.

This is made of cornbread and biscuits in a 2-1 ratio. You can make the cornbread and biscuits from scratch or use a mix. In days of yore, we used a cornbread mix—making two batches—and one batch of Bisquick biscuits. Cornbread mix is bizarrely not a thing in Canada, however, so we have to make our cornbread from scratch now. Either way, you make all the carbs the day before you’re going to make your turkey, whether it’s for Thanksgiving or Christmas or [insert special occasion here].

And once you’ve baked your batches o’ carbs, you break them all up into a bigass bowl and mix together with some salt and pepper and a buttload of sage. Like…a whole thing of ground sage. We don’t go easy on that one. I’m talking one of those 18g rectangular coffins full, not a ginormous bottle of it. Still, on the small coffin it says “use sparingly” and we’re like, “Listen, mothercustard, we’re gonna sacrifice every last microgram of your plant-based ass to the God of Stuffing.” If you have some poultry seasoning, you can throw that in too—not necessary, but if you have some on hand and have always wondered when you were gonna use it, now’s a good time. Shake it like a Polaroid picture in there. Mix well, cover with a towel, and forget about it overnight, because you’re gonna finish it in the morning before you stuff your turkey.

So, kablam—you’ve woken the next day, you’ve slurped down a coffee or five, and you’re ready to get some major poultry going. It’s time to finish off that stuffing. Get out your cutting board.

Chop up a white, yellow, or sweet onion, fairly fine, but not minced—we’re not making hot dog toppings here. (Red onion is Against the Law for this recipe, it ain’t gonna taste right.) Then chop up some celery into chunks. 4-6 stalks, I guess? You throw all that into your big bowl of carbs and sage, which has dried up a bit overnight. That’s okay. You want that. Because now you’re gonna moisten it. Aw yeah, it’s gonna be plenty moist, don’t you worry. Let me say that one more time for everyone who enjoys it: Moist.

Pause to wash your dang hands. I mean, you should have done that already. But really. Do it again. The clinically safe fifty thousand seconds or whatever it is. Because it’s gonna get messy.

Crack two (or maybe three!) eggs in there and then smoosh them into the stuffing. You just grab fistfuls of the carbs and let the proteins in the eggs bind them so it clumps together. You don’t want the cornbread and biscuits to be sodden, but you don’t want a mess of dry crumbs either. Just hanging together in bunches, you know? This is where you have to make a judgement call. If the 2-3 eggs weren’t enough to make it all work, add sparing splashes of chicken broth (or veggie broth if you have vegetarians in the family, this will make sense in a bit) to ensure your stuffing has become cliquish, shall we say. Again, not sodden balls of sadness! It’s a balancing act.

Now, unless you have an absolute hulk of a turkey, you’re going to have more stuffing than you can practically stuff into the bird. You should have enough to stuff both the cavity and the neck and adorn the creases where the legs meet the breast and still have plenty left over. That leftover you’re going to bake on its own in a baking dish, and if you have vegetarian family members, this is where using vegetable broth above comes in handy. You can grease up that baking dish with butter and rock it for a half hour or so after your turkey is out of the oven. You want it to cook until the top is crispy. And that’s what we usually wind up serving, along with the stuffing from the top of the turkey. Because…

Moisture from the bird is gonna make the stuffing inside SUPER moist—which is why you don’t want it to be especially juicy to begin with. Some folks like it that way—which is cool, more power to them—but we like to have the drier baked stuff ready too. This glorious carbfest is amazing at the main event with gravy, and fantastic later reheated or deployed on turkey cranberry sandwiches, what have you.

Bookmark for the day you need it, and enjoy!

To celebrate ten years of the Iron Druid Chronicles and to give the entire series a consistent look, Del Rey is reissuing the adventures in trade paperback featuring cover art by Sarah J. Coleman (@Inkymole). They’ll be released three at a time spaced a few months apart, and the first three will be available March 15, 2022!

The second three will be released in the summer, and so on, so that you’ll be able to have the entire series with a consistent look (which has been A Thing We Needed). What I love about this is that you get both Atticus and Oberon on the cover, Celtic knotwork that represents the magic system, and book-specific art in the corners/on the spines. The different colors are going to look absolutely gorgeous on your shelf, and there’s BONUS CONTENT in these editions!

Each book will contain some short stories or a novella that was previously available only in ebook and audio, or, in one case, printed out of sequence in the series, and in another case, it’s completely new stuff. We’re giving print readers all the goodies this time—and updating the text a bit too, fixing typos and such!

The new edition of Hounded will contain two short stories, “Clan Rathskeller” and “Kaibab Unbound.”

The new edition of Hexed will include the novella Grimoire of the Lamb.

The new edition of Hammered will feature the short story “A Test of Mettle.”

When we get to the reissue of Tricked, that will include the novella Two Ravens and One Crow. It’s supposed to fall chronologically between books 4 and 5, but previously had been included at the end of book 6. So we’re fixing that!

And the new edition of Trapped will feature all-new stuff from Oberon: “The Book of Five Meats” (Oberon’s attempt at a cookbook) and “The Dead Flea Scrolls” (which establishes the dog religion, Poochism).

But enough about the words—let’s see that cover art, eh? Here’s Hounded (presented with spine on the left)!

Love the blazing sun and the suggestion that things are going to get hot—as they do when Aenghus Óg opens a portal to hell. I also love the knotwork and that Oberon is properly sized—lots of people are unaware just how huge wolfhounds are until you see them standing next to someone. The eyes you see up top represent magical sight or the Third Eye.

For Hexed, we chose purple as a nod to the favorite color of the Sisters of the Three Auroras. If you look in the top corners, you’ll see some demon rams there! And there are some mystical symbols worked into the knots as well.

Hammered has some of my favorite goodies in the art: Thor’s hammer (which Leif Helgarson wears in the book) is at the top, along with some thunderbolts, and down below you’ll see Ratatosk as well as Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin. The midnight blue references the nighttime raid on Asgard.

Here’s a look at the spines, which should give you a glimpse into how cool the series will look on your shelf:

Breaking that down — we have a cool world tree design at the top, and some subtle sun/moon stuff going on. Then you have the book title, the number in the series, and then a cover element specific to the book. A Celtic knot for Hounded, a mystical symbol from Hexed, and a raven for Hammered. Then my name and the publisher logo. That’s going to be a consistent look across the series, and of course there will be different dominant colors, so it’s going to be quite the rainbow when finished!

All hail artist Sarah J. Coleman and designer Ella Laytham! You can preorder these beautiful editions now using this convenient page. (If the cover art isn’t quite there yet it will show up soon—sometimes the retailers take a few days to update.)

For those of you who might wish to have signed copies, I’ll try to get something arranged for that! My hope is that I’ll be able to visit at least one indie store (if not more) in the US and they’ll be able to ship you signed copies wherever you are. But if you’re cool with unsigned copies, that link above is ready to go!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. If you’d like to enter a sweepstakes to win a handpainted mini of Atticus O’Sullivan together with a trade paperback edition of Hounded, enter here! (You can order your own Atticus mini from Hero Forge in colored plastic (seen on the right) or get an unpainted one and paint it yourself. The painted model on the left with the tattoos and strap and everything was done by Alan O’Bryan, who can be found as @gorillabrush on Twitter and @gorillawithabrush on Instagram. Get your own Atticus mini from Hero Forge here.

Thank you all so much for reading the Iron Druid Chronicles and spreading the word over the years. I hope you’ll love these beautiful new editions and all the goodies inside!

Golly gee whillikers, where to begin? (Did I spell whillikers correctly? What is a whilliker anyway?)

Let’s start with the happy news that INK & SIGIL is now available in paperback, and therefore also at a reduced ebook price. And, if you’re in the UK (or large swaths of Europe), the ebook price is mega-reduced down to the minimum, 99p, for a limited time! Jump on that, y’all! Tell your friends, start a book club, do all the happy things!

Had some folks ask if INK & SIGIL will ever be in mass market paperback, and the answer is nay, alas, it shan’t. Mass market is slowly going the way of the dodo. In fact, the Iron Druid Chronicles will be reissued soonish in trade paperback with all-new covers, because (Gadzooks!) come May it will be ten years since HOUNDED hit the shelves, and ten-year anniversaries are commonly used as excuses for new art and so on. So this means that you will get new art (YAY!) and you will also be able to grab a matched set with INK & SIGIL (DOUBLE YAY!!).

Many thanks, by the way, to everyone who’s jumped on INK & SIGIL already and reviewed it and spread the word. I’m having a blast with Al, Buck, and Nadia, and would love to keep writing more. The only way I get to do that is if y’all buy the books, so it means the world. Reviews help tremendously.

In other news (so many updates)…

My first foray into science fiction is now sort of released! I’m super excited about that and stoked at the kind reviews it’s getting, but probably need to explain the “sort of.”

A QUESTION OF NAVIGATION was supposed to release on Jan. 31. But due to unfortunate snafu at the printer—pandemic delays and whatnot—it’s not going to be ready for another few days, or possibly weeks. They are working to get it done as soon as possible. So all your preorders will be fulfilled, whether it’s print or ebook—thank you to everyone who has already done so!—and if you preorder now, you won’t have long to wait. But! If you’re an audiobook listener, you don’t have to wait at all. Because that’s a separate deal—an independent deal, in fact, in which royalties are split evenly betwixt myself and the narrator, Luke Daniels. So A QUESTION OF NAVIGATION is ready to go now in audio, and Luke does his typical brilliant job. It’s a very rare case in which audio is available before print. So it’s sort of available now.

Reminder that the print edition is a bit more expensive because it’s signed, numbered, and limited—once they’re gone, they’re gone forever and therefore valuable. You can preorder the print directly from Subterranean Press, which packages your stuff SO carefully, as they know these are precious items, and of course you can preorder the ebook wherever you buy ebooks!

What am I working on now? Well, currently I’m doing the page proofs for PAPER & BLOOD, the sequel to INK & SIGIL. It will be out on August 10, and you can preorder now (including audio!) wherever you like to buy books. If you click right here you’ll land on a page full of convenient links to vendors—your preorder is so helpful and appreciated! Plus you’ll see the amazing cover art. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do signed copies or any events yet, but am fairly certain we can do signed bookplates as I did for INK & SIGIL.

I’m also working on A CURSE OF KRAKENS, the final book of the Seven Kennings trilogy. I’ve recently gotten some very kind emails regarding A BLIGHT OF BLACKWINGS and I’m so glad to hear that folks are connecting with it.

I’m baking a lot and also experimenting with ceviche and other fish dishes, reading some good books and watching Ted Lasso over and over again. My newsletter keeps you up on all of my random pursuits in addition to book stuff in case you’d like to subscribe.

And that’s all, friends! Happy reading, and I hope you and yours are well and will remain so.

Delicious, Thy Name is Moo Shu Pork Tacos

If your tongue is longing for something you can make at home that feels fancy but isn’t that tough to make—I got you covered. These goodies are good.

Deity of Choice, Take the Wheel

Shortly after I tried moo shu pork tacos for the first time, my facehole periodically sang a song of yearning, urging me to make them again. I was introduced to them through Hello Fresh, a meal delivery service where they give you the stuff and you cook it up. They let you buy it again every few months but that is not enough, because of the aforementioned song of yearning. So I needed to learn how to make them on my own. This recipe will easily feed 3-4, and if you have just two peeps you’re definitely gonna have leftovers. Let’s do this.

PREP THESE THINGS

• Shred half (or maybe just a quarter?) of a smol red cabbage
• Slice some fresh mushrooms, white or cremini, you pick. OR CHEAT and buy a package of washed and sliced mushrooms. I won’t tell.
• Chop up some green onions, like two or three of ’em
• Thinly slice a few radishes
• Mix 1 tablespoon ground ginger and garlic powder in a wee bowl, like a ramekin or something. You’re gonna deploy that soon, but set aside for the moment. Feel free, however, to pay your spice mix tiny compliments while you work on the rest of this. Just lavish it with affirmations. “Aww, yeahhh, you’re so damn tasty,” is really fun to say out loud without warning, because if anyone else is in the house, they’re gonna ask you about it. “You’re finger-lickin’ good, I can tell. You complete me.”
• Mix 1/3 cup of hoisin sauce, 1 tablespoon white vinegar, and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce in another wee bowl, but maybe bigger than a ramekin

HAVE THESE THINGS HANDY

• a pound of ground pork, or else some pork tenderloin cut into strips
• a tablespoon of sesame oil
• flour tortillas you like—white or whole wheat, you do you. Taco size rather than burrito size, unless you want to make a burrito out of this, and then a taco-sized tortilla would be inadequate
• Sriracha!
• Mayonnaise—whatever kind you like. Vegan. Organic. Half fat. Decaf.

GIT COOKIN’, HOSS

So grab a bigass skillet and do the “medium heat” thing on your stove, which is, I don’t know, 4-6 on the dial? (I think it’s weird how no one really knows what medium heat is.) As it’s warming up, drop a tablespoon of sesame oil in there, then your mushrooms and HALF of the chopped green onions. It’s gonna look massive but don’t worry, it’ll cook down nicely. Roll that all around, get it coated in the sesame oil, let it cook a bit.

Now get a smallish bowl and dollop four spoonfuls of mayo in there. Then squirt some sriracha on it. This is a taste thing. You like it hot? Squirt more. Squirt squirt squirt. Stir!

The redder it is, the spicier it is. We go for a salmon color, I guess, because it’s flavorful without being too spicy. Let that rest.

Check on your shrooms, stir and nudge and coo softly to them. They should have cooked down and look a bit like this before you do the next thing.

The next thing is you add the ground pork or pork strips. I shove the shrooms to one side to start with. Then I sprinkle that moo shu spice mixture (ginger and garlic powder) over the whole shebang. Get that pork cooked so there’s no pink, break it up, mix with the mushrooms, let those spices mingle.

Once that pork is all cooked through, you’re going to add the hoisin/soy/vinegar mixture to the skillet. What shall we call that mixture—Steve? Add Steve to the skillet. Steve is delicious.

Add the red cabbage in there too (and stir it all around to get Steve coating all the goodies. (I didn’t use all the cabbage—I just kinda eyeballed it.) The cabbage will reduce a wee bit and congratulations, folks, you have a skillet full of moo shu taco filling.

Now the fun bit: Nuke a tortilla for 30-35 seconds to get it warm. Slap some moo shu pork on there. Sprinkle green onions (because you saved some!) and deploy radish slices for some cronchy cronch. Dollop with the sriracha mayo, and wow. Enjoy. Shove it in your facehole and then you, too, will be singing songs of yearning later.

Reading of how many meatpacking workers are getting ill (and indeed, dying) because of Covid-19, I have even more reason (besides the health benefits) to avoid meat. Like…I don’t want my demand for steak or chicken to endanger someone, y’know? But I LIKE TACOS. So what can I do? Deploy the shrooms, good sir. DEPLOY THE SHROOMS.

Wordsmith Chuck Wendig has a spiffy recipe for mushroom tacos over on his blog here that’s dang good.

This recipe is a slightly tweaked version of the one created by the outstanding Isabel, who’s working with full-blown grilled portobellos and a bit more cabbage than I could personally handle, and I added cheese because of course I did, but do check out her original here. Do it up right and you should have enough for four peeps.

Your shopping list:

• fresh cremini (or baby bella) mushrooms. Three small packages of them, I guess? 20-30 ounces, whatever the equivalent is. If you can find some all sliced, you’ll save some time, but as ye can see above I bought mine whole and sliced ’em up. We are turbo lucky; there’s a local shroom producer about 10 km away from us so we get amazing mushrooms in our stores.
• buncha cilantro
• small red cabbage
• coupla limes
• four garlic cloves
• 2 bell peppers, whatever color you dig
• optional: Shredded cheese—I like the three-cheese blend that gets marketed as Mexican blend. But leave it if you want this to be vegan.
• tortillas that make you happy. White, wheat, corn, whatever size. You want burrito size instead of taco size? Go for it!

Your pantry item list that you may/may not need to replenish:

• olive oil
• ground chili powder
• salt
• ground cumin
• dried oregano
• mayo or light mayo or fat free this, vegan that, whatever your jam is

OK. First we’re going to make a marinade for the mushrooms. Get a big ol’ mixing bowl and put these goodies in the bottom and whisk together:

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from those coupla limes)
• 1/4 cup minced cilantro, but I just eyeballed it
• four cloves of that garlic, all minced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon salt. Get fancy if you want. If you use artisanal salt here I think you get to call the whole taco artisanal. Those are the rules.
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

Now wash and slice your shrooms, or, if you’ve scored sliced cremini shrooms, I guess just dump it in the mixing bowl with the marinade. Get your super clean hands in there and toss them shrooms around and try not to pass out from the heavenly smell. This marinade is just bonkers and your mushrooms are going to soak all those flavors up. Like, it’s right here you know this is going to rock. You can’t screw this up now. So get ’em all coated in the marinade, and then maybe tease your family a bit. SMELL THIS, you say, shoving it under their nose as they’re trying to decorate their home in Animal Crossing. WE’RE GONNA EAT THEM SOON EXCEPT THEY’LL BE HOT. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO PRAISE ME NOW.

Find a bigass nonstick skillet. I have a 12″ one but an 11″ or 10″ will work in a pinch. Medium heat, is, uh…5? Anyway. Not high. Not low. Somewhere in the middle. Get it het up a bit and throw your marinated mushrooms in there. They’ll fill it up pretty good, but don’t worry, they’ll cook down. Give it about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. They’ll look like this when you start out but shrink significantly as they heat up:

While the shrooms are getting hot n’ delicious, chop up those bell peppers and set aside. I used a yeller one and an orange one, but again, you use whatever color you want.

That cabbage? Halve it and halve it again. You just need a quarter cabbage. I can report from experience that if you shout “I CLEAVE MY CABBAGE IN TWAIN!” as you do it you’ll really enjoy yourself and maybe startle your family. Then, since you gotta do it once more, you say “I CLEAVE MY CABBAGE IN TWAIN AGAIN!” and at this point you should get some satisfactory WTFs from your family if the first one didn’t work. Now shred it, or slice thinly, or julienne? See, this is why I don’t write cookbooks. Throw shredded cabbage in a bigass mixing bowl. Chop some cilantro, a quarter cup or so, and then throw in a spoonful of mayo or your favorite equivalent. You just want enough to coat. Toss it around, admire the colors, and then say as pompously as possible, “I HEREBY DUB THEE…SLAW!”

The mushrooms are probably done. Dump ’em in a bowl for a wee while and rinse out the skillet. You’ll notice a buncha delicious juice. Don’t worry about that. In fact, rejoice!

Now throw in a dollop of olive oil in that same but newly-rinsed skillet, get it het up, and toss in your bell peppers and let them cook and soften for about ten minutes. Some of ’em will get a pleasant scorch mark or three and that’s good. Also good is shouting, “I SCORCH THEE! I BLISTER THY SKIN! CHAR, MY VEGGIES, CHAR! AHAHAHAHA!” I dunno, y’all. I just like cultivating the mad scientist vibe when I’m cooking some amazing shit.

When the peppers are ready, throw the mushrooms & juice in with ’em and stir it up, letting everything mix and heat together. You’re basically ready to go. IT’S TACO TIME.

Here’s where you bust out your tortillas of choice and add cheese or not as your heart desires. I sprinkle some cheese on, nuke it 20-30 seconds, then spoon on some mushroom glory and top with slaw. These are SO NOM NOM, and I hope you enjoy them and remain safe and healthy. So say we all.