long time no blog.

Looks like it's been a while since I posted anything here. Sorry about that. Means we've got plenty to catch up on!

A handful of new book reviews up:
SunDiver by David Brin
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
January Dancer by Michael Flynn

I wrote the January Dancer review for SFRevu. . and I need to decide if I'm going to continue writing reviews for them. The editors strongly prefer to only publish positive reviews, which puts me in a bad position when I choose a book from the shopping list that turns out to suck. my reviews just end up flat and superficial.

reviews in the works include Startide Rising, by David Brin, and Saturn's Children, by Charlie Stross. I have major issues with both novels, so i promise those reviews will be neither flat, nor superficial, although perhaps biting and just plain mean, due to dissapointment.

the last few weeks have had plenty of food adventures, both good and bad. i'm not going to subject you to the failures, the internet isn't that big. but here's some yummy stuff, and it's seasonally appropriate, at least where i live!

Zucchini bread, make 2 loaves
adapted from The Breadwinner's Cookbook

3 cups flour
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 butter, melted and cooled (or you can use one cup butter, melted and cooled, and skip the olive oil)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups shredded raw zucchini
1/2 cup chopped pecans or 1/2 cup raisins, or 1/4 cup of each (I don't suggest going over 1/2 cup of added fruit or nut extras)

preheat oven to 350, and grease 2 loaf pans. mix flour, honey, sugar, salt and cinnamon in a big bowl. Add everything else except the nuts and/or raisins, and mix well. when well blended, mix in the nuts/raisins. pour into loaf pans and bake at 350 for about 50 minutes. the bread will still be raw in the center, and will continue to bake as the bread cools, but be very, very careful when removing the loaves from the loaf tins.

i still have one more zucchini in the fridge, so i think later this week i'm going to cut this recipe in half and make zucchini muffins.

Yet again, i've managed to catch whatever crud is going around town, making everyone sick. if the Food and Drug administration was watching our city, they would think that everyone is making meth in their basements, due to all the cold remedies being sold in the drugstores. it's just a cold, i swear! and the magic over the counter medicine is. . . Mucinex! disgusting commercials, miracle medicine. so i've been sick the last few days, and wanting soup. nothing chowdery, and i made mushroom barley soup a few weeks ago. Chicken noodle soup is kind of boring, and I need something with more nutritional value than the lemon tea i've been living on for the last few days. that in mind, i give you Sick Soup! if i can make this while sick, then anyone can.

Sick Soup
adapted from a minestrone recipe off cooks.com
2 tbsp butter
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
one baby zucchini, quartered and sliced thin
a few red new potatoes, cubed
2-3 celery stalked, chopped
1 cup chopped carrots
48 oz chicken broth
water
1 tbsp dried parsley
1 tbsp dried basil
salt & pepper
one can northern white beans
about one cup elbow macaroni

sautee onion and garlic in butter for a few minutes. add zucchini, potatoes, celery and carrots, and saute over low/medium heat until veggies have started a soften just a little. Stir in the parsley and basil, and add the broth and at least 3 cups water. salt and pepper to taste. simmer until the veggies (especially those potatoes!) are nearly done, about 15 minutes. add the pasta, and boil for 6-8 minutes, or until pasta is al dente. let sit off the heat for a few minutes before serving. be careful not to overcook the pasta, because it's just going to get squishier and squishier as the leftovers sit in the fridge.

makes a good, easy to digest "sick soup". nice and squishy. In fact, i'm going to go have some right now, which i try to survive a few more pages of Stross's Saturn's Children. this won't be the first Stross book that i returned to the library unfinished. i either love his stuff, or think it sucks.

my basil plant is naked.

first things first, the massive "to be read pile" from last week has diminished, magically, somehow.

Kitchen Confidential - after reading about 20 pages, i realized i've read this before! got it from the library a few years ago! it's still as funny, irreverent, and probably frightenly honest as before. My husband is reading it, and froths at the mouth at how much of an asshole he thinks Bourdain is. well, the guy admits in the introduction that he's an asshole, and that being on all those drugs probably isn't a good thing anyway.

Action Philosophers - doesn't take long to read a comic book. Although my brain melted around Sartre, and never recovered. Good book, but not as good as volume I. i may be thinking twice before buying volume III.

The Servants, by Michael Marshall Smith - was shorter than i expected. review forthcoming on SFRevu. eventually.

Soul Catcher - by Frank Herbert - not as bad as i feared, but not as good as i hoped. More a treatise on Stockholm Syndrome than much else. It also felt very much like Herbert's The White Plague, which wasn't written until a few years later, i think. Angry protaganist is going to teach the world a lesson! and does it, but spends the whole book trying to justify their decision. it's like watching a old skool slasher film through the eyes of the bad guy. It's also very strange reading a non-SF book from an SF author. you keep expecting something SF'y to happen, and then get all dissapointed when it doesn't. like reading Voices From the Street, by Philip K Dick, i was weirded out by how relatively normal it was.

I'm a little leery of the Michael Flynn book, The January Dancer, because i was so dissapointed (and bored!!) with his Eifelheim of a few years ago. So hopefully this one will be better, and different.

Martin's A Storm of Swords will be my reward for getting through the Flynn book.

So, by now you are wondering "why is her basil plant naked????" well, cuz i cut nearly all the basil off, to make pesto!

basil? check!
pine nuts? check! (wow! who actually has those?)
parmesan cheese? check!
garlic? duh!
olive oil? check!

everything you need to make pesto! well, except the food processor, which i don't have. Here is how people without a food processor make pesto: put 1/2 cup pinenuts in a ziplock back. push the air out, zip up, and roll over with a rolling pin a few times to mush the pine nuts. put chopped basil (about 2 cups loosely packed leaves), 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, and 2 minced cloves garlic in ziplock bag, close up, and roll over with the rolling pin. every few rolls, mush it around the bag. you want it blended as good as possible. when you're sick of mushing it around and rolling it, scrape it into a bowl. add some olive oil, and mix with a fork. add more olive oil, and mix with a fork. add some salt and pepper. mix in more oil (up to a 1/2 cup, total), till you get the consistency you want. be aware, it will dry out over time, so if you're going to keep it in the fridge for a few days, you might have to mix in a little more oil to get the consistency back to where you want.

now you can make my super duper Summer Pesto Pasta!
8 oz Penne or small Shells
small sweet pepper
two small zuchinni
salt & pepper
your awesome homemade pesto

while water is boiling for pasta, saute peppers & zucchs in some butter in a skillet. season with salt & pepper. make pasta. just before draining pasta, add a ladleful of pasta water to your veggies. drain pasta and mix with veggies. Stir in Pesto. enjoy!

Potatoes make Eifelheim better

so i'm struggling through Michael Flynn's Eifelheim. this book is turning into a chore. but i'm nearly done, so i might as well get through it, so i can write a cranky, snarky review and bitch and complain about how Flynn can't get through a damn page without at least one untranslated phrase in German, Latin, or French. it would be nice if knew any of those languages. which i don't. grrr. knowing my luck, i'll be the only person who didn't like this book, and everyone else who reads it will rave about it!

but there is a reward in sight!! today i learned about library reciprocal borrowing! with my local library card, i can get books from the library in the next city. how different could libraries be, you ask? VERY different. and i came home with Edelman's Infoquake, Vandermeer's Shreik, and volume 1 of Cowboy Bepop, and 1 & 2 of something called Tokyo Babylon that looks cool. now if i can only find a library that owns the entire collection of Blame and Trinity Blood, i'm all set.

speaking of Manga, i got my copy of FullMetal Alchemist volume 3 today! Thank you Amazon, and thank you M for that Amazon gift card!

so many good books, i don't know where to start. the kitchen is a good place.

this dish turned out so much better than i expected, that not only will it go hand written in my cookbook, it will make reading Eifelhiem for another 2 hours much easier.

Garlicky roasted potatoes

1 1/2 lbs new potatoes, and or small heirloom potatoes
non stick cooking spray
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped finely (2-3 tbsp)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 tbsp rosemary
1 tsp lemon juice
salt & pepper

preheat oven to 450. clean and quarter potatoes. use a baking dish no smaller than 9x9. spray baking dish with nonstick spray, and put in potatoes. sprinkle potatoes with 1 tbsp of olive oil, and salt & pepper, and put them in the oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

meanwile, make the garlic topping. in a saucepan, put the rest of the olive oil, and the garlic. cook over medium-low heat until the garlic begins to turn golden, about 2-3 minutes. you might need to add a little more oil, if it begins to burn. remove from the heat, and let cool. shortly before the potatoes are ready to come out of the oven, add the parsley, rosemary, and lemon juice to the garlic mixture, and mix well.

after you've taken the potatoes out of the oven, you don't want to pour the garlicky mixture onto the hot pan (you just don't. it will stick, and burn.). either pour the potatoes & garlicky mixture into a serving bowl and mix well, or pour the potatoes into the saucepan you made the garlicky mixture in, and mix well.

i love potatoes. they are good medicine for annoying books.