On food and books (what else?)
Martin Sheen was on Desert Island Discs a couple of weeks ago. I finally got around to listening to it (don't normally listen to DID, but was told this one was great) and I have to say, he's a fascinating guy with some great music choices. If you can find it (because it's probably not on iPlayer anymore), I'd highly recommend it.
Oh, Radio 4, how awesome are you?
Someone on one of the Ravelry groups I'm on posted a link to this recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/06/crash-hot-potatoes/
I may need to try it out at the weekend. I'm not normally a massive potato fan, but these sound om nom and could be excellent with some slow cooker ribs and green beans. Not that I'm already trying to plan next week's menu choices or anything...
I love food. And cooking. And baking. As much as I love eating out (and I really do!), I also love eating my own cooking because I get to try new things and flavour them just how I like them. This is particularly important when it comes to baking, where store-bought things are frequently far too sweet for my palette and I'd much rather eat my own baking. A lot of what I make tends to be have richer flavours without being teeth-achingly sweet, which is my preference. This week I have a nommy batch of fairy cakes as my evening baked treat. I'm thinking that next week will be little butter tarts, for which I have acquired my mother's recipe. We've tried commercial butter tarts. Ugh. How do people eat things that sweet? For Easter weekend, I may bake a cheese cake.
It's possible that I'm turning into a food snob :-) Yesterday I baked some chicken wings, which were very nom, and at the same time grilled a chicken breast. The chicken breast has been chopped up and turned into a pesto-ey chicken salad thing for use in this week's wraps. It's an experiment that may fail (edited to add: not a fail!), but at least I tried. The rest of this week's menu is all "things wot I cooked and froze". So I'm kind of living off freezer food, but not really because it's all home-made. Is it silly that I'm already excited about Thursday's shepherd's pie?
Despite all the joys of baking and cooking, right at this moment I would give just about anything for a burger. Seriously. Major burger cravings. Not a home-cooked one - the evil kind from some horrible fast food place that you know is going to slowly kill you. Preferably with fake cheese and bacon. Or the smoky Jack burger from Jack Astor's *drools* Maybe I could treat myself on Friday?
I learned this week that as much as I love a good mystery, if I'm not in the mood for one then I should probably save it for when I am in the mood. I've been on a fantasy/sci-fi kick for the last couple of months, reading some absolutely terrific stuff, and then I picked up an Inspector Lynley book and it didn't really do anything for me. I could tell that it would normally have had me glued if I'd been on a mystery kick, but it wasn't what I wanted so it didn't hold me and actually took several days to read. That's most unusual. Those kinds of books are usually done and dusted in a couple of days.
So I'm back with the sci-fi, reading Declare by Tim Powers. I'm only a few pages in, but already hooked. Yay! And when I finish my Edward III biography, I am totally picking up Archer's Goon as my dead tree book. A few pages of it got browsed last night and it was tough to put it down :-)
At the end of March, I did a bit of counting up and summarising of statistics for my LibraryThing 75 books thread. Doing an end of quarter summary seemed like a good idea until I looked at the figures. It did rather point out the discrepancy between the quantity of books that I bought and the quantity that I read. It also brought forward that I've not done a good job of tackling my back-log. Really, getting Mount TBR shorter is supposed to be this year's goal. Instead it's grown. Ack!
One day, I will understand why I'm the type of person who Must Own ALL The Books and why there are people out there who don't feel that need. Seriously, how do people not buy books?
For anyone who is interested, these were my top reads from Q1 of 2011:
Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey
Soulless - Gail Carriger
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
To Say Nothing Of The Dog - Connie Willis
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
And as of last night, I'm at 26 books for the year so I'm well on track to more than hit 75 books. As 75% of those have so far been awesome with only one total clunker, it's looking like this year will be a terrific book year. I say that every year, though...
This entry was originally posted at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/394599.html. There are currently
babbles on the entry on Dreamwidth
Oh, Radio 4, how awesome are you?
Someone on one of the Ravelry groups I'm on posted a link to this recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/06/crash-hot-potatoes/
I may need to try it out at the weekend. I'm not normally a massive potato fan, but these sound om nom and could be excellent with some slow cooker ribs and green beans. Not that I'm already trying to plan next week's menu choices or anything...
I love food. And cooking. And baking. As much as I love eating out (and I really do!), I also love eating my own cooking because I get to try new things and flavour them just how I like them. This is particularly important when it comes to baking, where store-bought things are frequently far too sweet for my palette and I'd much rather eat my own baking. A lot of what I make tends to be have richer flavours without being teeth-achingly sweet, which is my preference. This week I have a nommy batch of fairy cakes as my evening baked treat. I'm thinking that next week will be little butter tarts, for which I have acquired my mother's recipe. We've tried commercial butter tarts. Ugh. How do people eat things that sweet? For Easter weekend, I may bake a cheese cake.
It's possible that I'm turning into a food snob :-) Yesterday I baked some chicken wings, which were very nom, and at the same time grilled a chicken breast. The chicken breast has been chopped up and turned into a pesto-ey chicken salad thing for use in this week's wraps. It's an experiment that may fail (edited to add: not a fail!), but at least I tried. The rest of this week's menu is all "things wot I cooked and froze". So I'm kind of living off freezer food, but not really because it's all home-made. Is it silly that I'm already excited about Thursday's shepherd's pie?
Despite all the joys of baking and cooking, right at this moment I would give just about anything for a burger. Seriously. Major burger cravings. Not a home-cooked one - the evil kind from some horrible fast food place that you know is going to slowly kill you. Preferably with fake cheese and bacon. Or the smoky Jack burger from Jack Astor's *drools* Maybe I could treat myself on Friday?
I learned this week that as much as I love a good mystery, if I'm not in the mood for one then I should probably save it for when I am in the mood. I've been on a fantasy/sci-fi kick for the last couple of months, reading some absolutely terrific stuff, and then I picked up an Inspector Lynley book and it didn't really do anything for me. I could tell that it would normally have had me glued if I'd been on a mystery kick, but it wasn't what I wanted so it didn't hold me and actually took several days to read. That's most unusual. Those kinds of books are usually done and dusted in a couple of days.
So I'm back with the sci-fi, reading Declare by Tim Powers. I'm only a few pages in, but already hooked. Yay! And when I finish my Edward III biography, I am totally picking up Archer's Goon as my dead tree book. A few pages of it got browsed last night and it was tough to put it down :-)
At the end of March, I did a bit of counting up and summarising of statistics for my LibraryThing 75 books thread. Doing an end of quarter summary seemed like a good idea until I looked at the figures. It did rather point out the discrepancy between the quantity of books that I bought and the quantity that I read. It also brought forward that I've not done a good job of tackling my back-log. Really, getting Mount TBR shorter is supposed to be this year's goal. Instead it's grown. Ack!
One day, I will understand why I'm the type of person who Must Own ALL The Books and why there are people out there who don't feel that need. Seriously, how do people not buy books?
For anyone who is interested, these were my top reads from Q1 of 2011:
Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey
Soulless - Gail Carriger
Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
To Say Nothing Of The Dog - Connie Willis
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Mistborn Trilogy - Brandon Sanderson
And as of last night, I'm at 26 books for the year so I'm well on track to more than hit 75 books. As 75% of those have so far been awesome with only one total clunker, it's looking like this year will be a terrific book year. I say that every year, though...
This entry was originally posted at http://selenay.dreamwidth.org/394599.html. There are currently
babbles on the entry on Dreamwidth