Bookish Wednesday

Shanghai Girls is written by Lisa See who also wrote Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love, both of which I also read.  Shanghai Girls is the story of May and Pearl when they are young women.  The story begins in Shanghai in the late 1930s and ends during the Chairman Mao days.  May and Pearl are beautiful young women from a privileged background, but their father needs to pay off gambling debts and sells them as brides to a Chinese businessman for his sons.  The businessman and his family live in America and May and Pearl have no desire to live in America and try to thwart the plans.  They do end up going to America and finding that all is not as they have been told. But they too have their secrets, such as the daughter May gives birth to and Pearl raises as her own.   The book is about the relationship of the sisters and how their lives evolve.  The ending of the book will leave you anticipating a sequel.  I enjoyed reading this.

The Sweet Life in Paris is authored by David Lebovitz, who is a pastry chef, chocoholic, author of cookbooks, and food blogger.  He left a comfortable life in San Francisco to live in a cramped apartment in Paris.  The book is about his adjustment to life in Paris and Parisians, and is also filled with recipes.  Many of the recipes contain chocolate — no surprise.  I too like good chocolate — but I can also live without it.  I did enjoy reading about his adventures in Paris, and I also love reading recipes.  I am tempted to try his recipe for madeleines, dulce de leche brownies, warm goat cheese salad, fig-olive tapenade, and the tomato and sourdough bread salad.  They all sounded yummy.

I have been buying fresh sweet corn at the farm market, and rather than roasting it AGAIN in the oven, I gave the fashionista a new recipe to try on Monday.  And she made it — but said it was a lot of work.  She had to cut the kernels off four ears of corn, which she had never done before.  The corn salad she made turned out very well, and we will definitely make this recipe again.  The salad consists of fresh corn kernels, a diced avocado, diced fresh mozzarella, and halved grape or cherry tomatoes.  The dressing is fresh cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper put through the blender or food processor.

Saturday after the farm market I headed over to Thai Binh, an Asian market close to where we live.  I found a recipe for an Asian noodle salad that I want to make, so I was shopping for ingredients.  I bought some fresh vegetables there also — a package of three Chinese eggplants marked down to $1.33, cilantro, napa cabbage, limes 5/$1 — in addition to the fish sauce, vegetarian soy sauce, and rice vermicelli.  Oh — and green beans since the farm market had none.  I think I will buy more of my produce there — it is less expensive than the chain grocery stores and likely fresher.

I needed to do something right away with the eggplants, so I made a ratatouille with sliced eggplant, zucchini, kalamata olives, onion, garlic, olive oil, and an assortment of tomatoes.  I say assortment because I threw in a can of seasoned diced tomatoes, a handful of grape tomatoes, and two yellow tomatoes that needed to be used asap.  The fashionista was not sure about the ratatouille, but we had it for dinner and she topped hers with plain yogurt. We also had feta and olives, pita, and a bit of hummus.  Made a lovely dinner.  And she said she would definitely eat it again.

I want to make the noodle salad soon, and I have been craving vegetable fried rice since we ate some at Pei Wei a couple of weeks ago.  And I have been searching for more zucchini and yellow squash recipes.

Weekend Plans

Ah, Friday afternoon — nearly time for the weekend.  I am ready for a break from the office.  I got out for a bit today and met a friend for lunch.  I had a fattouch salad and a cup of lentil soup.  The lentil soup was very good.

I hope to get a few things done this weekend.  I was thinking last night that I need to make a summer bucket list and do all the things on the list.  Some projects, but some fun things as well.

I plan to make my usual trip to the local farm market tomorrow. I hope to buy some green beans this week.  The corn I bought last week was good, so I will buy another 1/2 dozen ears.  I roasted the broccoli last night, so I need more of that.

I tried a new recipe last night.  I cooked spaghettini and made a parsley sauce and then added blue cheese crumbles.  Blue cheese and pasta — who would have thunk it?  I liked it and will definitely make it again.  I ate roasted broccoli with it.  Great meal.

The lasagna rolls turned out great.  I cooked 8 lasagna noodles.  I laid a noodle out flat and then spooned on ricotta cheese, marinara sauce and then a baby spinach leaf or two.  Rolled it up and put it in a baking dish.  When all the rolls were done, I poured the remaining marinara over the top, sprinkled with mozzarella and baked.  Then I put a container of mixed greens salad in the fridge to go with the rolls.

I think this weekend I will make the lima bean-artichoke heart salad again and serve it with bruschetta.  Not sure what else I will make.  Perhaps some curried egg salad sandwiches.  Insalata caprese is a must.  I have two good size yellow tomatoes and two red tomatoes to use up.

We had a thunderstorm and hail blow through on Wednesday night.  Some areas of town got the tennis ball/baseball size hail — mine did not — and I am very grateful for that.  Three years ago I lost both windshields in my car to that kind of hail and would hate for it to happen again.  I do have a few new dings here and there — I hope they pop out with the 100+ temps.  We had nickel to quarter size hail, and a lot of it!  It sure did a number on my tomato plants, my herbs, and my roses. 

I have some books to pick up from the library.  I want to get some of my safari photos up on the blog and on Facebook. I would like to go to the acoustic arts assoc. concert in a local park tomorrow — if it is not too hot out.  It starts at 11 a.m. and ends around 2 p.m.

This week’s local music theater production is Kiss Me, Kate, and I have season tickets for Sunday afternoons this year, so that is where you can find me on Sunday afternoon.

Ah, how to fit everything in?  It appears that this weekend will indeed go by too quickly as most do.

By the way, I did find the soy hot dogs and the fashionista made chili cheese dogs with vegetarian chili and cheddar cheese and they were yummy.

Bookish Wednesday

This past week I deviated a bit from my summer reading list.  I found a book at the library which called out to me — Tide, Feather, Snow: A Life in Alaska by Miranda Weiss.  Alaska is a place that has always fascinated me.  I have fantasies of moving to a remote cabin there where I can devote myself to drinking tea, knitting and playing music along with some cross country skiing.  However, all the books I have read about living in Alaska have clued me in to the difficulty of living there.  And this book by Miranda Weiss is no different.  She makes it very clear that not understanding the environment around you in Alaska can be fatal.  The book is beautifully written and I found it fascinating and hard to put down. 

The author grew up on the East Coast but had a fascination with Alaska.  She eventually meets a young man and moves with him to Homer, Alaska where the tides are extreme and the people stay grounded with the knowledge of fish, tides, boats and weather.  Weiss endures much hard physical work to live in Alaska, but gives us glimpses into the wildlife of the area — from the marine life in tidepools to the local birds and moose.

I am currently reading one of the books on my reading list, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See, and will write about that next week. 

I watched a couple of dvds over the weekend, New in Town with Rene Zellweger and Harry Connick, Jr.  A predictable story line of career woman goes to small town Minnesota with an agenda set by a big corporation and becomes close to the locals and falls in love and thwarts the big corporation.  The other dvd I watched was Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, and I liked the story line in it much better. 

My holiday weekend was nothing out of the ordinary.  The fashionista has a friend who is attending the new Paul Mitchell hair school here.  We went out there on Friday afternoon to have our hair done so she can get more experience.  She had cut and bleached the fashionista’s hair a few weeks ago, so the fashionista got a “shine” treatment.  It really brightened the color.  I had mine color balanced, all over color and a partial weave (highlights) and cut.  About a third of what I used to pay — but this took ALL afternoon.  But she is a student — the fashionista says she is at the top of her class — and she did a great job.  I was very happy with it and gave her a nice tip.

Saturday morning I went to the farm market to buy veggies.  I wanted green beans, but none were available at the two markets I went to — darn.  I had to content myself with yellow and red tomatoes, bicolor corn, broccoli, spinach, and sprouts.  At one market I also bought a jar of locally made salsa.  I am trying hard to buy local as much as possible.

The fashionista wanted to do some shopping Saturday afternoon, so we spent several hours at the mall.  I bought myself a few things also.  My favorite women’s clothing store had 4 items, regular or sale, for 40% off.  I found 4 items on sale and then got another 40% off.  I bought a knit top to wear with khakis or jeans, a short sleeve cotton cardigan sweater, and two skirts.  One is a plain black cotton twill skirt, and I have needed to purchase a new black skirt for quite some time.

I did make some food over the weekend.  I made a broccoli slaw — found a non sweet dressing recipe — very easy!  Packaged broccoli slaw mix, and then the dressing is simply 1/4 cup mayo, 1/4 cup plain yogurt, juice of 1/2 lemon, salt and pepper.  Most slaw dressings are too sweet for me.  The fashionista liked this also.  Saturday dinner was veggie burgers, roasted corn, and broccoli slaw. 

I also tried a new pasta salad recipe — spiral pasta, pesto, peas, grape tomatoes, pine nuts, chopped green olives.  I added a few capers also.

And I made hummus in my food processor.  It turns out so much better than in the blender.  One of our favorite little places near Old Town makes a wonderful pita sandwich, and I have the ingredients to create my own.  It is simply a pita pocket with hummus, red onion, cucumber, tomato, grated Monterey Jack cheese, and sprouts.  I think I will make this for tonight’s dinner.  It will be a quick and easy dinner for me. The fashionista is working, and I told her I would make lasagna rolls so that she could have something hot when she gets home late tonight.