Kale "sauerkraut"

I've been loving my sister's new barbarian cooks blog with fun ideas for kale. But when I was ultra-lazy, pressed for time, and eating solo for dinner one night last week, I came up with another fun thing to do with that huge bag o' greens: sauteed a big pile of those suckers in a pan, added a splash of vinegar, a splash of water, and spoonful of mustard. I let it cook down all soft and smooshy while I microwaved a Trader Joe's Italian vegetarian sausage and toasted a tasty hot dog roll from my neighborhood butcher, A & J Meats*. I put it all together, and it tasted DELICIOUS!

*I walk by this wonderful butcher pretty much any time I'm going anywhere. Everyone who works there is informative, helpful, and kind. I keep going in just to buy hot dog rolls and mustard. I feel like I have to explain myself somehow... Would it be weird if I told our butcher I'm vegan? I feel guilty that I'm not giving this local, family business as much money anymore. They are really good people! And they have great meats for all you Seattle-area omnivores!

Reader Confession

I set the timer on our microwave so I don't read away the whole morning when I don't have to work until the afternoon. Today, while reading Matterhorn, I originally set it for 90 minutes. Then another 40 more... then another 40... and I still kept reading. I wasn't at all productive, but the Marines are in a hot zone!!! How can I leave them to go to work?

Vegetarian Confession

I hate fennel.

Mexican chocolate "Que Sopresa" cookies

I'm baking a new cookie now, and I just sampled. So far, so good: I do want more immediately.

I was going to make vegan poop nuggets (the name really caught on in our household), but the bananas I have in the house aren't ripe enough for smooshing. I glanced around, "What to smoosh?" How about... an avocado? Que Sopresa!

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

4 tsp cocoa powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 large, ripe avocado, smooshed (or 1 1/2 little ones)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp rice milk

2 dashes habanero sauce (another surprise)

about 1/8 cup coconut flakes

1/3 cup chocolate chips

I had to use my hands to mix these. I formed balls o' cookie dough and baked them for 16 minutes at 325.

"The Lost Symbol"

Since I had a day to my lonesome, I've been trying to get through borrowed books! I've had this on loan from a friend for a loonnng time... Here's the verdict on "The Lost Symbol:"

Dan Brown, what piffle!

I know this is not meant to be great literature, but-- really? The starry-eyed descriptions of noetic science and the Masons made me laugh out loud. Don't even get me started on the tall, sinister, tattooed eunuch villain... Maureen Dowd picked out some choice passages in her NYT book review, but I still wasn't prepared for the sheer ridiculousness of this book.

Maybe Brown was trying to make Langdon more relatable, but he come off as rather thick in this novel. WHY does he keep willfully ignoring or just plain missing just about every major clue? I guess it's supposed to teach us about the dangers of not believing, the blinders we put on when we only consider what we think we know if verifiable, but UGH, the man is a Harvard professor! And he's supposed to be our hero! Let him come up with something other than MAGIC SQUARES, for chrissakes! (Perhaps I'm jaded, but when one of the big reveals in a Dan Brown book is the same as one in a kids' book published a year earlier, I have to think Mr. Brown is kind of phoning it in.)

I may have forgiven all if the pacing had been right. Brown has kept me going from chapter to chapter with breathless incredulity. Not this time. OK, I'll grant that chapter 9 ended well: "Someone was screaming." That kept me going. But chapter 4 ends with Mal'akh's thought/sentence fragment, "A gift for the one man on earth who can help me obtain what I seek"(p. 20). OOOOH, chilling, right? Then chapter 5 starts off with, "The world's largest and most technologically advanced museum is also one of the world's best-kept secrets." (p.21) This feels like a third grader reporting on the Smithsonian, not a masterful suspense writer toying with his readers. Put the two missteps together in the pages I would hope had been most polished by an author and his editors, and I almost decided to move on to another book.

I agree with a customer who chatted with me about the book the other day: the architectural tour of DC we get is fascinating, but the plot and puzzles in this thriller just fell flat. And the characters are ridiculous.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I was very curious, so I'm glad I read it (quickly), but I'm also really grateful that this is a book I borrowed and didn't buy.

Maybe I'm just bitter that we solved the "Da Vinci Code" puzzles and didn't win the "prize more valuable than gold" of having our names used as characters in this book... but I think I'm glad to have been just a dissatisfied reader of this rather than a fictional participant!

"Crossed Bones" aka "The Tenth Gift"

I just finished a swashbuckling romance (but not the Fabio-cover kind) lent to me by a kind customer. She picked it out of the piles at our galley giveaway and was very pleasantly surprised. It's by Jane Johnston, and the published title is The Tenth Gift I'm going to go on record: I prefer the piratical "Crossed Bones" as a title; the published title isn't explained until most of the way through the book, and it just kept reminding me of slimeball character Michael, the adulterous husband-of-her-best-friend who dumps contemporary heroine Julia. (He gives her an exquisite antique book as parting gift, but then, a-hole that he is, spends the rest of the book trying to get it back.)

The novel has two related narratives: Julia's life in London and Cornwall, and the life of Cat, a 17th century Cornish woman who is abducted by Salee pirates! They are connected through Cat's book/journal and their shared love of embroidery. The dual narrative kind of reminded me of "Julie & Julia" in that the contemporary character's story line was less compelling for much of the book than Cat's incredible journey. Things did get spiced up in today's world, though, and romance blossoms in both.

This was a fun and engaging novel that taught me more about the history of Cornwall, pirates, and the corsair culture. Fascinating and entertaining light fare!

Home alone Friday night dinner

While J's away on his run 'round Washington, I'm cooking for one. Before, that probably would have meant leftover rice, frozen limas, maybe with some spinach or an egg for dinner. (That was before turning semi-vegan.) Quick and easy would be the rule.

Now that we're mostly vegan, I feel that every meal has to count nutritionally. Plus, we just got a great delivery of delicious, fresh, locally-grown vegetables. So tonight's dinner in progress is:

chard and various "farmers' choice greens" cooked with garlic, shallots, olive oil, garbanzo beans, a touch of vinegar, and dried cherries and almonds for a touch of the exotic! I'm going to serve all that over a bed of leftover quinoa. On a nice plate, with a tall glass of watermelon juice refresher (watermelon juice with sparkling water and mint leaves from the backyard).

N, you'll appreciate this: the curly kale always makes me remember Gus the iguana. No monkey chow in my meal tonight, though.