LIbrary Books! And Ice Cream!!!
We went down to the library today to return some books & pick one up that I had ordered. I realise I hadn't done a brief round-up of my thoughts on the last books I checked out so will do that quick & then some info about the ones I will be reading next. Let me preface it by saying I had bought a couple books at the library & started reading one the other day, but unfortunately I hadn't realised it is part 2 in a series so I've today ordered the first one so I can get a better idea of what is going on. But before I get into the lengthy talk on books themselves, I will get into the talk on Ice Cream (which also involves books!).
Bluemeridian had recommended on a post I had about ice cream that I look into the Jeni Bauer ice cream techniques & her book. Jeni makes ice cream without eggs, but does use corn starch & corn syrup. Her book "Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home" has some interesting (aka kind of odd actually) flavour combinations. She is supposed to be pretty well known in her area for making Really Good ice cream though & I figured if I can get some ideas & base recipes in her book that would provide a good spring board for me to start from.
I am glad I got the book. I do find her story encouraging, it is always good to read about small entrepreneurs who are in the process of becoming successful. In addition to the base recipes, she also goes in to the science side of ice cream & that is going to be the most help I think. She talks about balancing your ice cream to prevent some of the common problems in home made ice cream. Besides the usual ice cream recipes she also has recipes like for different types of sundaes & for making ice cream-related things like merringue, baked Alaska, honey comb (aka Hokey Pokey as it is called here), waffle cones with a side on how to make them into fortune cookies, etc.
While I can't see myself making the sweet corn & black raspberry flavour itself, I do see some interesting takes on ice cream I do want to try & can adopt other recipes (like the sweet corn one) to leave out the more exotic ingredients we might not enjoy. A quick first look through the book & I thought I wouldn't really have many recipes I'd be interested in but that changed after a page-by-page look & I wrote down what I am interested in. I ended up with 28 recipes that I am looking forward to making either in their entirety or in adaptation. Some of them won't be ice creams C likes (ie--Watermelon Lemonade Sorbet as she doesn't like watermelon) but others like Roasted Pistachio or Baked Apple Sorbet she would be more into. I am keen to try the Influenze RX when winter hits us. The book itself has a nice feel to it (one of the things I like & that keeps me with regular books instead of ebooks). It feels solid & well-made, a work of art with beautiful & inspiring photos.
At the same time I ordered "Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Desert Book" by Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield. This also has info on their start up which is an interesting read. It has fewer recipes overall than Jeni's but has 3 base recipes where Jeni's only has 1. There are eggs in 1 of the base, another calls for sweetened, condensed milk which I'd seen recipes include online but wasn't sure how well it would work. Despite fewer recipes, this does have some of the recipes I miss from not having Ben & Jerry's. In addition to ice cream recipes, B&J's also has some recipes for sauces, deserts and so on. Overall it is a smaller book but the copy I got is very typical Ben & Jerry's with hand-drawn and colored cartoony figures and an overall semi-hippy feel to it that I do like.
I am going to today make the Ben& Jerry's Cherry Garcia recipe as our renewed foray into making ice cream from one of the 2 books. After that is done (and after we clear one of our older failed attempts at ice cream out of the fridge by eating it) I want to try one of Jeni's but might start with a simpler chocolate in hers. We have a tiny organic creamery in NZ that made a big splash by pairing their premium milk with a local, well-known & popular chocolate brand, Whittaker's. The result of that & a successful media campaign was security guards in grocery stores and rationing of bottles. I got lucky enough to find some small bottles of this liquid gold today at our local dairy (they hadn't been at the dairies before, only main grocery stores). I will be using this in place of the regular milk in the B&J recipe so I'll have an extra chocolatey Cherry Garcia :)
I'll let you all know how it goes.
____________________________________________
BOOKS! My take on the books I've finished reading & have returned. Synopsis on the subjects is here.
"The Moon is Down" by John Steinbeck -- a short story but interesting. It does hit some interesting themes along the lines of people just doing their job & being forced by circumstances to do what they have to even if they don't really like it (ie--the conquerors of the town), people's nature & how people can slowly & quietly resist even when it looks bleak. I enjoyed it but it seemed to be a bit of an abrupt end. like "In Dubious Battle" it had Steinbeck's typical character who meets an untimely end but who's death is used to rally people to a cause. It can seem a callous thing, but we do see so much of it in the world (either literal death or figurative). I do like Steinbeck's writing style so enjoyed this & would recommend it.
"In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck - Another short one. Again, I do like Steinbeck's writing style so enjoyed it. I thought this was especially interesting in how he plays both the main characters that are pro & anti strike---both sides are greedy, only driven by their ideology & willing to use (or create) sacrificial lambs out of someone to further their cause. There is the usual vilification of the vigilante groups, I would expect that in this story. It is almost like a "Grapes of Wrath" light; different stories but similar themes. I would highly recommend it.
"Once A Brethren Boy: an Autobiography" by Noel Virtue (An NZ author) -- Some interesting premises & points but the writing is kind of trite and overly-flowery in some places. It provides an interesting glimpse into being gay coming from an exclusive and extremely conservative background, but I just couldn't really get into the fact that he constantly blamed the Bretheren church for some of his problems without really spelling out why that was. I get that being ostracised from family because of their religious beliefs & possibly the break up of the family because of the same can create some mental and emotional issues, but he seemed to hold far more blame against them. In the end I kind of just got bored reading it & wouldn't go looking for anything else by him.
"Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry -- It is supposed to be one of the 10 most consequential works of fiction in the 20th century. I couldn't get into it (and no, it wasn't because of the occasional Spanish phrases---I know enough for that). I don't know if it just seemed confusing at first because of the writing style, if it was a hard ask for a book to follow up "In Dubious Battle" or the fact we are on holiday (I doubt that last one, it is the perfect time to catch up on reading). I got into the 2nd chapter & turned it back into the library not regretting reading further.
"Nights in the Garden of Spain" by Whiti Ihimaera (Another NZ author)-- I watched Whale Rider by Whiti & enjoyed it & have been thinking of reading something by him but hadn't yet. Interesting look into the gay scene in about the 80's in NZ. It is also a telling and heart-touching piece about a married man trying to reconcile his gay leanings with his relationship with his wife & kids and his family. I would recommend this one.
Books from today's library haul
"Blue Labyrinth" by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Childs -- I really enjoy their books. I have read several in their Pendergast character series. Sometimes some bits of the books are far-fetched but I do enjoy reading them for entertainment & escapism. It is basically crime/mystery with a little bit of mysticism & archaelogy snippets in them.
"His Name is John" by Dorien Grey -- This is the one I requested, I picked it out of the library's online list of GLBT crime stories. It is about Elliot Smith who wakes up in a hospital with a head injury & "John", an invisible friend. First he think's it is just because of his injury but when he has fully recovered & still sees "John" he tries to find out who he is. As he looks into "John" (a John Doe who died in the ER the same time he was in the hospital), he finds a body that was hidden behind a wall for 80 years, meets a sexy artist & a nun's deadly secret.
"Unseaming" by Mike Allen - chance pick-up. Our library will pick odd books & set them off to the side of the shelf to highlight them. 'Everyone in the world awakens covered in blood - and no one knows where the blood comes from. A childhood doll arrives to tear its owner's reality from limb to limb. A portal to the spirit realm stretches wide on the Appalachian Trail, and something more than human crawls through on eight legs'..... It looks like a collection of short stories & while I tend to avoid some short story collections, this looks interesting.
"The Sunken" by S.C. Green - An NZ artist, which is one of the reasons I ended up picking it up. She's in the Steampunk scene here, I've seen her on the news. I do want to read more NZ authors. "In the heart of London lies the Engine Ward, a district forged in coal and steam, where the engineering sects vie for ultimate control of the country". There is more to the back of the jacket. To summarise: it is about Nicholas Thorne, who has returned to London to work for a childhood friend, about Nicholas' strange affliction where the thoughts of animals crowd his head & is worried his friend Isambard Kingdom Brunel might be falling for the temptation of his growing power. The king has approved of Brunel's plan to put up a wall to keep out the swamp dragons & protect the city but the king is also secretly creating an army of Sunken, who are flesh-eating monsters. This one is book 1 in the Engine Ward series. The library didn't have book 2 yet, don't know if it has been published yet. Her website is www.steffmetal.com I haven't checked it out yet.
"Go Tell It On The Mountain" by James Baldwin -- A quote about this came up in my FB feed a week or 2 ago & I commented that I needed to read it again. I'd already had a stack of books when I saw this one sitting off to the side of the shelf & nabbed it anyway. I read it ages ago in university. If you don't know what it is about, here is the synopsis: "Drawing on his boyhood in a religious community in 1930's Harlem, he tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptised, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were ridin on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism make him cruelly abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt; of secret sinners and prayers signing on the wind".
More comment(s) at Red_trillium's Dreamwidth journal. Come join the conversation! You can comment there using OpenID or ask me for an invite to create your own account.
Bluemeridian had recommended on a post I had about ice cream that I look into the Jeni Bauer ice cream techniques & her book. Jeni makes ice cream without eggs, but does use corn starch & corn syrup. Her book "Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams At Home" has some interesting (aka kind of odd actually) flavour combinations. She is supposed to be pretty well known in her area for making Really Good ice cream though & I figured if I can get some ideas & base recipes in her book that would provide a good spring board for me to start from.
I am glad I got the book. I do find her story encouraging, it is always good to read about small entrepreneurs who are in the process of becoming successful. In addition to the base recipes, she also goes in to the science side of ice cream & that is going to be the most help I think. She talks about balancing your ice cream to prevent some of the common problems in home made ice cream. Besides the usual ice cream recipes she also has recipes like for different types of sundaes & for making ice cream-related things like merringue, baked Alaska, honey comb (aka Hokey Pokey as it is called here), waffle cones with a side on how to make them into fortune cookies, etc.
While I can't see myself making the sweet corn & black raspberry flavour itself, I do see some interesting takes on ice cream I do want to try & can adopt other recipes (like the sweet corn one) to leave out the more exotic ingredients we might not enjoy. A quick first look through the book & I thought I wouldn't really have many recipes I'd be interested in but that changed after a page-by-page look & I wrote down what I am interested in. I ended up with 28 recipes that I am looking forward to making either in their entirety or in adaptation. Some of them won't be ice creams C likes (ie--Watermelon Lemonade Sorbet as she doesn't like watermelon) but others like Roasted Pistachio or Baked Apple Sorbet she would be more into. I am keen to try the Influenze RX when winter hits us. The book itself has a nice feel to it (one of the things I like & that keeps me with regular books instead of ebooks). It feels solid & well-made, a work of art with beautiful & inspiring photos.
At the same time I ordered "Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Desert Book" by Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield. This also has info on their start up which is an interesting read. It has fewer recipes overall than Jeni's but has 3 base recipes where Jeni's only has 1. There are eggs in 1 of the base, another calls for sweetened, condensed milk which I'd seen recipes include online but wasn't sure how well it would work. Despite fewer recipes, this does have some of the recipes I miss from not having Ben & Jerry's. In addition to ice cream recipes, B&J's also has some recipes for sauces, deserts and so on. Overall it is a smaller book but the copy I got is very typical Ben & Jerry's with hand-drawn and colored cartoony figures and an overall semi-hippy feel to it that I do like.
I am going to today make the Ben& Jerry's Cherry Garcia recipe as our renewed foray into making ice cream from one of the 2 books. After that is done (and after we clear one of our older failed attempts at ice cream out of the fridge by eating it) I want to try one of Jeni's but might start with a simpler chocolate in hers. We have a tiny organic creamery in NZ that made a big splash by pairing their premium milk with a local, well-known & popular chocolate brand, Whittaker's. The result of that & a successful media campaign was security guards in grocery stores and rationing of bottles. I got lucky enough to find some small bottles of this liquid gold today at our local dairy (they hadn't been at the dairies before, only main grocery stores). I will be using this in place of the regular milk in the B&J recipe so I'll have an extra chocolatey Cherry Garcia :)
I'll let you all know how it goes.
____________________________________________
BOOKS! My take on the books I've finished reading & have returned. Synopsis on the subjects is here.
"The Moon is Down" by John Steinbeck -- a short story but interesting. It does hit some interesting themes along the lines of people just doing their job & being forced by circumstances to do what they have to even if they don't really like it (ie--the conquerors of the town), people's nature & how people can slowly & quietly resist even when it looks bleak. I enjoyed it but it seemed to be a bit of an abrupt end. like "In Dubious Battle" it had Steinbeck's typical character who meets an untimely end but who's death is used to rally people to a cause. It can seem a callous thing, but we do see so much of it in the world (either literal death or figurative). I do like Steinbeck's writing style so enjoyed this & would recommend it.
"In Dubious Battle" by John Steinbeck - Another short one. Again, I do like Steinbeck's writing style so enjoyed it. I thought this was especially interesting in how he plays both the main characters that are pro & anti strike---both sides are greedy, only driven by their ideology & willing to use (or create) sacrificial lambs out of someone to further their cause. There is the usual vilification of the vigilante groups, I would expect that in this story. It is almost like a "Grapes of Wrath" light; different stories but similar themes. I would highly recommend it.
"Once A Brethren Boy: an Autobiography" by Noel Virtue (An NZ author) -- Some interesting premises & points but the writing is kind of trite and overly-flowery in some places. It provides an interesting glimpse into being gay coming from an exclusive and extremely conservative background, but I just couldn't really get into the fact that he constantly blamed the Bretheren church for some of his problems without really spelling out why that was. I get that being ostracised from family because of their religious beliefs & possibly the break up of the family because of the same can create some mental and emotional issues, but he seemed to hold far more blame against them. In the end I kind of just got bored reading it & wouldn't go looking for anything else by him.
"Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry -- It is supposed to be one of the 10 most consequential works of fiction in the 20th century. I couldn't get into it (and no, it wasn't because of the occasional Spanish phrases---I know enough for that). I don't know if it just seemed confusing at first because of the writing style, if it was a hard ask for a book to follow up "In Dubious Battle" or the fact we are on holiday (I doubt that last one, it is the perfect time to catch up on reading). I got into the 2nd chapter & turned it back into the library not regretting reading further.
"Nights in the Garden of Spain" by Whiti Ihimaera (Another NZ author)-- I watched Whale Rider by Whiti & enjoyed it & have been thinking of reading something by him but hadn't yet. Interesting look into the gay scene in about the 80's in NZ. It is also a telling and heart-touching piece about a married man trying to reconcile his gay leanings with his relationship with his wife & kids and his family. I would recommend this one.
Books from today's library haul
"Blue Labyrinth" by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Childs -- I really enjoy their books. I have read several in their Pendergast character series. Sometimes some bits of the books are far-fetched but I do enjoy reading them for entertainment & escapism. It is basically crime/mystery with a little bit of mysticism & archaelogy snippets in them.
"His Name is John" by Dorien Grey -- This is the one I requested, I picked it out of the library's online list of GLBT crime stories. It is about Elliot Smith who wakes up in a hospital with a head injury & "John", an invisible friend. First he think's it is just because of his injury but when he has fully recovered & still sees "John" he tries to find out who he is. As he looks into "John" (a John Doe who died in the ER the same time he was in the hospital), he finds a body that was hidden behind a wall for 80 years, meets a sexy artist & a nun's deadly secret.
"Unseaming" by Mike Allen - chance pick-up. Our library will pick odd books & set them off to the side of the shelf to highlight them. 'Everyone in the world awakens covered in blood - and no one knows where the blood comes from. A childhood doll arrives to tear its owner's reality from limb to limb. A portal to the spirit realm stretches wide on the Appalachian Trail, and something more than human crawls through on eight legs'..... It looks like a collection of short stories & while I tend to avoid some short story collections, this looks interesting.
"The Sunken" by S.C. Green - An NZ artist, which is one of the reasons I ended up picking it up. She's in the Steampunk scene here, I've seen her on the news. I do want to read more NZ authors. "In the heart of London lies the Engine Ward, a district forged in coal and steam, where the engineering sects vie for ultimate control of the country". There is more to the back of the jacket. To summarise: it is about Nicholas Thorne, who has returned to London to work for a childhood friend, about Nicholas' strange affliction where the thoughts of animals crowd his head & is worried his friend Isambard Kingdom Brunel might be falling for the temptation of his growing power. The king has approved of Brunel's plan to put up a wall to keep out the swamp dragons & protect the city but the king is also secretly creating an army of Sunken, who are flesh-eating monsters. This one is book 1 in the Engine Ward series. The library didn't have book 2 yet, don't know if it has been published yet. Her website is www.steffmetal.com I haven't checked it out yet.
"Go Tell It On The Mountain" by James Baldwin -- A quote about this came up in my FB feed a week or 2 ago & I commented that I needed to read it again. I'd already had a stack of books when I saw this one sitting off to the side of the shelf & nabbed it anyway. I read it ages ago in university. If you don't know what it is about, here is the synopsis: "Drawing on his boyhood in a religious community in 1930's Harlem, he tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptised, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were ridin on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism make him cruelly abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt; of secret sinners and prayers signing on the wind".
More comment(s) at Red_trillium's Dreamwidth journal. Come join the conversation! You can comment there using OpenID or ask me for an invite to create your own account.