2014 - Book 30

"The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer" - Florida

Wow, this book was really interesting. It kept me confused and guessing for most of the book. It had a love story, villains, mystery, and suspense . . . in short, I rather liked it. Unfortunately, it was part of a series again, so the ending was a huge cliff-hanger. I'm going to have to keep a list of books from this year that I need to read the rest of the series next year.

I would like to write out a short plot synopsis for you, but 1 - I don't want to give anything away, and 2 - Some of it was just so strange that I don't know how to write it down. I'll give it a shot though: basically it is a story of a girl who can't remember the tragic night when she and her 3 friends were exploring a condemned insane asylum. She escaped with minor injuries, but her friends were killed. She was then diagnosed with PTSD, starts seeing weird things, and convinces her family to move from Rhode Island to Florida to sort of start over. She has an interesting family dynamic with a lovable younger brother, a seemingly perfect older brother, her mom, a psychiatrist, and her father, a defense attorney currently working a grisly murder case. When other things and people start dying around Mara, she can't help but wonder if she is somehow involved. Also, her one friend at her new school, warns her off the British boy with a reputation, Noah, but Mara discovers that maybe there is more to him than he lets on.

Sorry that my summary is kind of vague, but you'll just have to read it for yourself and let me know what you think.

Does anyone else have the same problem that I do where you get so involved in a book that if you have to tear yourself away you are cranky and distracted until you can finish it? I've been like that for as long as I can remember. I guess I just love resolution and always want to know what happens in the end . . . which is hard to do if I have to stop in the middle of the book. I think that's why I like movies so much, because I get the whole story in one sitting. I will attest that reading a whole book in one sitting is one of my favorite little joys in life. Anyways, that's a digression, I just wondered if others have that same problem.

For my recipes this week I have one miss and two home runs: Cream of Celery soup, Chocolate Raspberry Souffle, and Sweet Potato Steel Cut Oats.

Now, if you like celery, and use the store-bought kind, this recipe is probably just fine. I got it with my CSA (community supported agriculture) box containing organic celery, which is not like store-bought at all. It was much stronger flavored, and I thought it made the soup bitter tasting. So I guess it's not so much of a fail for the soup as for my use of the celery. I don't really like celery that much to begin with, unless it's covered with peanut butter or used in chicken dumpling soup, so that might have something to do with it too. The bacon was a good addition though . . . I never buy bacon, so I  overcooked it . . . oops.

Before

Oh well, to make up for that failure, I have two wonderful successes. I attempted a cheese souffle here: Cheese Souffle, but this was way better. Put a little whipped cream or vanilla ice cream on top . . . yum :) They were very easy to make too . . . a wonderful way to use fresh raspberries.

After

I think you all know by now of my dual loves of steel cut oats and my crock pot. I found a new version of crock pot steel cut oats to try, and it was just fantastic. I had a few sweet potatoes that needed to be used up, so I cooked them in the microwave and put them in a food processor with some of the milk to get nice and smooth. I've made this recipe a few times now, and I have to say, that was my favorite version. I never have evaporated milk on hand, but I figure you can substitute evaporated milk + water for whole milk, so why not substitute whole milk - water for the evaporated milk. It's not like there wasn't water added to the recipe anyways, so I wasn't changing the liquid levels, I just added more milk and less water, and it turned out just fine. If you'd like to do that, I substituted 24 oz. whole milk + 12 oz. water for the 12 oz. evaporated milk + 3 cups water. Also, I though with the sweetness of the sweet potato that it was too sweet (even for me . . . surprising, I know). So I reduced the sugar to 1/3 cup and that was better. I also put some sort of nuts on it and if you want to make it really special, a little bit of whipped cream . . . it's like eating sweet potato pie for breakfast, but not quite as naughty ;)

The original recipe actually calls for pumpkin puree, so the next few batches I made I used that. We cook and puree our own pumpkin and it is always more watery than the store-bought kind, so I used the following amounts: 2 cups pumpkin puree, 3 cups whole milk, and 1/2 cup water. I made it later with skim milk too, and while it's not as rich tasting, it is still good. I make a double batch and then just throw it in the fridge for 2 weeks of tasty breakfasts. I've put walnuts and almonds on it too, and they all taste good. Also, in the recipe she states it is not a good overnight crock pot recipe, but if you have a programmable crock pot like I do, it's not a problem at all. I've tried 4, 4 and a half, and 5 hours on low, and I think it was good every time. Subsequent days, I just add some milk to it, microwave for about a minute and half and stir it up really well to make it creamy again. Easy peasy. Give it a try, I guarantee it will give you a nice, warm, festive fall feeling :)

Have a wonderful week :)

2014 - Book 29

"Under the Blood-Red Sun" - Hawaii

Usually I really love historical fiction books, especially those set during World War II, but I just couldn't connect with any of the characters in this book. It's probably because it is narrated by a young boy, but it just felt like a book that I would have been assigned to read in grade school, not something I would have picked out myself. Not that it wasn't a good book, because it really was, I just didn't really get into it.

The story follows a young Japanese-American boy living with his family in Hawaii when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. It is obviously very difficult for him, but he has a great group of friends in his baseball team, The Rats. So if you know any grade school age boys who like baseball, they would probably really like this book, it just wasn't for me.

The recipes I have to share this week are hearty breakfast muffins, slow cooker beans, and chipotle tomato soup.

Although the muffin recipe was a top-rated recipe on Allrecipes.com, I almost didn't make it, just because I was so annoyed with whomever wrote the recipe. Seriously, "one zucchini" is NOT a measurement. Sure, bananas are pretty uniformly sized, so I can understand that one, but even carrots vary greatly in size. How is anyone supposed to know if they are creating the recipe properly, and if they do happen to succeed, how on earth will they be able to recreate their success again? We grew zucchinis that were approximately "medium-sized", but I've seen them in the store about the size of a carrot, and I've gotten some from friends and neighbors that netted me at least 10 cups of chopped or shredded zucchini, EACH. Can you imagine doubling the recipe, using 2 of those giants, and ending up with 20 cups of zucchini in this recipe?!? Now, I would hope most people would use a little common sense and not do that, but still, my initial argument stands, "one zucchini" is NOT a measurement.

Being of a scientific mindset, I of course set out to remedy this problem. I got out my kitchen scale (if you don't have one yet, you should get one . . . it really makes so much more sense, especially for measuring flour, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder) and weighed my ingredients. I took the most helpful suggestion I found in the Allrecipes reviews and tried to get approximately the same amount of carrot and zucchini. Who knows if my carrots were "average" size, but I tried to find ones that weren't too big and weren't too small. I ended up using 4 carrots (I doubled the recipe) for 183 grams shredded carrot (~ 2 cups), and ~one and a half medium zucchini (318 grams after draining it through a strainer, again ~ 2 cups). Notice the large weight difference in the "same amount" (~ 2 cups) of each ingredient? That's why weighing is better. Anyways, I also used four bananas (492 grams).

After all of this headache, I did end up with some very tasty muffins, so I will be posting my findings on Allrecipes and hopefully be able to help out other picky bakers like myself ;) Also, instead of dried cherries (because they are expensive and hard to find), I used half dried cranberries and half mini chocolate chips . . . I liked the substitution. This recipe is pretty amenable to any little tweaks like that.

As for the beans, I've cooked beans in the slow cooker before, but this recipe didn't really work. They were just not done enough. I've gotten suggestions from friends to add one teaspoon of baking soda to the water, and that seemed to work, but even after an overnight soak, these were still a bit hard. I ended up freezing half of them because I'm trying to get away from buying canned foods. I want to do another round of slow cooker freezer meals soon and those always call for many cans of beans, so I thought I would be ready, but I think when I need to use these, I'll have to thaw them and then do another short cook so they aren't so crunchy. It was a good experiment, but next time I'll try a different recipe.

So, this soup was not much of a success, but I think that was mostly due to the undercooked beans. Even though I braved the molten lava-esque boiling soup to attempt a few rounds of immersion blending, it still didn't have that creamy texture I was looking for. I was trying to be healthy and substitute beans for cream, but it just didn't work. The soup was pleasingly spicy, so it grew on me after a while, and the beans were good protein, but it just wasn't that good . . . oh well. I didn't follow the recipe exactly, I just used it as a guideline, so maybe if you use the actual recipe and add canned or properly cooked beans you'll be more successful.

That's all for this week folks . . . sorry for my lack of pictures.

2014 - Book 28

"My Life Next Door" - Connecticut

This is a perfect "beach book". Typical boy meets girl-next-door summer romance, but with a really nice storyline behind it too. A little bit too much focus on the physical aspect for my liking, but still PG rated. I really liked the different family dynamics and the main character, Samantha, has a good head on her shoulders, which I appreciate. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but it was one of my favorite books that I've read all year. Every girl deserves a nice guy like Jase :)

For my recipes this week, I have Slow Cooker Sticky Chicken Drumsticks, "Magic" Cake, Crock Pot Applesauce, and Dried Apple Skins (& this recipe for the apple skins too).

For the slow cooker sticky chicken drumsticks, you'd be better off following this recipe. There really is no way to get the good sticky sauce in a crockpot. I found that out the hard way by making it in the crock pot and ending up with cooked chicken and liquid sauce. So I looked over the other recipe and put the chicken in the oven and cooked down / thickened the sauce and then brushed it on a few times in the oven. I put them back in the crock pot on "warm" to serve at a pot luck, and they were SOOO good. I love cilantro too, so sprinkling that and the toasted sesame seeds on the end was a good addition. The first recipe didn't really work, but the flavors are great, just follow the oven procedure and you'll be good to go.

When I made the "Magic" cake, I thought there was no way that I was doing it right. Why would I whip the egg whites and then literally stir them back into a liquid mixture (as opposed to folding them in the make the mixture more light and fluffy)? It just seemed wrong, but I watched the little video at the bottom of the page, and that's what they did, and to my surprise . . . it worked. It kind of had the flavor of flan, minus the caramel part, and it had all three layers . . . amazing. There are lots of other desserts I like better, but I might try a different variation of this, just because it was kind of cool. I think the chocolate version might be good.

Magic :)

I really enjoyed the crock pot applesauce. I used 8 medium apples that we picked at a local farm (not sure which variety because we had four different ones), but I think using different types is a good idea. The addition of the strip of lemon peel was really tasty too. With all of the lifting the cover off and stirring, mine was not nearly done enough after the allotted time, so I let it go quite a bit longer (maybe two hours on low plus on "warm" for the rest of the night . . . I had to let it go overnight since it was too late to stay up and watch it. Programmable crock pots are my friend.) I didn't need to use a blender, because it was so soft at this point that I just stirred it and it was perfect. I warmed it up when serving and put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and ate it with graham crackers as my spoon = YUM. I don't really like pie crust, so this was like the perfect apple pie in my book. Give it a try, it was really good.

Since I peeled all of those apples for the applesauce, I had a ton of leftover peels. I didn't want to just waste them, so I read the two recipes I linked above and just sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar and put them in the oven on the lowest temp (170 F I think it was) until they were done. The smaller pieces were done first, but some of the larger pieces took a bit longer. I don't remember how long I had them in, but it was quite a while. Just keep checking them, and take them out when they are fully dry and crispy. They were actually pretty tasty if you are just looking for something to snack on.

I hope you enjoy all of the yummy food this week. Make a big pot of that applesauce, sit down with "My Life Next Door" and have a wonderful day :)