2014 - Book 10

North Dakota - The Beet Fields

Alright, maybe I was against it from the start, but I didn't like this book. The author is Gary Paulsen, and albeit stereotypically, I tend to think of his books are more or less "boy books". Granted, "The Hatchet" was a good read, but not the type of book I, or most other girls, flock to. This book was short though, and as you can see from the rather odd cover, took place during the summer. I was cold at the time, so I thought it would be a good read . . . unfortunately, it did not warm me up.

It was basically the story of all the things that happened to him during the summer when he was 16. There was a lot of bad things and not a whole lot of plot or happiness . . . not my type of story. Maybe some would like it, but to me, there weren't really any characters I could relate to and I was left feeling kind of empty at the end. Oh well, at least it only took me about four hours to read the whole book . . . not too much of my time was wasted. Maybe there weren't too many books set in North Dakota to choose from?

On a happier note, here's a good method of baking some potatoes . . . yum :) I made 10 pounds in one day using this method and kept them warm in a styrofoam cooler . . . they stayed hot throughout our whole party and who doesn't love a baked potato bar?

Also, I made these adorable fruit and brownie kebabs. I made up my own chocolate ganache to use as the drizzle so it would harden and they could be stacked for serving. They were a big hit at our party . . . so elegant, yet so easy to make (and tasty :)).

Hope you all are doing well . . . talk to you again soon.

2014 - Book 9

Book 9 - "Bloodlines" (California)

After quite a bit of normalcy in my books, I've returned to the supernatural world of vampires. I have to admit, this book was pretty good. It was pretty clean in the language and romance departments and it would really only get a PG-13 rating for the vampire violence. The whole premise of the other races of vampires and a class of humans (Alchemists) who work to keep the vampires secret from the humans is pretty fascinating. This book is the first in a spin-off series, so I was missing a little bit of the back story (from the "Vampire Academy" series). I would be interested to go back and read that and then read this series again. For some reason, although this book is set in California (Palm Springs), I kept thinking it was in Florida. Oh well, it was still good . . . have any of you read it? What did you think?

For my recipes to share this week, I have a main dish and a dessert. My main dish is fried chicken. I got a small deep fryer for my birthday and wanted to try it out with chicken. I didn't take the time to let the chicken soak in the buttermilk because I was very hungry, but I don't think that made much of a difference. Unfortunately, my deep fryer doesn't have a temperature control, so the outside of the chicken got a bit too done before the inside was safely cooked. Also, it was not spicy at all, so if you like it spicy, I would add some more pepper or hot sauce to it. So, fried chicken is probably not the best use for this particular deep fryer, but it was a good experiment. I made some sauteed zucchini to go with it too, so it made a pretty good meal :)

Mmm . . . fried chicken

The dessert I have to share is another cupcake recipe . . . these adorable chocolate malt cupcakes. The author of that blog is right, the frosting is really easy to work with, I enjoyed that aspect of it. However, for as much malt powder was in both the cupcake and the frosting, they didn't tasty very much like a chocolate malt. The little malt ball topping really helped illustrate that they were indeed malt cupcakes, otherwise, the were just tasty chocolate cupcakes with a slight malty flavor. Give them a try and let me know what you think :)

On display

Time for their close-up :)

That's all for now . . . talk to you later :)