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 :)