Sauté oil and garlic in the pan, add a half stick of butter, flame off white wine, cut heat and reduce until you can leave a furrow in the sauce with a spoon, squeeze two lemon wedges and then drop the wedges into the pan (very important), add capers (optional, but the brininess will cut the acidity of the lemon), add uncooked shrimp and cook about 2 minutes a side. Serve over pasta or risotto.
I had an idea for a character that had a stutter and spent 5 hours researching speech impediments. In the end i scrapped the idea because it was really hard to read when i tried to apply what i learned, but now i have a good knowledge of speech problems.
I forgot one haha... We have these two solar powered colour-changing light thingies on our kitchen window ledge. I thought there were a couple of points in my novel that could be enhanced by having a colour changing... whatever. So one night I sat and watched them and wrote down the colour sequence. Because even if nobody else ever noticed I had the sequence wrong (and since there are probably a million different sequences anyway), I would eventually have noticed, and it would have really annoyed me.
Casanova reputedly used condoms made out of sheep's intestines. In Elizabeth's case it's probably more likely that she used some herbal medicines either as contraception or for abortion, or of course that they used the withdrawal method ... when she's queen with the power to cut your head off its less likely than usual that a man will get carried away
Hm.... probably all the different methods of murder I had to research for a serial killer story. I wouldn't be surprised if I was on some government watch list. xD
The oddest thing I researched was 18th century erotica/porn, including de Sade. I didn't really enjoyed reading it. This sentences made me laugh out loudly. This is the worst! Because you could offend or annoy people who know the real thing. ^ This. I have found several new ideas or approaches while researching. From the research for my recent WIP I can tell you that they were not part of the upper class' diet in the 18th century. Because I WAS such a person who had a character peel potatoes in that time. Thankfully I realized my mistake myself. I research because I feel unsure about it. I might THINK I know how it worked, but I often realize I had it wrong. Movies and other badly researched books can distort our perception of things. In hindsight I might have wasted some time with some stuff, but who knows? I might have found out I was profoundly wrong about something I considered insignificant. Have you found this recipe during your research? ;-)
Just chiming in to say that the potato thing is actually a quite large error. The potato's introduction to Europe changed history. It deserves its very own dot on one of those historical timelines. A book with any claim to historical accuracy at any level should not have this error. (When published. In manuscripts, errors happen.) Now, the advantage of it being a quite large error is that at least one beta reader would probably catch it.
I have researched the following for others in the research thread: what human flesh tastes like, how to make a nuke, drugs to make someone compliant/zombiefied, and on. Pretty sure I am on some watch list, even though I have no intent to use that knowledge outside of helping my fellow fictioneer.
Oh I already know what human flesh tastes like, thanks to a love of weird documentaries. xD And I think I learned about the zombie drugs from documentaries about Haitian voodoo zombies.
@malaupp I will raise you torture methods through out history to present, and Unit 731. I had to get a good functional knowledge for an MC of mine that started out in extreme psycho/physical torture methods. Scary stuff. Though if you like serial killers, you should give Mind Hunters a read. It is a true crime, based around the guy that started the BAU in the FBI. Really interesting stuff.
Oh, really. I've made several batches in my life that turned into horror stories, for sure. The goo plastered everywhere. The smoke-filled kitchen. The desperately ill people...moaning about being poisoned. And then there was the first time I made cinnamon rolls with yeast, and kept tasting the dough. I had to punch my stomach down several times afterwards, because it kept doubling in size.
Well you should write what you know, but if you write what you only know you'll be stuck. It is always wise to gain new experience and research because what I only know is boring as hell to be honest.