All posts by brianS

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Nothing Ventured

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This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost a year, silently rebuking me. I finally pulled it out two weeks ago, in anticipation of our spring break-go-look-at-socal-colleges road trip. I'm not very deep in (only ~120 pages), but I'm pretty impressed.

R. Scott Bakker is a canuckian and (gasp!) earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Literature from Western Ontario. He also spent some time in a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Vandy. But apparently all that learnin' hasn't prevented him from creating something weird and wonderful. This is the first in an extensive, and lauded, series of swords-and-sorcery fantasy, but with a high degree of inventiveness and "literate"-ness. The first trilogy goes by the Prince of Nothing moniker (originally planned as a single book, then expanded and expanded as so often seems to happen).

I'm not far enough in to really know whether there are any compelling female characters; I've only "met" one named female so far in the narrative (teh Repository tells me that she will become prominent). So I'm a little nervous that things will decay into cliche, but hopeful that the hype will bear up. Certainly, the sophistication of the writing and storycraft is far ahead of anything that Robert Jordan achieved in The Wheel of Time, although it maybe lacks the swashbuckle of that epic series. This doesn't (yet) have the grit and realism of George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. I might put it in a class with Dune, actually, for the scope, vision, and pacing. I'm looking forward to getting in deep.

What are you reading?

The Nation Has An Appetite

Culture Club: A crock full of soyogurt

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As mentioned a couple of days ago, I recently decided that I wanted to try making yogurt at home. Specifically, yogurt that The Girl would eat (nondairy). I started looking around for yogurt makers on the web, but then ran across a variety of recipes for making yogurt in a crock pot. Well, sweet. I gots me one of those.

It was surprisingly easy. Step one: buy some soy milk. In my case, I purchased a half-gallon of Silk Organic Unsweetened Soy Milk ($3.48 at my store), plus a single-serving cup of some vanilla soy yogurt with active cultures (I could not find plain). Total cost: about $4.50. For what will be about 1 1/2 quarts of yogurt after draining some of the whey and allowing for some evaporation.
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The Nation Has An Appetite

Mac Daddy: Vegan “mac and cheese”

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Ok, so you're thinking, "Vegan Mac and Cheese? WTF? Why would I do that to myself?"

Yea, you got a point. Because ooey-gooey, rich and creamy mac an cheese is a delight. Add some lobster and you are in gourmet territory.

But I'm here to tell you that this dish is The Bomb. You may know that there's no dairy in it, but you won't really care. Because delicious. And what could be more 'murican on Preznit Day than vegan mac-n-cheese, amiright?

The base for this is a gravy made with toasted cashews. The gravy is delicious in its own right. I made a similar one for Thanksgiving, and it was a big hit with everyone, vegan and animal murderers alike.

Preheat oven to ~300 deg and pop a cookie sheet in the oven with about 3/4 cup of roasted cashews (you can also use raw cashews if you want, but might want to toast them longer). Toast about 10 minutes until fragrant and just starting to brown. Set the nuts aside in a bowl. Raise the oven to 350 deg. Coarsely grind about 2 slices of good whole-grain bread and dump the crumbs onto the cookie sheet. Toast these about 5-10 minutes until crunchy and lightly toasted. Set aside to use as topping.

Meanwhile, finely chop one large onion and saute in olive oil with a pinch of kosher salt and a few grinds of pepper. After about ten minutes, add about 2-3 cups of coarsely chopped mushrooms (I used about 10 large mushrooms; I separated the stems from the caps, but that's not an absolute necessity). Saute for a couple of minutes until the mushrooms are cooked down, then add 1-2 cloves of garlic, crushed or chopped. Saute a couple more minutes so the garlic is no longer raw, then set aside.

Meanwhile meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil with some salt. Cook elbow macaroni (or other shape, if you prefer) to just done. Reserve a cup of pasta water for thinning the sauce if needed (I needed!). Dump the pasta into an oiled casserole dish and combine with the mushrooms and onions.

and meanwhile (again), chop another clove or two of garlic and about an inch of ginger. Sweat in a smallish sauce pan with about 2 tbsp olive oil, then add about a half teaspoon of sweet paprika (or hot paprika or other chile if you prefer it spicier), a big pinch of kosher salt, and stir for a minute or so, until the chile is fragrant. Add about a tbsp of flour to make a light roux. Add a tablespoon of white/yellow miso paste and stir to incorporate. (If you don't have miso paste, you can use tamari or good soy sauce at the next stage; but miso is the way to go here)

Slowly! add about 2 cups of vegetable stock, whisking to avoid making dumplings. Add the toasted cashews and bring to a boil for a couple of minutes, stirring frequently. If using the tamari/soy instead of miso, add it now. Dump the cashew stock into a blender (Vitamix, baby!) and process until very smooth, adding the reserved pasta water and more veggie stock as needed to get a pourable, cream soup consistency. Check for seasoning. You shouldn't need any additional salt at this point (unless you used unsalted cashews, in which case, maybe). If the tan color doesn't float your boat, you could, I suppose, blend in a half tsp or so of turmeric to brighten things up. But brown tones don't bother me, and you're gonna want to serve this with a green veggie anyway.

Combine the sauce with the pasta and onion/mushroom mix, then sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top. All of the breadcrumbs, in a relatively even layer. Dot with vegan margarine (the Girl prefers Earth Balance, and, truth be told, it tastes pretty good). Bake, covered, for about 10 minutes, then uncovered for another 10 or so. It should be piping hot by now. Serve with a green vegetable on the side.

You just may find this addicting.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Bookday: Baby It’s Cold In Space

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Mailing it in, kids. Yes, I read a book (almost two!).

Alastair Reynolds is best known for his Revelation Space space-operatic universe of books. I wasn't ready to invest myself in that fully, so I opted to dip my toe in instead with a paperback collection of short stories, Galactic North.

This was just right for my current attention span, and the techno-babble content was intriguing. Reynolds' Conjoiners reminded me vaguely of both the Borg and Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace. Lots of interesting themes. But the most striking part of this set of stories is their horror aspects. Make no mistake, Alastair Reynolds is an accomplished horror writer. One story ("Grafenwalder's Bestiary") was very Poe-esque in its vibe, for example (think: "Tell-Tale Heart").

So I scratched two itches at once, getting some worthy scifi juju and some righteous macabre wrapped in a single package.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

Not First Monday Book Day: Maker-Breakers

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[copied and pasted from the Cuppa, per CH's pleadings]

also, and I know it's not First Monday, so I should probably save this for another three weeks for when I don't have a book post to offer, but I've seen this floating around the Bookface and it looks fun.

Books That Made You Who You Are ~
Instructions: In your status line, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard - they don't have to be ‘right’ or ‘great’ works, just the ones that have touched you.

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First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: A Pox On Me

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I just finished a week off, for which I'm appropriately thankful. I can't wait to see what kind of mess the office is in.... Nah, I'm sure everything is fine. I work for the gubmint, after all.

Even with the week off, I didn't get much reading done. I blame HBO's free weekend, or something. Truth be told, I'm still trying to finish The Black Count (highly recommended).

But for the sake of this feature, I started something new last night: Jennifer Lee Carrell's The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox.

I'm only a chapter in, so it is a bit premature to be assessing. My main fear is that the author is trying to hard to story-ify the history. Whereas Tom Reiss's The Black Count manages to tell an engaging story while clearly maintaining a popular historian's quasi-scholarly edge, Carrell's book (or the first chapter, at least) swings much further into literary territory, striving to read more like a novel.

That said, others have praised her book for historical and medical accuracy. So, she's got that going for her. I'll see how far I get.

What are you reading?

Miscellaneous

Veterans Day: a brief remembrance

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This basement started out as mostly a baseball thing. We do a lot of other stuff now, but it's nice to tie the room together occasionally. With that, I give you this link: Baseball in Wartime.

Baseball in Wartime is dedicated to preserving the memories of all baseball players (major league, negro league, minor league, semi-pro, college, amateur and high school), who served with the military between 1940 and 1946.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: The First Musketeer

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Going to an airport with only a few pages left on your book is a rookie mistake. Which I'm happy to have made recently. The Boy and I were flying back from the ABQ via Lost Wages, laying over for a couple hours. So I wandered into the book store and found this inviting biography of Alex Dumas, swashbuckling father of the famous novelist.

Tom Reiss's biography garnered him the 2013 Pulitzer. It's certainly a good read so far (~150 pages in). Dumas, the son of a ne'er-do-well French nobleman, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and a black slave woman, Marie-Cessette Dumas, in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (later Haiti). Davy had been sponging off his younger brother, Charles, until they had a falling out in 1748. Antoine disappeared into the wilderness with three slaves and lost all contact with his family for 30 years. Charles eventually returned to France to take over the family estate, under the presumption that Antoine had died. In 1773, both Charles and their youngest brother, Louis, died. Somehow, word of this got back to Antoine, who then apparently sold Marie-Cessette and Alex's two siblings, but took Alex with him back to France to claim the estate in 1776.

France was an odd place in the late 18th century, both racist and progressive. Alex was raised as the legitimized son of Antoine, thus earning a title of "Count" as the son of a Marquis. He ws trained as a gentleman and swordsman at the academy of Nicolas Texier de la Boëssière, learning his swordcraft from the most famous swordsman of the day, the Chevalier de Saint-George, who also happened to be a mixed-race black man from the Caribbean. But Alex, as a care-free knockabout (taking after the old man), eventually clashed with his father over money (he was spending it fast, while his old man was going broke of his own accord), and, in a huff, ran off to join the army.

Rather than pressing his case as the more-or-less legitimized son of a nobleman, and thus receiving a commission, Alex joined up as a mere enlistee under his mother's name, Dumas, in 1786, only 13 days before his newly re-married father kicked off. The old man had sold the estate and squandered the fortune, so there was only an empty title to be had anyway. Alex entered service with the Queen's Dragoons and was posted off in a provincial town, where, as luck would have it, he boarded with the family of a local inn-keeper and rising Republican. Dumas became engaged to the innkeeper's daughter and went off to serve the emerging Republic. He quickly rose through the ranks and in October 1792 accepted a commission as the second-in-command of the "Black Legion." In July 1793, he was appointed brigadier general in the Army of the North and, by September was commander-in-chief of the Army of the Western Pyrenees. These were exciting times, with French generals being denounced and executed left and right. But eventually he would win the (guarded) respect of Napoleon and be appointed commander of the cavalry for Napoleon's campaign in Egypt.

I've got a long ways to go in this book. It has some flaws -- fundamentally misinterpreting Rousseau's famous opening words from The Social Contract ("Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.") as fundamentally a commentary on slavery in the age when that quote really has almost nothing to do with the institution of slavery at all. But Reiss is an entertaining storyteller and the book is a wonderful introduction to the history of the French Caribbean, pre-revolutionary France and, of course, the Revolution, the Terror, and the rise of Napoleon. Dumas was fated to have a tragic ending -- dumped by Napoleon in Egypt, imprisoned in Taranto and all but forgotten for two years before being freed, a broken man.

Dumas' imprisonment provided much of the inspiration for his son's famed novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. This book helps bring the historical Dumas back into clearer focus. The book may not reach the majesty of a Robert K. Massie or the scholarly qualities of the Roommate, but I highly recommend it as a fun and informative read.

What are you reading?