Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

Tonight I made my first dinner from my Horse & Buggy produce share.  I made wheatberries* with chicken broth, sauteed onions and mushrooms .  This was accompanied by roasted butternut squash with a maple syrup and orange juice glaze.  I used some of the mixed Asian greens and greenhouse cucumbers to make a salad.  Upon this salad I poured homemade balsamic vinaigrette sweetened with some of the leftover glaze.  The maple syrup was a gift Nj brought me back from Vermont. For dessert, I used some of the frozen blackberries to make a kiwi blackberry salad with homemade whipped cream.  The whipped cream had just a tiny bit of hazelnut syrup which imbued it with a slight and delicious nuttiness. * Items in bold are from the CSA.

★★★ I listened to this on my drive down to SC.  My friend Rob loves the book and wanted to know why I only gave it 3 stars - what did I not like about it.  It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just don't believe in grade inflation.  It worked as a book to listen to in the car because I was exhausted and Alice has scarcely experienced one thing before something else strange has befallen her.  It's not a long book (only 112 pages according to Amazon), but there's a lot of adventure.   I think had I read it the first time when I was a kid, I would have liked it more, but as an adult, the shallow plot didn't offer much more than amusement.  That's not a bad thing, as it is, in fact, written for children.  I imagine that someday I'll read it to my kids and they'll love it.

My grandmother is in the hospital in SC.  Until today, I think we all had a lot of faith in the idea that she'd get better.  I saw her yesterday and she seemed to be improving. Now they think she is going to die. She's drowning in fluid in her lungs. Her kidneys aren't working. She has some kind of strange anemia with no apparent cause.  I think she's really tired.  I would be. I'm scared. I'm scared she's going to die and everyone is going to be really sad, and there will be another big hole in our family. I'm worried about my dad too.  In the past 6 months, his best friend died, his chihuahua (who was about 20 years old) died, and now his mom is probably going to die. I'm scared he's going to be so depressed that he's going to give up and die too, and I need him. They don't know how long she's going to last. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and my dad doesn't want to leave her.  My nephew has school tomorrow and this coul...

100 Best Novels Board's List Ulysses by James Joyce The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov Brave New World by Aldous Huxley The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler 1984 by George Orwell I, Claudius by Robert Graves To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1001 Books to read before I die.  Frack. 2000s Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro Saturday – Ian McEwan On Beauty – Zadie Smith Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson The Sea – John Banville The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble The Plot Against America – Philip Roth The Master – Colm Tóibín Vanishing Point – David Markson The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle The Colour – Rose Tremain

First day of the year means new reading challenges!  I did better last year than my blog indicates.  So my goal for this year is not to read more, but rather to actually follow through with writing about what I read (so writing challenge really?).  What's life without something to work toward, even if it's just to be a little happier.  Writing makes me happy.  I should do more of it.  I'm biting off more than I can chew again, but who cares?  It's fun. I love dystopian novels.  Like a lot.  Reading 5 of these for the Asocial level won't be hard; I probably read 15 (the next level) last year, but didn't write about them.  I'm aiming small.  5!   1. The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson 2. Battle Royale - Koushun Takami Another one I really enjoyed last year, but didn't write about as much as I should have.  I'm signing up for medium again - 2 from each continent.  14 books, here I come! ...