Nineteen for 50 - Mostly weeding and reading

Time spent in the garden increases this time of year. Maintaining the beds that we re-hauled last year, weeding and thinning plants in the other areas, installing edging and re-establishing the borders between gardens and lawn, pruning shrubs and trees, preparing the soil in the vegetable raised bed, picking out and then planting veggies. E helps with jobs requiring a shovel, edger, or any heavy lifting.  He hauls mulch, compost and dirt. He built a fortress around the veggies to help them stay out of the mouths of deer. He mows and mows, trims and waters. Much of the yard is starting to look great again, after a few years of minimal work completed in it. 

West side - cleaned up last year

Front garden by sidewalk

ground covers run amuck in the "stump garden"

Tomatoes safe from the jaws of deer

The cabin is 'under contract' so hopefully the closing and transfer to the buyers will go smoothly. There are a few things at the cabin that we'll bring home and store for now but it is for the most part cleaned out and awaiting the new owners creating their own memories there.

Work is, well, work. A lot of days I struggle to figure out how to get all the things done. Other days I say, "Screw it. I'm going outside." And then I wake up at 2am thinking about all the things that still need to get done.

I am preparing to go on a scrapbooking retreat later this week. This is about half the group that usually goes but when planning, we were still just getting first vaccines and made the decision we would feel more comfortable with a fully vaccinated group, keeping it small and paying a bit more. I usually go with this group 3 times a year and now it has been 16 months since last there.  I am slightly anxious and at the same time excited about it.  Planning what project I will work on, I decided to go way back in time and work with photos I have on hand, from high school and college days.

Since last blog post, I haven't completed any books or tried any new recipes, but do have 2 recipes and 3 books in reserve.  We had recipes last time so I'll start with the books

Books 19, 20, and 21

Book 19 was a book club pick and we'll be discussing it tonight. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was one I was only mildly interested in and didn't anticipate liking it much. It seems there was a lot of hype about this one and EVERYONE was reading it. Sometimes when things get overhyped, they greatly disappoint me, if I even end up reading them at all.  This one did not - I read it quickly and would pick it up eagerly to see what was going to happen. It is a novel that is part environmental science of the North Carolina marsh (not nearly as boring as that phrase makes it sound), part coming of age story of Kya the "Marsh Girl" (one of my favorite descriptions of her was "a tangled-haired, barefoot mussel-monger who lived in a shack") and part murder mystery of Chase - "the best quarterback this town ever saw".  It tells Kya's story chronologically, from the time she is a young girl until she is an older woman. Chase's story starts with his body being found. It was engaging and well-written, especially for an over-hyped book.  One of the lines that stood out to me (and doesn't give away any part of the story but resonated with me), after one of the characters asked if Kya could forgive him: "Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?"

It took me a full 4 months to read book 20, but considering that I first remember hearing about the book (and about the subject) 30 years ago, that seems like hardly any time at all.  Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick is probably not a book you are going to read. Chaos theory is most likely not your idea of interesting reading and this book, though accessible to beginners, is not exactly a beach and margarita read. As a math major many years ago, I attended a talk on chaos (symposium? is that what they called those?). Honestly most of it went over my head. A friend who took a class on fractals mostly annoyed me by pointing out fractals and non-fractals in the cafeteria (strawberry - fractal, caf tray - not a fractal) without telling me what the heck a fractal was. A fractal is a shape that is infinitely complex - think of a hill. For you and me, a hill is relatively smooth and we can walk over little differences in terrain. For a cat or dog, there may be more differences in surface to navigate. For something smaller, say an ant, it becomes even more complex. The closer we get to the surface, the more complex it is. I only explain this because I didn't want to be like the person in the cafeteria. Probably the most familiar part of chaos theory is the Butterfly Effect.  This book told how chaos theory became to be a new science and how many different disciplines were all studying it at the same time - meteorologists, biologists studying population growth, physicists looking at turbulence, and so on. Like I say, I thought it was interesting but the audience for this one may be limited.

Finally, the most recent book finished was one I first read probably 25 years ago and it immediately went on my list of my favorite books. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood is one of her first novels, written in the '70s, and I have always struggled to describe the book and why it affected me so much. The blurb on Goodreads seems particularly misleading to me - "part detective novel, part psychological thriller".  If you are looking for either of those things, you will be sorely disappointed, I think. Certainly there is an element of mystery to it - the unnamed narrator goes with her boyfriend and another couple to an isolated cabin in Quebec to look for her father who seems to have disappeared - but that storyline seems very secondary to her introspection and to the story she is telling herself and her friends vs. her reality, her coming to terms with reality and escape back to nature through madness.  As a twenty-something, I scribbled many quotes from this book in my journal.  Re-reading it as a 50-year-old, I felt myself wanting to scribble them again and then scribble some more. I think it hit me differently than it did a quarter-century ago, but it really hit me this time too. Atwood is poet as well as a novelist and this novel definitely has a poetry to it. A few of my favorite lines:

“We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.”

“From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.”

“'Do you love me, that's all,' he said. 'That's the only thing that matters.'

It was the language again, I couldn't use it because it wasn't mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.”

Until we weed again,

Hallie

Fifty for 50 Tally

Books completed – 21 (5 more in progress)

Recipes tried – 20

Blog posts published– 19

Miles walked in June - 8.09

            Miles walked in May - 52.42

             Miles walked year-to-date –234.48

Scrap book pages completed –19

Hats donated – 20

Hours volunteered – 0

Nine for 50 - The best laid plans of mice and men...

birthday flowers from my mom

 "The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley," says Robert Burns (and probably better known today as "The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry" from John Steinbeck). I don't know that my plan to have another post in a few days was really well-laid, but it certainly did go a bit awry.  This past week was a series of Mondays.  It started with a very Monday type of Monday, went on to the Mondayest Tuesday in a long time, which then transitioned into a Wednesday in which I spent 3 hours with IT trying to recover my spreadsheet of all I had done on Tuesday (never to be recovered, by the way), and ended with Thursday and Friday and my frequent mentions of when I would like to start drinking (9am was the record for earliest mention, but please note I did not drink even a sip until nearly 6 pm on Friday and then only 2 cocktails).

my b-day shirt from my sister

For this post, let's travel back in time to my four-day birthday extravaganza, now nearly 2 weeks ago.  If you recall, the big day was a Tuesday, so I took Monday and Tuesday off from work and we began the celebration on Friday after work.  There were flowers, gifts, cards, phone calls, special deliveries, favorite meals, and time spent doing some of my favorite things.  I baked (my birthday cake - new recipe below), we ate (menu planning was undertaken seriously with b-day extravaganza in mind), I scrapbooked, read (see books below), walked, did a little knitting, spent time with E.  We tried on Saturday for food from a favorite Italian restaurant only to be told that they were full and weren't doing any carry out.  On to plan B, where the B stands for BBQ pulled pork from another local place.  Later that evening, I scrapbooked via Zoom with my sister and a couple of our friends who we haven't seen for more than a year (I only got 1 page done that night but also completed 12 cards).  Sunday was pizza (of course) but I got to choose the toppings (sausage and green pepper) and we made it deep-dish.  Monday we Nordic walked at the community center, around the ice arena while a couple of young women practiced figure skating - I admired one's persistence as she over and over attempted a jump and fell on her butt.  I got new walking shoes and discovered our shoe sales guy also had failed  carryout from the same restaurant we did on Saturday.  Still hungry for Italian of some sort, we got Olive Garden to go and ate while attending virtual Mini Medical School.  Then on Tuesday, E made his famous Chicken Tacos (these have been renamed tacOOOOOOs because they are that good). It was a good birthday - thank you to all who were part of it through your wishes, cards, gifts and being there for my first half century.

Recipe Nine - Chocolate-Glazed Chocolate Bundt Cake (aka The Fiftieth Birthday Cake)

This recipe is from Weight Watchers Best-Ever Desserts. Copyright 2007 so I have had it for awhile.  Back when I was a member, back when they were still Weight Watchers and when they still had the Points program.  It was a tasty cake that we ate all weekend long, and that I sent home a chunk of with a friend who delivered a delightful unexpected gift to my door.  If you need some chocolaty goodness, this is a cake for you.  I didn't put any candles on it, though I did receive a thoughtful package in the mail that included exactly 50 candles sprinkled throughout the box.

Cake 

2 C all-purpose flour

1 1/4 C granulated sugar

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/2 C unsweetened cocoa powder

1 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used semisweet Ghiradelli)

1 T instant espresso powder (I did not add this)

1/2 C boiling water

1 T vanilla extract

1 C low-fat buttermilk

1/3 C canola oil (I used vegetable oil because that is what I have)

1 large egg

1 egg white (which reminds me I need to toss out that extra yoke still in the fridge)

3/4 C semisweet chocolate chips

Glaze

1/2 C confectioners' sugar (aka powdered sugar)

2 oz semisweet chocolate, melted (same Ghiradelli as the cake)

3 T fat-free half-and-half

Naked cake

Preheat oven to 325 F. Spray a 10" Bundt pan with nonstick spray.

Whisk together in a medium bowl: Flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a small bowl, combine the cocoa, chopped chocolate and espresso powder.  Pour the boiling water over the cocoa mixture, stirring until the chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.  Stir in the vanilla.

In a large bowl (yes, this is a 3 bowl cake), whisk together the buttermilk, oil, egg and egg white.  Stir in the cocoa mixture until blended.  Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring just until blended.  Stir in the chocolate chips.

Pour the mixture into the pan.  Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 45-50 minutes.  Let cool in the pan on a rack 10 minutes.  Remove the cake from the pan and let cool completely on the rack (mine cooled on the plate because I didn't want to have to figure out how to move it from the rack to the plate).

To make glaze, whisk together the glaze ingredients in a small bowl (I used a glass 2-cup measuring cup) until smooth.  Let stand until cool and thickened, about 15 minutes.  Place the cake on a serving  plate.  Pour the glaze over, allowing it to drip down the side of the cake (like it needs my permission to drip?).  Let stand until set, about 10 minutes.  

In case you want the info, if you somehow slice this into 24 (!) pieces, it is 4 points/serving in the old old points system.

Cake in its glazed glory

Book Seven, Eight and Nine

I finished 2 books during my B-day weekend (not that I started and read them completely during that time.  As you may realize, I often/always have more than one book in progress at the same time.  I happened to have read the final pages of 2 books during that extended weekend.).  The first was one that had been on my Goodreads "want to read" list for many years and that I almost picked for book club until a couple of people wiser than I said "nobody wants to read that book but you, Hallie" and I picked something different.  As I read and really enjoyed it, I realized that most (normal) people truly would not appreciate it like I did.  The subtitle to Stiff by Mary Roach is "The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers".  I'll admit, it was an odd book but odd in a way that I approve.  I am a fan of murder related TV shows and forensic science (CSI and Bones to name a couple).  Movies with serial killers intrigue me. Medical science is also fascinating - the time I got to go into the gross anatomy lab and see the digestive system in living color was seriously a highlight - and I can read very detailed medical records without feeling the least bit squeamish (other than anything dealing with eyeballs or, inexplicably, finger/toe nails - those gross me out).  All that said, this book examines all the different ways that human cadavers have been involved in scientific (and sometimes bizarre) undertakings and studies over the past 2000 years or so.  Topics ranged from plastic surgeons practicing face lifts on the newly deceased, organ donation, use of cadavers in car safety and army weapon testing, and for help in future criminal investigations by studying how bodies decompose under various circumstances.  You may find this book disgusting in places (I struggled a bit with some of the vivid descriptions in the body decomposition field) but I found the author's humor (a bit of a gallows humor) and enthusiasm for learning all she could about the various uses for cadavers interesting and the book highly readable.

Book 8 was a book club choice - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.  It also had been on my "want to read" list for about as long as Stiff had.  I liked the first part okay and then it got odd and I lost interest.  I don't want to give away too much but it only got 3 stars from me (of 5).  It seemed like the author was trying to make a point about something but I am not entirely sure what that point was.  I didn't really like most of the the characters (other than Mr. Penumbra) and had trouble remembering who some of them were, let alone remembering what their purpose was supposed to be.  Readers at work have been talking about Sourdough by the same author but I think I'll pass.  I kind of liked that the cover glowed in the dark, but that seems an odd reason to like/recommend a book (or anything else, honestly).

One of my favorite authors, Margaret Atwood, wrote the book of poetry Dearly that I read as book number 9 this year.  I don't usually read poetry but enjoyed this.  I had noticed that it was dedicated to Graeme, in absentia. Graeme Gibson was Ms. Atwood's long-time partner.  He died a couple of years ago and had vascular dementia prior to that.  Themes of love and loss, and the passing of time run throughout this collection of poems.  Some of them really stuck with me and I find myself still thinking about them 2 weeks later, particularly Ghost Cat and Blackberries.  I also realized that I had heard her reading from the book on the radio one day and now understand why her voice was breaking as she read.  

Fifty for 50 Tally

Books completed – 9 (5 more in progress)

Recipes tried – 9

Blog posts published– 9

Miles walked in March - 13.42

Miles walked in February – 34.04

                Miles walked year-to-date –91.23

Scrap book pages completed –12

Hats donated – 12

Hours volunteered – 0

Until we read or eat again,

Hallie

Fall Eating and Reading

Fall is a time for eating and reading.  Really any season is but fall seems to be more so than others.  Weeding is mostly done for the year - just some remnants in the veggie and flower gardens to clean up and compost, some leaves to rake and mulch.  Creating will happen soon too with a fall scrap booking retreat usually scheduled (called off this year but I'll post more about my plans for that weekend later), knitting projects to pick back up.  But right now, as a football game drones on in another part of the house, my thoughts turn to eating and reading.

Eating: Today we made our second trip to the orchard this year.  We typically go with friends and with so little on the calendar this fall, all of our schedules were clear 2 weeks ago.  We met them there and each picked a full bag (about 10 pounds) of SweeTango.  E and I also bought a 10 pound bag of pre-picked Paula Red seconds (not the prettiest bunch of apples but certainly good enough for sauce and a good deal at only a couple of dollars for the whole thing).  I made a batch of applesauce, then some applesauce muffins and also an apple crisp, all of the recipes I have posted before.  It smelled delicious at our house.  The SweeTango are a delicious variety for eating fresh.  It is an apple variety developed at the University of Minnesota (Ska-U-Mah!) and is a cross between the Honeycrisp and the Zestar (which are 2 other U of M "alum" apples).  Crisp, and the perfect mix of sweet and tangy, a SweeTango a day is keeping the doctor away at my house.

The drawback to going early in the picking season is that the apples I love most for baking, Haralson, was not yet ready.  Haralson is yet another U of M developed apple but from way back in 1913!  My friend's favorite apple is MacIntosh and they were not yet available two weeks ago. So she and I made a plan to meet at the orchard again when those apples were ready.  She wasn't available so we met her family at the orchard today and picked Haralson and Honeycrisp.  We had an early dinner/late lunch in the park and I brought dessert.  I had this idea for applesauce cupcakes with apple cider glaze.  It is a work in progress but I will post it here for you to try.  The cupcakes are the same recipe as my applesauce struesel muffin, but subtract off the topping, then add glaze/icing.  As I told E, the only difference between a muffin and a cupcake is frosting.  That happens to be the difference that allows muffins to be ok for breakfast but cupcakes not.

Applesauce Cupcakes with Apple Cider Glaze

Makes about 18 medium size muffins/cupcakes.  Line muffin pan with paper or silicon cups or spray very well with non-stick spray (they will probably still stick).  I love the reusable silicon cups I got many years ago and still use.  If you don't want/need 18 cupcakes, refrigerate the batter in a closed container for use in up to a couple of days, or make and freeze the cupcakes for later.

Preheat oven to 375.  

Combine: 1 1/2 C flour

1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix together: 2 eggs

2/3 C brown sugar

Add eggs/sugar mixture to the dry ingredients.

Stir in: 6 Tbls butter, melted
1 1/2 C applesauce

Mix just until combined.

Divide batter into muffin cups.
Bake for 20 minutes. The top should spring back when touched.

Remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

When cool, top with glaze.

Apple Cider Glaze

In medium bowl, measure about 2 C. powdered sugar

Whisk in small amounts of apple cider (start with 1 tablespoon) until spreadable.

The glaze is the part that needs some tweaking.  I started with a recipe I found on-line which called for 1/4 C cider and 1 C. powdered sugar.  It was waaaaay too runny and all it did was soak into the cupcake.  I added at least another cup of sugar and it was still very liquid.  I really want the cider flavor to pop, though, so next time I will try reducing the cider (cooking to reduce the amount of water) to enhance that flavor without having to use as much liquid.  And I will add the cider gradually (and only the minimum amount to make it spreadable) instead of dumping in the full amount of cider into the sugar like the other recipe said to do.

There it is.  Let me know what you think.

Reading: 

I have no less than 6 books started right now.  I have struggled with difficulty focusing for the past 6 months and keep starting new books to see if it is just the material or if it is my brain.  Mostly, it seems to be my brain.  I have managed to finish half of the goal I set for this year (36) which Goodreads tells me is 8 books behind plan.  Here are a couple of books that stand out so far.

The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood - Back in February (which seems like at least a decade ago now), I re-read one of my all-time-favorite books by one of my top-five-favorite authors, The Handmaid's Tale.  I have blogged about this one before (2003) and yes, I know it is now a popular TV series, but I read it yet again because I wanted to refresh my brain on the story before I read the new sequel The Testaments.  Every bit as chilling as I remember it, the dystopian society in the not-so-distant future (and feeling more and more relevant every passing month lately), where women have no power over their own bodies or any say in what happens to them, where they are separated by purpose - the handmaids for their reproductive purposes, the Marthas for cooking and cleaning, UnWomen who have been banished to the colonies for not conforming to the new norms. Gilead is where the rights of women and our fights for silly things like equal pay, the right to work while pregnant, access to our own banking and credit accounts are fading memories.  The Testaments picks up after the Handmaid though does not continue the story of Offred.  It is set 15 years after the first book and is narrated by 3 very different characters: Aunt Lydia (Aunts "train" the Handmaids and this particular Aunt is a character in the first book), Agnes, a young woman who has grown up in Gilead, and Daisy, a young woman who is living in Canada.  The new novel was different than the classic Handmaid (and not the same as the continuation of the Hulu series, I have heard) but still a gripping and scary (as in a "I can see this happening" sort of way) book, with underlying currents of hope and the will to continue the fight against oppression.  Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Currently I am reading Laurentian Divide, the second in a series by Sarah Stonich.  The first one was a novel in short stories called Vacationland which I loved.  Both books take place mainly in Hatchet Inlet, a small town in northern Minnesota, just across the border from Canada.  Both are filled with the quirky inhabitants of and visitors to this town and the summer resort area nearby.  Part of what I liked so much about the first book was the people - they are real and I felt like I already knew them.  Yet everyone has stories, pains and joys that they don't share and these are those stories.  Vacationland was not told in linear fashion and each chapter could stand on its own as a short story, with different characters in the forefront or narrating at turns, but showing up in others' stories as well. Stonich's full-bodied descriptions make the place, the land and the lake as much characters as the people are.  I am so excited to continue on with Laurentian Divide to see some of the friends that I made in Vacationland and get to know more about some of the others I only glimpsed before.

Until we read and eat again,

Hallie