First I must tell you I actually haven’t read this book, Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil . I have 3 books going right now and there’s definitely not time in the near future for me to add another. But I would like to read it (I’ve ordered it actually), especially after reading the review of it in the Los Angeles Times  last weekend. It’s the review that prompted me to go searching further on the subject. And to write up this post about it.

If you do a search for the title of the book you’ll find any number of links, to amazon of course, but also to NPR who did a review of it. Also a couple of naysayers who have olive oil blogs or websites. And I’m no expert – I’m only telling you about what I read in the article in the Times.

Russ Parsons (the Time’ reviewer), a long time writer for the newspaper, and major food/recipe contributor, is someone I trust. I like the way he writes. I like what he writes. In this article he talked about how, in 1985, he heard from a friend who had just returned from Tuscany, that there had been a major freeze there, which cracked most of the producing olive trees in half, killing them. So Parsons jumped to the conclusion that there would [surely] be a deep shortage of Tuscan olive oil the following year. Indeed, the Tuscan trees were devastated. But that next year, using a little-known fact about the agricultural system in Italy, the olive oil producers in Tuscany merely imported oil from Spain and Algeria. It didn’t matter how much “real” Tuscan oil was in the can or bottle – they could use mostly Spanish and Algerian for that matter and still call it extra virgin Italian (Tuscan) olive oil. It’s also supposed that there was a lot – a LOT of cottonseed oil added to the olive oil too (also okay by Italian regulations).

What we may know as “light” olive oil is actually (most likely anyway) low grade olive oil mixed with cottonseed oil to thin it out, making it less olive-y, less pungent. So why not just use vegetable oil? Indeed!

So based on that, I’m paying heed to Mueller’s points. So who is Tom Mueller? He’s a writer for the New Yorker,  but he lives in Liguria amidst his large olive tree farm. Over the years, he obviously has done a lot of research about olive oil – probably a real eye-opener when he discovered that the Italian rules are rather lax about the derivation of their olive oil. And incidentally, that phrase about “first press” or “cold press” oils – that’s all bunk, because really nobody actually uses an olive press anymore – they use more modern equipment.

I did a bit of sleuthing and found this quote from his very interesting website.

[During the writing of the book, I] immersed myself in olive oil. I’ve traveled on 4 continents, meeting olive millers and oil-bottlers, lipid chemists and fraud investigators, oil-making monks and oil crooks, chefs and government regulators and oil sommeliers, as well as countless eager consumers, some of them life-long experts, others enjoying their first taste of great oil. In the process I’ve learned a lot about one of humankind’s most magnificent foods, this essence of health and flavor. I’ve met olive growers and oil-makers whose divine nectars deserve to be celebrated around the world, treated with reverence and gratefulness. And I’ve seen that they’re losing their shirts.

The book, I’m supposing from the article, tells you which olive oil producers are the fraudsters (his word) and which are reputable. We all know we can buy very expensive olive oil, and we can buy the cheap stuff at the grocery store. Those cheap brands likely contain a significant amount of cottonseed oil and little actual olive oil. Price doesn’t always indicate quality, either, although it should go some distance that way. If I paraphrase the article, it does indicate you should choose an extra virgin olive oil that indicates an expiration date – the better producers do that – they’ll provide a lot number and a use-by date.

Until the book arrives and I have time to read it, I’ll just have to use my trusted brands. I think I read recently that Costco’s Kirkland brand is a fairly good olive oil – I use it for some things. I have several others than are better oils. I also visit a little olive oil store about 20 miles from our house (they carry just oils and vinegars, under their own labels, mostly infused with herbs, spices, and fruits). You probably know already that you don’t need to use EVOO for frying – you never garner the flavor from it for frying – use a vegetable oil (in fact my most recent Cook’s Illustrated, they tested brands of oil and Crisco’s Natural Blend was the clear #1. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it in any market. Anyway, their test was preparing home made mayonnaise and using the oil for frying. All the oils preformed differently depending on the use, but this one, the Crisco Natural Blend, brought the best flavor to the mayo, as well as frying. Anyway, don’t waste good EVOO for anything unless the flavor is going to come through. You’re paying for that flavor, be it bland or peppery, herby or floral, and you might as well taste it. So that would mean relatively plain salad dressings or drizzles on things. Don’t use it for frying, for baking, or in your favorite carrot cake. Use a very bland oil instead, like the one above. So there’s your olive oil lesson for the day!

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Not every book I read ends up as an actual blog post. Most of them flit through my sidebar over on the left on my home page. Lots of books  get an honorable mention and a short write-up there and I don’t necessarily mention them here. So if you don’t actually GO to my website you’d not even know that I’ve read 5 books since Christmas. And this book I’m telling you about today isn’t one of the best written of books I’ve ever read, but it’s interesting. It’s about a subject you’d not find on very many blogs. But obviously, if I’m writing a blog post about it I found it noteworthy.

Neil White, the author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts , has written a memoir of a year he spent in a prison in Louisiana. That, in itself, would hardly make this book noteworthy. But there’s a whole lot more to the story than that. Let me give you the background.

The author, prior to being sentenced to a year at this prison, was a highly successful entrepreneur. A college graduate. Smart. Likely he has some charisma thrown in too. The son of very successful parents. He was a hard worker. He was married with two young children. He led the kind of life lots of people would aspire to – he had a beautiful home, went on lavish vacations, had nice cars, dined out regularly in the best restaurants, and was well recognized in his town – lots of people wanted to know him. He thrived on the attention and accolades. He saw himself as a rising “star” in the media world. After starting up a newspaper in a medium-sized southern city (it failed, actually) he decided to become a magazine publisher. He was good at that. He was able to sell advertising – he was exceedingly good with people. There’s that charisma thing, I’m sure, although he never mentions that word. He’s an idea man too. Always thinking about where he’s going to make his name, where he’d make his “big break,” to get into the big time. He was never quite satisfied with where he was (career-wise). One more magazine, one more something. All requiring more cash to start and run. He borrowed money. He asked friends and family members to invest in his dream. They did. They believed in him. Saw no red flags.

Obviously, he wasn’t quite as good at looking at the bottom line. A few people (companies) couldn’t quite pay their advertising bills. The problem was, Neil had already spent or used the money. He factored his income in the publishing business (a common enough tactic for small companies, although not always wise); he borrowed money from Peter to pay Paul. I’d not realized until I read this book what “kiting checks” really meant (it’s fraud). He’d write checks from one account to pay another, and likewise that one to pay yet another. When you do it with different banks, it may take awhile for someone to catch on, especially since he’d do most of the transacting minutes before the close of the day. He’d convinced himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He got caught (rightly so) and was sentenced to a year in this low-level, minimum security prison called Carville, in Louisiana. He lost absolutely everything.

To say that Neil White had a big ego is an understatement. When he reported for his year of incarceration, he still had a pretty big ego going. He was embarrassed about what happened. He felt badly for his wife and children (and on the advice of a therapist he and his wife decided to tell their two children that Daddy was going to “camp”). He had duped a lot of people, many family members included, who all lost money in their misguided belief in him. In prison he felt like he didn’t belong – the business-dandy that he was, was “above” these uneducated prisoners from all walks of life. He never had worn an un-ironed shirt. He had been obsessive about cologne and cleanliness. He had to adjust to wrinkled uniforms, no privacy, no doors anywhere, lights on 24-hours a day. Yet within days he was already mentally scheming how he was going to do an exposé about prison life at Carville.  How would he do that? Well, he discovered right off, that this prison also housed (not imprisoned) the last survivors in the United States who have Hansen’s Disease (leprosy).

Because I think you should read this book, I don’t want to give away everything about the story. Here I’ve shared quite a bit about the author’s background. And hardly anything about the facts of leprosy, its progression, the medication now used to stop its advancement. Or about the people who live at Carville. I am telling you about the author’s abhorrence of catching the disease had him holding his breath sometimes – this, when we first arrived at the prison. And yet, eventually, with time, he learns more about the disease and befriends several of the patients and inmates in the prison. (There are inmates – like him – and patients like those with leprosy – and also there were inmate patients – prisoners who were too ill to be in some other prisons). There was a separation between the groups, but because it was a minimum security prison, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out ways to get around the rules about not fraternizing. Most of the inmates wanted nothing to do with the Hansen’s patients. They stayed clear of them for fear they’d “catch” it.

During the year, Neil White learns a whole lot about himself. Discovers how much he cares about these people – the Hansen’s patients, particularly a few special ones. They teach him a lot about life; they make him look into himself for answers; fortunately for him, he listens to them, although he’s hard-headed. It would be easy to dismiss this book as an ex-con’s way of making a living after his release, but you’d be missing the gist of the story, which is about Hansen’s Disease and what happens to all of the people who live there. These people who have no other home. It’s a story that needed telling, even if it is cloaked in a small book about one man’s prison journey. If you don’t read this book you’ll miss out on the redeeming value this book offers you, a friend, or someone in your family, perhaps, who has made a wrong-turn in life. In the process you’ll learn a whole lot about leprosy, which is something everyone should better understand. If you go to Neil White’s website, you can see a few photos of the prison. This book may not be for everyone. And, of course, since it’s a memoir, there’s no way of knowing whether everything he recounts in the book, is true. Neil White talks about that in the book – about how he was told by several people to not believe what both inmates and Hansen’s patients had told him. That they embellish or outright lie. Since truth became an important word to Neil White during his year, I’d like to think this book speaks it. I’m very glad I read it.

National Hansen’s Disease Museum (Wikipedia)

Karen’s Orphans and Forgotten Residents

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Awhile ago a friend told me to read the book The Last Chinese Chef: A Novel by Nicole Mones (who also wrote Lost in Translation).

I promptly visited the bookstore and bought a hard copy. Usually I read books on my Kindle, but this time, since it was about cooking, I assumed I might want the actual book in hand. It’s been on my bedside table for a couple of months and I’d just had too many other books to read first. When I started reading this one, though, a day or two ago, I could hardy put it down.

The book was enchanting. And I know next to nothing about Chinese cooking. I used to eat Chinese with some regularity. BUT. Then I married a diabetic, and we did eat Chinese food occasionally, but once the medical world figured out that counting carbs in a meal was what spelled the secret to diabetic control, well, going to Chinese restaurants became a very risky proposition. When I cook anything Asian at home I have to put the recipe into my MasterCook program and guesstimate how large a serving he will have so I can tell him how many carbs he’s eating. And it’s never precise unless you literally measure out each serving.

We live in an area where there are some well-renowned Chinese restaurants (in the San Gabriel Valley mostly, east of downtown Los Angeles, about 40 miles north of where we live). I’ve never been to any of them. I’d like to. But it would be difficult for my DH as no waiter can ever tell him how many carbs are in  any meal we eat out, Chinese or any other food for that matter. It’s always a guessing game.

All that said, what it means is that I don’t know much about Chinese cuisine, other than a few very lame Chinese-American dishes that I make now and then. What makes it hard is the use of unusual sauces and additions. If it’s just meat and veggies – no problem. But usually there’s a sauce involved, as with most other Asian cuisines.. Many of the contain sugar – like oyster sauce, or kung pao sauce, etc. Very unpredictable, is what it is!  Sometimes I go out for Thai when my DH is away for an evening. I relish the opportunity.

THE BOOK: So, when I started to read this book, I was mesmerized right away by it. It IS a novel; but you get engrossed in the story almost immediately. A middle-aged woman finds out a year after her husband’s sudden death (from an accident) that a woman in China claims her daughter is her husband’s, conceived from a one-night-stand some years before. A claim is made against the husband’s estate (because he worked on occasional for a few weeks at a time in China). The couple was childless, supposedly a mutual decision between husband-wife. The news is devastating to the widow, who begins to question everything she ever thought she had in her marriage. She goes to China to find out the truth, and also goes there with a purpose (she’s a writer) to follow a Chinese-American chef who is competing in a nationwide culinary competition.

Part of the book is about her determining the truth (through DNA), and part of the book is about this Chinese-American chef in the competition. He speaks English, since he grew up in America, yet he has a strong Chinese culinary heritage (supposedly the grandson of a very famous Imperial Dynasty chef – before the Cultural Revolution). An attraction develops between these two people, yet the story is studded with interesting facts and quotations from the (fictitious) book written by the grandfather, this dynastic chef. Visits to Chinese family ensue, frantic cooking takes place prior to the competition, and in between encounters with the chef and his family, the widow makes her way around discovering facts about her husband’s affair.

What I learned by reading this book was all about the symbolism in Chinese cooking. About how every dish allows the soul to shine through. Quotes (supposedly from the cookbook/book written by the grandfather) scatter throughout, and some famous (real) Chinese poetry too. The quote I liked the best is this from the fictitious book:

The major cuisines of China were brought into being for different purposes, and for different kinds of diners. Beijing food was the cuisine of officials and rulers, up to the Emperor. Shanghai food was created for the wealthy traders and merchants. From Sichuan came the food of the common people, for as we all know, some of the best-known Sichuan dishes originated in street stalls. Then there is Hangzhou, whence came the cuisine of the literati. This is food that takes poetry as its principal inspiration. From commemorating great poems of the past to dining on candlelit barges afloat upon the West Lake where wine is drunk and new poems are created. Hangzhou cuisine strives always to delight men of letters. The aesthetic symmetry between food and literature is a pattern without end. . . . . Liang Wei, The Last Chinese Chef

But remember, this is a work of fiction. As I read the quotes/anchors at the beginning of each chapter (all from this fictitious book written by the grandfather) I was quite charmed by the writer’s (Nicole Mones) creativity. I was so prepared to believe what this Imperial chef had written. His mantras. His lessons regarding his country’s cuisine. In the end, it’s a bit of a love story too. Beautifully written and crafted. Even if you don’t have a lot of interest in Chinese cooking, I think you’ll find this book very enlightening. Very educational without feeling like it is, and immensely entertaining.

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Really, I wasn’t sure I’d ever read Ree Drummond’s book (memoir),  her story of meeting and marrying Marlboro Man. Yes, I was interested, although over the years I’d read parts of her story on her blog, which I’ve been following for several years. To buy it, well, maybe not. BUT, she’s pretty amazing – that I knew. She’s a very clever writer. She’s pretty. Cute. And after reading her blog for so long, I feel like I know her. Like she could be a friend of mine – except that she lives in the middle of nowhere near Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Not exactly a place close to anybody’s radar. But I feel like I could just walk into her kitchen and be right at home. And she’d serve me a glass of her iced coffee (she says she drinks gallons every day), introduce me to her 4 children who would be quietly (ha) studying at their desks as she’s homeschooling them, while she’s whipping up a dinner for 20, taking 4000 photos, writing a post for her blog, Photoshop’ing all 4000 of those photos, and pulling on several different pairs of her infamous cowboy boots. I’d meet Charlie (the basset hound) who would be lounging on the leather sofa. She’s written a book about Charlie too. And, of course, meeting Marlboro Man, her very handsome husband. What this woman is, is a marketing genius. But it’s all surrounded in her homespun, self-deprecating voice – that voice – a person –  who could be your next door neighbor, your cousin down the street, or your best friend from high school. I love all that about her. She has a HUGE following. I mean huge.

Her recent episodes on the Food Network were very fun. Seeing her live, in her own element, at the Lodge, the house her husband’s family uses for guests and events. Seeing her husband (shy) and her 4 kids (adorable), and numerous members of her extended family was great. I have her first cookbook – The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl. Actually I don’t know that I’ve cooked anything from the book. But I loved the photos of their cattle ranch. I’ve thought about buying the book about Charlie (a children’s story) – Charlie the Ranch Dog for my grandson. But he favors cats since that’s what they have in their house. She’s also written a sequel cookbook – The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier that will be released in 2012. Did you hear me say she’s a marketing genius? But she also gives away oodles of stuff from her blog. And I shouldn’t forget to mention her comprehensive Tasty Kitchen website too.

So anyway, I was at the library recently, and there was her book The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels–A Love Story –  right there on the shelf. I glanced through it (no photos). Oh well, I took it home anyway. But first, I needed to read the new Philippa Gregory book – The Lady of the Rivers: A Novel (The Cousins’ War), which I rented from the library actually, and had to return in a week. By the way, that is one fascinating story, revolving around the reign of King Henry VI, England’s boy king, his wives, and told from the voice of one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting (a real person, though there’s never been anything written about her). It was such a good story I found myself going to my computer several times to read online about the actual history of that period (c. 1450). This is a brand new hardback book, and since buying books on my Kindle these days are getting more and more pricey, I decided to try the library. The week cost me $1.50.

Once I finished the above book I opened up Ree’s memoir and started reading. And I read. And I read. I don’t read romance novels except on very rare occasions. But then, this isn’t a novel – it’s a memoir of her own life, about a year in her life. It’s spicy and steamy without any graphic detail. It’s LOL funny. A few nights ago I was lying in bed reading – again, I could hardly put it down – and was laughing and laughing and laughing. My DH thought I was nuts – although he knows all about Ree Drummond because I told him about her – and he watched all of the Food Network episodes. In her book, though, you’ll read about linguine with clam sauce. About Ladd’s starched blue denim shirts, his Wranglers, and his chaps. About their dates (let me tell you, there really isn’t much to do near Pawhuska Oklahoma!). About their wedding, their honeymoon, and a whole lot about her first pregnancy. And all from her hysterically funny voice. I finished it last night and didn’t want it to end. It’s a good thing I have her blog to go to, that’s all I can say.

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It’s not very often that I do a blog post about a book I’ve read. I’m an avid reader, mostly books I download onto my Kindle. I’m in two book groups. And this book is one I read for one of these groups. I do update my left sidebar regularly which contains a section all about what I’m reading, in case you rarely go look at my actual blog site, but read my posts through a blog reader.

I’d read about this book in a magazine sometime last year, and thought it sounded interesting, so I was glad when one of my groups decided to read it.

Have you ever heard of HeLa cells? You’re about to learn. From the moment I ticked my Kindle to the first page, I could hardly put it down. This is NOT a book of fiction. It’s a true story. About Henrietta Lacks, a very poor black woman who found out in 1950 that she had cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, a hospital that was founded on the principles of providing health care to the needy and poor. She was treated in the “colored” section of the hospital. The treatment for such cancer at that time was limited. Radium rods were inserted in her cervix for a day or two, then removed, and it was hoped that the cancer would recede. In Henrietta’s case, it did not work, and she died some months later in 1951, her body consumed by malignant tumors. She was married with five children, one an infant. She was 28 years old.

But, during the treatment her doctor removed a dime-sized piece of tissue from her cervix – cancerous tissue – and gave it to a colleague to test it. At the time, no lab researchers had been able to grow cancer cells in a petri dish or test tube, and the research lab within Johns Hopkins was attempting to grow cancerous tissue. They needed it in order to test possible treatments – the goal of trying to find a cure for cancer. After dividing the tiny piece of tissue into many even tinier pieces, the lab assistant put it aside to grow. A couple of days later the tiny pieces of tissue (cells) had not only grown, but they’d grown hugely. Henrietta’s doctor and the research colleague were thrilled. It was a huge breakthrough in medical science. The doctor gave samples of her cells to other researchers (at no charge). There was not a thought about marketing it – these were research physicians who were on a mission to cure cancer. And in the years since, many drugs have been developed to treat some diseases (like HIV and leukemia). All thanks to Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta was not consulted about the small piece of tissue removed from her cancerous cervix. If she’d been asked, she might have agreed. But at the time, doctors (particularly those running clinics for the poor) simply took samples as a routine – from most patients. And most patients weren’t consulted. At the time such tissue samples were identified with a unique code – the first two letters of the patient’s first and last name. Hence we have HeLa. And HeLa cells are now, to this day, continuing to grow and thrive and provide fodder to cancer testing around the world. What’s unique about Henrietta’s cells is that they grow at an astounding rate – far faster than any other tissue ever grown from another tissue sample. So cancer testing can be done in a shorter period of time, speeding up the process. Laboratories and pharmaceutical companies and individual researchers buy HeLa cells now, and pay enormous sums for it. None of the profits ever went to Henrietta’s family. I do want to clarify here: according to the author, Johns Hopkins never profited from the growing of HeLa cells. They gave it away. It was other companies, laboratories, hospitals that decided to become profiteers of her cells.

Rebecca Skloot, the author, took 10 years writing this book. She’s a young woman – if you’re interested, check out her website.  She began researching HeLa when she was a graduate student, but it took years for the Lacks family to trust her. Part of the story involves several road trips Rebecca took with Henrietta’s daughter Deborah trying to find some further family history, with the push-pull of Deborah’s untrusting temperament. So many people had strung them along, promising, promising. There’s no question the research community as a whole mistreated the Lacks family. But court cases (regarding who owns tissue samples) that have taken place in the ensuing years clearly state that once something is removed from our bodies (like a malignant tumor, or a cyst) it is no longer owned by the patient. This brings up a lot of questions for people who have an interest in medical ethics. The author devotes 40+ pages as an afterword about the subject.

The author established a foundation from the proceeds of this book, to benefit the heirs of Henrietta Lacks – hopefully it will be used to send some of her great-grandchildren to college.

Writing more here about this book would be easy, but maybe too tedious for you to read. You owe it to yourself to read it. If you have a smidgen of interest in the medical field, you simply must read this book. Again, it’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

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It’s been awhile since I started using Eat Your Books, and thought it was about time I told you something about it. So you can check it out yourself. If you’re an avid cook (well, you must be or you wouldn’t be reading my blog, right?) and have a whole collection of cookbooks and never know where or which book has what, this website is right up your alley.

The other night I wanted to fix cauliflower. This provides a perfect example of how you’d use EYB for cooking at your house. At Eat Your Books, or EYB for short. Somebody mentioned it on his/her blog a couple of months ago, and the website was offering a lower-priced sign-up bonus. Which I did. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but I hope to use it day in and day out for years to come (here’s hoping the website is successful and stays in biz!).

Here’s what EYB is all about. Once you sign up for an account (30 days for free at the moment), you enter the names of all of the cookbooks you own. In an ideal world, they would have listings for all the books I have on my bookshelves. Not so, but they had about 75% of them. As an aside, the books they didn’t have listings for are ones I own that are really old, a bit obscure, several books from England, and one Indian cookbook. It also didn’t have several new books I own. Go figure. So I individually entered the titles of all the books that matched up with their list. Their server grinds through and pops up the book. I add it to my cookbook collection at EYB. It did take me awhile (maybe 1 1/2 hours) to do this, but then I own a huge collection of cookbooks. What I did, actually, was stand in front of my cookbook collection and write down all the titles with the author’s last name. That was all I needed for all but a couple of books. Here’s what my EYB bookshelf says now:

You have (147) Cookbooks and (16,480) Recipes on your bookshelf.

THEN, here’s the good part – I was ready to cook something (cauliflower this time, remember) – I went to EYB and typed in the word cauliflower. Up it came with a listing of where, in my cookbook collection, recipes exist for cauliflower. (It doesn’t give you the recipes, it just gives you the recipe titles they’ve gathered from the recipe titles or indexes of the cookbook library.) It gave me about 12 choices. From the recipe titles I could tell several of them were not something I wanted to make (like cauliflower with pasta, cauliflower and peas, cauliflower and rice, cauliflower in a salad), but there were about three that met my initial criteria as a dinner side dish. And the one that sounded most interesting was in Deborah Madison’s book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Time elapsed: It took me about 3 minutes to type in the search term, get the results and hone in on the recipe I wanted to investigate, and about 30 seconds to find the cookbook and go to the right page. A whole lot less time than standing in front of my cookbooks and staring at the titles wondering which one(s) might contain an appropriate recipe for a side dish cauliflower.

There are other functions at EYB too. Like advanced searches for ethnic, or by category. Or maybe gluten-free (I’ll use that one next time my cousin comes to visit), or sugar-free. If the cookbook has been fully indexed it will show you a page with all the ingredients in that dish (so you might eliminate it if it contained something you didn’t have, or didn’t want to go shopping to get).  Only 880 cookbooks at EYB are fully indexed. That means that you would be able to use a cookbook’s intuitive index (like a recipe titled just Provencal Summer Squash Casserole, for instance, might be listed under Squash, Summer Squash, French, vegetables, sugar-free, and gluten-free).

You can also mark recipe titles with a favorites icon, or a do-later one, in case you run across one as you’re doing a search. Like the pasta with cauliflower and peas I spotted on this search. It wasn’t appropriate for this meal, but it sounded interesting for later. I haven’t tried those functions yet, but they sound like great ideas. It will also help you with menu planning if you want, and help create a shopping list (without quantities, though). I used to store my myriad cookbooks in two or three places (now I have just one area), but if you have multiple locations, you can flag the cookbooks in “My Locations” as you enter the info about them, to indicate “kitchen,” or “dining room,” or “garage” perhaps to save time when you need to run and find one. You can also rate (with stars) your own cookbooks. There’s a user forum too, and you can make friends with other EYB members if you want to, like Facebook for cookbook users.

If you want to get a quick tour of EYB, go check it out for yourself. And right now they do have a 30-day free trial. I’m quite pleased with the resources so far. The website was founded/developed by three women who live in far parts of the world. Amazing how the web levels the playing field. I wish these gals success in the venture. Makes perfect sense to me that I can go to the web to find my recipes. Just differently!

– – – – – – – – –
A year ago: Blueberry & Ginger Salsa (so very good with pork)
Three years ago: Peppered Pecans (a favorite)

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We’ve spent countless hours on the ship this week. We did take a tour – in Juneau. The other shore excursions were excessively expensive, we thought, so since we’d been here before, we decided not to partake of others.  Am so glad we had a nice verandah stateroom, though, as we were able to enjoy sitting there for many, many hours enjoying the scenery. The photo above is one I took in the ship’s library.

I brought along my Kindle, with several books loaded on it. But since the Zuiderdam (pronounced zeye-der-dam) has a very extensive library, I decided to utilize theirs. And read some books I might not normally have done.

Testimony (Anita Shreve) – almost like a Jodi Piccoult book, I thought. Shreve took a very volatile subject (rape . . . or was it rape, the reader questions from about the 3rd page?) and tells each chapter from the point of view of the many different people who were profoundly affected by the event (not just the 3 barely adult boys having sex – and videotaping it – with a 14-year old girl at a private school) It was a fascinating read.

It Ain’t All About the Cookin’: a memoir (Paula Deen) – hmmm. Well, more like a tell-all of Paula Deen’s life. She said she didn’t hold anything back, and I learned things I almost wish I hadn’t. Certainly learned more about her sex life than I ever wanted to know. She did pull herself up by her bootstraps, and definitely knew how to stretch a dollar to feed her children. Until she met Michael (her current husband) she made some really bad choices in men. Until recently Paula didn’t have a very good self image. And her language? Oh my goodness. What a foul mouth she has, and makes no apologies for it.

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet (Colleen McCullough) – You know Colleen McCullough, the author of The Thorn Birds, The Ladies of Missalonghi, the 7 books in the “Masters of Rome Series,” the first one was The First Man in Rome, and one of my favorite books, Morgan’s Run. She’s a prolific writer. This book is so off the normal track for her. It’s about Mary Bennet – you remember her? The younger, lesser sister from Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen’s classic? McCullough takes that singular character, skips 20 years and has written a book about a year of her life. Mary spent those 20 years caring for the Bennet mother until her death, and where the book starts she decides to become an agent for change. She knows children are being exploited in the workforce. It’s very much in the Jane Austen style. Cute book.

Are You Somebody? An Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman (Nuala O’Faolain) – actually this book was one I brought along with me. For my book group which meets the day after we get back home. I’d never heard of this author. And obviously I’m not all that well-read in the classics. O’’Faolain drops names (author’s names) like bread crumbs on a nature walk. Mostly Irish and English authors I’ve never read. And most I’d never heard of, either. She grew up poor, although she did get a very good college education by great happenstance. Learned more about her sex life than I wanted to know, too, which started at a frighteningly young age. (What IS it about women baring their sex souls?) She grew up in an era when being Irish was nothing to be proud of, but later in life, when she finally makes a name for herself in the world of journalism, she finally accepts her Irish-ness and moves back home to Dublin. Single. Lonely. Unhappy, mostly. And still looking for the right man. But at least she’s on her own and financially independent. In a second edition of this book she adds an “afterword” which was perhaps more revealing than all the rest of the book. She was just overwhelmed with notes, calls and letters from people who had lived a similar Irish life (who read her first edition). It seemed to give the author some kind of character validation, I think. I liked the book better after reading that part, but I don’t think I’ll be prompted to read any of her novels. After attending my book group, I heard that the author lost her life to lung cancer last year. She’d finally found a man in New York and had been living with him for awhile before her cancer diagnosis, although she went home to Ireland before her death, and she’s buried there.

Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon (Dr. Nick Trout) – Another memoir, this one from a veterinarian. The cover was what got me – it’s a photo of a very adorable Boston terrier with the doctor’s hand and a stethoscope pressed to the dog’s chest. Wouldn’t be interesting to anyone who doesn’t love animals. Medicine has always fascinated me, though I don’t suppose I could have been a physician. But reading this book, a compilation of stories about a day in the life of a veterinarian, convinces me I probably wouldn’t have what it takes to be one. Interspersed amongst the stories are chapters and paragraphs about veterinary philosophy (pet insurance, euthanasia, even the wisdom or lack thereof, of some cat and dog names. Very interesting read, though.

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Buying the book A HomeMade Life, by Molly Wizenberg (the writer of the blog Orangette) was a given. I’m just so proud to be in the same league (Molly and the others are in the major leagues, I’m in the minors) as the few other bloggers who are published authors – published mostly because of writing a food blog.

The stories in the book are refreshing reflections on her life – her growing up years, with recipes included. Then when she became an adult, she began cooking in earnest on her own and discovered how much she enjoyed it. (And now, she and Brandon, her husband – you read all about him in the book too – are about to open a restaurant in Seattle, called Delancey.) Her chapters are so darned CUTE. She has a sparkly wit and weaves wonderful tales. Even though I’d read some of it over at her blog, in book form it was just as entrancing. And the recipes are not your mainstream potato salad or tomato soup. They’re different, like Meatballs with Pine Nuts, Cilantro and Golden Raisins, Bouchons au Thon (a quiche/pate kind of muffin-style omelet, sort of), Bread Salad with Cherries, Arugula and Goat Cheese, and this, the Pickled Grapes. Why pickled grapes? Because Brandon is a pickle nut, of course.

Possibly I’d never have tried this recipe except that Smitten Kitchen did and raved on and on. So I looked again at the recipe in the book – it’s so EASY. You make a vinegar brine with a cinnamon stick, brown mustard seeds (gee, I even HAD some of those) and whole peppercorns. You cut off the little stems ends (the belly-button ends, Molly tells us) and soak the grapes in the brine.

Serving this on top of some fresh goat cheese was so fun. Once you taste them, you know they’re grapes, but looking at them on the plate (top photo) you might wonder. They’d be equally at home served with pieces of cheese – maybe even some veiny Blue or Cambazola, for instance. Serve with crackers. If serving with a soft cheese, I think the grapes should be chopped up (once brined). That way they’d stick to the cheese a bit easier.  If serving with firmer cheese, leaving them in whole or halves would be better. Molly adds the hot brine to the grapes. Smitten Kitchen cooled the brine first, then marinated them. Your choice. Whichever way, you’ll be glad you tried these. They’re just flat-out delicious.
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A year ago: What is it about Plates?, a post about my obsession with plates, china, etc.

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Honestly, I’m not eating all these cookies I’ve been baking lately. Most have gone to a friend who needs them right now, and last week I thought I should give her yet another type of CC cookie. CC cookies are what she craves, so CC cookies it is! Plus we were going to a book group meeting the other night and I thought it would be nice to take a little something to Jean, the hostess, who made a fabulous St. Patty’s dinner for us book-groupies (Jean and Jack are Irish, and made Scotch Eggs, scones, lemon curd, quiche, desserts, plus gallons of Irish Coffee). Jean reads my blog (thank you, Jean) and is always telling me how much she craves some of the food I prepare and write up here on my blog. She loves sweets, so I thought I’d take her some of these cookies.

I’d marked the recipe over at Eggbeater (a blog) about 2 years ago, but hadn’t ever gotten around to making them. What makes these unique are cardamom and dark brown sugar. Well, I have to admit, I didn’t HAVE dark brown sugar, but I surely do hope that light brown won’t have spoiled the recipe. I had everything else on hand, and whipped these up in no time flat.

For my first time around I chose to use regular chocolate chips rather than some of the high-priced chocolate bar-type Shuna recommended – I wasn’t a bit concerned that I wouldn’t LIKE these – I was sure I would – but the next time I’ll definitely use the “good stuff” in them. As I’ve likely said way too many times, there aren’t many chocolate chip cookies I’ve met that I haven’t liked. And in this case I didn’t think either Norma or Jean would care that I used Nestle’s instead of an expensive 65% chocolate chip/chunk.

Shuna shared a funny story about these cookies – about how she used to make them for the kitchen staff, but in time they became a regular, then she kept the batter in the refrigerator at all times. Those are the kinds of credentials that make for a good formula. Shuna recommends using parchment paper on the cookie sheets, so the chocolate doesn’t burn. The batter is soft – softer than usual – but worked just perfectly when baked.

I’m not going to write up a separate post about the book we reviewed, but will just mention that it was REALLY interesting. Gripping. Riveting. Couldn’t-put-it-down kind of read. Called Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan. Several in our book group read it last year, raved about it, so we included it in our book reads for ’09. What a story. It’s the fictionalized account (but based on the real events) of the affair between Mamah (pronounced may-mah) Borthwick Cheney (a married woman with 2 young children) and Frank Lloyd Wright (also married, with 6 children). In the 1905 timeframe in Oak Park, Illinois, the affair was absolutely scandalous. Off the charts scintillating. Nearly the ruin of Wright’s career. Both left their respective spouses (AND children) and escaped to Europe for about a year, madly in love with one another, where they lived together. Mamah’s husband eventually granted her a divorce, but Wright’s wife refused. So marriage wasn’t in the cards for them. Wright had designed and built a house for the Cheneys (that’s how they met). Eventually both returned to the U.S. and Wright built a home an hour or two away from Chicago where they could basically hide. That’s Taliesen, the famous home, in the woodlands of Wisconsin. What happens after that I just can’t tell you. You really have to read the book. Despite the subject being infidelity, I found this book compelling nevertheless. And what happens is chilling. Enough said. Buy the book. Read it.

The cookies? Sweet. Flatter than some. Caramely. Chocolate-y. Crispy on the edges and soft in the middle. Overall: good. Will I make them again? Well, maybe. I might try them with the expensive ingredients. I couldn’t taste the cardamom, so would increase it in the recipe below. I also chilled the dough, which made it easier to spoon onto cookie sheets. And next time I might add chopped walnuts to the dough too. But then, I like nuts.
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I included a TV remote control in the picture, just so you can see the approximate shape. It’s about the same size as a larger paperback.

It’s been some months now that I’ve had a Kindle. I bought one when Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s CEO, and the Kindle’s maker) was on Oprah last Fall, and offered a discounted price if you bought one then. I’d been contemplating buying one anyway, so that was all the impetus I needed.

Why did I buy one?
1. I hate to give away my books. I have hundreds. And hundreds. And I keep buying more. Even though I never (almost) re-read a book. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of books. So, I figured if I read books on the Kindle, I’d not be adding to my collection, my home book footprint. None of our kids read like I do. What are they going to do with all my books, for goodness’ sake, except give most of them away?
2. Whenever we travel, I always have to allocate precious suitcase space to books, since we read a lot when we travel. As we’ve gotten older, we’re not quite so active at every destination – we rest some in the late afternoons. And we read. So I saw the Kindle as a perfect solution. Ten (or dozens) more books, all in the space of one. Except for the charging cable, which isn’t all that big.

The advantages:
1. The small (footprint) space, lots of books (several hundred) can be loaded, you can make notes and bookmarks (there’s a small keyboard on it), you could read 5 books at the same time for that matter.
2. The dictionary – is amazing. You merely scroll to the line where the questionable word is, click, go to Dictionary and the Kindle defines all the major words on that line. There’s a tiny little roller button that is sort of like a mouse. That’s what you use to navigate around.
3. Buy a new book anytime. Right through the Kindle. Or you can do it from your home computer too. Or somebody else’s computer – just log on to your Amazon account. Takes just seconds to download it. You can also subscribe to newspapers and magazines too (I don’t, but lots of people do). For business travelers, that would be a very good deal. Supposedly you can access the internet on the device, although it’s not really a computer, as such. You can get to the Kindle bookstore easily and select new books. If you have an amazon account, it’s a simple matter of pressing a button and the book downloads in about 60 seconds. Bingo.
4. The price of books. Most books were $8.99 when I bought the Kindle. They’re now $9.99, but still a good deal. And a few books are more.
5. The screen – it’s not backlit – you can’t read it with a light. For some this might be a disadvantage, but for me it’s easier to read this way. And the print size can be adjusted to suit your eyes. (In the photo below you can see the print – it’s adjustable to 5 sizes, I think it is.)

The disadvantages:
1. The battery. It’s only as long-lived at each sitting as the battery. If you don’t use the Kindle (and charge it) regularly, it goes into a power-down thing and it’s a bit of a hassle to get it back to running again, but that’s a minor thing. It does have to be charged often (about 4-5 hours of use, is my guess). I now have the charging cable right next to my bed, so it’s easy to plug it in after every 2-3 or 4 days of use.
2. It is a computer, after all. If something were to go wrong with it on a trip, it might be difficult to get it fixed. That hasn’t happened to me yet (except the major battery down thing which was easily fixed after talking with a Kindle customer service person). You can buy an extended warranty.
3. The Kindle 1 case that came with it was not good. I’ve since purchased another one, built especially for the Kindle, but fixes all the little problems with Amazon’s case. It was $50, and it does keep the Kindle securely in the case. If you’re interested, you can search on the internet for “Kindle covers,” you’ll find many manufacturers of them). I understand that the Kindle 2 is shipping without a case.
4. It’s too easy to accidentally advance or backup a page. The bars on both sides of the Kindle take you ahead one page (top right and lower left), back a page (top left) or to the beginning (bottom right). They’ve made this user friendly for both righties and lefties. Clever planning, I’d say. Overall, though, I’m saying it’s worth buying – I LUV my Kindle – but it’s a bit of a nuisance sometimes when you accidentally hit the Next Page bar. Usually it advances just the one page, but occasionally if the Kindle falls out of its case, in righting it, picking it up, etc. you may advance the pages by several. Just a little bit of a pain to have to back up to find the page you were on. But then, that’s really no different than dropping a regular book and losing your place. It’s just different on a Kindle.
5. I won’t be buying any cookbooks on the Kindle. And I do buy new cookbooks with some frequency. Those books I want to hold, be able to see the color photo (the Kindle just has B & W), glance at the whole recipe at once. All things the Kindle can’t do for me.
6. Some people don’t like the millisecond of time when the pages turn – the screen flickers once (blips to black momentarily) with each page advance. At first it was annoying to me, but quickly I got used to it.
7. If you like to loan or give books to friends – well, you can’t loan a Kindle book you’ve read. The book lives only on your Kindle, and unless you want to loan the actual reading unit, it’s only yours. Supposedly Amazon offers a family plan (up to 3 units) and within that “family,” you can share all the books. You don’t have to be an actual family – but the units and books have to be purchased from the “head” of the group only.

And just because I listed more disadvantages than advantages, doesn’t mean I don’t LUV my Kindle, because I really, really do. In case you haven’t heard, they just announced a second generation Kindle at the same price – $359 (what I paid 6 months ago). Longer battery life, thinner package. More books can be loaded. And the blip at page turns is vastly improved, I’ve heard. It will read TO you, if you’d prefer (good for the sight-impaired). I won’t be buying a new one since mine works just fine, but now I’ll try to convince my DH that he needs one, then I can give him mine and get the new one 😉

A year ago: Coriander Lime Shrimp (an appetizer)

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