Gardening in my Roots, Mid-March edition

Ah, the delights of flowers in the garden. These don't come in packets of flower seeds--they're what happens when you let last year's vegetables overwinter.Soon I'm hoping to have sage; it's the best because bees love it. Although they seemed to like these okay.  I have collard greens:

And arugula.

On a non-vegetable gardening aside, this horribly out-of-focus picture shows proof, irrefutable, that my dogwood tree is alive and budding. But still, fingers crossed it will come to more.

Review: The World Record Book of Racist Stories

   
by Amber Ruffin

I read this book on paper, but for the previous one (You won't believe what happened to Lacey) I listened to the audio book. I think, oddly enough, that made me like this one better. Or possibly it just was better. A horrible awful kind of better, of course, because it is about racism, after all.

In this one she branches out to include stories from her other family members, including her mother and father, who lived through a time when it wasn't even something to apologize over. Their stories were very interesting. Some made you smile a little, but only the ones where the person suffering discrimination got back at the discriminator. Which almost never happened. Wish it did!

Review: Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World

by Theresa MacPhail

Well, darn. I thought I'd love this and write a glowing review; instead I just liked it and have nothing to say. But I'll try...

She did a good job synthesizing a lot of research and coming up with a lot of good information on the current state of allergies--understanding, diagnosing, and treatment. And some information on the treatments of the future. The material was well presented and pretty much well organized.

Some very interesting things to learn, if you don't know already--the skin tests for allergies are pretty much useless in a whole lot of cases.  That was some interesting stuff, but I'd have been happy with a quick summary instead of the great detail to which she descended. And the "no peanuts to babies" theory is pretty much a bunch of bunk, and probably caused a lot more peanut allergies than it prevented.

So if you're an allergy sufferer or care for people who are (pretty much all of us), you'll find some interesting stuff here.  I got a little bored at times, sorry to admit. But it's still worth reading.

Recipe Adventures. Or not.

Another recipe out of the book I was complaining about, The Blue Zones American Kitchen. This time it was "Savory garlic tofu with minced mushrooms."

 Not very good. Although it was full of umami producers--Hoisin Sauce, mushrooms, black bean paste, garlic--it was sadly lacking in flavor. It was so bland I ended up sprinkling a tidbit of salt on it at the table.  I have only five recipes from this book left, so I may forge on and try them.  They all "look" interesting--but then so did this one.

Review: Ex'd Out: A Melanie Bass Mystery

by Christine Falcone
    
I found myself enjoying this pretty much. I couldn't put it down, which is a good sign, except that I'm kind of in a mood right how where nothing much makes me happy except reading, and this sort of light fluff is exactly what I want.  So it may be too light and fluffy for a normal reader.

The main character is not a real detective, which is kind of a downer. But she is a home health care aide (or is it nurse?  yes, I think so) and that part of her life is very interesting. But the murder mystery moved right along and the characters introduced show great promise.

To the nitpicky reader, I must give one quick warning--the author repeats herself. Not in big things, but little ones--from time I found myself reading a bit of backstory or description that made me stop and shake my head...didn't I already read this?  Yep, I did. Where's the editor when you need one?

Gardening in my Roots, Early March

I have ten lovely, fat asparagus spears up, on the old plants. Some plants (crowns) have multiple spears, others none at all. I cannot bear to cut any of them.  Some more of the new plants I put in this year are coming up, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lettuce is struggling up--

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What few peas came up out of the ground are climbing at a good clip

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the beets are looking okay. I'm trying the experiment of putting the row cover over half of them but leaving the other half out to the elements. So far it looks like the ones under the row cover are doing better. The temperatures are a little too warm for beets--upper seventies in the day--but they should be okay as long as I keep them watered.

Review: to Shake the Sleeping Self

To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
by Jedidiah Jenkins


I have to admit with apologies that I only picked up this book because knew the author's father, Peter Jenkins, from his own travel books. I got started with A Walk Across America way back in the...seventies, was it?  

But that was just the start and it wasn't the reason I devoured every page of this with great interest and mostly enjoyment. (After all, how can one enjoy miserable days in the desert with heat, cold, boredom and flat tires?)  But he didn't dwell on his miseries so much as his joys, and it turned into an intensely enjoyable travel story as well as a story of self discovery. He doesn't quite "find himself"--yet--but he went a long way down that road.

I didn't notice the writing, good or bad, so that means good by default. Pretty much highly recommended with only a warning that he went off into his own personal life history for a chapter or so. I found that very interesting, too, but I can see that some people might consider it a pointless digression.

Recipe Adventures...or not

 I tried one of the recipes from a cookbook I checked out of the library--The Blue Zones American Kitchen's Salvadoran Tofu Scramble. It was okay, just. What's not to like--onion, bell pepper, tomatoes, tofu, turmeric and salt?  After tasting it, I added a sprinkle of powdered cayenne and cumin. That improved it.

I think the book is proving to be a dud, recipe-wise. For one thing, I doubt that Salvadorans eat tofu or use turmeric as a spice. I think the authors just picked the countries with the longest-lived people and then invented the recipes at random. I could very likely see Salvadorans scrambling eggs with the vegetables, but I suspect they'd use garlic, chilis, and ground pumpkin seeds as their seasonings.

So this one is a reject, however, I need to remember to make myself a tofu-veggie scramble more often.  Most likely with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and mirin.