{"id":3116,"date":"2014-09-15T09:08:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T13:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2014-09-15T10:34:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T14:34:06","slug":"the-fish-test-for-nanny-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=3116","title":{"rendered":"The Fish Test for Nanny X"},"content":{"rendered":"

When people think of writers researching stories, they often think of nonfiction. But writers research fiction, too. Details\u00a0\u2014like the way it feels to cast a fishing rod\u00a0or do a loop on a roller coaster\u00a0\u2014\u00a0need to be right for a fictional story to seem real. For Canary in the Coal Mine<\/a>, I did research by visiting exhibition mines, walking the streets of Charleston, exploring an old company store, and listening in the dark.<\/p>\n

For Nanny X<\/a>, which is out today from Holiday House Books<\/a>, I ate.<\/p>\n

My main task was to figure out which smelled and tasted worse: a peanut-butter and sardine sandwich or peanut-butter and anchovies.<\/p>\n

\"Which<\/a>

Which smells worse?<\/p><\/div>\n

I should begin by saying I have\u00a0a history with sardines. In my post-college years, one of my housemates liked to make himself a snack of sardines and feta cheese, which he claimed<\/em> tasted delicious. But my other housemate and I could tell what he’d been eating, long after the evidence was gone. The smell lingered. In the end, we either banned it from the house or made him eat it outside on the porch. So my bet, in the anchovy-sardine competition was definitely on the sardines.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG<\/a>But while the sardine smell did turn out to be\u00a0stronger, my crew and I decided there\u00a0was something more disturbing about the anchovies. In a taste test, we all thought the\u00a0sardines tasted better. The anchovies made us gag. Which means the anchovies won the place of honor on Nanny X’s sandwich. We lined them up on the peanut butter, just so.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG<\/a><\/p>\n

And then we closed the sandwich and took a\u00a0bite. I will spare my test subjects the humiliation of displaying their spitting photographs here. But below is my tentative taste test.<\/p>\n

Verdict: BLECH.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0we\u00a0try out new food items, we have a list of things we\u00a0consider when we\u00a0give those food items a proper review.<\/p>\n

Appeal<\/strong>:\u00a0Doesn’t look as awful as you might think.<\/p>\n

Texture<\/strong>: Not so bad. We eat peanut sauce with Asian food so there is\u00a0half a chance peanut butter might be okay with fish.<\/p>\n

Taste:<\/strong> (Insert barfing noises here.)<\/p>\n

Would you eat this again?<\/strong>\u00a0No thanks.<\/p>\n

\"Just<\/a>

Just one bite<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\""GUH."\"<\/a>

“GUH.”<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When people think of writers researching stories, they often think of nonfiction. But writers research fiction, too. Details\u00a0\u2014like the way it feels to cast a fishing rod\u00a0or do a loop on a roller coaster\u00a0\u2014\u00a0need to be right for a fictional … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,138,155,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-middle-grade","category-nanny-x","category-researching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3180,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}