how's that for a vague post title? well, I've been reading what i like to call my "boring books, and been reading "good books", and been eating lots of of good food, so it's perfectly descriptive.
Book review is up for Sergei Lukyanenko's Nightwatch. I'm quite sure there are more books in this series, and now I've got to track them down!
I finished reading Robert Silverberg's Majipoor Chronicles, which is the second book in the Lord Valentine series. Chronicles follows Labyrinth urchin Hissune as he gains access to the Record of Souls. Hissune lives a few hours as early colonists of the planet, dreamspeakers, coronals, soldiers, and others. This shapes his education in a way no other experience could, and sets him up to be Valentine's heir apparents, much to the dismay of the princes on the Castle Mount. Lord Valentine's Castle gives the foundation of getting to know the multitude of cultures on Majipoor, and Chronicles gives the history and the details. So now I'm on to Valentine Pontifex, and i'm find that I'm avoiding it for the same reason I was avoiding finished LVC - I don't want it to end!
In the land of boring books (anything non-fiction), I'm still slogging through Fienman's Law 101. I'm picking up a lot of needed terminology, and learning that Contract Law is really, really boring. I couldn't resist a book entitled The Government vs Erotica, by Philip Harvey, the owner of Adam and Eve, a mail order "adult products" company. The government went after him with all it's might for distributing obscene materials, and Harvey and his company fought back. This book is funny, scary, and passionate. I can't put it down. Distorting the Law is going back to the library unfinished, it is too over my head. Never in a million years did I ever believe I'd be reading a book about tort law (other than John Grisham), and at least now I can say that I've never finished one.
Foodwise, i'm already starting to test drive recipes for Passover, which is only a few weeks away! Okay, so this isn't quite kosher, and it isn't quite kosher for passover, but it's only a few easy to substitute ingrediets away from both.
Mushroom & Potato casserole
2 lbs potatoes
olive oil
1 lb mushrooms
2 tbsp lemon juice
a few ounces thinly sliced salami
2/3 cup parmesan cheese
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
few tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
salt & pepper
Preheat oven to 350. slice mushrooms into 1/4" slices. clean and slice mushrooms, and sprinkle them with the lemon juice. in a small bowl, blend parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and parsley. generously oil a large baking dish, and put a layer of potatoes to cover the bottom. follow this with a layer of mushrooms, a layer of salami, and a layer of the cheese breadcrumbs mixture. season with salt & pepper (go easy on the salt if your salami is salty). keep layering in this manner until you run out of ingredients. Pour a few tablespoons of olive oil over the caserole, and bake until potatoes are cooked through, about 60-75 mintues.
Showing posts with label Mushrooms and Potatoes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mushrooms and Potatoes. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Saturday, June 16, 2007
it's too hot to think.
it's too hot to think. it must be too hot to buy books, as well. Or maybe I just don't want to sit in the stuff car for the 15 minutes it takes to get to Barnes & Schnoble?
I managed to go 2 weeks without buying books! aren't you proud of me?? but i did hit the library. got my grubby little hands on Ian McDonald's Brasyl, and Paul Park's The Tourmaline (book 2 in his Roumania series), some Manga, and a Japanese cookbook filled with ingredients I've never heard of. I'm nearly done with Brasyl. It's good. it's really freakin good. but it's really hard to read. Props to McDonald for setting an quantum computational epic in Sau Paulo. Good for him for sprinkling the novel with all flavorings of Brazilian slang and culture. too bad only about a quarter of the Portuguese words are in the glossary in the back. Too bad even more that I don't speak a lick of Portuguese, or know jack about South American indigenous peoples and their religious pantheons. So the books is rather hard to follow. But I must be enjoying it, since I'm 50 pages from the end and can't put the stupid thing down. Stay tuned for a full length review. Same with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I owe both of these books at least 600 words a peice. maybe more.
I'm still working through Pandora's Closet, and it's quite enjoyable. Not every story is a gem, but it's very nice that each story is short, so I can read one each night before I go to bed, even if I go to bed really late.
Should have some thoughts next time on the Paul Park book, as I haven't even cracked it yet. But i remember the first book in the series A Princess of Roumania being light, fun, and surface. and easy read. I could really use something like that right now.
it is too frackin' hot to cook. but i do it anyways. this side dish is easy, quick, cheap, and yummy hot or cold.
Potatoes & Mushroom
12oz fresh mushrooms (any kind you liked)
1.5 lbs potatoes
4 garlic cloves, minced
leaves from a bunch of parsley or basil
salt & pepper
more parsley or basil, to garnish
shredded cheese (optional)
pre heat oven to 350. slice potatoes & mushrooms. in a large bowl, toss mushrooms and potatoes with herbs, garlic, salt and pepper (to taste). grease a large baking dish that will hold everything in a shallow layer. pour everything in the baking dish and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until potatoes are just nearly cooked. stir it up once or twice while it's baking (this is not a caserole type dish). sprinkle a thin layer of cheese on top, and bake another five minutes. let cool a few minutes, garnish with herbs, and enjoy!
and it's even easier to make than it looks.
I managed to go 2 weeks without buying books! aren't you proud of me?? but i did hit the library. got my grubby little hands on Ian McDonald's Brasyl, and Paul Park's The Tourmaline (book 2 in his Roumania series), some Manga, and a Japanese cookbook filled with ingredients I've never heard of. I'm nearly done with Brasyl. It's good. it's really freakin good. but it's really hard to read. Props to McDonald for setting an quantum computational epic in Sau Paulo. Good for him for sprinkling the novel with all flavorings of Brazilian slang and culture. too bad only about a quarter of the Portuguese words are in the glossary in the back. Too bad even more that I don't speak a lick of Portuguese, or know jack about South American indigenous peoples and their religious pantheons. So the books is rather hard to follow. But I must be enjoying it, since I'm 50 pages from the end and can't put the stupid thing down. Stay tuned for a full length review. Same with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I owe both of these books at least 600 words a peice. maybe more.
I'm still working through Pandora's Closet, and it's quite enjoyable. Not every story is a gem, but it's very nice that each story is short, so I can read one each night before I go to bed, even if I go to bed really late.
Should have some thoughts next time on the Paul Park book, as I haven't even cracked it yet. But i remember the first book in the series A Princess of Roumania being light, fun, and surface. and easy read. I could really use something like that right now.
it is too frackin' hot to cook. but i do it anyways. this side dish is easy, quick, cheap, and yummy hot or cold.
Potatoes & Mushroom
12oz fresh mushrooms (any kind you liked)
1.5 lbs potatoes
4 garlic cloves, minced
leaves from a bunch of parsley or basil
salt & pepper
more parsley or basil, to garnish
shredded cheese (optional)
pre heat oven to 350. slice potatoes & mushrooms. in a large bowl, toss mushrooms and potatoes with herbs, garlic, salt and pepper (to taste). grease a large baking dish that will hold everything in a shallow layer. pour everything in the baking dish and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until potatoes are just nearly cooked. stir it up once or twice while it's baking (this is not a caserole type dish). sprinkle a thin layer of cheese on top, and bake another five minutes. let cool a few minutes, garnish with herbs, and enjoy!
and it's even easier to make than it looks.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
the worst book i've ever read.
it's April somethinth, and it's freakin' snowing. i do NOT live in Marquette, so why the hell is it snowing? learn how to make this delish potato gratin, or scroll all the way down to read my real thoughts on what has to be the worst book i've ever read.
Gratin Savoyard. this dish will cost you about $15, and $10 of that will be just the cheese.
you'll need:
2 lbs new potatoes
1 1/2 cups grated Grueyere cheese (i just buy a block & grate it myself)
2 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
nutmeg
preheat oven to 400.
scrub and peel the potatoes, keeping them in a large bowl of cool water until you are read to slice them.
grease a shallow caserole dish. layer the ingredients in the following manner: slices potatoes, sprinkle of salt/pepper, cheese, sprinkle of nutmeg, dots of butter. go light on the salt, as this is a rather salty cheese. you should end up with 2 or 3 layers of this, depending on the size of your dish. make sure the top layer is cheese- nutmeg - dots of butter.
bake at 400 for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 and bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. let sit 5 minutes before serving.
that was easy! you survived the suspense!
i recently wrote a book review of Anthony William's Scales. This was the hardest review i've ever written because it was the worst book i've ever read. i needed to be honest, yet tactful in my review, but i don't have to be tactful in my own damn blog, do i? go read the review, tell me if it is tactful or not.
it annoys me to no end when reviewers are "nice", or "polite", because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. not every author is going to be the next Robert Jordan, or the next Wil McCarthy, or whomever. This isn't a bad thing.
if every other sentence in the book start with "I", and the characters are flatter than pancakes, and there is no central plot line just unfinished episodes, and characters have the long term memory of a fruit fly, and it just gets worse from there, why should i say "this book isn't for me, but maybe others would like it?" That would be dishonest to everyone involved. i had fears my article would start some kind of shitstorm, but all's been quiet on the western front. and don't even get me started on the fact that this book was "self published". meaning the author paid to have it printed. barf.
note to any and all authors who request i read and review their books: i will be honest. promise.
luckily, i've moved onto bigger (and smaller) and better things. on the plate at the moment is Jennifer Caress's Perverted Realities. what a bizarre title! this 100-page novella is short and sweet. Story lines are reminiscent of old school Stephen King, where his short stories were somewhat open ended, to force the reader to wonder if the good guys won or not. i like that. her two main characters are a little on the freaky side. they think they are normal, so the reader has an easy time thinking they are normal. So some cheers to Caress. I think she's got potential to be a quality story teller, as some funky grammatical problems are easy fixes. Review to be posted. . . soon.
complete opposite of that 100-pager would be the first book in Robert Jordan's wheel of time The Eye of the World. I don't plan to turn into an obsessive WOT-er, but Jordan's characterization is some of the best, if not the best i've ever read. and sure, it's got that Tolkien feel, and the foreshadowing smacks you over the head like a ton of bricks, but it is very enjoyable. a healthy escape. and it is SO nice to read fantasy where the chicks aren't just damsels in distress, waiting for their boytoys to come of age and save them.
Gratin Savoyard. this dish will cost you about $15, and $10 of that will be just the cheese.
you'll need:
2 lbs new potatoes
1 1/2 cups grated Grueyere cheese (i just buy a block & grate it myself)
2 tbsp butter
salt & pepper
nutmeg
preheat oven to 400.
scrub and peel the potatoes, keeping them in a large bowl of cool water until you are read to slice them.
grease a shallow caserole dish. layer the ingredients in the following manner: slices potatoes, sprinkle of salt/pepper, cheese, sprinkle of nutmeg, dots of butter. go light on the salt, as this is a rather salty cheese. you should end up with 2 or 3 layers of this, depending on the size of your dish. make sure the top layer is cheese- nutmeg - dots of butter.
bake at 400 for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 and bake for 20-30 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. let sit 5 minutes before serving.
that was easy! you survived the suspense!
i recently wrote a book review of Anthony William's Scales. This was the hardest review i've ever written because it was the worst book i've ever read. i needed to be honest, yet tactful in my review, but i don't have to be tactful in my own damn blog, do i? go read the review, tell me if it is tactful or not.
it annoys me to no end when reviewers are "nice", or "polite", because they don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. not every author is going to be the next Robert Jordan, or the next Wil McCarthy, or whomever. This isn't a bad thing.
if every other sentence in the book start with "I", and the characters are flatter than pancakes, and there is no central plot line just unfinished episodes, and characters have the long term memory of a fruit fly, and it just gets worse from there, why should i say "this book isn't for me, but maybe others would like it?" That would be dishonest to everyone involved. i had fears my article would start some kind of shitstorm, but all's been quiet on the western front. and don't even get me started on the fact that this book was "self published". meaning the author paid to have it printed. barf.
note to any and all authors who request i read and review their books: i will be honest. promise.
luckily, i've moved onto bigger (and smaller) and better things. on the plate at the moment is Jennifer Caress's Perverted Realities. what a bizarre title! this 100-page novella is short and sweet. Story lines are reminiscent of old school Stephen King, where his short stories were somewhat open ended, to force the reader to wonder if the good guys won or not. i like that. her two main characters are a little on the freaky side. they think they are normal, so the reader has an easy time thinking they are normal. So some cheers to Caress. I think she's got potential to be a quality story teller, as some funky grammatical problems are easy fixes. Review to be posted. . . soon.
complete opposite of that 100-pager would be the first book in Robert Jordan's wheel of time The Eye of the World. I don't plan to turn into an obsessive WOT-er, but Jordan's characterization is some of the best, if not the best i've ever read. and sure, it's got that Tolkien feel, and the foreshadowing smacks you over the head like a ton of bricks, but it is very enjoyable. a healthy escape. and it is SO nice to read fantasy where the chicks aren't just damsels in distress, waiting for their boytoys to come of age and save them.
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