Why is it 84 degrees in March?

So I decided to try the advice in The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, of planting carrots in the row with radishes so the strong, fast-growing radishes can act as a 'nurse crop' to the wimpy little carrots.  They're supposed to break up the soil and provide a little cover in the beginning.

Is it working?  I dunno.  But those itty bitty two-leaved sprigs coming up underneath those big wide radish leaves are awfully interesting looking.  Actually it looks like spinach only smaller, plus there's no way I got spinach seed and carrot seed mixed up.

If it does work, how am I supposed to get rid of the radishes without pulling the carrots out of the ground, too?

     To the right----->
Taters are up!   These are the ones I ordered from Southern Exposure, a seed-savers exchange in South Carolina or some such place.  The ones I ordered from Gurneys are just now being shipped--a full three weeks after the time when they were supposed to be planted down here.  Or, according to the North Texas Master Gardeners' program, four weeks.

If they ever get here, I guess I'll plant them.  But I'm not ordering potatoes from Gurneys again.

Ichy feet inducing

Trails West
National Geographic Society

Although this was a book I bought on the mark-down rack at Half Price Books years ago, it could as easily have been a National Geographic magazine.  Lots of pictures, of course, and a little more text than they'd typically cram in.  I wasn't disappointed, exactly, but it could have had a little more meat to it.  (Make that idiom legumes in the pot if you're a vegetarian)

I liked The Mormon Trail...Marching to Zion by Charles McCarry best.  He put a bit of personal adventure in and he'd clearly been a historian of the trail for years, driving or walking every mile of it.  Also good and was The Gila Trail...Pathway in the Desert by Don Dedera, but it was quite as long or as well written.

The book will get a spot on my shelves for a while longer,
at least until I get a chance to go see some of its sights.

Fantastic fantasy finale fun. Say that ten times real fast.

 Winter
by Marissa Meyer

Terrific finale!  You can clearly tell how she matured as a writer during the course of the tetrology.  She said so in the interview at the end of the audiobook--I love those interviews!  Next time I read a book that really impresses me, I'll see if there's an audiobook version with an author interview and check it out just for the extras.

So...fairy tales inspiration for modern-day tales. It's all been done before, so what do you do?  You do it better!  Or at least, uniquely better.  Let me explain.

Each book in her 4-book series is very loosely based on a well-known fairy tale-- Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White.  Only in Cinder (Cinderella) did I really notice the heritage, but now I'd like the reread the two books in the middle just to see what I ignored.  But no matter--that's not the point.  The point is this:

She writes a really good and really original tale of good versus evil.

Good comes in many guises--the cyborg mechanic stepsister with a dead father, an evil stepmother and two selfish stepsisters; the android with a faulty personality chip; the 'shell' locked away alone on a satellite; the beautiful princess who refuses to use her glamour to control people; the big bad wolf who falls in love with a redheaded maiden....

Evil comes in only a few and foremost of these is the bad queen--Levanna.  Even when you come to understand her and even pity her, you know she needs to die.  But how?

Marissa Meyer stacks all the odds against her determined avengers, and the tension holds until the the end. (Except, of course, for wrapping up the loose ends.) If there'd been a fifth book, I'd have it on the reseved list right now.

One interesting point--her characters aren't warriors. They feel too much and think too hard and are often paralyzed by all-too-human self doubt.  Not to be sexist, but I don't think a man could have written this book--and that's all to its credit.  We like to think our heroes experience a sudden switch that turns on their heroism and after that it never switches off...and that's just not true.  A true hero has to find his strength over and over in battle after battle--and that's what makes for fine fiction and true life drama.  Persistence.  Bravery.  And more persistence.

Too much cooking too little writing?

Home Cooking: a Writer In the Kitchen
by Laurie Colwin

Not what I'd hoped for. It just didn't sing to me.  Maybe if I'd already been a fan of her writing, I'd have adored it.  There was nothing not to like--it just wasn't amusing, or endearing, or clever or the slightest bit deep.

But I see her works of fiction have very good ratings on Goodreads.  So please, please disregard my opinion and check it out if you think it's something you might want to try.  And if you absolutely love it, I'd like to know why.

(Going to go read other peoples' reviews now.)

No more cookbooks! Except...

Vegan Without Borders
by Robin Robertson

Very informative cookbook with example recipes of many cuisines around the world.  In most cases she selected one or two signature dishes of a cuisine that were already vegan or easily adapted.  In only a few did she simply make a meatless version of a meat-based dish.  I was pleased with that first approach--it's always good to remind yourself that many people don't build a diet around meat, milk and cheese.

I found a couple to try but how good they turn out to be remains to be seen.

The best reading was the recipes themselves.  The background material--the introductions to the cuisines--was skimpy and often just a repeat of the obvious.  I think it was a mistake to combine all of India or China into a single chapter.  If she couldn't take the time (or space) to do regional cuisines inside the bigger countries, then I wished she'd chosen a single area inside each to cover.  Say, Northern Indian; or Shandong.

Happiness in the garden

I should preserve it in carbonite.  Oops--too late.

Fluff is the mind-killer

Little Blog on the Prairie
by Cathleen Davitt Bell

Oddly, I liked this book.  It amused me.  The culture shock experienced by a family who had to give up electronics, machinery, and convenience foods against their will and live like a family from 1890...well...it made an amusing story.  When the family actually started to like a little of the work, the story seemed forced--but their delight when they got hold of something good--like fresh bread--that was real.  I could almost taste it.

It's a shallow teenager book with impossible coincidences, of course. I'm not sure whom I'd recommend it to--if you're the kind of teenager who always wanted to go back to 1890, you'll probably hate their shallow materialism.  And if not, you might sympathize but wonder what's the point?

Ruth Reichl memoir part 2

Comfort me with apples
by Ruth Reichl

Continuing the life history of restaurant critic and Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl, this one takes us through travels to Europe and her first years at the LA Times.  I liked her better than the first time--she's a little more mature now and her decisions are more sensible.  But it still has all the fun, food, and fantastic people you can desire.

I don't remember any particular part that I'd deem "worth the wait" or "must read."  And she is still growing up, you know.  Not until Garlic and Sapphires did I really come to love and admire her. And now I know how she got that way--I'm content.

Let us, at last

Stupid auto-correct.  That was,

lettuce,
 at last!

Called not chosen

The Call Of The Farm
by Rochelle Bilow

This book had everything I love to read about...and I still didn't like it. It's hard to say why, but I think I had a personality conflict with the author.

Plucky would-be food writer falls hard for a guy working on a CSA and goes to work on it herself. She finds that she loves the people and the work, immersing herself in the experience so deeply that she forgets who she really is.  Or was.

She's the kind of personality that makes herself over to please a man, and while she recognizes that kind of lifestyle is unsustainable, she can't seem to stop herself.  Occasionally she tries, and one look at him drags her back into the charade.  On top of that, she doesn't seem to have--or develop--any depth.

All that aside, she does truly love the work.  And that's the redeeming part of this story.

Charming travel tale!

A Taste For Adventure by Anik See

From page one I was bowed over by the beauty of her writing, the clarity of her vision, and the warmth of her acceptance. She was a true traveler.  She wrote:
    Right now I'm sitting on a dock on the Rideau Canal in Eastern Canada.... I'm looking up, and in the sky there is the shiny glint of a jet airplane caught in the sun's grasp, pushing silently east; I'm thinking, there are four hundred people going somewhere else....I want everyone on that plane to be on their way to a place they have always wanted to go--maps already perused and worn in the folds from curious fingers following streets, emergency cab fare handy in a coat pocket--but intending to walk everywhere, to soak everything in.  I want everyone to have already envisioned the park bench or alleyway or restaurant where they will sit or walk or close their eyes and taste something they have never tasted before and realize that they are finally here, that they have been waiting for so long and they are finally here.

Everywhere she goes she seeks out food and finds friendship. When people see how eager she is to appreciate their foods--and therefore their culture--they offer it freely.
This book is about realizing that in places where culture is celebrated vivaciously, fear simply dissipates. The world is much more open-armed than we think.
   
And then she launches into twelve short chapters, one for each journey. She eats adzhapsandali in Georgia, bubur injin in Indonesia, and posole (Rosita's) in Mexico. Somehow she scrapes up recipes for each journey and translates them into foods we can find and measurements we can duplicate.  That had to be a lot of work--I doubt if very many of the street vendors and home cooks used precise quantities.

I haven't tried any yet, but I plan to.  But don't get me wrong--this is a travel book much more than a cookbook. the recipes are just icing on the cake.

Too bad someone doesn't come up with an online version that will ship you samples of the food after each chapter.