Peach Yogurt Freeze

We've been having a lot of these after supper instead of ice cream. The recipe says it serves 4, which is only about 1/2 cup per person. Weight Watchers would like that, but the average person really wants about 3 servings, which is what is in this glass.

I have had a bit of trouble getting the frozen peaches to process. I found it works better to let them soften a tiny bit before processing.

peachyogurtfreeze
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

1 lb fresh or frozen unsweetened peaches
1/2 tsp vitam C powder or Fruit Fresh
1/2 cup sugar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt

If using fresh peaches, remove their skins, pit, and cut into 1-inch chunks. Place them on a cookie sheet and sprinkle them with vitamin C or Fruit Fresh. Freeze until firm.

About 15 minutes before serving, remove the peaches from the freezer. Combine with sugar in a food processor. Process until finely chopped. Taste and adjust sugar. With the machine running, add vanilla and yogurt. Continue processing until smooth and fluffy. Serve.

From Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook

Spaghetti with Lemon Butter & Shredded Zucchini

The other night I made this again and used yellow summer squash instead of zucchini. I doubled the squash and, at the request of 10-year old Taylor, dropped a bit of the lemon zest. He felt the last batch was "too lemon-ey." Using yellow squash instead of green definitely lowered the eye appeal of the dish, but the results were pure nirvana. I had the rest for breakfast the next day. I like how quickly this recipe goes together, the fact that it uses up some of that ubiquitous yellow squash, and that it's easy to get my kids to eat it, since it's basically buttery noodles.

butteryzucchininoodles26.05
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

12 ounces spaghetti, spaghettini, or vermicelli

4 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons finely shredded lemon zest

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

2 small or 1 medium (about 6 ounces) trimmed and shredded zucchini

Salt, pepper and red pepper flakes, to taste

Cook the pasta in plenty of salted boiling water until al dente, or firm to the bite, 7 to 10 minutes; drain.

Meanwhile, press excess liquid from shredded zucchini. Melt butter in a skillet over low heat. Stir in zucchini. Heat, stirring, until the zucchini is crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add the lemon zest and juice; toss with the hot pasta. Sprinkle with salt, black pepper and a little red pepper, if desired. Serve.

Adapted from “365 Ways to Cook Pasta” by Marie Simmons, Harper & Row, 1988

For The Lancaster News

Cold Marinated Broccoli

The staff photographer was giving me tips to avoid having the back of close-up photos wash out like this. I didn't tell him that was what I was going for here. I actually like this photo a lot.

This is a good recipe to take to a family reunion. It's good cold or at room temperature.

Marinated Broccoli 6.18.05
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 teaspoons soy sauce
fresh black pepper, to taste
1 large head broccoli
red pepper flakes, to taste

Mix together all the ingredients except the broccoli and red pepper flakes.
Prepare the broccoli by cutting into 2-to3-inch florets. If using organically grown broccoli, soak the florets in cold, salted water for a few minutes to scare out any garden pests. Steam or quickly boil broccoli until tender-crisp. Drain and chill in ice water to stop the cooking process. Toss with marinade and sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Let stand at least 1/2 hour. Serve at room temperature or chilled.
Adapted from “From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Farm-Fresh, Seasonal Produce” by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition, 1996.

For The Lancaster News

Swiss Chard Pies

This is not a great photo, but I enjoyed taking it and I don't have a better one. These are very very good pies. I made one with monterey jack and the other with a medium cheddar. The kids liked them very much. I ended up freezing one and we pulled it out a week later for a quick meal.

piesinoven6.05
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 bunch swiss chard, trimmed from ribs and chopped
6 eggs, divided
1 cup finely-shredded cheese
dash of nutmeg
2 pie crusts

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Sauté the onion and garlic in oil. Add the chard and cook down until wilted. Beat 3 of the eggs and set aside. Place half the chard mixture in the bottom of each pie crust. Sprinkle a little nutmeg over the chard. Sprinkle each pie with half the cheese. Pour the beaten eggs into one pie. Beat the other 3 eggs and pour into the other pie crust. Bake 25-30 minutes or until a knife inserted in to the center comes out clean.
Adapted from “From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Farm-Fresh, Seasonal Produce” published by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition.

For The Lancaster News

Peach Pound Cake

Peach Pound Cake
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

This is a good way to eat yourself to death

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, softened to room temperature
2-1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups flour, divided
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups fresh peaches, peeled and chopped

Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Grease a tube pan with the 2 tablespoons of butter. Sprinkle the pan with 1/4 cup sugar.
Cream the remaining butter; gradually add remaining sugar, beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix well.
Combine 2 3/4 cups flour, baking powder and salt. Gradually add to the creamed mixture, beating until well-blended.
Dredge peaches with remaining 1/4 cup flour. Fold peaches into batter. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely.

Serves 16...or 4
Recipe from http://www.thatsmyhome.com

For The Lancaster News

Turnip Turn-around

Roasted Spring Turnips
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

We've definitely experienced a breakthrough on the turnip front. Up until now I've struggled to find a way to get anyone else in the family to eat turnips. Each year we get them in our farm box and each year the farmer says "These spring baby turnips are so sweet and tender you don't need to peel them. Just slice and sautee in butter for a few minutes."

Well, the guys won't eat them.They also don't like to find them in their stir fry, mashed potatoes or anything else. I was seriously thinking about throwing in the towel. Which I've never done on any vegetable.

So last week I roasted them with the beets. Just scrubbed them lightly, pricked them with a fork, drizzled with olive oil and roasted them for an hour at about 375. After they cooled I peeled and sliced them and THEN sauteed them in butter.
What a treat!

By the way, these are a variety of red turnips. They didn't get that way from roasting. The turnip I recieved that was bigger than a softball(what was the farmer thinking?), I cut into chunks and put in my vegetable stock).

I have one other idea, that involves roasting, crispy bacon and grits. I'll try that at some point, too.

Farm Supper

Farm Supper
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

We are moving into that precious time of year when it's possible to have an entire meal from our farm, Newtown Farm in Waxhaw, NC. It's not actually our farm, it's Sammy Koenigsberg's CSA (community supported agriculture) farm. We are shareholders. Every week from the first of May to Thanksgiving we receive a half-bushel of fresh, organically-grown vegetables. Sammy also raises free-range chickens, which he sells to a few shareholders, as well. (He sells live chickens and then "butchers them for free.")

This is a free-range bird I roasted on the grill (a lump hardwood charcoal fire), fingerling potatoes with onions and fresh garlic and steamed broccoli and carrots. I should admit here that the carrots were purchased from the grocery store. Sammy's carrots taste like candy, so they end up being eaten raw within a day of our receiving them. That makes it hard to have any to cook with.
We shareholders are especially fortunate to receive fingerlings. Sammy has several Charlotte area restaurants as clients and they are always wanting fingerlings. We reap the benefits of their largess. Otherwise, they would be too expensive for a CSA-only farm to grow.

Chocolate Chip Pie

Choc Chip Pie
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

This was a fantastic dessert! I made this for my new book club. My son said "it's like chocolate chip bars in a pie crust." He's exactly right. The recipe is from The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook by Paula H. Deen of Foodnetwork fame. Deen says the pie serves 6 to 8, but even with my sweet tooth I had trouble finishing 1/8 of the pie.

Chocolate Chip Pie

2 eggs
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 stick butter, melted
6 oz (1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
9-inch unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy. Add flour and brown sugar; beat until well blended. Blend in granulated sugar and butter. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts. Pour into pie shell. Bake for 1 hour.

Miso Noodle Soup

miso noodle soup
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

Looks can be deceiving. In fact, even smells can be deceiving. My mouth was watering as I prepared this recipe from Cooking Light Magazine (March 97). But in actual fact, this soup turned out to be very bland-tasting. I had to do a lot of salting. I concede it might have been due in part to the fact that I used a homemade vegetable stock. A stock that I really did not spend the proper amount of time on. I also had trouble making sure the miso was completely blended in. The noodles obstructed my view and, even though I thought I had it all incorporated, I found clumps of miso on my spoon. I may try this recipe again in the future with better stock.

Miso Noodle Soup
1 tsp dark sesame oil
1 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 (14 1/2 oz) cans vegetable broth
2 cups chopped broccoli florets
1 cup diagonally sliced carrots
1 cup vertically sliced onion
1 teaspoon chile paste
2 cups cooked Chinese egg noodles (4 oz uncooked)
1/4 cup white miso

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add ginger and garlic, saute 1 minute. Add broth, broccoli, carrot, onion and chile paste; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 2 minutes. Stir in noodles and miso; cook 1 minute or until miso is blended.

Beef. It's What's For Dinner.

Tonight we had our first "Ranch" steak. The beef council came out with some new cuts of beef a while ago (a year, maybe?). Sure, they acknowledge that the new steaks were there all along. It's not like the cows suddenly came up with new parts! (We certainly don't want to go there, do we? Along with "frankencorn" we'd have "frankencow"...makes me shudder) But the industry has done some research and found that nice cuts could be found in the shoulder area.

One of the beauties of these new cuts is the cost. Since they are from the shoulder you pay "shoulder" costs. I picked up ranch steaks for $5.99/lb at Lowe's Foods today. So for about $8.50 I had plenty of steak for our family of 4. I grilled them on my little smokey joe and they were fantastic! I wish I'd taken a picture but I was asleep at the switch. We had a bit of excitement in our neighborhood while I was grilling and while I listened to the police and fire sirens and followed the Life Flight helicopter as it looped over to the High School to land, I let the steaks sneak up to 155 degrees. This was about 15 degrees over what I wanted, so in the flurry I just yanked 'em off and we ate them.

Yes, 145 degrees is about what you want for those ranch steaks. Cook them to 140 and let them rest while they rise to 145. The Iowa Beef Council says they are best if they are marinated first, too. But you can do just about anything with them...grill, skillet-cook, broil, stir-fry. Ours were a tad tougher than I prefer but I figure that had to do with the sirens and the helicopter. I plan to try them again soon.

I went to the Iowa Beef Council website and downloaded this nifty guide to the New Steak Cuts. I recommend you do too. Tuck it somewhere for handy reference.

Broccoli Raab & Spaghetti

broccoliraabspaghetti5.28.052
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic.

12 oz thin spaghetti
2 or more cloves of garlic, chopped
red pepper flakes
4 tablespoons olive oil
8 cups chopped broccoli raab
4-6 cups chicken stock or water
salt
parmesan cheese



Break the spaghetti into 2-4 inch lengths. In a large skillet, sauté the garlic and red pepper flakes in oil. As soon as the garlic turns translucent, add 1 cup of chicken stock or water. Add the spaghetti and salt to taste. Stir until all the pasta is well-coated with oil and water. It may take some time for the spaghetti to wilt enough to settle into the water.
When the spaghetti has become flexible, add the broccoli raab. As the mixture cooks, add more stock or water – 1/2 cup at a time – stirring constantly, to keep the pasta from sticking. Stop adding the liquid when the pasta is almost done. Continue stirring until all the remaining liquid is absorbed. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and serve immediately.
Adapted from a recipe by Edward Giobbi in Fine Gardening Magazine.

mise en place

"Everything in it's place" is the rough translation of "mise en place". I've started this blog to put my cooking in its' own place. I am the author of another blog, "Gone to Carolina", which is about our family and our move from Minnesota and subsequent settlement in South Carolina. That blog is an eclectic mixture of commentary about politics and culture, book reviews, movie reviews, anecdotes about our friends and family and cooking. But the cooking has become a bigger thing. And now I've added some amateur photography into the mix. I started writing food articles, blurbs and recipes for our local county newspaper, The Lancaster News, about a month ago and now the cooking that has always been a big part of my life as a hobby is morphing into a bit of a job. Actually writing and photographing it has become more job-like. The actual cooking is still fun enough to feel more like hobby. I've asked the paper if I can post the stuff I write for them on this blog and am waiting for a response. But even if they say no, I'll still have plenty of stuff to put on here. I hope. I just hope I don't run out of stuff to say on Gone to Carolina.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 14, 2005

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon is one of the best books I've read recently. Christopher Boone is an autistic 15 year-old English boy who finds his neighbor's dog killed by a garden fork. Christopher does not like talking to strangers, but he decides he has to find out who killed the dog. He starts asking questions and ends up finding the answer to the crime. But the answer rocks his entire world. He embarks on a scary adventure, down paths he's never traversed before to deal with what he has learned. I worked with autistic kids for one year when I was just out of college. I am amazed at Haddon's depth of understanding of autism. The book jacket says he too worked with autistic kids when he was a young man. He must have done this for some time, or even have some autistic tendencies of his own, to be able to crawl inside a child's head like that. I'd not only recommend this book to every other adult I've met, but I think it would be a great book for teens to read as well. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to suggest this to Nate's English teacher. I've heard about school buses in the news twice in the past couple of days. A bus tipped over at the intersection of Marvin and Johnston Roads when a small pickup hit it. 3 people were sent to the hospital. That is a bad intersection. Actually, the entire stretch of Johnston from Old Lancaster Highway to Marvin Road is scary. Cars go too fast there and the road is curvy. It's difficult to tell how fast people are going and carolinian's penchant for not using turn signals definitely doesn't help, either. The other bit of news was an item in The State newspaper out of Columbia. A woman is upset that the state legislature isn't considering a bill to force school buses to only have bus stops on the door side of the road. Apparently a bill of this sort of was introduced last year and died when the session ended for the year. It's not even been brought up this year. Good. It would be horrendously expensive to do that. Apparently the woman's child was hit and killed by a car when she was crossing the road to get onto the bus. There was no further information about that incident. I don't know what kind of road she was crossing, or whether it was deemed a "hazardous" stop. If we have a stop occur at an area where it can't be seen by at least a certain number of feet, it is deemed "hazardous" and must be marked with a "school bus stop ahead" sign. A good driver will also see if there is a way to move that stop or approach it in such a way that the stop is on the door side. But there are always stops where the kid is just going to have to cross the road. Never a highway, though. Anytime you have a kid cross a road, the driver is supposed to supervise that crossing and warn the student if someone is coming that might not stop. The driver's eyes should NEVER leave a kid who is on the pavement. To have to re-write routes so that all stops are on the right side of the road would be terribly expensive. We have a law that says no student may have a ride longer than 1.5 hours. So if you had to have all that doubling back, you'd be lengthening routes and you'd end up having to add more buses. I should also mention that we run into problems where we want to move a stop and the parents just won't let us. We have a stop on one of the routes for our school that is just way too hazardous. The children's grandmother just will not comply. She does not want the kids to walk 600 feet down the road to a safer spot. So even though the official stop is down there, she still has the kids standing at the hazardous spot. By themselves. Their driver pretty much has no choice but to pick them up. He can't just leave them standing there.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 12, 2005

Today's entry is about butter. Much vilified butter.

Some years ago, when I was in Weight Watchers, I had an epiphany about butter. I was looking through my points book and...whaddaya know? 1 teaspoon of butter=1 point. 1 teaspoon of margarine=1 point. I vowed from that point on to stop using margarine. I've never looked back.

Sure, there are things in margarine that are less artery-clogging than butter. For a while there, though, margarine and it's trans-fat ingredients was much slandered as being almost capable of dropping one dead on contact.

Butter does have its problems. When you keep it in the refrigerator it's too hard to spread. You can keep it in the cupboard pretty successfully in the winter but when the weather warms up, it starts to sweat and get an off-look and taste to it. And a certain preacher, who eats with us on a regular basis, makes snide comments about it then. So for his and our benefit, I switch to whipped butter when the weather is warm. It's not the same, but close.

Restaurants seem to still be trying to get us to eat margarine, though. That's what prompted me to write this missive. This morning we bus drivers are to meet at Bojangles for a breakfast paid for by the PTA. It's Bus Driver Appreciation Week and the PTA and staffs of the schools we serve are treating us all week to little things.

When I go to Bojangles for breakfast, which I do as little as possible, I pack my own butter. The only item they have on the menu that I can eat is grits. Excellent grits. But nary a butter pat in the joint. Those wonderful grits are completely ruined by that whipped yellow plastic they make available in the condiment area. I don't understand how a restaurant, that wins competitions with their biscuits, can fail to have butter on hand.

Our local diner opened with no butter. We went there for supper the night before my surgery and the poor waitress about turned the joint upside-down trying to find real butter for my baked potato. She had to come and tell me "even the kitchen doesn't use butter". The following week she did present me with real butter at lunch with our cornbread. I, or someone, must have made an impression on them.

I am NOT a consumer of fake stuff. I want real butter, I want real sugar and I want real salt. If we use all these things in moderation, and we move around a bit more, we don't need to worry about using these things. And so I encourage you, my fellow Americans, to demand THE REAL THING! Accept no Substitutes!

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 11, 2005

A beautiful weekend was had by all here in South Carolina. I had a good book, a good movie and even watched just the right 20 minutes of the Masters. Did a lot of walking around the neighborhood and reconnected with many of my neighbors and my church family.

Mom and Dad are pulling out today, heading back to Minnesota. They will start their golf leagues in 2 weeks and start tilling up their gardens in another month. I did get some garden work out of Mom this weekend, just to whet her appetite.

We planted a plot of 3 rose bushes for Soya's ashes. We planted them in a triangle with Soya's box of ashes down in between them all. We put them in the area where she used to lay in the sun. It was a bittersweet moment when we scooped the dirt back in on top of her box. She was a wonderful pet and companion.

Mensa Boy and I watched The Hudsucker Proxy on Saturday night. An absolute delight! This is a Coen Brothers movie, so of course you are ready to be entertained in the most twisted way possible. And the movie starts right out with a shocker, as the head of highly successful Hudsucker Industries commits suicide in the most stunning fashion. When it becomes known that the deceased's will calls for all of his shares to be offered to the public as stock, the board cooks up a plan to make a lot of money: They will hire a complete idiot to run the company. When the stock prices fall low enough, they will buy them for next to nothing and the restore the company's finances. There are many whacky depictions of corporate life in the movie and if you've ever worked for a big company, you'll recognize a few of them. Tim Robbins is brilliant as the patsy, Norville Barnes and Paul Newman is wonderful as the brilliant leader of the board, Sidney Mussberger. I think one could easily watch this movie over and over and see something new every time. I might need to buy this one!

I also finished reading Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva. Another excellent spy novel. I'm not sure why I have a hard time finding other people who read his stuff. Yes, he is one of those authors who uses the same hero in each book, but Silva does it right: each story is radically different from the last. There is no recycling of stories. But you definitely should start reading Silva's stuff by going back to the first Gabriel Allon novel: The Kill Artist, although I haven't read that one. I started with The English Assassin. You can pick up any of them and get caught up on Allon, but I would think it would be more enjoyable to begin at the beginning.

Gabriel Allon is a Jewish counter-terrorism agent. He spends his life alternately restoring fine art and chasing down Palestinian terrorists. In this novel, Allon is after the man who is plotting to set off bombs in Paris. The man is the son and grandson of palestinian terrorists, both of whom were eliminated by Allon's agency.

My only complaint about this novel is that it's hard to track all the characters sometimes. If I'd had 10 straight hours to just read the book from cover to cover this wouldn't have been a problem. But of course I had to read, put down, read, put down. So every once in a while I had to leaf back through the book to find a character to remind myself who he was.

And finally, the Masters. I am not a golf fan. I am one of those who sees the game of golf as "a good walk spoiled". But of course we had it on for 3 days here, so Dad could watch it. Mom and I were in an out, so I just caught snatches of it. Just the right snatches, apparently. I saw that guy's ball roll off the green after Tiger's ball landed on there. "Vibrations?" That was weird. And I was brushing my teeth in preparation for a church council meeting when Tiger chipped that ball into the 16th hole. If only all golf were that exciting...

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 9, 2005

It was very sad yesterday morning to wake to NPR and hear the translator say (I'm paraphrasing) "...our dear Pope".

I'm not Catholic, but I did admire the Pope. I'm wishing he'd done a bit more to allow modern men and women, especially women, to feel comfortable in the church. While I personally divorce as a viable option, I've seen people's spiritual lives torn apart as they've been discarded from their church at one of the worst times of their lives. I've also seen people struggle with a church that does not condone birth control or abortion. Not being an abortion-rights advocate myself, I can see the church's point there. But no birth control seems downright irresponsible to me. Not only from the standpoint of preventing conception, but also for preventing sexually transmitted diseases.

But this pope, the only pope of my adulthood, had a special way of acknowledging everyone, even people of different faiths. He truly was "dear" to Catholics and even to many of us Protestants.

I know speculation is that the cardinals will choose someone older, who might not be a pope so long. And if they do, that pope might not travel as much as John Paul II. I hope that's not the case. In my outsider's opinion, the Catholic church needs someone who can continue to trot the globe and bring unity.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 8, 2005

For the last two days I've just rested. Read books, walked around the neighborhood, watched movies. It's been nice. And it's made me feel a bit ambivalent about going back to the bus...even if it'd only be for 4 weeks or so.

Books:

Terminal Man by Michael Crichton. This is a pretty old book by now, and the technology Crichton writes about is no longer an issue, but it's still a fascinating read. A man suffers from epilepsy and assaults people to the point of almost killing them when he has a seizure. He undergoes an experimental procedure that wires a pacemaker-type device to his brain. When a seizure comes on, he gets a mild shock. Of course everything goes wrong. Otherwise there'd be no story. It's a good one and a quick read.

Light on Snow by Anita Shreve. I have never read anything by Shreve before. This is a really fast read and enjoyable. A father and daughter find a newborn in a sleeping bag in the woods. They take the infant to the local hospital and are subject to quite a bit of questioning from local authorities. The notoriety is disconcerting to the father, who moved himself and his daughter to this rural area after losing his wife and other daughter in a car accident. Their lives are further disrupted by the arrival of a stranger with a load of emotional baggage.

Movies:

M.A.S.H. I'm sure I've seen this before, but I hadn't remembered much about it. I definitely hadn't remembered that the theme song was "Suicide is Painless". It's fun to go back to old movies every once in a while. This movie is funny but also very much "adult content".

The movie Sideways. I can't think of a single redeeming quality about this movie. A groom-to-be and his best man embark on a week-long tour of northern California wine country, with the intention of drinking their way up and down the state with a little golf in-between. But it becomes apparent that the groom-to-be intends to sow some wild oats along the way. The movie is vulgar and uncomfortable.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 6, 2005

I think my Dad has a new hobby in his "golden years". It appears that he is collecting store discount cards wherever he goes. So far he's gotten cards from all 3 local grocery stores and yesterday he hit a pharmacy. None of these establishments have locations in Minnesota.

It should be noted that my Dad HATES these cards.

Yesterday we went rose shopping. We'd like to plant 3 rose bushes along the west side of the house, and put Soya's ashes in there with the plants...in the container underground. We went to Lowe's and Home Depot and stopped at Walmart because we were passing by. We found some nice-looking bushes at Walmart and hope to plant them on Friday when Mensa Boy is off. Eventually we may plant more bushes all down that side to sort of screen off the utility area we have back there...the hose reel, the water valve cover, etc. The bushes should get to about 3 feet tall, so we can see them well from inside and they won't block our view of the back yard.

The next shopping bit on our agenda is to find a picture for the family room. The "theme" in there, if you could call it a theme, is sort of "northwoods cabin". So I'm looking for a photo of something that reminds me of northern Minnesota. It'll have to be a big one. I was thinking we might try to go today but we've been very busy 2 days in a row now and I'm noticing this morning I woke up tired. So I may have to lay around today and hit the pavement again tomorrow.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 5, 2005

I've got to return a couple of books today and I need to tell you about them.

Michael Crichton's State of Fear: Don't. That's it. Just Don't.

State of Fear is about environmental terrorism and global warming. The story is actually good, but the academic discussions about global warming and whether it's really a threat or not just totally bog down the book. One of our heroes is an expert on the subject and he's an arrogant jerk. You just don't even care that he's an expert. If Crichton took out the discussions about climate and the charts and graphs(!) and just had the characters give us the "skinny" on the topic, we'd still learn and not feel like it's being rammed down our throats. It would definitely make a good movie, though. In fact, I'd probably even go see the movie, even though I've slogged through the book. The story is good.

The Broker by John Grisham. Do. Definitely Do. And you don't need a lot of time to do it. Joel Backman, high-powered attorney in Washington(nicknamed "The Broker"), currently in prison serving time, is pardoned by an outgoing puppet President. The CIA wants him pardoned and secreted away in Italy for a while, where they will keep him safe for a period of time before leaking his location to some other countries in hopes that one of them will assassinate him. Apparently Backman has knowledge of some special satellite technology that could compromise the national security of these countries. This is a great book...no lagging along...clicks right along and you can finish it in about 10 hours.

Today I pick up Daniel Silva's latest, Prince of Fire. I've enjoyed every one of Silva's efforts and am looking forward to this one. I do see, however, that it's another "terrorism" novel.

Gone to Carolina Archive: April 4, 2005

Slowly

Going

Insane

The "pizza detector" outside my office door, which is also in the kitchen, started chirping at 8 am. These detectors are hard-wired into the house and have a battery backup. It's very hard to figure out how to change the batteries in these things. And with the 10 foot ceilings and the incision across my stomach, it's out of reach for me.