Thordsay Book Review

On the front of yesterday's Wall Street Journal was a banner which declared: "How to Make Your House Look Smarter (even if you aren't)".  The article, in the fourth section, said to have books.  Lots of books.

How am I doing?  Bear in mind that this probably isn't more than 15% of my books.

Anyway....
This is a double book review: an e-book, and a real book; a thriller and chick-lit.

TEARS IN TRIPOLI
by Paul A. Rice
copyright 2012

Jake Collins is a retired British Special Forces soldier, who works as a private security officer in dangerous places.  When this book opens, he's been hired to protect a newscaster named Andy who's going to Tripoli during the Libyan uprising.  Of course, there are no direct flights to Tripoli, so Jake flies into Tunisia, is taken by a driver named Mus to the border, from whence he rides with a driver named Raouf.  Entering Libya from a southern border crossing and driving north to Tripoli, Raouf proves helpful with his friends and relatives at every checkpoint, and ultimately in Tripoli.  Jake is one of a team of protection agents assigned to two news crews, including his journalist, who turns out to be "Andi", a blond bombshell he'd noticed in an airport before he arrived in Tunisia.  The book was very realistic, with actions having real consequences, and set during the couple of weeks during which Gadaffi's regime was toppled.  All in all, it was a good read.

I got this as a free e-book during a promotion; it's available in Kindle format and paperback.  I think that if copies of the paperback survive long enough, it will be considered good, accurate historical fiction.  And that's what I liked most about it.  4 stars out of 5.

THE MOON SPINNERS
by Mary Stewart
copyright 1963

Mary Stewart's books are somewhat formulaic, and comforting to read.  They always involve a plucky British heroine, usually on vacation somewhere else, handsome men and danger.

Nicola Ferris is a 22 year old junior secretary at the British Embassy in Athens.  When her cousin Frances wants to come to Greece for vacation, Nicola eagerly meets her at the seaside village of Agios Georgios on Crete.  She had been given a ride to the footpath to that village by the Studebakers, who "...were both lavish with that warm, extroverted, and slightly overwhelming kindliness which seems a specifically American virtue."  Since Nicola's a day early in arriving at the village, she decides to walk up a path beside a stream for lunch, and, after a couple of hours hiking, she finds herself being taken hostage by Lambis, who is trying to protect Mark, who was shot after they stumbled upon some locals and a dead body.  Of course, the next day she went about her business, while trying to assist Lambis and Mark,  Of course, Frances helps out, and all is well.

The title "Moon Spinners" refers to a legend that three spinners pull the moon out of the sky, spinning it down to earth, until it's gone, so there will be a night of darkness when everyone can sleep.  Mary Stewart included a description which made me think of Chan, of a woman spinning:  "The soft, furry mass of white wool on the distaff, the brown fingers pulling it out like candy-floss to loop across the front of the black dress, the whirling ball of woolen thread on the spindle...."  Being able to relocate melodious passages like these is why I still love real books so dearly. This was a nice book, one that my friend GMarie might call a "cozy".  Even though you know to some degree how it will end, you want to read because you love the good guys, root for the underdogs, and boo for the bad guys, all in good fun.  Again, 4 stars out of 5.

Happy Thorsday, everyone!

Poke Cake

This is one of those things that couldn't be easier to make, and everyone loves it.  Well, everyone except my littlest fussbudget.  He has to do something to prove he's a fussbudget, right?

POKE CAKE

1 cake: white, yellow or pound, preferably sheet form, but loaf will do
1 box of jello mix (3 ounce)
hot water
ice
whipped cream (cream, vanilla extract, sugar)

You can make a white or yellow cake from mix or scratch, or a pound cake, or just buy one unfrosted at the store - it is, after all, summer, and therefore too hot for normal people to bake, right?  If you bake it, let it cool.  Pour 1 cup boiling water into a 4 cup measuring cup, sprinkle the jello over it, then stir with a wire whisk to dissolve and blend thoroughly.  Add 2 cups of ice cubes, and stir with a slotted spoon until the jello starts to thicken and is partially set.  Using the handle of a wooden spoon, poke holes in your cake mercilessly - lots of holes, with about 1" of cake around each hole.  Pour the jello into the holes and over the top of the cake.  Frost with the whipped cream, refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and serve.

You can take this to a 4th of July picnic.  Use blue jello and red-colored whipped cream to be really festive looking, or be like me, and use whatever you have on hand.  Either way, it won't last long!

Cranberry Walnut Pie

Since my daughter and I didn't coordinate our baking plans, I also made a pie for Father's Day dessert.  My dearly beloved loves pie above all other confections, so it was an easy thing to decide to do.  My biggest problem is always deciding to do these things hours ahead of time, as the cookbooks suggest, in order to let it cool.  So when you see my raggedy-looking cut pieces, you understand, right?

CRANBERRY WALNUT PIE

3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup light cornstarch
12-oz bag cranberries
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
2 tbsp butter or margarine
1 pie crust

In a sauce pan, stir the sugar and cornstarch with a whisk to combine.  Add the water and corn syrup, and heat to a boil.  Add the cranberries, raisins and walnuts, return to a boil and cook until the cranberries pop open - about 4 minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat.  Stir in the butter until it's combined and melted.  Let the filling cool while you prepare the pie crust.  (See my recipe for the Best Ever Pie crust, or just use a frozen one - whatever makes you happy).  Pour the filling in the crust, and top with a second crust.  Bake at 425F for 40 to 50 minutes, cool and serve with whipped cream.

My dearly beloved loved this pie, although he opined that it needed whipped cream because it's pretty tart.  Dan said it made walnuts edible, and the little boys and Cass loved it.  Cass had a guest over, who said it was wonderful, and tasted like Thanksgiving.  I think that's pretty unanimous votes in favor of this pie!

What Makes Father's Day Great...

...is your daughter baking you a pie.  And what makes an apple pie really great....

is when your daughter puts a candle in it, so it's more like a party!

Meatloaf

Oh, I've been cooking, because everyone else wants to eat regardless of my dental woes!  (Seriously, is anyone surprised by that?)  Meatloaf is pretty easy to break into little bits, so even we dentally challenged individuals can manage it, and it has the added benefit of being Ryan's absolute favorite meal.  So when it was 47 degrees the other night, after a rainy and chilly day, meatloaf was the centerpiece of the menu!

MARJIE'S MEATLOAF

2 pounds ground beef
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup milk
2 onions
1 carrot
1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika

Chop the onions and carrot into a very fine mess, almost the consistency of mush.  Add the milk, salt and paprika, and blend briefly to combine.  Put the ground beef in a bowl, form a hollow in the middle of it, pour in the blended mix, and add the Worcestershire sauce.  Fold over until combined, then form the mixture into a loaf in a pan.  Sprinkle a little more Worcestershire sauce over the meatloaf, then cook at 375F for 40 to 50 minutes.  For gravy, combine 1 cup of water, 2 beef bouillon cubes and about 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce, bring to a boil, then whisk 1-1/2 tbsp cornstarch into 1/4 cup cold water and whisk that into the boiling liquid.  Cook until it thickens, adding a touch more liquid if necessary.

If you like to use a starch filler in your meatloaf, use 1 cup oats - quick or original.  I avoid that due to sugar/starch considerations, but the oats can be added with the onion mush, and 1/4 cup more milk.  I usually serve my meatloaf with a wild rice side dish and some green veggies, and never have any leftovers.  Sad, really, because it would make a great lunch the next day!

Hope you all have a great weekend planned!

Another Birthday!

Yes, we have a lot of those around here.  This weekend, it was my middle daughter's birthday.

We even dressed alike for the occasion.  OK, so the prints weren't identical.  But it was close!

I hope you all had a fun weekend!

Thorsday Book Review

In honor of Ray Bradbury, who passed away yesterday at the great age of 91, I bring you one of his books.  I read this about 2 years ago, with Ryan, when it was assigned summer reading before he started his freshman year of high school.

FAHRENHEIT 451
by Ray Bradbury


Some time in the future, books are banned.  Televisions are everywhere, telling people exactly what "officials" want them to know.  No one needs to deal with messy things like religion, psychology, sociology, or anything that might make them unhappy.

In this world lives Guy Montag, married with no children.  He is a fireman; like all firemen, his job is to burn books.  They are not permitted to keep any of the books which are confiscated; that's an imprisonable offense.  But one day, Guy did just that.  His wife had been bothering him to work harder and make more money, so she could have a fourth TV wall in their house, because she spends all of her time with her TV family.  Then Clarisse  moves in next door, and she's a scholar, reading books and holding lively discussions with Guy.  This is what inspired him to secrete the first book, and to do it over and again.  One day, Clarisse simply disappeared.  Then Guy's wife discovered his cache of books and turned him in, forcing Guy to flee.

451 degrees Fahreheit is the temperature at which paper burns, thus the title of the book.  I truly enjoyed this book; it made me happy that we live in a time and place where we are free to read and do as we please, think what we like, and disagree with anyone, including the government.  It should not have taken Ray Bradbury's passing to make me write a review of this book, and everyone should read it and think carefully about the implications of a society where the government dictates more and more of what people can do and think.

Thor read this book with me and Ryan, smart guy that he was, and he would also implore you to read it!

Happy Thorsday, everyone!

 Edited to add:  Janet at Mystery Fanfare wrote about Ray Bradbury yesterday, and I learned this from her:
"He (Ray Bradbury) wrote “Fahrenheit 451” at the UCLA library, on typewriters that rented for 10 cents a half hour. He said he carried a sack full of dimes to the library and completed the book in nine days, at a cost of $9.80."

Double Thorsday Book Review!

I have a real book and an e-book to review today!  Spending lots of quality time with Kevin the Dentist also insures that I spend lots of quality time waiting for things like x-ray development and other fun things we don't need to discuss here.  Anyway....Book #1

THE PHYSICK BOOK OF DELIVERANCE DANE
By Katherine Howe
copyright 2009
362 pages



I bought this book at one of the used book sales this spring.  Oh, I know I said I'm not buying myself any more books, because I have so many, but how could I resist this cover?

How could I resist this back cover?

How could I resist the inside of the book?  And the pages felt nice in my hand, too, which is something I love about real books, and miss about e-books.

Connie Goodwin is a graduate student at Harvard, preparing to write her thesis to receive her PhD in Colonial American History.  Shortly after passing her oral exams, her mother Grace calls to ask Connie to go to Grandma Sophie's house in Marblehead, Mass., to clean it up for sale.  Grandma has been dead for 20 years, and Grace has ignored the house, but the property taxes have become cumbersome, so Grace wishes to sell it, without the bother of returning home from New Mexico.  Connie reluctantly agrees to take on this job while searching for a topic for her dissertation.  She finds Sophie's house completely furnished, but absolutely without modern utilities (save indoor plumbing).  While going through old books, Connie found a hollow key in a 200+ year old Bible; a tiny rolled up parchment in the key bore the words "Deliverance Dane".  In an effort to find out who or what Deliverance Dane was, Connie scours records at old churches, town halls, and libraries.  She also meets a hunky steeplejack, Sam, who attempts to assist her.  Because, after all, what fun is a novel set in New England without a hunky steeplejack?

Interspersed between the modern chapters in this book are chapters set between 1682 and 1750, which explain the background of Deliverance Dane and her descendants.

I liked the first 3/4 of this book, but in the last quarter, the author took a turn I found unnecessary; I thought she could have come to the same ending without following the course she did.  Overall, it was a pretty good book, however.  3 stars out of 5

WHY WE RAISE BELGIAN HORSES
by Kathryn Judson
copyright 2011

This story is told in the way a mother or grandmother would relate a family saga to a teen or young adult, complete with the periodic inquiry as to whether you'd like more cocoa.  It's the story of Great-grandfather Lars, who immigrated from a fishing village in Norway in the 1880s when the fish stopped biting.  He was 17, and his father sent him with his 5 year old brother, Thorval, to the Dakota Territory, to live with his Uncle Anders, a bachelor running a successful teamster business.  Lars and Thorval are greeted in town by a pastor who is neither Lutheran nor Norwiegan, but helpful nonetheless, and feeds the boys while they await their uncle (and gives them puppies as they're leaving with Uncle Anders).  The book is about Lars' first few years in Dakota, learning to handle horses, meeting people, learning to be more American and less Norweigan, and, of course, meeting girls, one of whom would become his bride.  There are Indians, who are more or less friendly, cowboys, and all of the other types of people one would expect to encounter in the Old West.  The book made me chuckle a couple of times, gasp in horror a couple of times, and smile a lot.  Overall, it was a very nice book, which made me wish I had family stories of my great-grandfather Lars, er, I mean Olaf.  This is about as close to a 5 star book as I can imagine.

Both books are available in paperback at amazon.com, and the second is also a Kindle book.  I got it for free, and I'd love to have a hard copy of it.

Of course, there are plenty of horses and dogs in this book (and a dog in the first book), so Thor would approve.

Happy Thorsday, everyone!

Garden Tuesday: Dogwood

On my back terrace, a dogwood tree is merrily blooming.

Sorry I've been AWOL, but I'm spending lots of quality time with my dentist, Kevin.  Quality time for him, that is, because I'm helping him pay for his duck hunting trip to Louisiana in September.  As for me?  Well, let's just say it's the never-ending root canal saga, with complications galore.  At least Mark's done with school, and Ryan's taking finals this week.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!  Hope you all had a terrific Memorial Day weekend!

Very Little Sewing

Remember the dress I messed up, and so had to offer to my daughters?  Well, my newly graduated nurse wanted it, but with the proviso that it have cap sleeves, because she hates long sleeves (for whatever her reason).  So I drafted some cap sleeves, installed them, facings and a hem, and finally finished the princess seamed dress for her.

This color is not right.  It's really a medium shade of true pink.  The color is fabulous with her dark hair.  Maybe one of these days she'll even wear it!

And maybe this weekend I'll get some sewing done for myself.  Let's see if the weather inspires me!

Happy Weekending, everyone!

Peasant Rolls

We went to a cute little Italian restaurant last weekend, and my dearly beloved was absolutely wild about their dinner rolls.  I tried a bite of one, and then set about trying to come close to that flavor after we got home.  An adaptation of a bread recipe from Beth Hensperger's cookbook, this was the result.

PEASANT ROLLS

1-1/2 cups warm water
3 tsp or 6 tsp yeast*
4-1/4 cups flour
2 tbsp gluten powder
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
3 tbsp olive oil

Pour the water in your bread machine bucket or mixing bowl, and sprinkle the yeast over it (use the larger amount to get the rolls to rise faster).  Add the remaining ingredients in the order listed, and mix on the dough cycle in your bread machine or at slow speed with your mixer.  Knead for 10 minutes, let rest for 10 minutes, knead for another 5 minutes, then form into 16 balls.  Place on a baking sheet and flatten with your palm, then let them rise until doubled in size. Pour 1/2 cup of water in the bottom of your preheated oven, then bake at 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, or 375F Convection for 16 to 20 minutes.

My dearly beloved was just delighted that I nailed the flavor of the restaurant's rolls perfectly, and even more pleased that my crust was thinner.  My littlest fussbudget, from whom "It's OK" is high food praise, pointed out to me that he loves these rolls, and claims to have eaten 8 yesterday.  So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I made these Monday and Tuesday nights, and they're on schedule for today, as well!

A Doubly Wonderful Weekend

Friday at 5, I loaded my guys into my "little" blue Caddy.  Destination: Cass' college, 250 miles away.  She graduated on Saturday at 1!

This is so typical of her attitude; always happy.  Now she has to take the RN licensing exam in a couple of weeks, and she's on her way to a great life!

But we didn't have time to celebrate yet, because we had to get to Kellie's graduation at 6.  And that was 120 miles away.  So off we set!  I actually beat Kellie to the university's Coliseum, where her graduation was held.  So while we were sitting on a bench, waiting for Kellie, lots of people walked past us.  And when she arrived, Kellie told us that one of her friends had told her that her mother was over by the statue of Jerry West.  Maybe we look a little alike.

She already has one job offer and several more potential jobs, so I think she's doing wonderfully!

A humorous side note: When we went to Cass' graduation, we all drove from her apartment in her Explorer.  Do you think Ryan and Mark were comfy?

So, 750 miles of driving and 2 graduations in 30 hours, and I was beat.  I was going to say that I was getting too old for this crap, but then Shannon, who had driven from Philly to each graduation and back home Saturday night, confessed that she slept through most of Sunday.  Maybe I'm not that old, after all!