Friday 56 and Book Beginnings (Oct. 21)

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post in the Linky here. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It's that simple.

Book Beginning is hosted by Rose City Reader. All you have to do is share the opening line of the book you're reading and what you think about it. Check out the other posts here.

My book this week is The Butcher Bird by S.D. Sykes.  Oswald is the new Lord of Somershill Manor and having trouble with his new position.  And then a baby is found dead in a thorn bush and the people are blaming a huge bird.  Oswald does not believe the bird exists and tries to find out who the real killer is.

Book Beginnings:

It was the tail end of the morning when the charges were laid before me and I would tell you I was tempted to laugh at first, for the story was nonsense.

Friday 56:

"I can't ride."  He then smiled.  A toothy and lopsided expression that was entirely disconcerting.  "My legs are too wide apart," he said, pointing at his groin.  "See. I can't grip the barrel of the beast.  I keep sliding off."

This is the second book in the series and I have not read the first one (Plague Land) so they keep talking about things that I don't know about.  I think it would help to understand the characters more if I had read the other book but the plot is not hard to follow.  I like it but I don't think I'll run out and get the first one.  By now I'm a little annoyed with Oswald.  They keep saying he is a great investigator but every time something suspicious happens he doesn't ask any questions about it.  

The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings (Oct. 14)

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post in the Linky here. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It's that simple.




Book Beginning is hosted by Rose City Reader. All you have to do is share the opening line of the book you're reading and what you think about it. Check out the other posts here.

My book this week is The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder.  One day, after over a century of use, a bridge breaks causing the death of five people.  Brother Juniper, who witnessed the incident, sets out to prove that there was divine design even in this by finding out all he can about the people who died on the bridge.

Book Beginnings:

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

I think this is a pretty good first sentence.  Because now I want to know who they were and why he's telling me this.  And isn't that the point?  To get people to want to read on.  

Friday 56:

What relationship is it in which few words are exchanged, and those only about the details of food, clothing, and occupation; in which the two persons have a curious reluctance even to glance at one another; and in which there is a tacit arrangement not to appear together in the city and to go on the same errand by different streets?  And yet side by side with this there existed a need of one another so terrible that it produces miracles as naturally as the charged air of a sultry day produces lighting.

This passage also makes me curious.  I want to know all about these people he's talking about.  I'm liking this one so far.  Each part is about a different person that was on the bridge when it broke.  So it kind of has a short story feel to it but all the stories end the same way.

Consider the Fork Review

Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson

(from the book jacket)

Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious – or at least edible.  Tools shape what we eat, but they have also transformed food.  Technology in the kitchen does not just mean the Pacojets and sous-vide of the modernist kitchen.  It can also mean the humbler tools of everyday cooking and eating: a wooden spoon and a skillet, chopsticks and forks.

In Consider the Fork, award winning food writer Bee Wilson provides a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world, revealing the hidden history of everyday objects we often take for granted.  Knives – perhaps our most important gastronomic tool – predate the discovery of fire, whereas the fork endured centuries of ridicule before gaining widespread acceptance; pots and pans have been around for millennia, while plates are a relatively recent invention.  Many once-new technologies have become essential elements of any well-stocked kitchen – mortars and pestles, serrated knives, stainless steel pots, refrigerators.  Others have proved only passing fancies, or were supplanted by better technologies; one would be hard pressed now to find a water-powered egg whisk, a magnet-operated spit roaster, a cider owl, or a turnspit dog.  Although many tools have disappeared from the modern kitchen, they have left us with traditions, tastes, and even physical characteristics that we would never have possessed otherwise.

Blending history, science, and anthropology, Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be, and how their influence has shaped modern food culture.  The story of how we have tamed fire and ice and wielded whisks, spoons, and graters, all for the sake of putting food in our mouths, Consider the Fork is truly a book to savor.

I like to read books about food, cooking and culinary science but this one is different from the others I’ve read.  This one focuses on the tools used to cook and eat the food.  Each chapter deals with a different technology; knife, grind, measure, eat, etc.  It’s interesting to see how the way food is cooked and eaten changes the culture of a people, and in some cases the people themselves.  It talks about how location made a difference in how people cooked and ate.  It goes into how as the cooking methods changed so did the diet of the people using it.  It shows why some things have endured the test of time while others have been lost to history.  There is science, history and anthropology all here.  I like all those things, and when you add the food angle it pushes this book over the top for me.  So I really enjoyed reading this one.  Wilson has an easy writing style that makes it a quick, engaging read.  You learn a lot without it feeling like you are reading a text book because there is a good balance between explanation and story.  And that makes this good for everyone regardless of previous knowledge.  It is a very approachable book for anyone who ever wondered how the fork came about or when knives lost the sharp edge and became butter knives.  There are a lot of questions answered that I hadn’t even thought to ask.  And it is a new look at a lot of things we find in our kitchen that we take for granted.

Weekend Cooking is sponsored by Beth Fish Reads. Be sure to check out the other posts here.

Friday 56 and Book Beginnings (Oct. 7th)

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader
(If you have to improvise, that's ok.)
*Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it)
*Post it.
*Add your (url) post in the Linky here. Add the post url, not your blog url.
*It's that simple.

Book Beginning is hosted by Rose City Reader. All you have to do is share the opening line of the book you're reading and what you think about it. Check out the other posts here.

My book this week is Queen of the Dark Chamber by Christiana Tsai.  It is the autobiography of Christiana Tsai who grew up in China and suffered great persecution when she became a Christian.

Book Beginnings:

It was the twelfth day of the second month, and all over China, people were celebrating the Birthday of the Flowers, by tying red strips of cloth on the trees and bushes.

This sounds like a happy beginning.  Somehow I knew it wasn't going to be all Birthday of Flower celebrations though.

Friday 56:

Rumors spread that the god of the locomotive demanded human sacrifices.

I'm just getting to the part where she is having to choose between the easy life she has been living and the new inner peace she has found. 

Outrun the Dark Review

Outrun the Dark by Cecilia Bartholomew

Billyjean’s little brother was killed by a blow to the head with a wrench.  Everyone said Billyjean did it, so she was put into a mental institution when she was only eight.  Thirteen years later they let her go home.  But she still doesn’t remember doing it.

Billiejean, a little eight year old girl is caught standing over the body of her little brother holding the wrench that killed him.  She spends the next thirteen years of her life in a mental hospital.  For those thirteen years she is told that she killed her little brother, Bubber, and she will have to face the reality of that and admit it before she will be well enough to go home.  The only problem is she doesn’t remember doing it.  And when she finally gets to go home there are people who tell her they don’t believe that she did.  In truth the mystery here isn’t much of a mystery.  Not to the reader anyway.  You can guess what happened pretty early on.  The book becomes not about what happened to Bubber but what is going to happen to Billiejean now.  She is both still eight years old and a woman of twenty-one.  You see the world through Billiejean’s eyes as she tries to navigate through her new world.  She is confused and scared and does not know how to behave.  She tries desperately to do what is expected of her so people will think she is normal and well but at the same time she does not believe it herself.  You also get to see how the characters around Billiejean deal with her coming home, her father is desperate as he tries to explain himself, her mother is worried what everyone thinks but wants to do right by Billiejean, and the neighbors don’t know what is best for Billiejean or how to help.  It is a story about the emotional and psychological responses of the whole neighborhood to this one event that engulfed and changed so many lives so profoundly.  Even though you feel like you know what happened to Bubber, Billiejean is still not sure herself and her search and what the outcome and consequences of it will be leave you with lots of doubts.  You want to know if Billiejean can pull through this whole.  You want to know if anyone will be there for her at the end.  I think it failed to make Bubber the mystery it had intended but it is still a tense and emotional story about Billiejean’s struggle to find her life again.

Magic Meets Custard

Magic 3 Layer Custard Cake (From One Batter)

I browse recipes online all the time, following links from one place to another, starting out looking at a recipe for snickerdoodles and ending up printing out a recipe for trout.  So I have no idea how I came across this recipe.  I certainly wasn’t looking for a Magic 3Layer Custard Cake since I had no idea it existed.  But I ended up on Recipe Tin Eats looking at this.  And it looked really cool and like I could pass it off as a lot of work even if it isn’t.  Besides, custard of all sorts is awesome.  If you want to try it go here.

After the whites are 'folded' in

Like all custards it is mostly milk and eggs.  You have to separate the eggs and beat the whites.  You set them aside and mix the rest of the ingredients together.  Starting with beating the yolks with the sugar and ending with the lukewarm milk.  This has to be done at a low speed to avoid splashing because basically what you have by this time is a bowl of milk.  Then you have to fold in the egg whites.  I have no idea how to fold egg whites into a liquid.  I did the best I could but ended up less folding it in than breaking up the clumps into smaller clumps.  So then I had a bowl of milk with egg whites floating on top.  It said not to worry if there were lumps of egg white so I decided to just go with it and see what happened.

it does not look yummy yet

much better after it's baked

In the pan and then in the oven it went.  About 50 minutes later out it came.  I let it cool.  I had a little more trouble getting it out of the pan than the recipe led me to believe that I would.  But it did come out and stayed in one piece and held its shape.  The consistency reminded me of a Jell-O Jiggler.  When it was cut you could clearly see the three layers.  The top, which had most of the egg whites, was airy.  The middle layer was like custard in a custard pie.  The bottom layer was tougher than the others, slightly chewy, and gave the impression of a crust even though there isn’t one. 

It was delicious.  It was very much like a custard pie but I didn’t have to mess with a pie crust (which is not my strong suit) so I was happy about that.  It’s easy to make (especially after making it once and knowing what to expect.)  And it can sit in the fridge for a couple of days and you don’t have to worry about the crust getting soggy.  It was a hit with my family.  And the three layers makes it look cool too.  I think I’ll be making this again.

Weekend Cooking is sponsored by Beth Fish Reads.  Be sure to check out the other posts here.