Garden report

Lettuce looking delicious!   As usual, I forgot to check the radishes in time.  The two I pulled yesterday were in supernova stage.




Sunflowers a little uneven but growing like weeds.  Which they are.  I don't know what makes the leaves be a little wavy and distorted.  A virus, perhaps?












And finally,

Who ate the pepper?

Back in a long-forgotten college class called Desert Ecology, we quantified plant mass by tossing a big hula-hoop thingy at random onto a section of ground.  We would then identify, list, and count every plant in the space.  Or...maybe we didn't count--just identify and list.

A failure to count would make my garden look good.  In a given square foot you would find four or five species--

1. Onion
2. Johnson grass
3. Henbit
4. Ragweed
5. The rounded leaf thingy

Guess which of the five is the desired species?

A count of the plants would be much more revealing--
1. Onion: 16
2. Johnson grass: 2300
3. Henbit: 30
4. Ragweed: 5
5. Rounded leaf thingy: 10

Garden report tomorrow, stay tuned.

The China Study Cookbook recipes #19, 20, and 21--

                   African Vegetables

 Scrambed Tofu






 and Breakfast Burritos
 (no picture)

I cheated a little on the burritos--the book has two variations, one with potatoes and one with scrambled tofu.  I mixed the two fillings; skipped the cheese, and warmed then in the microwave when I got to work.  She's being a whole lot inconsistent when she has you sautee the onion in vegetable broth but then top the burrito with Daiwa.  The amount of fat in Daiwa is probably equivalent to that of a tablespoon of olive oil; Daiwa is a highly processed food; and it doesn't have any of the beneficial properties of extra-virgin olive oil.  It's just fat.

The burritos weren't at all bad but I don't see the point of the curry powder.  All it did was make them bitter.  I like the taste of tofu--why cover it up? You know what would have been better? Sauteed mushrooms!

About the African vegetables...I don't know what makes them "African", but I do think this may be the first non-dessert dish with cinnamon that I like!    I've tried cinnamon on meat dishes--mole, for example, and in tomato sauce a la Barbara Kingsolver--but I just couldn't take it.  The bossy flavor of cinnamon destroyed the mix.  Blame my western European palate.

But in this recipe I doubled the amount of cayenne pepper and halved the amount of cinnamon, seasoned it with 1-1/2 tsp of sea salt with sea flakes, and it turned out both spicy and warm.

Food of the Week:

Miso Paste

Fermented soybeans with salt and fungus. Maybe not as tasty as that sauerkraut I'm planning to make, but nicely microbial.  Got to get my bacteriums.




Oops--I just discovered that cooking the miso paste, as described in the recipe, destroyed all the living microorganisms.  Note to self:  don't cook the miso!

My new favorite teen book author

Caroline B. Cooney

The only bad thing about Hit The Road was that it was so fast moving I couldn't stop to think.  I raced through the ending so fast, I had to read it over next day.  I may read the whole thing over tomorrow. 

Ever liked a movie so much that you stayed seated and watched it a second time?  For me, as an adult, yes--Revenge Of The Nerds.  And that's the way this book struck me.  The driving scenes are hilarious--nearly getting smeared by a semi at seventy miles-per-hour; lanes that narrow down so dramatically you almost lose a mirror; construction codes ahead and--

Your Mom calls.

(The above paragraph may seem like a spoiler, but trust me, it won't spoil anything.  It just keeps getting better.)

And they say Americans can't do comedy!

The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb

This is going to be a hard one.  I disliked The Fetch--but I had to finish it.  Does that mean I liked it a little?

I kept going because I needed to hear the end...but in between the beginning and the end was a whole lot of packing peanuts.  And it got so repetitive about halfway through that I started wondering, "Where was the editor?  You already said that!   And Calder's endless soul-searching...ugh!  I know it was part of the story and a necessary part, but it got really old really quickly.

I was going to give this a one-star rating (did not like) but the ending was kind of cool.  And...as I said...I did finish it.   The plot was clever--the imagery cool even if dragged into the dirt sometimes--and Rasputin was marvelously conflicted.

So Ill give it three, but I do think the author should find a better editor and "tighten up" the next episode.

Time to water the garden--but no time to look at the garden.  I hope it's still there.





At the garden store the other day, I saw Arugula seeds for sale.  Hah!  Come to my garden and get them for free.

Arugula looks after itself.









It's pretty, too.

So-so storybook, sorry

Heads or Tails
Stories From the Sixth Grade

by Jack Gantos

Very amusing for tweeners.  Not so much for old farts like me.  I enjoyed it like I would a Reader's Digest article--cute, but shallow.  It's not exactly something I'll seek out and read more of.  It wasn't as clever as Danny Dunn nor as historically amusing as The Great Brain.  And definitely not as flat-out-funny as Pat McManus's childhood tales.  But it was amusing.

Definitely recommended for pre-teen boys.

Winner of worst cover design (IMHO)

            When Jeff Comes Home
              by Catherine Atkins


Let me just say that I read this under "false pretenses."  A reviewer totally misrepresented what the book was about.  Either he never finished the book or he was so anxious not to reveal the ending that he reviewed it based only on the events of the first few chapters.  I'm not angry at him--his review made me want to read the book--but I was shocked at the difference between what I was led to expect and what really happened.

I won't make the same mistake, so I won't even mention the plot.  You can find it on the book cover.  But what I will mention is that it's extremely deep although short; so believable I can't believe it's not based on a true story; and un-putdownable.  The young man's relationships with his father, brother, sister, stepmother, and best friend are so heartbreakingly real that--it's--it's like a Hallmark Special!  No one is a stereotype and everyone gets a chance to show their true character.

I was sorry when it ended, but not sorry that it ended.  It was time to move on--and that doesn't necessarily make a good story.

Only one note felt false--nobody ever suggested the young man see a trauma specialist.  Not even the police.  Not likely.

Long book but worth it

Pope Joan
by Donna Woolfolk Cross


Was there a Pope Joan or was it just another of those good yarns whispered over firelight, shared as an urban legend, and become so rooted in popular imagination that even scholars of the later ages believed it without question?

There very possibly may have been--from what she writes in the author's note, the debate is still ongoing.  She lists four scholarly sources arguing both for and against--I wish I could read them. 

Side note:  I have a very real fear that the world wide web will be the death of true scholarship.  We're living in a world where anyone can say any crap they want to, publish it for the world to see, and never be asked to defend their theory against their peer group of experts.  Are we descending into another dark age, where true scholars hide behind monastery walls (a.k.a. scholarly journals) and the general public is left to believe in magic, witches and homeopathic remedies? 

Ms. Cross' book appears to be so well-researched it could almost be a scholarly article itself, except for the personalities and details she had to invent to make it a darn good book.  She freely admits her deviations from historical accuracy in the author's note, and I get the feeling that if there were additional mistakes that a scholar caught and pointed out to her, she be grateful for the correction and add them into future notes.  You got to admire that kind of writer!

I won't watch the movie based on this book.  The book was too depressing by itself--I couldn't take more images of the violence, suffering and cruelty of the medieval world.  Mental ones are bad enough.

The week so far

Last night I heard a couple of barred owls making their funny monkey noises, up close.  I snuck outside for a closer look and there they were!  In the trees right by the garage--whooping and cooing and ark-ark-arking away!  And they were....

Mating.  Oh, dear..  I felt like a voyeur.  A cross-species peeping Tom.

I snuck away.

As to my week and why I've no good pictures to post, it's like this.  I can't log anywhere near eight hours a day on my contract.  I can't get out of bed on time, and when I come close to on time, everything breaks, crashes, burns or demands immediate attention.

My taxes are screwed up and need to be amended.  My garden is dying, first from the frosts and then from the dry wind.  The bathrooms are filthy.  The floors are more hairs than carpet.  The hummingbird feeder pulled its hook out of the roof, crashed, and broke. When I brought it in to refill it, I brought in a couple of million ants who are wandering around the kitchen, disoriented and doomed.  And every thing I pick up, I drop.

Even a Friday can't fix this disaster

Casualties?

Possibly one--the jalapeno pepper plant.  It was covered with a wastebasket, but it didn't look so good this morning.  I didn't even bother checking the Walmart tomatoes.  I'm hoping they will die so I don't feel guilty about replacing them with healthier stock.

Now, on to The China Study Cookbook recipe #18,

Leafy Lentils.


I didn't bother with food styling.  It was awful.  Not quite bad enough to throw away, but nowhere near good.

First, when I see "diced tomatoes with jalapenos," I think Rotel.  But it didn't work in this dish.

Second, the lentils and spinach were great together.  But adding three tablespoons--three tablespoons--of dried oregano to one cup of lentils, that was a bad idea.  I thought it was a bad idea at the time and backed it off a little--but not enough.  The dried oregano was bitter and whangy.  Could it have been a mistake?

For a final touch, I added one tablespoon of balsalmic vinegar before serving.  (Per recipe).  So, both bitter and sour.   I'm still thinking balsalmic vinegar has a place in the world, but I've yet to discover it.  Will keep trying.

So that recipe was a fail.  However, if I ever have lentils, spinach, garlic and onions, I might just try simmering them together and pop a little tamari in.  I think they'd be friends.

Doom impending--dawn will tell.

Cooking report tomorrow.  Today it's

Frost.  Forget what they say, "Areas Frost."   It's clear as a bell outside and the wind is falling.  My farmer genes say,
                    "Heavy frost."

Bring out the buckets and hope I'll see this little darling again,

Long anticipated and quickly over

                       Skinny Bitch
                         by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin


I was going to give this book to the library as soon as I finished it, but on second look, I might keep it around on account of the lists of recommended food.  Some good ideas here


The book is okay, I guess.  I don't disagree with much of anything they say. 
 My favorite chapter is, "Have No Faith: Government Agencies Don't Give A Shit About Your Health."  The title is a little harsh but the basic meaning is truer than true.  The individual people may be kindly and concerned, but the heavy hand of American agribusiness is present in any decision they make.  Anywhere you look, it's the fox determining construction standards for the chicken coop.

 Their four-week menu is a joke, just like all the menus they print in the women's magazines.  If I followed it carefully, I'd be cooking two hours a day and throwing away a lot of food.

Example. Monday.  Breakfast: mango, banana, kiwi and soy yogurt.  (Side note: since I hate yogurt, what would be the point of soy yogurt?  The only reason I would ever force myself to eat yogurt is for the probiotics and I doubt if they're present in soy yogurt...oh.  It has live cultures too.  Okay, then.)

So here goes my grocery list: mango-1, banana-1, kiwi-2, soy yogurt-1
Lunch: spinach salad with shredded carrots, chopped almonds, red onion, fresh garlic, cubed tofu and sesame oil.   Sounds good but it would take a half-hour just to prepare.
Add to grocery list: bag spinach, bag carrots, bag almonds, onion-1, garlic-1, tofu-1 12oz box.
Add to leftovers in fridge: 1/2 bag spinach, 7/8 bag carrots, 3/4 bag almonds, 7/8 onion, 10-oz tofu.
Supper: pasta with zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, fresh parsley, pine nuts and olive oil.
Add to grocery list:  all except the garlic and olive oil.
Add to leftovers: 1/2 box pasta, 3/4 bunch parsley, 7/8 box pine nuts.

Are you getting the idea?  the only things that every seem to get used up are staples, like garlic, nuts, and yogurt.  On almost every meal, I have to buy something that only comes in a certain size, and then use very little of it--tofu, alfalfa sprouts, 3-bean salad?   Can you even make a single serving of 3-bean salad?  Say, 1/3 can each of three different canned beans; a stalk of celery; a scoop of mayonnaise.

The only way I could follow this would be to spend an hour each week in Whole Foods Market and package up little one-serving portions of everything.  And it would cost a fortune.

. 

I've been bewitched

Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

It's impossible to review this without major spoilers. Any specific thing I mention would rob you of your delighted surprise when you encountered yet another of Ms. Hartman's odd creations. I can only compare her to J. K. Rowling--they both took a "same old story", a theme done millions of times before, and shot it to the moon.

Here's the thing--J. K. Rowling took the notion of "What if witches and wizards existed in the world and you might be one?" Rachel Hartman took "What if dragons and humans signed a treaty to coexist peacefully, despite deep-seated hatred and mutual disgust?" Then Rowling added Voldemort, Hagrid, boggarts, Death Eaters, House Elves, floo powder, Diagon alley, Parseltongue, horcruxes....

As to what Ms. Hartman added to her magical world, I can't tell you for the reason described above. I can tell you she writes a story that sweeps you along, curious and fascinated and revolted at once. She creates real people (and dragons) and a central character that you're rooting for from page one.

The only bad thing about this book is that the sequel isn't due until next year.

LOVE and other four-letter words

Can it be said that Carolyn Mackler is channeling the spirit of Judy Blume...even if Judy Blume is still alive?  I hope neither of them is insulted by my comparison.  They both capture the psyche of the emerging adult so well--the confusion, the desparate need to fit in and the even more desparate need to stand out and be unique.  And oh my god--the parents! 

Carolyn Mackler took on the peer group as well--a bold move for her.  Haven't you ever had a friend who was all about herself?  Where you were just a sounding board for her, her, her?  I have.

So, if you're a teenager fighting all the usual problems--not that I'm saying they're not problems, because they are and if you don't learn to deal with them in your own unique hemisphere, they will engulf you and devour--

Read this book.  You'll make a friend, I think.

Poor, sad garden.

          More weeds than sprouts. 





An alarming number of the sunflower sprouts have disappeared--are they a tasty snack for sommot, or just succumbing to weather?  I've planted all I had...I think.

Food of the Week is back!

Yesterday's food was
 
Bulghur.


Sounds to me like it's one of those slimy foods that peasants ate in the dark ages, probably with a little cabbage or dried peas in a thin soup. 

But I'm wrong--it's a cereal made from the groats of wheat, typically durum wheat.  A groat is a seed that's had the outer covering removed.  So they take these groats, which have the germ (embryo, if you will), and the bran (the inedible covering), and...I'm so confused!  If the groats still have the bran, what part did the hulling take off?

In any event, the bulghur you buy has been parboiled, dried, and coarsely ground.  It's high in protein and fiber, has a decent amount of iron and vitamin B-6, and little else except yummy complex carbs.  Remember the complex carb movement of the seventies when everyone was jamming on pasta?

On the other hand, since it's made from the same old wheat everything else is, it's subject to the same old problems of a modern-day slice of bread.  I won't be seeking it out.

But the stew it made--


The China Study Cookbook Recipe #17 is Zesty Bulghur Stew

Not nearly enough zest for me, but good!  Face it--anything that calls for garlic and onions, chickpeas, lentils, sweet potatoes and a grain, simmered in vegetable stock, is good.  I can't say that I could even taste the bulghur--it was just a thickener.  Quinoa or rice would have done as well.  But I'm eating it and smiling.

Lovely rainy Sunday--must make time to read

                  Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day:

                  One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide

                     by Doug Mack

It's hard to review a book that you neither liked nor disliked.  Although Goodreads' 1 to 5 star rating system attempts to soften the impact of a 2 by labeling it, "It was ok," a 2 rating still seems like a "D" to me.  And a D, although kinder than an F, is still a failing grade.

I finished it, but if it had been fifty pages longer, I probably wouldn't have...and that observation alone says "2". Why my negative vibes? Just this--it reminds me of the Peanuts comic strip. I love Peanuts, and Charlie Brown is the star of Peanuts. But I wouldn't take a trip with him.

Here's the story:  taking the guidebook used by his mother in 1967, Europe on Five Dollars a Day, Doug Mack sets out on his own European tour to see, hear, and feel the places that were popular before travel guides became big business.  He deliberately eschews other forms of research--no Google, modern guidebooks, or Facebook--so that he can experience the Old World unprepared and unexpected.  And he takes along his Mother's letters to his Father, written during her own ten-week tour.

It's a great premise for a book.  Occasionally it's really funny.  The only substantive criticism I have is that it contained too much "history of travel guides since Frommer's history-changing edition."  But still I didn't like it.  Dare I say the author was always keeping a part of himself back, hiding from his own camera lens?  That's how it felt.  The bits of his Mother's letters were interesting, just interesting, and if they gave him any insight into his own feelings--or hers--I didn't see it.

He did seem to change a little during the trip, and if he writes another travel story, I might just like to read it.

However Long The Night

 by Aimee Molloy


So many quotables I'd like to post, but that might spoil your enjoyment of the book!  I'll just include one:

Life has legs and continuously walks.  We must walk with it or we will be left behind.


After a "teaser" episode and a brief sketch of Molly Melching's background, the book jumps into  her early years in Senegal--how she grew to love the people and the culture, to learn Wolof, the language of the people, and develop schools for children--schools that taught them to read and write in their native language.  Imagine learning to read in French when you don't even speak French?  Pretty useless.

She even wrote and illustrated her own childrens' books, in the beginning.  Children learned the magic of the written language, and soon she continued the process with adults in adult education programs called Tostan.  Tostan means, "breakthrough"--it taught the basics of sanitation, science, medicine, reproduction, and above all, human rights to people who'd been hung up in the constant struggle for basic survival.  Once the people started getting this basic education, they empowered themselves to make change--one village lobbied for a water line; another a health center and exercise class.

Later she was (unwillingly) dragged into the movement to end female genital cutting.  Not that she didn't hate the practice--she did--but because she knew that any attempt to impose "foreign ways" on a proud and ancient culture was doomed to failure.  Change must come from within--always.

And did it?  Read the book.  Find out for yourself.