Indian Cookbook: Book Review

This cookbook would have been great to have 6-9 months ago when I was needing to eat vegetarian food. There are some recipes that look really tasty in here, so I am still looking forward to making things from it.

I know next to nothing about cooking Indian food. I enjoy going out to eat it, but the closest I have come to making it is a curry from a Blue Apron box.

This book had a good section at the front that explained about all the spices. It was really helpful, but also a bit overwhelming and complicated.

The only downside is that there are so many recipes that don't have pictures. I bookmarked quite a few things I want to make in the near future. One I skipped over because it didn't have a picture, but later in the book it was featured again in combination with another sauce. It looked delicious in that picture! I probably never would have made it based just on the name.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

German Baking - Book Review

I am not German. I come from a family that loves baking, but pretty much everything in this book is new to me. On that note I found this book to be very disappointing. There are very few pictures, and very few of the pictures are of the finished baked goods. There are pictures of Germany and of food prep, but those don't inspire me to want to make a recipe. As an example the Glazed Hazelnut Torte recipe has two pictures, one of a bicycle and one of a graffiti style art wall. Why would I want to see those pictures right then? It makes no sense.

Other than the very disappointing visual aspect of the book, the recipes look well written with good detailed instruction. I am doubtful that I will ever make anything from this book given how uninspiring the formatting is.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Yosemite Day 2

Happy Birthday Steven!

Today we had a lot planned. We woke up and ate cake. Not technically birthday cake, but apple coffee cake I got for free at my knitting group. Then we went for breakfast at the cafeteria place near our room. 

Morning View

Someone doing some passive aggressive protesting...

After breakfast we went to do the lower Yosemite Falls loop. It was a short walk, so we wanted to squeeze it in before our official tour. It was a nice walk, very wet at the end.

Our winter gear proved useful afterall.

The tour was really nice. Since it was cold and raining we had a bus, not the open seat shuttles. We got there early as we tend to do, and had a stop right at the front of the bus. We could see right out the front window, and get off first at all the stops. We really liked our tour guide. There was a lot of interesting information about how Americans have caused problems with the valley. 

Another classic Yosemite View

Deer!

Coyote

After the tour we grabbed our hiking gear and went to check out Mirror Lake. Sadly with the rain it wasn't mirror like as I would have liked. It was still beautiful. The trail there was a mile round trip, so easy hike... Expect we decided to do the walk around the lake too. It isn't just around the lake it was way upstream and the trail became less maintained as we went. It ended up being about 5 miles. My foot hurt in it's formerly broken spot, and my knee was starting to hurt. Despite my being exhausted at the end of this it was a lovely hike. Going out past the quick hike areas was nice. 

Steven proving that his shoes are waterproof.

The first of many makeshift creek crossings.

Steven pondering on a rock. 

Since it was Steven's birthday I made a dinner reservation at the fancy place at the Ahwahnee Hotel. The dining room is really beautiful in the early evening. We dressed up per the dress code. We started out with their onion soup, which was delicious. Steven very unsurprisingly ordered the prime rib roast. I went with the ravioli.  

After all the hiking 15,010 steps, but as we confirmed the next day hiking poles greatly interfere with step count by almost half. I was so tired I fell asleep by 9:30.

Squirrel!

Home Cooked

Another cookbook on how to cook the old fashioned way and why it is so much better. This seems to be a trend, but one I am enjoying. 

This book had some things I will never eat, unless I am literally starving to death and for some reason it is the only option. Maybe some people are into them, maybe they do taste good, but it just isn't something I'm going to eat. On this list I did put the blood orange salad, but I recognize that more people will eat that than roasted chicken hearts. 

Ignoring the food I consider too weird to eat, I liked this book. There are some things in it that I do plan to make. I might even have been a little inspired to try tomato canning once tomato season comes around. If the inspiration lasts anyway. 

I think this is a nice book to have around if you ever feel like having a big cooking day. It isn't the best for situations where you want to make dinner and are looking for recipes. 

Coffee sock

I have named this project "Coffee Sock", because while knitting everyone kept thinking I was making socks. This yarn would make beautiful rainbow socks, so this may happen in the future.

This was made with the leftover ball of mini mochi. I made a hat with rest of it, this is almost exactly what I had left. I'm not going to write an official pattern, because I incorporated the lace pattern from another pattern. But I will share how I did it.

Instructions:

Step 1: Go to Starbucks. They were selling these travel mugs a year ago, maybe they still are. The idea was you can open it and write notes to yourself with a dry erase marker, then put the clear cover back on and the notes stay undisturbed. I saw this and bought one to make a knitted coffee cup.

Step 2: Pattern
With DPN Cast on 6 stitches.

This makes a flat circle for the base.
Row 1: kfb 6 Times (12 sts)
Row 2: [kfb, k1] 6 Times (18 sts)
Row 3: [kfb, k2] 6 Times (24 sts)
Row 4: [kfb, k3] 6 Times (30 sts)
Row 5: [kfb, k4] 6 Times (36 sts)
Row 6: [kfb, k5] 6 Times (42 sts)
Row 7: [kfb, k6] 6 Times (48 sts)

Rows 8-10: Knit

Begin Lace Pattern:
You can find the lace pattern here: It is free.

Repeat Lace Pattern 5 Times.

Knit 3 rows and bind off.

Step 3: Fiddle with the coffee sock to get it positioned properly around the cup. No blocking is necessary.

Escaping the Madness

In what turned out to be a highly successful attempt to avoid the absurd traffic a large sports inconvenience was going to cause, we ran off to the top of a mountain hoping it would be far enough. 

On the way up I spent the whole car ride trying to finish this cowl for Steven. My original plan had been to make two. It did not go as quickly as planned. I got Steven's finished though. It was so warm he basically wore it for this picture and it spent the rest of the day in his pocket. 

These are the previously mentioned skis. I love my skis. They are the best skis. They would only be better if they were blue and had the same pattern on both skis. I will just consider this encouragement to not look down while I ski. The poles were nice too, and since our last lesson taught us what to do with them they weren't just an annoying stick to carry around.

Since we had these fabulous new skis I braved the full mountain trail. It wasn't as hard as I remember it, so that was nice. It was still long and I got tired. We took a break here. Not a terrible place to rest at all. It had a great view and the other way a view of the really steep part we had just gone down. So there was a fun mix of really awesome skiers and people falling all over the place. 

On our second night we tried out the local sushi restaurant. Squaw Valley has much better food options that dodge ridge... One of the house rolls was topped with seared beef. Weird enough to try and take a picture of. It was actually pretty good. 

Our second day of skiing had even better views than the first. The sky was soooo blue. The birds were really enjoying it too. I know this because one almost ran into me while I was starting down the slope. It almost made me fall over. I thought birds flew south for the winter...

Steven made a giant snowball and threw it at me. 

Squaw Valley has an Olympic Museum which I wanted to see before we left. I planned to see it Monday morning before we left, but we finished skiing early Sunday, so we were going to wander over there right before it closed. Luckily we did this, because it turns out the museum is at the top of the mountain. So our wandering turned into rushing out of the room trying to get to the tram in time, which takes 15-20 min to get to the top and hoping to get to the top. We made it, good thing too since we didn't have tickets for the tram that worked on Monday. 

The thing that I found the most amazing was how terrible their equipment was in the 60's. These were the kind of ice skates used. These look awful! I had better skates than this and I was never even a senior level skater. Their skis weren't much better either. Crazyness. 

This is the rink at the top of the Mountain. I almost wished I had my skates with me, but then I remembered how tired I was from skiing. I took a picture instead.

Book Review - Asian Dumplings

Another book review. You'd think I like cooking giving the amount of cookbooks I seem to get. I got this book because I thought it would be fun to learn how to make those white dumplings you can get at an asian market. 

I like this book because it has very clear instructions. It seems easy enough, although very time consuming. 

The instructions on how to use a chinese bamboo steamer don't seem as thorough as I would have hoped them to be. Perhaps better instructions come when you actually purchase one of them. 

The other thing this book is lacking is enough pictures. I prefer cookbooks to have pictures of every recipe. This book has some very nice pictures, but not nearly enough of them. 

I think I will keep this book, but I doubt I would have purchased it if I had just seen it in a store. 

Holiday Road Trip Day 5 - Last day of the year

We decided to take the coast road up from San Diego. This led us to a cute little knitting shop with a lovely clearance section. We wandered around for a bit looking at the stores in various downtowns. 

Driving down a hill we saw this beach, which happened to have an easy to get to parking lot. I also happened to have my emergency flip flops and a blanket stuffed in the back of the car. So we took an hour break to enjoy the ocean. Steven claimed it was warm enough to go swimming, and that he would have if his swimsuit had been accessible. I think he was crazy. It was nice enough to sit there in a sweater, and that's about it. 

After this beach we went to Venice beach for some walking around and dinner with the friends we came down to LA with. I again wished I had brought my roller skates. I will come back there in May with them, or maybe rent a bike. 

After this we got some supplies for New Year's Eve. Our plan was to have a bonfire at the fire pit in their backyard. So we got some wood, s'mores stuff, and other snacks. Turns out the fire pit is gas powered. Also, it was so windy we couldn't sit near enough to the fire to stay warm. We lasted about 20 min, but took a picture like we were having fun.

New plan, use the indoor fireplace. It was much warmer inside. We had lovely snack, but no s'mores. Then made a huge mess with party poppers at midnight. There are too many things you are supposed to do at midnight. How can you make a toast, kiss your husband, and use the noise makers all at the same time. Despite the change in plans it was a fun night.

Book Review - Hot Bread Kitchen

When I got this book I didn't know that Hot Bread Kitchen was a place. I thought the cover looked good, and I liked making bread at a recent bread making class I went to.

The story of the Hot Bread Kitchen is nice. It is a nice story. The kitchen provides education for low income minority women. It helps them get management track positions in the food industry. 

My favorite thing about this book is that is has recipes for all those tasty breads you get when you eat out. Some I enjoied eating but couldn't remember the name of or how to spell it even if I did. Now I can make them at home. 

I also like that the books assumes you know nothing about making bread and gives some great tips on how to get started. 

Book Review - The Homemade Kitchen

I love this book. I have the author's other book The Homemade Pantry. This book is even better. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't assume you know how to do all the basic things. I know a lot of the basics, but not all and probably not the best way to do things. It is nice having that available. One section is on roasting vegetables. Which I do regularly, but it is nice to have a better idea written down for how long to roast each type.

I also love that it has simple recipes. Especially in the salads section. The recipes are simple and don't require a lot of ingredients. One is sauteed dandelion greens and a fried egg. It looks delicious, but I never would have thought to make it.

I'm very happy with this book, I am looking forward to trying more of the recipes.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Book Review - Einkorn

I choose to get this book because it was about a grain I had never heard of. Finding the grain to actually use was harder. I didn't see it at any of the Whole Foods like stores I normally shop at. I did find it online. I was only able to find one maker of it, Jovial Foods. This happens to be the same people who made this cookbook. I'm considering it more of an instruction manual for their product rather than an advertisement. The recipes look good. I am looking forward to trying quite a few of them. Most, but not all, of the recipes have lovely pictures that make you want to make them.

My largest complaint with this book is that the recipes do not have a total time or preparation time or baking time listed. I thought I had enough time to make the loaf of bread before I had to leave. I look at the cooking time and skimmed the recipe. The particular recipe that I chose required the bread to rise twice, which of course added almost two hours to the total time. I could have read the entire recipe more carefully and done the math to add up all the wait and cooking times, but it is nice to just have that done for you and written at the beginning of each recipe.

The bread turned out well despite my issues with timing. I like the book, and the Einkorn grain is tasty. I probably would not have purchased this book on my own, because the grain is so hard to come by. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.


Here is a picture of my bread ready to eat with homemade butter to spread onto it.

The Broad Fork

This is my newest cookbook. I got it because it was designed for using all the vegetables that come in your CSA box. Steven and I like our CSA, but sometimes we run out of interesting things to do with the contents. This book is definitely one to grab your attention. The cover is nice, with easy to read lettering. The book itself is huge and full of pictures. 

When I first started looking through it I started with the summer chapter. I found it overall disappointing. There were no recipes that jumped out at me. One I thought I might try, was the corn spoonbread. I found more success with the other seasons. There are quite a few recipes that are now in my to try list, once their season comes. 

This book is organized by season. I found the season's vegetables don't line up with what I get in my CSA. I was disappointed with Summer's selection of recipes, but apparently I get some non summer vegetables in my summer box. Maybe this is because I live in a warm state?

There are a few things that I don't like about this book. There seems to be a lot of pickling recipes. This doesn't really interest me, and almost every vegetable seems to have it's own. There are a lot of overly complicated recipes that call for a lot of ingredients. I was hoping this book would be more of tasty things to do with your CSA vegetables, not you have your CSA vegetables now go to the store and buy a million other things.

I like the book, but if I had been flipping through it in the store I would have put it back. I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Butter

Since Steven and I gave up eating sugar my beautiful stand mixer has been horribly neglected. Today thanks to the inspiration of my new cookbook The Homemade Pantry, I made butter!

Some of the things in this book are actually useful. The homemade version is actually healthier or cheaper. I don't think butter qualifies for either. It was more like an edible science experiment. 

Step 1: Cream in Bowl. This was not the most difficult step.

Step 2: Turn on Mixer

Step 3: Pour

Step 4: Squish

BUTTER!

Disclaimer: No hats were involved in the making of this butter, only a hair tie.