The Cold and the Pantry

It's not fun to wake up and have the thermometer say it's only -10 out at 11:00 AM.  I thought it was bad when the car said this the other night when I came home at 3:00 AM:

Of course the animals don't like the weather because they can't go out, at least not for long.

One good thing about the weather is it makes me want to eat soup and more soup and more soup.  I like soup so it's not a hardship. It also helps with my new year's resolution to eat more from my pantry/cupboards (I don't really have a pantry) and freezer to clean them out.

Here's my grains/rice/canned fish/cereal/misc cupboard:

As you can see I have a lot to work with.  Now I just need to find some new recipes to try.

This is my pasta/asian/condiment cupboard:

The top shelf is the Asian shelf, the one below it the pasta shelf, the one below it is the vinegar, worchestershire, salad dressing, etc shelf, and the bottom is the hot sauce and misc shelf. Once again, a lot to work with! 

The middle cupboard is my honey/baking ingredients cupboard.  I also have a smaller cupboard that contains my canned veggies, beans, soup, and tomatoes:

I actually go through the stuff in this cupboard faster than the others.

I live in an old house (at least for the US) and found some interesting things on the walls when I moved in like this:

According to the writing on the top:

it's from a cooking school in 1964 which is before I was born! It's also from Pan American Airways!  It has recipes for spice cake, sponge cake, steak in a sauce, and saurbraten.  I intend to try at least one of the recipes this year if not most of them.  There are three smaller things to the side and I'm going to take a magnifying glass to them to see what they are.

Anyone have any recipes that are not soup for split peas?  I have a lot:

and really would like to use them. Between them and my grains I have plenty to create my own salads so I won't get bored. I have  many old cookbooks, including church cookbooks, to look through also:

so I should find something! Trust me I have many more cookbooks than just that shelf.

Well, wish me luck on my resolution!  Now, to find something for lunch...

OBSESSIONS

It's funny how one obsession can lead you to another.  

I became obsessed with Downton Abbey during its first season, though I admit I was a little late to the game-I started with the second to the last episode. I fell hard for the character of John Bates and the actor who portrayed him, Brendan Coyle:

Through Netflix I started watching some of Brendan's earlier work and made my way to:

I bought the dvd in an Elizabeth Gaskell set that included Cranford and Wives & Daughters. While watching Brendan in this I also fell for Richard Armitage:

Who wouldn't?

Because Brendan was in the first episode, I also fell for The Inspector Lynley Mysteries:

I bought the whole series.  Imagine my delight when Richard showed up in an episode too! I also decided I needed to read the books the series was based on and became an Elizabeth George fan. I've read fifteen of the books in the series and am almost caught up to the present. I love the character of Barbara Havers in both the show and the books.  

I saw the 2005 movie of Pride & Prejudice and fell for Matthew Macfayden:

Because of that I started watching some of his past roles and fell for:

or Spooks as it's known in its home country.  I had tried to watch it when A&E first aired it but couldn't get into it but that wasn't the case when I started again.  I was thrilled to find out that Richard was also in the series in later seasons:

Though I will admit I really didn't like how his story arch ended.

Going way back, I became obsessed with Star Wars:

when I bought the VCR tapes of one of the new editions that had come out.  I never saw Star Wars in the theater but did see The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in the theater.  I have a habit of falling for secondary characters in movies and tv shows and I fell for Wedge Antilles:

I later also fell for Zev Senesca:

Christopher Malcolm has a very nice smile.

Because of Wedge I started reading some Star Wars books.  I've really enjoyed the X-wing series but haven't finished it yet.  I was never fond of Luke Skywalker, I thought he was whiny  so I haven't read any of the Jedi series yet but I may.  I know one of the authors of the X-wing series wrote a character that later became a Jedi and I do have that book in my TBR pile. Besides Wedge, I like reading stories about Han Solo who was my original crush in the series.

Knowing my crush on Wedge, imagine my delight when I watched:

and found that the actor who played Wedge was in it as Mr John Jarndyce:

I really fell for Denis Lawson watching this and am now watching some of his other roles. 

Maybe he'll lead me to a new obsession!

Okay, I was going to start blogging last year but never got to it so I’m going to try it again this year.  I’ll start out with a blog about books.

My Reading in 2012

In 2012 I managed to read 49 books which was down three from the year before.  I wasn’t really overwhelmed by any of the books I read and became frustrated with a few of my favorite authors.  Without further ado, here are some statistics on my reading and my top five favorites and non-favorites of the year.

Number of cookbooks read:  4

Number of new to me authors: 6

Number of books reread: 7-the Harry Potter Series

Non Fiction books:  10-includes the cookbooks

Five Favorite Books:

1. Deception on His Mind by Elizabeth George:  I started reading the Inspector Lynley series last year after having watched the PBS show (which I found through watching the backlist of a favorite actor) and have reconciled myself to the differences between the books and the show.  I really identify with the character of Sgt. Barbara Havers, being a female police officer and single, but I can cook and I don’t smoke.  Oh, and I have a little better fashion sense.  This book really let Havers shine when she goes to help an old friend with a murder case while Havers is on vacation. The case also involves her neighbor and his daughter so things get very complicated and end with Havers’ job on the line. It’s hard to summarize this book if you’re not familiar with the series.  I really enjoyed this one.

2. The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson.  I read this because I became hooked on the    A&E television show Longmire which is based on Johnson’s books which this is the first in the series.  It takes place in Absaroka County in Wyoming where Walt Longmire is the sheriff. His department staff consists of three deputies and a secretary/dispatcher. He also has a daughter and a best friend by the name of Henry Standing Bear, a member of the local tribe on the nearby reservation.  Needless to say the Rez cops and the locals do not get along.  The story is about a series of murders connected to a rape case that Walt investigated.  Good start to a good series.

3. The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.  I read the first book at the end of 2011 before I watched both the US and Swedish movies.  I read the other two books this fall and thoroughly enjoyed them.  I’m not saying they were high literature and I did get confused at times with all the characters but the story was engaging if not completely plausible.  Everyone knows what the books are about so I won’t summarize.  I will say that I will read these again because Lisbeth and Mikael are like  old friends you want to visit with from time to time.

4. False Mermaid by Erin Hart. This is the third book in a series about American pathologist Nora Gavin and her lover Cormac McGuire, an Irishman in Ireland. The story is about the murder of Nora’s sister a few years earlier that Nora comes back to solve in St. Paul, MN. The story starts in St Paul but ends back in Ireland. 

5. I Am Half-sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley.  Flavia de Luce is an eleven year old who lives with her two sisters, her widowed father, and her father’s handyman/war friend in the old family estate Buckshaw which belonged to her deceased mother Harriet.  Flavia has a passion for chemistry, getting in trouble, and sleuthing. This book is set at Christmas time and Flavia is working on a trap for Father Christmas while a film crew comes to Buckshaw to film a movie.  Someone is murdered and Flavia goes into action.

Five Least Favorite Books:

1. Crazytown: The Witch Tree by Jon Grilz.  I got this book free for my Kindle and read it because it was set up here in the northland of Minnesota. It started out okay but went downhill fast.  It starts with the FBI investigating an incident at the Witch Tree in Grand Portage, MN.  Next it goes to a small town where a former FBI agent has been demoted without really being told why to a position of police chief in a small northern MN town.  Yeah, you read that sentence right. The story then becomes cliché ridden and very implausible.  The police chief character was interesting but that wasn’t enough to save the story.

2. The Legend of Raven’s Ridge by Nancy Shepard. This one was another free book for my Kindle. The main character is a fifty something freelance female writer who lives out east somewhere (sorry, can’t remember) near the mountains and a nice park. Her mom wants her to get into a new hobby called  letterboxing that is like geocaching but with rubber stamps and log books. She gives it a try but ends up injured after a weird experience in the woods with a raven and old tramp.  There’s something mysterious is going on at Raven’s Ridge and she intends to find out.  The main character soon finds herself with a boyfriend and up to her neck in trouble.  I liked the main character but the bad guy almost had neon signs above his head saying “bad guy” and the ending was very rushed.  I will try another book by this author.

3. The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. This wasn’t a bad book by any means but not overly memorable as I can’t remember what it was about.  Allen’s books are nice little romances where there is some magical element to them.  They are rather formulaic because the female usually has a secret/troubled past they’re trying to escape or fix and end up going home to do so where they are confronted with everything from the past. Like I said, this one just wasn’t memorable.

4. The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan.  This too wasn’t a bad book but not one of my favorites in the Heroes of Olympus series. Too be honest, I didn’t remember much of the last one (Son of Neptune) so I got lost a few times. I didn’t really care about the characters much (except for Leo for some reason) and Percy and Annabeth just didn’t seem to be acting like themselves.  RR also gave us a big cliff hanger ending which isn’t how he normally does things so I was just disappointed.  My friend Kirsten was too so I’m not alone.

5. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling.  This also wasn’t a bad book per se, more of a frustrating one.  It took a while for me to get all the characters straight. Rowling is good at portraying small town life and the politics of that small town but I felt that some of the characters were just retreads of some of her Harry Potter characters. I also felt like I was being hit over the head with a frying pan with the social statement Rowling was making. I will read her next book.

I realize these are not really good summaries of the books but I hope to do better in the coming year. 

My goals for 2013: read more than last year and read a lot more off my TBR bookshelves.