To start with, a recap of the past few weeks:
Food:
Kalamata Spaghetti: Delicious, but made WAAAAY too much. Check the servings, and think about how much 30 bloody ounces of fettuccine really is. Has a very good flavor. Never made a pesto before, and it's been a while since I've eaten one either, so I didn't really know what kind of consistency to go for. This ended up being on the meatier side, but not chunky. Every few bites gets a distinct taste of walnut, and I really like the variation.
No-Knead Bread
: I really had no idea this had become a major phenomenon until I started looking for variations on it yesterday. I heard about it through the Personal Finance blogs I read, and even got an enameled cast-iron 3.5qt casserole pot to make it in for Christmas. I know that bread can be very tricky, and wasn't expecting much for a first attempt.It was delicious. I was very proud of myself for having such a good first attempt. My only difficulty is that since my pot is about half size, I cut the dough in half between its first and second. This works fine, but it takes 2 hours to get it all cooked, and there's not a lot of sandwich-sized slices in each loaf. The picture is of my very first loaf, and was taken with my phone. In the future I plan to use my Elph, and therefore have significantly better quality.
I'm hoping to figure out a way to fix this. My cheap-o solution is to get an unglazed clay pot of a size to be able to invert it over my loaf pans, and maybe a stone slab to put under the loaf pan, effectively creating a mini-oven within the oven, to hold the moisture in, then just take the pot off for the 2nd cook.
Yesterday, I bought some light rye flour, some 12% protein bread flour, some King Arthur brand Whole Wheat flour, some cornmeal, and some stone cut oats. Experiment results will be posted.
Books:
All Things Bright and Beautiful, James Herriot: The 2nd in the series, will post once I finish.
All Creatures, Great and Small, James Herriot: I think I started to read this once, back in my early teens, if not before. I just finished reading it last week, and I greatly enjoyed it. I finished all the fantasy and sci-fi books I've been wanting to read lately, and decided to find some country/survivalist books to read. This is a memoir-ish collection of his adventures during his first year or two as a post-graduate assistant veterinarian in 1930's Britain. Some touching moments, a good bit of funny anecdotes, overall very enjoyable. Something I could read to my (nonexistent) kids as bedtime stories. The individual anecdotes make good stopping points, and he makes extensive use of the English language without being verbose. There were a number of words that I had only seen in my "A Word A Day" newsletter perviously, but they really felt like they fit, and not that he was trying to be showy. Just goes to show you how far the English language has come in the last 40-50 years...
World Made By Hand: A Novel of the Post-Oil Future, James Howard Kunstler: I found this book suggested on a list of survivalist literature. It's the only one from taht list that I've read; everything else seemed a little too out there. This was a very good story. It starts about 5 years after the "fall". When I first started it, I compared it too Alas, Babylon, but picking up a bit after that book ends. The protagonist lives in small-town Vermont, and he and his neighbors are making do with chickens, pigs, a little bit of specialization and bartering. The basic premise of the story is moving past the 'survival' mindset, and forward into restarting civilization, actually thriving instead of just subsisting. There's a little side-story that I think was quite poorly developed, some kind of supernatural thing that never got picked up or even explained. The ending had a very "this looks like a good place to stop" feel to it, but I think with this kind of story, that's about the only way to go, sicne there was no "rescue" to have happen, such as did in Alas, Babylon.
Dreamcatcher, Stephen King: I listened to this on CD, but it was unabridged, so I think it counts. This was enjoyable from beginning to end. King's books always end up being a lot longer than I initially think they will. Even though this was 20 discs long, it didn't really click how long it was until the story was getting the guys out of the woods, and I wasn't even a third of the way through. If you like anything sci-fi/horror/King, then this is recommended. Then again, if you enjoy King at all, I imagine you've already read it.
Salem's Lot, Stephen King: see above.
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