Recipe Reduction 4...3...2...1

Open-faced Greek Omelet
by The Mediterranean Dish

Not bad and could be easily prepared in the 15 minutes they suggested. Slice tomatoes into a skillet with the barest dusting of olive oil, sprinkle with minced garlic. When soft, add a little cheese (I used queso blanco not that nasty feta stuff), then pour on eggs beaten with baking powder, paprika, dill, coriander and salt. Plus fresh mint leaves, which I did not have. Cook for a minute and then slap it under the broiler to finish the top.

With fresh, ripe garden tomatoes and the fresh mint, this could be heavenly. Mine was prepared with those nasty pink acidy things from the supermarket. Wish I'd sprinkled them with a bit of sugar along with the garlic.

Aside: I'm not trying to be all Nero Wolfe about this, but I'm beginning to think garlic powder has no place in my kitchen. I just returned from a visit to a friend's house where it's just about the only seasoning used, and it seems to add a funny aftertaste to everything.

My stuffing recipe changes every year, but it always involves onions and celery stewed in butter; cornbread and toasted wheat bread; lots of seasoned broth with bits of meat in it, poultry seasoning, rubbed sage, and thyme.  I should be charitable and offer to bring the dressing next year.

Rio Arriba Baked Beans
developed by the Bean Education and Awareness Network (B.E.A.N.)

These are really good. There's just something special about putting sugar on beans...remember the Shaved Ice with Beans on the North Shore of Oahu? No relation to this, of course, but magnificent.

Plus i have a weakness for baked beans. This is a good recipe, despite it calling for beer--I hate wasting good beer on a recipe--and of course the sugar is a given. I didn't spend money on "sun dried tomatoes packed in oil" but instead used some of the garden tomatoes I dried in the oven last year. Lovely things!  But next time, I must insist on peeling them.  The recipe didn't say to, but I know better.











Temple Soup

What a winner to be the next-to-last recipe of the set! This stuff is hearty and wondrous.  And strangely contains no garlic, no onion, and no ginger!  Is it possible?

It's a vegetable soup with tofu, butternut squash (I used sweet potatoes), carrots, white potatoes, daikon, and shitake mushrooms. Stir-fry the in a little oil until they're browning and delicious, then add edamame, water, mirin and soy sauce. Also a bit of seaweed. When it's all simmered soft, add spinach, white miso paste and little more soy sauce. It was already so close to perfection that I considered leaving out the extra soy sauce, but it seemed to belong there.

Whatever the reason, it has a very filling, satisfying body to it. 

If the last recipe turns out suckish, I may rearrange the results and put this one at the end.




 

Ginger Pork #1
by norecipes.com

How do I say this, Good! But I'll not likely make it again. Indecisive, no?

The marinade was tasty, but overpowering. Ginger, miso, sake and sugar. But nowadays my favorite way to have pork is to cook it with just a light marinade to keep it juicy, then dip it in a spicy Korean barbeque sauce.

But if you like a caramelized, tangy crunch to your pork, go with this one. Good.












#0

It's over! It's over!  Recipe Reduction is over!

No more cooking, no more books, no more husband's dirty looks.

Ruth Reichl's Hash Browns

I know that my goal of 199 recipes ended at #1, but I threw this one in as a companion to the pork.  Plus, she made it sound so tasty in Garlic and Sapphires.

It was a failure, of course. I can cook really good raw-fried potatoes. Good as Mom's, IMHO. But my hashbrowns were a sad failure.

She called for 8-10 small waxy potatoes but I'd pulled up the wrong recipe and bought three gigantic russets. If I'd cooked only two of them, I think the proportion of potato to butter might have been correct. As it was, they were underdone after almost twice the cooking time and didn't have a brown, crusty exterior. To add insult to failure, my husband put margarine on them.

I'm not upset. No more cooking stupid recipes!  I'm free!!!!!

Gardening in my Roots, a winter bonus

Last fall I planted a row with radishes, carrots, turnips, and daikon radishes. I don't think a single radish or carrot appeared, but the turnips and daikon were doing fine--until the deluge. All through the dry months it rained, frequently and heavily. I stopped even walking (sloshing through the mud) out to look.

When I finally ventured out last week, I saw that most of the turnips had disappeared but one big clump of them were still green-topped and alive. Not exactly large, but big enough to hope for roots. And there were about eight plants in the daikon radish bed, four of which turned out to actually be daikon. I have no idea what the others are but I'll leave them alone and not disturb any more by tugging them out of the ground. They don't look like any weeds of my acquaintance, or any vegetable plant either. Maybe they'll fruit and feed some birds.

So here's the year-end harvest of glory:

 

Recipe Countdown #6-5

Mapo Tofu
by Marc Matsumoto at norecipes.com

It was supposed to be a 'blazing hot' dish but my substitutions--crushed red pepper for the Szechuan peppercorns and miso for the doubanjiang--ruined any chances of that. I meant to use dried red peppers from the garden but got in a hurry; for the doubanjiang I should have substituted that red chili-garlic paste. Not authentic but still tasty.

Which is what I can say about the dish. Not authentic but tasty and, of course, a hundred times better than what I can get at the Chinese restaurant. Sigh.

Fruit-Nut Balls
from A Homemade Life

If you like dried figs, apricots, prunes and cherries, plus walnuts, powdered sugar and dark chocolate, you might like these.  They're not bad at all.  But for me, I'd rather just mix the fruit, nuts and chocolate chunks together in a bowl and eat them one piece at a time.  Because now it all just tastes like chocolate (who was that who said chocolate is an overbearing beast?  The Tipsy Baker?). But I want to taste the figs and apricots and prunes and cherries.

Best memoir of the year

In Pieces
by Sally Field

Wow. Wow. Wow. I was bowled over from page one, or should say line one since I listened to the audio book read by the author. If her life was a can of spaghetti then  writing this memoir was like ripping the top off with a can opener and dumping it all out on the table.  Sauce, noodles and little chunks of meatlike product. All out.

Her career was equally fascinating with her personal life. I never knew Gidget only lasted one season; I never guessed how much she hated the idea of playing a chirpy little flying nun in a world where deep problems were never addressed and all the trivial disasters could be solved in a half hour minus commercials. Also I never guessed what a career suicide it was to be identified with such a well-known character and how hard she had to work to come back and be Sybil or Norma Rae.

Recipe Reduction Countdown #7

The bread with wheat germ
from  Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads

Okay, I boasted I could make bread. That needs to be corrected:
I can make white bread. This Sunday I attempted a loaf of mixed whole wheat flour and bread flour. The first rising was phenomenal--the dough was strong and springy as I split it in halves to fill the two bread pans. It was beautifully brown, too.

But during the second rising I got busy with other stuff and left it too long. The larger of the two spilled over the sides of the pan and fell in the center; the smaller simply drooped. Not drastically--they still looked like bread--but not with that lovely rounded top you would expect.

Then during baking they started to burn on top more than ten minutes before the recommended baking time. I pulled one out but left the other in for the full time, and it was distinctly black on top. Oddly enough, once you cut off an inch at the top, the one with the full cooking time tasted better.

Texture on both is great and they slice well. It's certainly edible, but problematic. This time, I blame the recipe.

Recipe Countdown at last 9...8

Butternut Squash and Black Bean Tostadas
I liked the results, but nowadays, recipes like this rub me the wrong way.  Their butternut squash comes pre-cubed in a bag; the beans come from a can.  So I cheated--I whacked a butternut squash in half, scraped out the seeds and baked it in the oven until soft. I presoaked a cup of black beans and threw them in the slow cooker with onion, garlic and cumin.

But the idea was good and the results were great.  It's a keeper. I doubt if I'd bother with a recipe next time.

Chinese Inspired Chicken Noodle Soup

Oh, my. I can't think of enough bad things to say about this recipe.  Here are the simple facts. 

I don't care how good it tastes, the recipe is stupid.  You can't cook a chicken and then "remove chicken pieces" from the broth.  It was a whole chicken and it fell to pieces. What about all the little tiny bones that fall out of the meat?  Were they somehow magically going to hold together so I can dip them out? Impossible.

It was okay, tastewise, but not special enough for the aggravation of trying to dip all those little bones out. I'll go back to the normal approach--cook, take the meat, cook the bones some more then strain the broth.

Here was somewhere but not quite here

Here is Where
Discovering America's Great Forgotten History
by Andrew Carroll

I wonder sometimes if editors suffer fatigue when reviewing long books. Is 462 pages long? I think it is, although I've read longer ones. And I suspect it is difficult to sustain the sharp attention to detail needed for editing such a lot of pages.

if so, editor fatigue might explain why I started this book with such enthusiasm but had to force myself to finish it. The last few chapters seemed to cover interesting topics--Daniel Boone's grave, which might or might not be in Frankfort, Kentucky; the current whereabouts of the 200 official copies of the Declaration of Independence; the source of the 850,000 unidentified and unclaimed bodies on Hart Island;.... But I lost interest at some point and the book failed to draw me back in.

Or possibly as the book took shape the author took fewer notes on his journeys to the places, so he was left with just the research materials. I admit to being more interested in reading how a place was discovered, how it's significance was determined, and how it looks now--rather than just the historical facts of its existence.

Here's how one of the stories starts.

My elation is tempered by the fact that I don't exactly know where I'm going.... I have old photos of a relevant site in Springville, just south of Provo, but the area has changed drastically since the 1970s. When I called around before coming to Utah, no one I spoke with from this area--librarians, town officials, real estate agents--key the specifics. Granted, the crime took place about forty years ago, but it's not often that someone carrying half a million dollars jumps out of a plane over one's town.

He goes on to relate the facts of the skyjacking, then his attempts to find someone who can tell him where the man landed. He finds someone who remembers and they tell him where to go. He then finishes the history of the crime and the guy who did it. But when he gets to the site--now an empty field behind a construction zone--dusk has fallen and there's nothing to see. End of story.

See my disappointment?  They weren't all like that, but just enough to make me feel like he could have written them without ever walking out his doorway.

Recipe Reduction 11-10

Hot Pepper Relish
from Serious Eats

I only made this because I had tons of hot peppers in the fridge and I hated to throw them away. See, in the garden this year, I planted mostly sweet peppers. At the opposite end of the row--where they couldn't cross-pollinate--I put a jalapeno, a poblamo, two small chiles and two Thai bird peppers.  but then that freeze hit, and it hit the hot peppers hard. I replaced the ones that were clearly dead but for the ones that were still somewhat alive, I planted the replacements close alongside them but left the survivor to take his chances.

The survival rate was surprising. I had more chiles and jalapenos than I could deal with, plus a huge number of this pepper that's bigger than a jalapeno but not shaped like a poblamo.  In fact, they looked exactly like my big sweet peppers--but don't put 'em in a salad!  You will suffer.  (And then you'll pick them out.)

This recipe had you sweat them with salt for a few hours, then simmer with vinegar and sugar. It tamed the heat slightly.  In fact, on a really big bowl of beans, a teaspoon of this would be just right.

So at one teaspoon per serving I have about...one hundred servings. Heavy sigh.
 

Kale Hazelnut Pesto
by Darya

It's a nice twist on pesto, but only if you have kale and hazelnuts to use up. Mind you, there's as much basil in here as there is kale. If you're like me, and you bring your basil plant indoors when frost hits, you can make this without totally wrecking seasonal eating rules. Because--in case you don't know this--basil is a summer crop; kale a spring and fall crop. Early spring and late fall.

Anyway it came out okay but nto nearly as good as summertime pesto with basil and pine nuts.

Recipe Reduction 13-12

Paula Deen's Sweet Potato Fries
 
Okay, so I cheated by swapping this to replace a recipe I really didn't feel like doing. Didn't I mention losing enthusiasm for this project many months ago?

But still, it was worth the experiment. I'd done a baked sweeet potato fries experiment before which involved soaking them in an entire can of beer, and at the time it seemed like a waste of good beer. (Or in that case, cheap beer) Did the beer make a difference?

I don't think so. Her recipe just had me sprinkle them with olive oil, salt, garlic powder and paprika, and they came out just fine. Not as good as deep-frying them, but perfectly edible.

Honey Sriracha Glazed Meatballs
by Eat yourself skinny

This was stupid.  First of all, why would you grease (cooking spray) a baking
sheet that you're going to cook meatballs on? I don't care how lean a meat
is, it's going to make its own grease.  Second, when they were done
baking--after 40 minutes--they were still awfully greasy. I blotted them with
towels.

Third, the amount of sauce was pitiably small for the amount of meatballs. I
could write a better recipe--
Double the sauce.
Cook the meatballs for 20 minutes.
Drain and dry the grease off them, then toss with the uncooked sauce. Cook for another 20 minutes, crowding them on the sheet so as not to lose all the yummy sauce on the bottom of the pan.

Fourth, they were pretty good.

A lot of great science in progress

Who We Are and How We Got Here
by David Reich

Absolutely masterful--widely scoped--detailed--deep but not drowning. State of the research in human population DNA, but with many reminders that the subject is growing and changing so fast that it might be out of date in ten years. Mind you, it's not saying our current research is "wrong", it's just "in progress". There are many things we know now that we never knew before, but there are known unknowns yet to come.

I'd read a good bit before about the interbreeding with Neanderthal and Denisovians, so the early Homo Sapiens migrations section wasn't as exciting to me as it could have been.  But if you haven't, this is a good place ot start. But when he goes into detail about other populations, things get wild.

Take India. Due to the strong prohibitions of inbreeding outside the caste, or jati, and further strengthening of the system under British rule,

...many Indian groups today might be the product of population bottlenecks. These occur when relatively small numbers of individuals have many offspring and their descendants too have many offspring and remain genetically isolated from the people who surround them due to social or geographic barriers.

Looking at those, they found that they could measure how long ago the populations diverged, and,

One of the most striking we discovered was in the Vysya of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a middle caste group of approximately five million people whose population bottleneck we could date (from the size of segments shared between individuals of the same population) to between three thousand and two thousand years ago.

It was surprising, and even shocking. Based on this and other evidence, they determined that the "institution of caste has been overwhelmingly important for millenia".

Toward the end of the book he has a good discussion of the dangers of ignoring "racial" differences--should be "population"--in favor of political correctness. Doing so can blind us to legitimate differences that might explain, for example, different reactions to drugs.

And a lot more throughout. Great book.

Picking up a book on a whim at library is never a good idea

Sleeps With Dogs:
tales of a pet nanny at the end of her leash
by Lindsey Grant

I should have paid more attention to the subtitle. The writing is good and the memoir honest, fair and engaging. But the stories are grim.

She's trying to support herself by doing pet sitting for rich people. I like her, but I don't like rich people. Or at least not the kind of rich California idiots she was stuck working for. They were the dog owners who give dog owners a bad name.

And since she desperately needed the money, she felt like she couldn't turn down a job offer or refuse an unrealistic demand. And she had problems saying 'no' to people in general, but the time or two when she finally did were cheer-worthy!

Recipe Reduction 15-14

Buffalo Cauliflower

A decent, highly fattening junk food for vegans. Deep fry cauliflower chunks in a thin batter, sprinkle with salt, then add buffalo-style sauce. But there's the problem--there are a thousand different recipes for buffalo sauce and this one didn't make the cut. It consisted of minced garlic, tabasco-style hot sauce, and oil from the fryer. It was hot--that's all.

If I were prone to making such stomach-inflating treats, I'd track down a better sauce. Something with richness to offset the heat. Probably containing ketchup.

Note that all this complaining didn't stop me from eating ten or twenty of them.




Deb's Granola

I never met a homemade granola I didn't love. Oats, seeds, and nuts, sprinkled with cinnamon and salt, then glued together with (in this case) maple syrup, coconut oil, egg white and vanilla.  They didn't stay glued very well but what the heck--I'll eat it with a spoon.

She had me add dried cherries (unsweetened) and dried blueberries (wild). I couldn't do that without a trip to a health food store, but cheated with some grocery store dried berries, sugar added, of course. What's wrong with us if we have to add sugar to *all* our fruits. The only fruit I can think of that benefits from sugar are the sour canning-type cherries plus any fruit that isn't quite ripe. And what would be the point of drying fruit that wasn't ripe?

It was a sad compromise of my principles. But delicious.

Mad teens and crazy parents

The Good Lie
by Robin Brande

She channeled a lot of rage in this one. Imagine you're a sixteen-year-old girl whose mother just up and left one day, without explanation, to live with some man you didn't know existed. And your father is a complete nutcase who expects you to take over the housework and cooking that she used to do. And your little brother looks up to you but is totally miserable now she's gone. Then things get worse.

At the same time everyone around you seems obsessed with sex even if they're not having any. Or possibly it's just  you who are obsessed and projecting it on everyone else, probably because you and your father are both bible-thumping nuthouses who justify everything they do with King James Version citations.

I can't say I fully enjoyed this one of Robin Brande's books, and at this point I'll probably not read any more of the older ones. If a new one comes out, we'll see. Mind you, it's impossible to this book put down and would be highly recommended reading for any teenager who is dealing with rage. Maybe they would recognize themselves in Ms. Brande's heroine, every time she loses her temper and destroys some of her best chances for making things better.

Recipe Reduction 17-16

Vegetable Biryani
Sasha Martin, Global Table Adventure

I took so many shortcuts on this it's almost embarrassing to pretend I made it. Almost.

But I liked it, so doesn't that count for something?  The recipe is described as a big deal, all day endeavor and it very well could have come down to that.  You soak rice, then parboil it, then let it cool while you fry onions and then fry a mixture of vegetables. You remove them all and fry your masala, a mixture of onion and spices. Then you return the vegetables to the pan, sprinkle with raisins (I skipped, apologies), and cover with rice.  You sprinkle a couple of teaspoons of rose water over the rice. Then you put a tight lid on the pan and cook at low heat until the rice is done.

I was sure the rice would be crunchy and inedible, but it wasn't. I forgot to add the onions at the end and instead mixed them in with the rest, but that didn't change the flavor. And--this is important--I forgot the spices that were supposed to go into the rice cooking water.   Cardomom, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and salt.  I wish I hadn't.  While it wasn't at all bland, it missed the spicy aroma these additions would have given.

So the recipe would be a keeper, but I'm thinking of gradually inventing my own recipe for a mixed vegetable masala dish.  The particulars of cooking for this one were too complicated, with too many steps. However, these were points to remember:
1. Don't let your ghee go rancid (I had to use butter)
2. Cooking sliced onion until it caramelizes is a plus for most any dish
3. Brown the vegetables over medium-high heat for 20 minutes, then finish cooking at low heat.
4. Try adding a little yogurt into the masala after it cooks. It makes it rich.

 

Broiled Shrimp and Broccoli with Cashew Sauce
by Amy Stafford

If you're in a hurry for a 20-minute, impressive looking entree, this would be it. I would have swore you'd couldn't get broccoli tender under a broiler.  I left it a little longer than she suggested, with a rest in the middle as I got the other part ready.

The shrimp, as you'll see from the picture, turned out to be catfish nuggets cut bite-size. They made a good substitute, just not as photogenic.  The sauce--cashew butter, honey, lime, soy sauce, sriracha, vinegar, sesame oil--wasn't all that great. I don't think too many ingredients were lugged in that didn't add to the flavor, in particular the sesame oil and vinegar.

But I'll enjoy eating it!  Won't bother making it again since I'm the only one who likes roasted broccoli and I actually prefer steamed.  Strange, but true.

Recipe Reduction #18

Tofu and Lobster Mushrooms in Ginger Broth
from fat-free vegan

Excellent!  It should be called, Swamp Owl's comfort soup. All the things I love--tofu, mushrooms (had to use shitake), noodles, ginger, garlic and miso. If I'd not been too lazy to chop up some green onion to go on top, I'd be in nirvana.

I've dissed a lot of fat-free vegan's recipes, but this one is worth the wait.

Sorry no picture. It looks like soup. Use your imagination.

Got great at the end

Navigations: One Man Explores The Americas And Discovers Himself

Ted Kerasote's Navigations starts off weak--in my opinion, only--but ends very, very strong. Masterly strong. My issue with the first few essays--travels, really--is that they skimmed the surface. My surface. I have to keep pointing out that an opinion of a book like this is highly personal. A different person could have opposite and equally valid feelings.

But even when I didn't feel the connection with the author, I much enjoyed reading his adventures. His quest for A Record Snook is simply a fishing tale--hooking the fish, crashing through the surf, feeling his fish's indecision and then realizing with a hopeless determination it had decided to swim into the river where following it would require wading through a log jam and climbing the roots of a huge snag. Sometimes, when you're reading such adventure, you get a better feel for the countryside than if the author was simply describing it, from a high vantage point. It's a whole lot different thing to see a massive tree fallen in the river, gnarly roots exposed in a hideous snarl, than it is to climb over such an obstacle. Kerasote takes you with him.

Later on he described some years spent with his wife--a time when two people were greatly in love with each other but eternally pulled apart by their passions--dancing and climbing, for her; travel and writing, for him.  I could see a lot of guys being turned off by this section--where's the sport?  Where's the record fish, the sub-three-hour marathon, the search for the perfect, trophy Line?  (that's a skiing route, best I can understand.)  What's with all this emotional crap?

I didn't mind. But I have to say my favorite stories are ones like "Neva Hurry" where he confronts the contrast between his schedule as a working author of short stories, which involves deadlines, airline schedules, endless meetings, and his need to slow down and feel life...to dabble in a river for trout, get a hit at the eleventh hour, slowly release his catch, a breeding-sized female, then hold his hands in the freezing water until they ache.

It was a  dark pool, dark as the bridge shadow over which I had stood the evening before, dark as a slow brown smile of Carib Billy Joe and as smooth, glossy, and continually moving as one's life in retrospect--when all the mindless hurry, inscrutable hurry, and senseless ambition have passed into what we kindly call wisdom. Into this pool, with a delicate plop, I dropped my hare's ear nymph.

[skipped a bit here, sorry...the nymph stopped moving.]

I gave a tremendous whoop, which stampeded the contentedly grazing cows, and of course I also immediately fell into the fiver, shipping water over my starboard hip wader.
"Man, neva hurry."
Yes, Billy Joe, yes.

Recipe Countdown #19

Sister Virginia's Daily Loaf

I tossed the pecan pie recipe and instead made bread. Made mistakes, too. During the first rising I pronounced that "if this comes out, then I hereby declare myself as someone who can make bread."

So I skimped on the yeast--it was the last package and I'd taken 1/4 teaspoon out of it for another recipe.  I turned my back on the milk, water and lard heating on the stove and let it boil over. I added a little milk back in to make up for the loss. Then I failed to properly measure the flour I was adding and had to decide--by eyeball--when it was stiff enough.

It turned out very beautiful but not nearly as flavorful as the recipe promised. The cookbook called it a "fine white bread", and it was. But not a "flavorful white bread."

And guess what?  I can make bread!

Okay but not overly excited

Southern Discomfort
by Margaret Maron

I enjoyed The Bootlegger's Daughter series #1 just enough to risk a second. It wasn't disappointing--complex plot and real world crimes, and you get to see a judge hand down the kind of unbiased, compassionate sentences that you wish you could pronounce yourself. The courtroom scenes are my favorite part.

Beyond that I don't have any helpful comments to offer. Just a good, exceptionally solid, light mystery. Maybe I shouldn't say "just". Good mysteries are not all that common. Objection sustained--strike the "just".

Whoever said Mississippi is not a state but a scar, said it.

Mississippi: An American Journey
by Anthony Walton


I don't think it's possible to understand how much hate builds up when a person is enslaved. We see it in movies, read it in books, but how can we understand it? How can we possibly feel it?

It's not something we as white people sit around trying to understand. Slavery is over--at least in America--and it's never coming back. My attitude has always been, it's ancient history--let it go already! But we need to understand that slavery didn't end in 1862--it only went underground. For years to come, for generations of people--people who are still alive today--black people lived knowing they could be fired without cause, killed without retribution, and worked without hope of saving a dime over what they owed at the company store. They had to put up with whatever the white man dished out or risk being jailed. Or killed. And those people really hate white people.

In Mississippi, the only hope was in escape to the big cities in the north. But even when people successfully escaped the Jim Crow south, like Mr. Walton's father, they were still feeling the rage for years to come. Who wouldn't?

"At school we would get our books and in the cover there would be this person's name; our schoolbooks were always used books. I remember this was like the second or third grade. There would be a person's name in there, and grade, and race, and it would always be 'white'.

    [Me: Can you imagine that? Having to write your race in your schoolbooks?]

"We always got the old books, the white kids got 'em first. And there's always be pages missing, where if you read two chapters relative to something, you couldn't finish. if the third chapter completed the subject matter, then that chapter would be deliberately cut out, or the pages torn up, and you'd never know how it finished. I didn't understand it, why it was happening, but I talked to my parents and teachers and they said there was this school superintendent, a white woman, and she did this on purpose. She also never gave us enough books, or all the units on a particular subject. I think it was to keep us from doing enough work to get a high school diploma. She succeeded in my case.

His father spoke of walking to school and having insults yelled from white kids passing in the school bus; of taking verbal abuse and threats from bosses; of digging ditches in hundred degree temperatures for a man who wrote his paycheck, threw it on the ground, and told him he was never coming back.

This book is not just a recitation of wrongs--nothing like it. It's a deep, thoughtful journey of a man trying to understand his history, especially the one big puzzle of why his mother and father worked so hard and denied themselves simple luxuries. Their kids grew up in the north, getting a good education and going on to college--and taking equal opportunity for granted, as children should. But--at some point--children should ask questions. Mr. Walton did.

Good questions. Painful answers.

Great historical fiction -- but sad!

Before We Were Yours
by Lisa Wingate

Early on I realized this book was told in the "then" and "now" alternating passages that I found so annoying in a previous book. But here, they weren't annoying--not in the least. I think that's because both stories were equally engrossing and because the author let the stories dictate the breaks rather than chop them into chapters. In the other book, I was annoyed at having to constantly wrench my attention back and forth. This just flowed.

I don't read enough historical fiction to have a vote, but I could see myself voting this for best book of the year. Except it came out last year and it already won.

Nothing else to say that hasn't already been said in thousands of other reviews. It was scary and disturbing and if the bad parts had been told by an adult, it would have been excruciating. The narrator would have known what dangers really faced them, rather than a vague sense of dread that might not really be so bad as reality. Even so she was old enough to feel responsible for the fate of her siblings and that was the worst--having no power to fight back. Knowing there was nothing she could do, but feeling that she ought to have done something.

Shudder. But don't let me scare you off.  Lots of good stuff, too.

Second Best book of the year

Pukka's Promise:
The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs

When Ted Kerasote writes about dogs, he writes good! I've been trying to read one of his earlier works of travels and adventures, Navigations, and while I'm finding it enjoyable, I'm also finding myself putting it aside and not picking it back up.

Pukka's Promise I devoured in one weekend and immediately started over. It's all about the mystical magic of dogs combined with a lot of hard science. His research takes him deep into questions I never even considered questioning--
Why do dogs need annual vaccinations for diseases that don't mutate, like distemper and parvo?  (answer: they don't)
Since wolves eat no grains, why do dogs thrive on diets consisting primarily of corn or wheat?  (they don't)
Is there a long-term benefit to radical sterilization at an early age? (depends on who you ask)
What is the genetics behind breed-specific diseases and how can you improve your odds of getting a healthy purebred dog? (he tells)
How can you make your dog happier?

I need to re-read the section on dog food and the part where he gets a tour of a plant that produces animal by-product meal. It seems that when done correctly with a careful separation of species, by-product meal should be an ideal product to incorporate into pet food--it consists of the organs and innards and ground bones of the animals, which are exactly the parts that wolves and other predators prefer.

Poultry by-product meal has gotten a bad rap--most of the trendy dog food brands specifically exclude it on the label. Careless producers have been reported to include feathers and hair and improperly stored remains, and also throw in remains of dogs and cats killed in shelters.  This is a shame, because organ meats and offal can be very nutritious. Think of French cooking--tripe, trotters and chitterlings--or early American hog slaughtering--headcheese is what you get from boiling the cleaned head; all the leftover snips of meat and fat go into the sausage grinder. If you've ever read Never Cry Wolf, when the author attempted to see how well he could survive on a diet of mice, he soon realized that he needed to include the whole of the mouse, just like the wolves did. I think he must have skinned them.

While Ted Kerasote researches and writes about all the science of healthy dogs, he's also acquiring and training his puppy on the skills needed to survive as a (mostly) off-leash dog in Wyoming. Mr. Kerasote's previous dog Merle had already acquired a lot of survival skills, including watching out for cars. The town where they lived was smaller, all of the dogs ran loose and were able to socialize themselves using normal dog behaviors.  When Pukka came around there are more dogs on chains, more stupid owners, and more careless drivers.
That last paragraph sounds grim. It isn't--it's a lovely, happy book with plenty of elk bones to gnaw, pheasant to flush, and snowy slopes to slide. Wish I lived there.

I was right there with them! (In 1965)

Don't Make Me Pull Over!
An Informal History of the Family Road Trip
by Richard Ratay



Near the beginning he made a statement about the National Road having its beginnings when President Thomas Jefferson wanted a better route between Monticello and Washington. That seemed like such an interesting oddity of history that I tried to verify it. And I failed. The best I can tell the National Road went across the Allegheny Mountains to the Ohio River.

Other than that I didn't argue with him. He tells all kinds of interesting stories about the "biggest ball of string" and the first motel chain and the rise and fall of Stuckeys. He mixes his social history in with political history--oil embargo, airline deregulation--and adds a very amusing dose of his family's legendary auto trips.

If you lived through the days when seat belts were things to tuck under the back cushion, emergency roadside assistance (and cell phones) didn't exist, and Dad Drivers were nearly universally focused on "getting there", you'll resonate with this book. And most likely start telling your kids, "You don't have a clue what we went through. I had to hold my bladder from Minneapolis to Georgia."

Recipe Reduction 21-20

Red Potato Bundles
from A Taste of Home

Pointless.  I've made potatoes with rosemary before and liked them, but those were roasted in the oven with olive oil or butter. This called for onion and garlic and cheese, then rolling it all up in a square of aluminum foil and grilling it. I thought they'd make a good camping food.

But something failed to translate. These were just pointless.

Roasted Acorn Squash and Sweet Potato Soup
from A BEAUTIFUL PLATE by Laura Davidson

Not bad at all, but I'm not an acorn squash fan. For reasons unknown, the CSA likes to grow them.  I much prefer butternut, delicatta, or pumpkin. However, this recipe's suggestion of pairing the flavorless squash with yummy sweet potatoes was sound. Very sound.

One question: it has you roast the squash and sweet potatoes, but you mince (finely) and sautee the onion.  Then you put it all together and puree in a blender.  Did it really matter that you minced the onion, let alone, finely?  Did it really matter that you sauteed the onion at all?  Why not just cut it in half and toss it on the baking sheet to roast along with the rest?

People really need to think about reducing unnecessary steps when writing down recipes.  I think it would have been just as good, and maybe better, if I'd roasted the onion.  And certainly easier!

Recipe Reduction 24-22

Spinach Artichoke Tofu Quiche

This dish was pretty much doomed from the outset. I decided to make it crust-less, which is perfectly acceptable but misses the yummy, fattening crust. I refused to add the nutritional yeast because everything I've put nutritional yeast in comes out funny tasting. (Except popcorn) And I accidentally bought pickled artichokes. Should have stopped there and not

proceeded--the sharp taste of vinegar overpowered all other flavors.

It was edible, but I wouldn't serve it to friends.

 
Salmon with Ginger Pineapple Salsa

I made the salsa and I made the salmon, but couldn't bring myself to put them together. Sorry me!


It was a good salsa--spicy and rich and fresh. I've been using it as a salad dressing for the last couple of nights. It would be really good alongside spinach enchiladas or a plate of sizzling fajitas. But on salmon, the king of fish? Salmon's too good for this salsa. I like to eat salmon with just a hint of butter and garlic, topped with a drop of two of lemon juice. (Or lemon zest--should try that sometime!)

But i'm not going to overpower a lovely fillet of salmon with a Screaming Salsa.

 
Sinangag (Filipino Garlic Fried Rice)
 
There wasn't much going on here.  Fry a lot of minced garlic in oil, then somehow dip the garlic out and leave the oil. I should have used a strainer.

Add the leftover rice and fry for a while. When it's nice and brown, add a little soy sauce and some strips of fried egg and sliced green onions.  Serve with some of the crunchy garlic on top.

Okay first time around but made lousy leftovers. Not worth repeating.

Lunch (minus) meat woes

Not having brought lunch today on account of "plans" that fell through, I went over to Tom Thumb Grocery to see what I could scavenge. I was craving salad. There's a Braum's next door, but their "garden salad" consists of iceberg lettuce, cabbage, carrots and cheese.  Tom Thumb had a lot to choose from: roast beef club, chicken club, Asian chicken, sesame chicken, chicken chicken.... I finally found one that didn't feature meat--triple cheese melt.

So that's the story of American food--you can only eat salad if it's topped with meat or cheese. No chance of roasted squash, chickpeas, quinoa, black beans...any of the delightful things I love to put on a salad.

Giving up on the salad, I took a glance at the sandwich stand. No waiting in line, there--grocery store sandwich shops are almost always deserted. But all of the featured sandwiches were based on meat or cheese.  Has no one but me ever spread toasted bread with hummus and piled it high with roasted vegetables and sliced olives? What about refried bean sandwiches topped with lettuce, tomato and guacamole? What about pesto spread piled high with sprouts, cucumber and garbanzo beans?

I'm making myself hungry.  I guess that's why I need to always bring my lunch even if I think I have plans.

Recipe Reduction 26-25

 
Cold Soba Buckwheat Noodles
from Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat

 
The epitome of Japanese eating--you chop up a little of this and that, present it on tiny plates and bowls, and give each diner one-half cup of a dipping sauce and a big bowl of noodles.  Each diner doctors up their sauce and then use chopsticks to dip the noodles delicately in the yummy sauce. Then they slurp 'em down.

My version was altered for a bag lunch--the this and that were all piled in a flat bowl and the sauce and noodles packed separately.

I liked it, but I'd like it a whole lot better on a scorching day in mid-July.  Today it was near freezing and I was craving a big plate of steaming hot noodle soup!

Gougres

Yummy!  They taste just like Cheese Nips!

Which is amazing. Imagine a home-baked snack made of water, butter, flour, mustard powder, eggs and Gruyere Cheese (very expensive Gruyere Cheese!) could come out of the oven....

Tasting like a supermarket snack aisle product.  It's sad beyond imagining. In order to retain my sanity, I have to pretend that they're missing that nasty little artificial aftertaste of the commercial product.  Plus...they're pretty and puffy.

Highly instructive! Too bad it's winter right now.

How to pick a peach
The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table

by Russ Parsons

Reading this makes me want to get a copy of How to Read a French Fry.  It was fun and incredibly instructive. Even want to know whether the "new" potatoes at the farmer's market were secretly bought at the grocery store? Even want to know which fruits need to be picked dead ripe and which are better ripened on the kitchen counter?  Is the best tasting peach the one with a reddish blush?

Maturity is another matter entirely. Although peaches and nectarines do soften and become juicier and more aromatic after harvest, they don't get any sweeter. That requires picking the fruit at the highest possible maturity....The best hint is the color of the fruit. That doesn't mean picking the peach that is the reddest--remember that blush is a genetic variation that has nothing to do with either ripeness or maturity. Instead, it means paying attention to the quality of the background color of the fruit. ...Peaches and nectarines that have the most sugar and are the most mature have a background color (yellow) with a golden, almost orange cast. When you see a piece of fruit like this, pick it no matter what the variety is.

I'm assuming he did the research and really knew what he was talking about. But enough of his information gibes with what I already knew, from observation or research, that I trust it.  I only wish he'd write a companion volume that deals with imported fruit, like the papaya or the Korean plum.

If you're thinking to buy this book, note that it includes a few recipes fro each fruit category. I haven't tried any of them, and oddly, I didn't feel the desire to try any of them.  They were either too cheffy or they included meat or cheese that wouldn't have been easy to omit. I might try Garlicky Braised Cauliflower with Capers or Plum Cornbread Buckle.

Other than that, the real value of this book would be if the "how to choose" sections were pulled out into a quick-reference guide. If I ever do that, I'll post it here. Wonder if I'd need to get permission from the author? Yes, of course.

Having to wait on hold for this, but.

The Tuscan Child
by Rhys Bowen

I don't know. It was a good story--it flowed excellently well and the people were all so very lovely. But I don't think I fully understood the ending. I didn't even like the ending, much, but I can't tell you why because that would ruin it for  you. So I won't.

Be warned that the storyline flips pretty much chapter by chapter between then and now. Not my favorite narrative style and I didn't ever come to like the people in the then story--the now story was much better and it was set in a beautiful, idyllic countryside I'd love to visit. Lots of good food and local produce, too. Maybe she should have added the recipes and made a cookbook out of it.

JK. It's okay, I just didn't love it like I wanted to.

:Whopper of a good (horrible) story!

Rising Tide

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America 
by

John M. Barry

How is this possible, that a big old book about the politics and people of the great Mississippi flood of 1927, could be so darn good? Okay, there were a few too many 'floating cows' and cold, scared people perched on levees waiting for boats that never came. But the whole story of the mismanagement of the great river, all mixed with politics and racism and engineers who made decisions based on profits rather than facts, was great! It should have been subtitled, the Documentary of a Disaster. Or, more accurately, how mankind's meddling created a disaster.

It started in the 1850's and 60s, when The Army Corp of Engineers was led by a flawed scientist named Andrew Atkinson Humphreys. He took the time to collect the data that would allow him to make informed decisions about managing the river, then ignored it all. One of his proposals for managing the river was so out of touch with reality that,

Privately, even some Army engineers were aghast at Humpreys' position. One was Barnard, the sole dissenting vote...[who said] the plan submitted to the board simply ignored the engineering science of the present....The incompetence from first to last with which the thing has been handled by the [Corps] has thrown it irrecovably into the hands of politicians."

Politicians set up a sort of power play between the Corp and civilian engineers, with Humphreys pitched against the famous bridge builder James Buchanon Eads and the scientist engineer Charles Ellet. Their battles made for good reading but very bad outcomes, and the decisions ended up in the hands of the "Mississippi River Commission"--neither a scientific organization nor an engineering one, but a bureaucracy.

The commission took positions, and the positions became increasingly petrified and rigid. Unfortunately, these positions combined the worst, not the best, of the ideas of Eads, Ellet and Humphreys.
Both Eads and Humphreys opposed outlets. Ellet proposed them. Ellet was right. But the commission opposed outlets.
Both Eads and Humpreys opposed building reservoirs. Ellet proposed them. Ellet was right. but the commission opposed reservoirs.
Eads wanted to build cutoffs. Humphreys and Ellet opposed them. Eads was right. The commission followed Humphreys and Ellet.

And in the end,  with outlets, reservoirs and cutoffs all being cast aside, the commission decided to use levees and only levees, a position "violently rejected" by all three men. So over the next decades, levees were built higher and higher and natural outlets were closed off. when the rains came, the Mississippi had nowhere to go but up.

There is no sight like the rising Mississippi. One cannot look at it without awe, or watch it rise and press against the levees without fear. It grows darker, angrier, dirtier; eddies and whirlpools erupt on its surface; it thickens with trees, rooftops, the occasional body of a mule. Its currents roil more, flow swifter, pummel its bands harder. When a section of riverbank caves into the river, acres of land at a time collapse, snapping trees with the great cracking sounds of heavy artillery. On the water the sound carries for miles.

Unlike a human enemy, the river has no weaknesses, makes no mistakes, is perfect; unlike a human enemy, it will find and exploit any weakness.

Recipe Reduction 29-27

Immunity Soup
by Heidi

Good work on coming up with a catchy name--which has nothing to say about the recipe. This starts with a basic recipe for vegetable soup that you could find in any woman's magazine cookbook circa 1960--onions, celery and carrots, stewed in oil. I assume the "immunity" label came from the additional of a generous portion of garlic and ginger plus a whole lot of white pepper to cover up its lack of flavor. Since I hate pepper, I skipped it, and sure enough the result had no flavor.

The recipe called for mushrooms and tofu, too, and since I couldn't stand to waste a soup that included two of my favorite things, I decided to give it some flavor.  I tried rice vinegar and soy sauce--better, but no unami. So I dissolved a healthy tablespoon of brown miso in hot water and plopped that in. Plus a dash of toasted sesame oil.]

Yummy!  Come on, immunity!


Curried Scallops
from Modern spice

I don't know what to say about this. What could be bad about scallops sprinkled with curry powder, sauteed in oil, then served in a sauce of the curry drippings, onion, tumeric and coconut milk?  It was good but not special, however, I may have omitted the key ingredient--fresh curry leaves.

Scallops are way too expensive and precious to waste on a less-than-stellar recipe, so I'll have to file this away. But I think it could have been great.

 
Roasted Delicata Salad with Warm Pickled Onion Dressing

 
Knock me over!  I thought this was going to be yet another meh from the long file of boring "salads" I could have thought up for myself.  It was good!  Like coleslaw on steroids.

I'll share the basics:
Roast some winter squash. It's hard to find delicatta, so I grabbed an acorn squash and a sweet potato from the CSA box. (The last delicatta from my garden had gone hopelessly soft in storage)

Mix 2 Tbsp honey, 3 Tbsp cider vinegar (the recipe called for red wine vinegar but I messed up and am glad I did), 1/4 tsp caraway seed and 3/4 tsp salt. Heat until boiling, then pour over 1/3 cup of minced red onion.

Shred 2-3 cups cabbage, an apple, and 1/2 c celery hearts. (Please don't measure any of this, just throw it in.) 

When the squash is cooled, mix it all together and top with some toasted walnuts.  I skipped the walnuts and that's good, because if I'd included them I'd probably have sat down and gobbled the whole bowl at once.

It's that good.

And with that I've knocked out another category (Salads) under the to-try folder!  I only have seven categories left.  3 desserts, 7 side dishes, 12 main dishes, 1 other, 1 sauce, 1 soup, and one spread. How does that add up? Excellent -- 26 to go.  With some interruptions in the picture, I may not make it but I'm not giving up the race yet.

Disappointment in mystery shrouded

Nun Too Soon
by Alice Loweecey

Everyone raved over this first mystery. Ex-nun takes over her husband's detective agency when he returns to the police, and proceeds to take on a case investigating an obnoxious man who killed his obnoxious wife by strangling her with a tie. Everyone assumes his guilt because all of the evidence points to him, and Giulia (the detective) is more than half-convinced he's guilty, too. But she decides to take on the case for no reason I can fathom.

Clearly, I had issues--starting with my inability to pronounce the name Giulia. I decided to say Julia, with a little hitch each time as I remember to make the G soft. I eventually looked it up and discovered it is an authentic Italian given name, so I had no right to gripe. So I read on, growing more and more irritated with the abbreviated, uber-witty dialog; the constant interruptions of the "detection" with flavored coffees and snacks and meals and more snack and more meals; the shallow snippets of characters that bounced on and off the stage; the short chapters and shorter sentences. The proof of the crime(s) seemed awfully flimsy, even at the end. The final action scene didn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense any way I looked at it. People acted strangely for no apparent reason and we were supposed to accept it and applaud.

I think all that says this book wasn't a good fit for my personality. I give you permission to adore it. I will not pronounce judgement, just say this: there was too much of nothing crammed into too little space. For my taste.

At last! Someone who knows what I'm talking about!

If Ina Garten has one pet peeve, it's the phrase season to taste. "If you don't know what it's supposed to taste like, how are you supposed to season to taste?" 

Yeah! 

So not much progress on the recipe reduction front--been sick and out of sorts mostly. One much-delayed update,

Onigiri #30

I've saved this recipe for a while. Don't know why--it's not complicated. Cook some sprouted rice (I sprouted my own, but I don't know if it was really necessary). Mix with mung beans, sesame seeds (forgot) and green onions.  Make balls--oops. Mine failed failed failed to make balls. Maybe if I hadn't started the recipe two weeks ago, ran out of time and chucked the whole thing in the freezer, it wouldn't have looked like this mess:

Anyway, make balls with a scoop of avocado in the center. Top with a spotch of miso, soy sauce and nut butter (I cheated with tahini but almond butter would be better). Broil until it melts. Wrap with a strip of toasted nori (I used some roasted seaweed of unknown type leftover from Christmas).

With all my swaps and failures, it turned out good!  I should make again, frequently, and figure out how to make it stick together next time.

YA on earbuds works great on an airplane

The Truth About Forever

Classic (dare I say?) Sarah Dessen. I'll probably stop reading her older books now but stay hopeful for a new one. I've read What Happened to Goodbye?, Just Listen and Saint Anything. Of the four, I'd be most likely to recommend the last one, although I only gave it three stars at the time of reading. I was probably still mad at the creepy guy.

She excels in "family", especially the parts of family that must make you want to scream. There always seems to be at least one clueless adult who never takes the time to really see what his/her kid is going through. The resolution of this--the point where the parent wakes up and sees what they're missing--isn't simple and seldom involves an apology, parent to child. The best you can hope for is that they sort-of get it, in their small-minded, grown-up way. In fact, that may be what Ms. Dessen is trying to say--don't expect your adults to ever understand, just be sure that they hear what you're able to say. And get on with your life.

I appreciate that about Ms. Dessen--she doesn't take the easy way out and create the fairy tale happy ending. Her endings are, at best, a compromise. But somehow you never feel robbed.

Another thing I appreciate is her ability to write a sweet romance that complements the heroine's development but doesn't complete it. Yeah, it's great to be liked for yourself. (She steers well clear of any suggestion that a guy might like a girl for her...uh...developments, missing a chance to help girls grow into their sexuality as well as their self-determination. Too bad.)  But being liked for yourself, that way isn't the major impetus that helps her heroines move from childhood to adulthood, from helplessness to self-determination. It helps, friendship and sometimes family helps. But eventually, her young women have to grow a backbone all by themselves.

I wasn't the target audience, however, I can enjoy a farce. Usually.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue
by Mackenzie Lee

I wish I'd not started this, but once started, I wanted to see how it ended and so it went.  Hint: if you're feeling the same way, early on, go ahead and quit. Not worth it.

All that said it delivered in its intentions--it was light and funny and full of ridiculous escapades.  The plot, as described on the cover blurb, was a machination of coincidences. But the real plot was something very different and surprisingly well revealed.  Hint: it's a love story.

So if you're a teen looking for a fun afternoon and a bit of light reading. Tackle it. Anyone else, think thrice.