Cookbook # 29 - Asada
Since we don’t currently have a functional grill, a lot of the recipes in Asada by Bricia Lopez (2023) were off limits to me, but I was able to make Frijoles Charros in Broth. This made a huge batch of meaty bean soup—the recipe claims to serve 4 to 6, but it’s more like 14 to 16, and I’m going to freeze over half of it for future homemade meals on evenings none of us feel like cooking. It’s good with tortillas and cotija cheese.
Frijoles Charros in Broth
2 lbs dry pinto beans, cleaned of any pebbles and rinsed
1 large white onion, quartered
1 head garlic, smashed and peeled
1 T sea salt, plus more as needed
4 oz. bacon (about 8 strips), chopped
6 oz. deli-sliced ham (about 8 slices), chopped
6 hot dogs, chopped into small pieces
½ tsp ground cumin
¾ c crumbled Mexican chorizo
½ c chopped Spanish chorizo
2 ½ c chopped tomatoes
1 c chopped cilantro
In a large pot, combine 1 gallon water with the dried beans, onions, and garlic. Bring to a boil Once boiling, lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until the beans are softened. This should take about 1 hour but can take up to 2 hours, depending on the freshness of the dried beans. Add the salt to the pot once the beans are cooked. Discard the onion and garlic. Turn off the heat.
In a large frying pan over high heat, add the bacon, ham, hot dogs, ground cumin, and Mexican and Spanish chorizos. Fry until the meat is cooked, about 7 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until their liquid is reduced, about 6 minutes. Add this chorizo mixture to the pot of beans and stir to combine. Bring to a simmer and cook for an additional 20 minutes.
Stir in the cilantro. If you would like a thicker broth, mash the contents of the pot with a potato masher. Taste and adjust seasonings before serving.
Cookbook # 28 - Dessert Person
Yesterday afternoon I baked Salted Halvah Blondies from Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz (2020), which made for a great confidence restorer after last weekend’s failure with the gnocchi. I was worried about the batter, since it had a sort of caramel taffy consistency unlike what I’m used to in batters and doughs, but it turned out quite tasty—not as sweet as most brownies or blondies, with a nuttiness I’d almost take for almond flavor if I didn’t know better.
Salted Halvah Blondies
Butter for the pan
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt (0.11 oz/3 g) - I haven’t been able to find Diamond Crystal in stores out here even though Saffitz isn’t the first cookbook author who prefers it to Morton. So I used Morton and weighed it. 3 g turned out to be a rounded half teaspoon.
½ tsp baking powder
6 oz white chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 stick unsalted butter
¼ c tahini
½ c packed light brown sugar
1 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 T vanilla extract
4 oz halvah, crumbled
2 T sesame seeds
flaky salt, for sprinkling the top
Preheat the oven and prepare the pan: Arrange an oven rack in the center position and preheat oven to 350 F. Line an 8×8 inch pan with 2 sheets of foil, crossing one over the other and pressing the foil into corners and up the sides. Butter the foil generously and set the pan aside. (I skipped the foil part because I didn’t realize until I started that I was almost out of foil. So I took a chance on just using Baker’s Joy like normal and it turned out fine.)
Mix the dry ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder to combine. Set aside.
Melt the white chocolate mixture: In a large heatproof bowl, combine the white chocolate, butter, and tahini and set it over a medium saucepan filled with about 1 inch of simmering (not boiling) water. Warm the mixture gently, stirring occasionally, just until the white chocolate and butter are melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat and let cool slightly.
Add the sugar and eggs: Whisk the brown sugar into the white chocolate mixture. It will look grainy and you might see some of the fat start to separate from the rest of the mixture, which is normal. Add the whole egg, egg yolks, and vanilla and whisk vigorously until the mixture comes back together and looks very thick, smooth, and glossy and is starting to pull ever so slightly away from the sides of the bowl.
Add the dry ingredients and halvah: Add the flour mixture and stir with a flexible spatula just until the dry ingredients are evenly incorporated into the batter. Add the crumbled halvah and folk in gently to avoid breaking into smaller bits.
Bake the blondies: Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it in an even layer all the way to the corners. Sprinkle the sesame seeds across the surface of the batter, then top with flaky salt. Bake until the blondies are puffed across the surface, golden brown around the edges, and slightly jiggly in the center, 20-25 minutes.
Let cool and serve: Allow the blondies to cool completely in the pan. Use the ends of the foil to lift the blondies out of the pan and slice into 16 bars.
Cookbook # 27 - The French Laundry Cookbook
I tried. I really did. I am—if I do say so myself—a good home cook, maybe even a skilled one. Aside from yeast breads, which I will eventually have to face for this challenge, I feel confident taking on about 80-90% of the recipes in most of my cookbooks.
But The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller (1999) isn’t really designed for good practical home cooks. Insofar as it’s intended to be cooked from at all (as opposed to just being a coffee table collection of food porn), IMHO it’s for the kind of home cooks who could contend on a savory/cooking version of The Great British Baking Show.
Still, it’s on my shelf, so I attempted it. I tried the Potato Gnocchi recipe, which was there as a building block for a dish involving smoked salmon that I knew to be beyond my skills, not to mention that I don’t even like smoked fish. And it just didn’t quite work. It wasn’t inedible, but it turned out more like soft mashed potato dumplings than the dense, toothsome pillows I love in a good gnocchi dish.
So pizza is on the way even as I type this. Maybe I’ll circle back to the cookbook at the end of the challenge. I could probably make one of the stocks, or maybe even the family meal lasagna.
Cookbook # 26 - Cool Beans
Sunday dinner was French Green Lentils With a Trio of Mustards from Cool Beans by Joe Yonan (2020), and it was a home run that’s definitely getting added to the rotation. This cookbook is vegetarian (in fact mostly vegan), which I am not, but I have nothing against a delicious meatless meal like this one.
French Green Lentils With a Trio of Mustards
1 ½ c dried French green lentils, picked over and rinsed
5 c vegetable broth
1 bay leaf
2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
¼ c extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 T yellow or black mustard seeds
1 large bunch mustard greens, chopped (I couldn’t find mustard greens at the farmers market, so I substituted collards)
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 T red wine vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 c toasted pistachios
1 c vegan or dairy feta, crumbled
Combine the lentils, broth, bay leaf, and 1 tsp salt in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook until the lentils are just tender, about 20 minutes.
While the lentils are cooking, pour the olive oil into a deep skillet over medium-high heat. When it shimmers, add the onion, garlic, and carrot and saute until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the remaining teaspoon of salt and the mustard seeds, then stir in the mustard greens and cook until they fully wilt, about 5 minutes. (I let mine cook a little longer due to the robustness of collards.)
When the lentils are tender, drain them, discard the bay leaf, and add them to the mustard greens mixture in the skillet, stirring to combine. Turn off the heat and stir in the shallot, vinegar, and Dijon. Taste and add more salt if needed.
Top with pistachios and feta and serve.
July reading
July was a slow reading month by my standards, and I’ve even fallen behind on my Seattle Public Library summer book bingo reading—it requires reading books in 24 categories roughly between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which works out to 8 books apiece in June, July, and August, with a week or so of grace period on either side. Normally I’m running ahead of schedule at this point in the summer, but I’ve still got 10 categories to fill for my blackout. I’ve got a plan, and backup reads for most of the categories in case my first choice isn’t working for me, but I feel like I’m back in college procrastinating on big assignments.
Anyway, I did barely squeak into double digits with 10 books for the month:
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. SPL Book Bingo, Soothing. A completely cozy and whimsical romantic fantasy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. (It's also tagged and described as a romantasy, but to me that implies a certain level of angst and kinky and/or explicit sex that just isn't there. I mean, this is a book I would've shared with my very prim and proper mom, if she were still around, though she wasn't the SFF lover that I am and might not have liked it on that count.)
Celia's House by D.E. Stevenson. I wouldn't want all my reading to be quite this old-fashioned and wholesome--I mean, my mom really would've loved this one, and reading it filled me with the peculiar wistfulness of knowing exactly what I'd buy for Christmas for someone no longer in the world for me to give it to--but I'm glad I made the time to read it.
The Golden Road by William Dalrymple. A look at ancient India's deep, though often-overlooked impact on the cultures to its east and west from roughly 500 BCE to 1200 CE.
The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. Hugo finalist, Novel; SPL Book Bingo, Time Travel. Wow. Just, wow. That is quite a book. A gender-bent twist on the Arthurian legend and a twisty time travel love story that's something of a meditation on violence, PTSD, and the costs of empire. So good.
The Inescapable Love of God by Thomas Talbott. My deep dive into Christian universalism continues. I think the author made convincing arguments about logical fallacies in the Augustinian and Calvinist positions, though the more abstract, philosophical sections made my head spin a bit.
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. Hugo finalist, Novel; SPL Book Bingo, Own Choice. I picked this for Own Choice because I slammed the book down (metaphorically, as it was an ebook) early at the first major plot twist because it made me SO ANGRY, and when I googled for spoilers I saw that it's not going to be undone, at least not in this book (I hold out hope for later in the trilogy). But then I kept thinking about it and wanting to read more, so I chose to pick it up and plow through all 600 pages though I'm still SO ANGRY about that plot twist.
The Unclaimed by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans. This book tracing the lives and deaths of four people who ended up as unclaimed bodies in the L.A. morgue was tender and moving, and it also made me vow to work a bit harder on my family connections, keep up my community chorus membership, stop skipping coffee hour after church, and faithfully attend my virtual and in-person writers groups. Oh, and now that my husband and I have our wills squared away, figure out what we want done for our actual funerals and make some concrete plans (albeit not involving concrete--we're looking into green burial options, with my husband favoring human composting while I'm more interested in a traditional burial without embalming in a wooden or wicker casket).
Half American by Matthew F. Delmont. An account of Black Americans' service in WWII, in the teeth of the bigotry of Jim Crow. Often infuriating, always fascinating, and it made me see connections between WWII and the Civil Rights Movement I wasn't previously aware of.
Provence, 1970 by Luke Barr. A gossipy account of some of the very first celebrity chefs and food personalities spending a couple of months in late 1970 cooking, talking, and occasionally clashing in the way of big personalities with big egos.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. SPL Book Bingo, Recommended by an Independent Bookseller. Did I stay up till 11:50 PM to finish this last night so my book tally for July wouldn't be in the single digits? Why yes, I did. Anyway, this was a lot of fun and I might continue with the series, though I don't think I'm going to become a big fan of LitRPG in general.
Cookbook # 25 - Chili Madness
This week I continued in Mexican, or at least Mexican-adjacent, cuisine with Chili Madness (2nd Edition) by Jane Butel (2008). I chose Chocolaty Chili for being straightforward and using ingredients I already had on hand, but with the chocolate to make it interesting. And I liked it, though not quite as much as my standard chili—which is basically beans, ground beef, an onion or two, some variety of canned tomato product, beef broth, beer, and liberal amounts of chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, and onion powder until I decide it tastes right.
Chocolaty Chili
2 T vegetable oil (not canola)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 lb. lean ground beef
1 16 oz can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 16 oz can tomato puree
1 6 oz can tomato paste
4 fresh domestic green chilis, such as Anaheims, parched, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 4 oz can chopped green chilis
2 oz bittersweet chocolate, halved
2 T pure ground red chile powder (hot, mild, or a combination)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 beef bouillon cube
Place the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes.
Add the meat to the skillet. Break up and cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat is evenly browned, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the kidney beans, tomato puree, tomato paste, green chiles, ½ cup water, half of the chocolate, the ground chile, half of the cumin, and the beef bouillon cube. Mix well and bring to a boil. Then lower heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
Stir in the remaining chocolate and continue cooking until it is thoroughly blended, adding water if the chili begins to cook down too much or look too dry. Add the remaining cumin, taste, and adjust the seasonings.
Cookbook # 24 - Tacopedia
We’ve gone from the Junior League to Mexico, and suffice it to say that the Mexican-Style Beef Tips from Tacopedia by Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena (2015) were not even remotely bland. In fact, if I make them again, I’ll probably use 3 serranos instead of 6.
Mexican-Style Beef Tips
2 ¼ lbs tenderloin or ribeye, sliced into small strips
3 cloves garlic, crushed
½ T freshly ground black pepper
½ T ground cumin
Sea salt
1 T corn oil
9 oz diced onion
2 ¼ lbs medium tomatoes, peeled and diced
6 serrano chiles, sliced into rings
12-20 4 ½ inch corn tortillas
sliced avocado and/or rice and beans for serving (I used rice and refried beans)
Mix the meat with the garlic, ground pepper, cumin, and a pinch of salt. Cover and chill for 3 hours.
Heat the oil in a large pot over low heat. Add the onions and fry for a few minutes until translucent. Raise the heat, add the meat and saute for 7 minutes.
Add the tomato and chiles, and season to taste. Simmer until the liquid thickens.
Serve in heaping spoonfuls on doubled fresh tortillas with rice, beans, or avocado
Cookbook # 23 - Colorado Cache Cookbook
The Colorado Cache Cookbook (30th Anniversary Edition, 2008) was put out by the Junior League of Denver, and was a gift from the Colorado branch of my husband’s family. It’s typical of fundraiser cookbooks in having a wide range of typical American home cooking. The Almond Chicken recipe I chose fits that description, insofar as it’s an extremely bland 20th century white person’s version of Chinese food. While I’m actually very fond of Americanized Chinese food, this was so bland that even with my additions of an onion, a decent amount of salt, and generous grinds of pepper, we all had to add more soy sauce, salt, and hot sauce at the table to make it tolerable. I won’t be making it again, though I might use the same basic cooking techniques with a stronger sauce.
Almond chicken
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced
3 T peanut oil
2 5-oz cans bamboo shoots, drained
2 c celery, sliced diagonally
2 5-oz cans water chestnuts, drained
½ c slivered blanched almonds
2 T soy sauce
3 c chicken broth
3 T cornstarch
½ c water
Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add chicken and stir fry until browned. Add bamboo shoots, celery, water chestnuts, almonds, soy sauce, and chicken broth. Cover and cook gently for 5 minutes. Blend together cornstarch and water. Add to chicken mixture and cook, stirring, until thickened. Serve with rice.
June reading
Halfway through the year, I’m on pace to read 172 books, though I doubt my Dec. 31 tally will be quite that high—now that I’m reading Nebula and Hugo finalists every year, spring is reading marathon time for me. This month was mostly a mix of Hugo finalists and Seattle Public Library summer book bingo choices.
Root Magic by Eden Royce. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Honorable Mention category. Middle-grade historical fantasy set in 1964 about a pair of 11-year-old twins in the South Carolina Sea Island Gullah Geechee community and dealing with grief, racism, bullying, and the general challenges of growing up along with training in their family legacy of root magic.
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells. Hugo finalist, Novelette. I skim-read this one for the emotional beats back when it first came out, but this is the first time I read it carefully all the way through, so I'm counting it as a 2026 read. With that said, the emotional beats are the best and IMHO most important part. I liked getting to see more of Peri/ART's vulnerable side, which from Murderbot's perspective you'd hardly know existed.
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. This is the 2017 Newbery Medal winner, and it's a simply gorgeous middle grade fantasy. It's toward the challenging end of children's fiction in both its themes and the complexity of the writing and the plot, but I would've loved it at age 10 or 12, and I think it'd be an especially good book for the many bookish children who read far above their grade level but don't want to and/or shouldn't cross over to reading only adult books.
Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America by Andrew Weissmann. I can only take current events reading in small doses, which this fortunately is. Weissmann speaks as the law professor and former prosecutor he is, recommending ways we could make lies such as Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen crimes--if lying to deceive and defraud customers or shareholders is a crime, which it is, why not when the victims are voters and the citizenry as a whole?
The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker. Hugo finalist, Novelette. Atmospheric, almost cozy story of two young performers in a traveling magic show in what feels like the late 19th or early 20th century.
Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love by Brian Recker. I'm making my way through a mini reading list, a personal syllabus of sorts, on Christian universalism in preparation to preach on Romans 8 next month. This one resonated with me far more than Love Wins, largely because the author's perspective, experiences, and general approach to discussing theology are a better match with my own.
The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reid. Hugo finalist, Novelette. Wherein two young women fight to make lives for themselves (eventually, together) in a corporate dystopia.
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Hugo finalist, Novel, and SPL Book Bingo, Outer Space. I wouldn't say I loved this book--for me, "love" is mostly for books with found family, happy endings, and a certain hint of coziness, at least insofar as the ending should include the found family hanging out together, like Murderbot or the Vorkosigan saga. But I sure admired the heck out of it and couldn't put it down.
When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente. Hugo finalist, Novelette. A Jolene retelling (yes, as in the song) wherein Jolene is a vampire.
A Terrible Intimacy by Melvin Patrick Ely. Without once flinching from the true evil of Southern chattel slavery, this history explores the messy and contradictory realities of how it was practiced in one Virginia county through the lens of half a dozen court cases involving the interactions between blacks and whites from the 1820s into the early 1860s.
Crow by Boria Sax. SPL Book Bingo, Animal. A quick overview of how corvids are viewed across various human cultures and religions. There are multiple books in this series, and I think I might get more out of the ones that aren't about animals I already know as well as crows.
The Broposal by Sonora Reyes. SPL Book Bingo, Suggested by a Library Worker. A romcom, but one with a lot of dark undercurrents--our heroes' backstories and challenges include family members with substance abuse issues, abusive exes, and one of their immigration statuses.
A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester. An interesting exploration, somewhat of a literary memoir almost, of plate tectonics, the North American and Pacific plates, and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it had focused more specifically on the quake itself. Also, it bears the marks of being written 20+ years ago--earthquake science has progressed quite a bit in the past two decades, for example.
Moonlight and Mischief by Rhonda Woodward. SPL Book Bingo, HEA/HFN. My favorite so far of the mini-trove of traditional Regency romances I found in a used bookstore last fall, a fine example of a house party story with a rakish earl and a wealthy but nouveau riche young woman (her father made his fortune by owning--gasp!--a woolen mill), who form a quick friendship largely because they consider themselves safe from falling in love, given that she is dead set against her mother's effort to see her married into the aristocracy and he isn't ready to marry yet and therefore doesn't allow himself to catch feelings for eligible single women.
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks. SPL Book Bingo, FIFA World Cup Country. A midlife crisis memoir (which I mean positively, and in a way I found relatable given my own age) wherein a British farmer and writer spends several months on an isolated Norwegian island with two women there for the eider duck nesting and down gathering season.
Cookbook # 22 - South
I’d like to return again sometime to South: Essential Recipes and New Explorations by Sean Brock (2019), since it’s a deep exploration and elevation of the rural Southern/Appalachian food of my childhood. I chose a very basic recipe for my first venture. I didn’t have the time or energy for some of the more complex choices, I’m trying to save money currently so special-ordering non-local ingredients is out, and while some of the fresh fruits and produce grow very well out here on the other corner of the country…it’s still a month or two till they’ll be in season. So I went with Fried Apples, and they were good. The lard gave them a faintly savory/meaty flavor, which worked well given that I served them as a side dish with pork chops.
Fried Apples
2 T lard
2 lbs Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 3/4-inch wedges
½ c. packed light brown sugar
4 T unsalted butter
½ tsp kosher salt
Heat the lard in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the apples and cook, stirring frequently, until they start to brown and soften, about 6 minutes. Add the brown sugar and butter and stir to combine and melt the butter. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the apples are completely tender but not falling apart, about 3 minutes.
Remove the apples from the stove, stir in the salt, and serve directly from the skillet. Or transfer to a heatproof container, cool to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate for up to 2 days; reheat over medium heat before serving.
Cookbook # 21 - Pig: King of the Southern Table
I suppose it was inevitable that I would eventually attempt to cook something from one of my cookbooks and end up with an inedible mess. I just wasn’t expecting Pig: King of the Southern Table (James Villas, 2010) to be where it happened, since it’s well-reviewed and relatively recent.
I attempted Deep-Fried Marinated Pork Nuggets, partly because I had pork tenderloin already in the freezer from my last Costco run and partly because it was it was more summery than most of the recipes that appealed to me—Baked Pork Chops With Spiced Applesauce Glaze, for example, didn’t really appeal on an 80-degree June day. We do have air conditioning, unlike a lot of Seattle folks, but still.
Anyway, I thought as I was preparing the marinade last night that it was awfully heavy on the soy sauce, but I’m trying to follow the recipes as written, especially with such a well-reviewed and recent cookbook, so I just went for it. And OMG. Complete salt lick. You couldn’t even taste the pork—it was like eating meat-textured salt with a faint hint of soy flavor. So my pork nuggets are in the compost bin, the noodle and vegetable stir fry I was planning to accompany it will find another use in the next few days, and our sandwich order is on the way via DoorDash.
That said, I do like the basic technique. There’s more tenderloin in the freezer, so I might try it with a less salty marinade, like, you know, a basic pork BRINE.
Deep-Fried Marinated Pork Nuggets
1 c. soy sauce
1 c. dry sherry
1 garlic clove, minced
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
¼ tsp dry mustard
1 1 ½ pound pork tenderloin, trimmed of fat and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 c. all-purpose flour
salt to taste
3 c. peanut oil
In a large bowl, combine the soy sauce, sherry, garlic, pepper, and mustard and whisk till well blended. Add the pork, stir well, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Dredge the pork nuggets in the flour, shaking off the excess, and place on a large plate.
In a deep fryer or deep cast-iron skillet, heat oil to 350 F. Deep-fry the nuggets in batches till golden, about 10 minutes, and drain on paper towels.
Cookbook Challenge # 20 - The Cookie Book
Next up on my cookbook journey is The Cookie Book (presented by the Seattle Mariners Wives, 2002), which is exactly what you’d expect based on the title and authorship—as a fundraiser for a local nonprofit, the wives and girlfriends of the Mariners as they were 24 years ago (think Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki, Bret Boone, etc.) collected a bunch of cookie recipe and did a photo shoot of various players who are now retired with their wives and cute kids, many of whom probably have kids of their own now. (I remember that team very well, and my God does it make me feel old to think of how long ago it was.)
Anyway, the recipes are largely a tour of all the cookies, brownies, and bars you’d likely see at a family gathering or office/church potluck. I went with Nanaimo Bars, contributed by then-Mariners chef Jeremy Bryant. My husband pointed out that the classic recipe includes Bird’s custard powder rather than vanilla pudding mix, but I retorted that part of the point of this challenge is to follow the recipe as written, within bounds of reason and ingredient availability. And they turned out quite tasty, though I wouldn’t win any points for presentation or evenness of layers.
Nanaimo Bars
½ c. butter
¼ c. granulated sugar
1 egg
5 T cocoa
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 c. graham cracker crumbs
1 c. shredded sweetened coconut
½ c. walnuts, chopped
½ cup butter, softened
3 T milk
2 T instant vanilla pudding
2 c. confectioner’s sugar
6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
In a double boiler pan combine butter, sugar, egg, cocoa, and vanilla until custard-like. Add graham cracker crumbs, coconut, and walnuts. Press mixture into a 9×9-inch square man. Cool.
In a mixing bowl, combine butter, milk, and pudding. Mix well. Add confectioner’s sugar and mix well. Spread over first layer in 9×9 pan. Let stand for 15 minutes.
In a small saucepan, melt chocolate over low heat. Stir constantly. (Here, despite my protestations about following recipes as written, I microwaved them in 30-second bursts, stirring in between, until melted.) Spread evenly on top of two layers in pan. Cool.
Cookbook Challenge # 19 - Favorite Recipes of Alabama Vocational Home Economics Teachers
Favorite Recipes of Alabama Vocational Home Economics Teachers (Third Edition) is the first cookbook older than me that I’ve tackled on this challenge. I don’t know its exact date of publication, but it was sometime in the 1960s and therefore officially Before My Time. It’s one of several cookbooks I inherited from my mother, though I don’t remember her using it very often.
Like most cookbooks of its type and vintage, it’s heavy on desserts of all kinds. But since I made a cake last week, and next week’s cookbook is desserts only, I decided to go with a savory recipe and picked one of several for oven-barbecued chicken. It was OK, but nothing special—I prefer the way Mom made this same dish, which just used bottled BBQ sauce from the grocery store. If I’m going to make my own sauce, I want something more than a vaguely sweet and not noticeably spicy or tangy tomato sauce.
Barbecued Chicken (Oven)
1 large fryer, cut up (I used a pack of thighs and one of drumsticks. I’m pretty sure stores around here don’t even sell whole chickens cut up anymore.)
¼ c. shortening (I used canola oil, because I’m not going to buy shortening special just to pan-fry chicken.)
1 c. chili sauce or catsup (I used chili sauce, since I had most of a bottle left over from when I made hot dog sloppy joes a few weeks ago.)
½ c. water
¼ c. lemon juice
¼ c. minced onion
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
2 T. brown sugar
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp salt
Pan fry chicken until golden brown. Place in a 2-quart casserole or broiler pan. Combine other ingredients in a small sauce pan and bring mixture to a boil. Pour over chicken. Place in oven and bake at 350 F, turning frequently and spooning sauce over chicken at each turning. Cook about 1 hour or until tender. (I cooked it for 45 minutes, because all the pieces tested at 165 F internal temperature by then. More would’ve just dried them out, though I can see it taking longer if I’d used breasts.)
May reading
My reading pace slowed down a bit this month, since I’ve still got all of June and July to finish my Hugos reading. I still finished 14 books, which is a nice pace, and I finished my first three books toward the 2026 Seattle Public Library Adult Book Bingo summer reading program.
Also, my husband just started reading Moby Dick, which honestly sounds more daunting to me than all the 150-175 books I expect to finish in 2026.
Serving Up Scripture by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and Aaron Higashi. An IMHO excellent guide to reading and interpreting the Bible for progressive Christians of various stripes and/or people deconstructing from more conservative/fundamentalist approaches.
The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor. Hugo finalist, Graphic Story or Comic. A sweet, imaginative middle grade graphic novel wherein Periwinkle the cat (inspired by the author's real-life cat of the same name) has adventures in space and battling alien invaders on earth while his humans are sleeping.
They Bloom at Night by Thang Thanh Tran. Hugo finalist, Lodestar YA award. Once again the Hugo and Nebula lists have me reading more horror than I ever would've touched on my own. I feel like more horror has been finaling relative to SF and fantasy in recent years, though that may be biased by the fact I've only recently joined SFWA and started attending WorldCons and therefore trying to read as much of the list as I can. Anyway, this is hella atmospheric (and set in a hellish dystopian Louisiana bayou), so I'm sure a real horror fan would love it.
The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo & John Picacio. Now, I may not love horror, but spooky I am fine with, as long as there aren't too many spiders involved. This children's picture book about a girl whose deep grief for her beloved grandfather is causing her to withdraw from the world, but who begins to come to a place of healing and acceptance via Dia de Muertos, is full of skeletons and graveyard imagery while also being gentle and comforting.
Platform Decay by Martha Wells. The newest Murderbot novella, released today. I confess to being a little disappointed that it was mostly about Murderbot and some new humans, when I could happily read infinite stories about Murderbot, ART, and my favorites among its existing sets of humans (Mensah, Pin-Lee, Ratthi, Gurathin, Amena, etc.). But I love Murderbot regardless.
Built on Bones by Brenna Hassett. A chatty, rambling overview of the impact of urbanism on the human body from the Neolithic forward.
Cinder House by Freya Marske. Hugo finalist, Novella. I have no idea how I'm going to rank the finalists in this category, because they're all so good. This is a Cinderella retelling with both Gothic and romantasy elements, and I loved it.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher. Hugo finalist, Novella. OK, I will continue to make an exception to my non-love of horror for T. Kingfisher, and I'm going to have to go back and read the first two books in this series. I love the narrator and the voice. And wow, in my admittedly limited experience of reading all the finalists for a particular literary award, this year's Hugo novellas are the best. Uniquely yet uniformly amazing.
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. First in a trilogy, this history looks at Germany from roughly the end of the Bismarck era through 1933, growing more granular the closer we get to that fateful date. It's obviously not a happy fun read, but it's informative and thoughtful. Also, the fact it was published over 20 years ago makes certain present-day parallels all the more striking--the ineptitude of mainstream parties and politicians, the willingness of many voters to take a shot on a problematic outsider due to dissatisfaction with a genuinely broken status quo, right-wing bias across the justice system from the police up to the highest courts, etc. Though I do take comfort in the fact America has been doing democracy, however imperfectly, for a lot longer--we've got traditions and muscle memory around protest and free speech in particular that just weren't available in Weimar Germany.
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Historical category. After these last two books, I mainly hope the 2020s won't look as dreadful as the 1930s after time for hindsight. I hope we are doing and will continue to do better, but the jury is still out.
Love Wins by Rob Bell. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Eye-Opening category. I'm counting this as eye-opening because, after having basically deconstructed my evangelical faith and found my way into the Episcopalian form of progressive Christianity, I'm finally starting to read more theological works from my new perspective (as opposed to memoirs and cultural critiques). I found this one thoughtful and fitting my understanding of a loving God, though Bell's chatty-poetic writing style isn't really my cup of tea.
Web of Love by Mary Balogh. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Unplug category. (The definition for this category was "Step away from your devices and read distraction-free," and this book fit as a very rare paperback read for my ebook-loving self.) This is one of Balogh's earlier works, dating to 1990, and I think she grew stronger as a writer later in her career. With that said, I did like the old-school aspect of a romance with a large cast of characters and a longish time frame, almost a historical novel with a romance in it rather than a historical romance.
Adulthood is a Gift by Sarah Andersen. I happened to see this book in either my LT or local library's recommendations and picked it up as a much-needed light and relaxing weekend read.
Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch. Hugo Finalist, Novelette, and also SPL Summer Book Bingo, Under 150 Pages category. Wherein a well-intentioned but baffled alien sea monster tries to stop nuclear proliferation during the cold war era.
Cookbook Challenge # 18 - Life After Pizza
Life After Pizza: A Cookbook for the Fast Food Crowd (Favorite Recipes Press, 1988) was the cookbook that taught me to cook. Oh, my mom was a good cook and a gifted baker, and I learned a lot by watching her, but she didn’t push me to cook or do chores in general—I think as the youngest of four children I was just a tiny bit spoiled in that regard—trusting that I’d learn when I had to. And I did, from this book. It’s every bit as simple, breezy, and basic as the title makes it sound, and I’ll still grab it off the shelf every so often to remind myself of basics like how long to cook a hardboiled egg. I do have one go-to recipe I still make from it, a quick mock minestrone made by combining various canned condensed soups and broths with ground beef, beans, an onion, and pasta. But the point of this challenge is to choose something I haven’t tried already, so I made Bisquick Oven-Fried Chicken and Crazy Cake. Both turned out perfectly tasty in a straightforward, old-school way.
Bisquick Oven-Fried Chicken
Whole chicken cut up or chicken pieces (I used 4 thighs and 4 wings)
¼ cup butter
¾ cup Bisquick
(I ad-libbed and added a generous shake of Cajun seasoning to the Bisquick and dipped the chicken pieces in an egg wash so the batter would stick better.)
Melt butter in a baking dish in a 350-degree oven. Shake chicken in Bisquick in a paper bag until coated. Place in prepared baking dish; do not allow pieces to touch. Bake for 30 minutes; turn chicken. Bake for 15 minutes or until tender.
Crazy Cake
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
½ cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 T vanilla extract
2 T vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
¾ c vegetable oil
2 cups water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13-inch cake pan.
Combine sugar, flour, cocoa, and baking soda and place in prepared pan.
Make 3 wells in dry ingredients. Pour vanilla into 1 well, vinegar into 1 well, and oil into remaining well. Pour water over all. Mix with fork until smooth.
Bake for 30 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool in pan. Frost cool cake as desired.
Cookbook Challenge # 17 - A Feast of Ice and Fire
I bought A Feast of Ice and Fire (Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, 2012) at the height of Game of Thrones fandom. Based on their Inn at the Crossroads blog—which I was pleased to find still exists with recent content, though you have to wade through a lot of ads to find the recipes—it takes foods mentioned in Martin’s novels and offers a version based on a historical recipe and a more modern interpretation for each. This weekend I made Modern White Beans and Bacon with 17th-Century Baked Apples as a dessert. The bean dish was okay, though not enough to add to my rotation necessarily. The apples, however, surprised me with how good they turned out. Because it was a pretty warm evening, I served them with vanilla ice cream, and all three of us loved them.
Modern White Beans and Bacon
4 pieces bacon, roughly chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 head curly endive, leaves rinsed and torn
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup dried white beans, soaked overnight, or one 16-oz can white beans
Salt and pepper to taste
If using dried beans, cook and drain.
Cook the bacon in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and set it on paper towels to drain. Add the onion to the drippings and saute until tender.
Add half the endive leaves and cover the pot, cooking until the endive is wilted, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining endive and the garlic, then cover and cook until the remaining endive has wilted.
Add the beans and bacon, cooking until the beans are heated through, stirring often. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
17th-Century Baked Apples
1 T ground cinnamon
4 T sugar
2 T unsalted butter, melted
2 firm, tart red apples
Preheat the oven to 350 F.
Mix together the cinnamon, sugar, and butter.
Slice the apples in half vertically through the core. Cut out the core and seeds, then prick the inside of the apple all over with a sharp knife. Place the apples cut side up in a baking dish and pour in enough water to just cover the bottom of the dish. Divide the cinnamon filling among the apple halves, spreading it to cover the cut surface.
Cover and bake for 1 hour. Provide a fork and knife for your guests to eat the apples with, and enjoy!
Cookbook Challenge # 16 - Under 20
I bought Under Twenty (Weight Watchers, 2013) sometime in 2013 or 2014 when my husband and I were doing Weight Watchers. (We briefly slimmed down, him to his goal weight, me to the lightest I’ve been since before I got pregnant with my son back in 2004, but eventually gained it back, as tends to be the case. With our doctor’s blessing, we’re currently focusing on health at our current size, and I will not be discussing this matter further at this time; please don’t come at me with your diet or how well your GLP-1 is working for you.)
Given that parenthetical, you probably won’t be surprised to hear I haven’t cooked much from this one of late. But after revisiting it for this challenge, I may change that. The title refers to the fact the recipes are supposed to take 20 minutes or less to prepare, which is handy for weeknights even after adding the extra 10-15 minutes for the fact that my chopping skills aren’t chef-speed, time spent rummaging the fridge and pantry for ingredients, etc. And they’re good, healthy recipes for the most part—lots of veggies, not a lot of heavily processed ingredients—and just because I’m trying to avoid the toxic aspects of diet culture doesn’t means I’m against lower-calorie meals.
Tonight I made Chopped Chicken and Peanut Salad, which I expect I’ll make again at some point. It’s always good to have some meals that don’t require turning on the stove for summertime use. (Not that the weather is at all summery today—it’s cloudy and barely crept into the 60s for a high.) However, the dressing was on the bland side, and there wasn’t enough of it to coat all the ingredients. Next time I’ll double the amount and add fresh lime juice.
Chopped Chicken and Peanut Salad
¾ lb fully-cooked grilled chicken breast strips (I used shredded rotisserie chicken from my grocery store’s deli)
¼ c roasted salted peanuts
2 carrots
1 large broccoli stem, peeled (I didn’t bother peeling it)
2 c thinly sliced romaine lettuce
½ red bell pepper, thinly sliced
3 T rice vinegar
1 T soy sauce
¾ tsp grated fresh ginger
¾ tsp dark sesame oil
1/8 tsp black pepper
3 T chopped chives
Pulse chicken in food processor until coarsely chopped. (I skipped this step since my chicken was already shredded.) Transfer to bowl. Pulse peanuts in food processor until coarsely chopped, transfer to bowl. Fit food processor with shredding attachment, and shred carrots and broccoli stem. Transfer to bowl and add romaine and bell pepper.
Whisk together vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil, and pepper in a small bowl. Pour over salad and toss to coat. Sprinkle with chives.
Cookbook Challenge # 15 - Sandwiches of History
I’ve seen Barry W. Enderwick’s entertaining historical sandwich-making and tasting videos on TikTok, so naturally I acquired a copy of Sandwiches of History: the Cookbook (2024). In keeping with the spirit of the book, I picked an option that seemed at least moderately weird: Hot Doggy Sloppy Joe from 1970. I tripled the recipe so it would feed the whole family for dinner, and all three of us gave it the same rating: “Huh. Not bad.” Probably not endorsement enough that I’ll make it again, but I wouldn’t have been shocked if we’d all taken one bite and decided we had to order pizza. Really, the tomato sauce and chili sauce made a nice contrast with the saltiness of the hot dogs, which almost makes me think the folks who like ketchup on their hot dogs have a point.
Hot Dog Sloppy Joe (note that this is the single-serving version from the cookbook)
1 hamburger bun
2 tsp unsalted butter
1 hot dog
2 T unsalted butter
1 T minced onion
2 T minced celery
2 oz canned tomato sauce
¾ tsp cornstarch
1 T tomato chili sauce
salt and pepper
1 dill pickle, chopped
Separate the hamburger bun into top and bottom and toast both sides. Butter the inside and set aside.
Cut the hot dog into 1/8-inch thick slices and set aside.
In a large skillet over medium-low heat, melt 2 T butter. Add the minced onion and saute until transparent, 2-3 minutes. Add the minced celery and continue to cook until the celery is soft, 2-3 minutes longer.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, stir together the tomato sauce and cornstarch until completely dissolved. Add to the skillet with the onion and celery mixture. Stir in the chili sauce, salt, pepper, and hot dog slices. Cook over very low heat 15 minutes, or until thickened slightly. Stir frequently to avoid sticking. Spoon the hot dog mixture over hte bottom of the bun and sprinkle with chopped dill pickle. Add the top bun ans serve.
Cookbook Challenge # 14 - Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook
After a couple of weeks off where my back pain was such that my husband, son, and various restaurants on DoorDash were doing all the cooking, I’m back in my cookbook challenge with one I inherited from my mom, Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook (1979). I’d planned to try the Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe that I’m guessing by the faintly stained page is the one my mom used to make for my and my dad’s birthdays, but with the lingering back pain I decided to stick with something simple: Chocolate Brownies.
These are as basic a homemade brownie recipe as you’d find, and make a rather small batch—nice for your family of three, but maybe you’d want to double it or choose a different option for your office potluck. They’re not as rich and gooey as most modern brownie mixes, more like a soft cookie than a dense cake, but they taste good, and I think they’d be a perfect base to serve a la mode or with berries and whipped cream.
Chocolate Brownies
2 eggs
1 c. sugar
½ tsp vanilla
½ c. butter, melted
½ c. unsifted all-purpose flour
1/3 c. Hershey’s Cocoa
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ c. chopped nuts, optional (I left them out because I’ve never been a fan of nuts in brownies)
Beat eggs in small mixer bowl. Gradually add sugar and vanilla; beat well. Blend in melted butter. Combine dry ingredients; gradually add to egg mixture until well blended. Stir in nuts, if using. Spread in greased 8-inch square pan. Bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes or until brownie begins to pull away from edges of pan. Cool in pan. Frost if desired; cut into squares.
April reading
I haven’t been posting cookbook challenges lately because for the past several weeks I’ve been dealing with a back spasm flareup. I’m starting to get back on my feet (literally!) so hopefully I’ll be back in my cookbook explorations soon.
In the meantime, being laid up and missing over a week of work meant I got a ton of reading done, much of it from the Nebula finalist list:
Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Knudsen. Nebula finalist, Andre Norton Award. This middle grade novel is about a pair of 6th-grade girls, both loners for different reasons, who forge a tentative friendship in the midst of an adventure back and forth between our world and a fantasy kingdom
Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle by Renan Bernardo. Nebula finalist, Novella. Now that was the bleakest story I've read in recent memory. Very well-written, of course, but oh so bleak.
"The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends" by Eugenia Triantafyllou. Nebula finalist, Novelette. A meta story--while we learn what happens to Alavira the Great, the real story is between the two friends who are reading it, blogging it, and arguing about it.
But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo. Nebula finalist, Novella. This is a gothic fantasy mystery sapphic romance, which is a lot of things for one novella to be! Fair warning: as an arachnophobe, I had to consciously turn off the visual part of my imagination for a good chunk of this one.
The Nebula Short Story Finalists
I'm counting these as a single "book" for the purpose of tracking how much I've read this year, since doing it any other way would feel like artificially inflating my numbers. I figure it's like reading an anthology or an issue of a short story magazine. Anyway, the stories in question are:
“Through the Machine”, by P.A. Cornell (Lightspeed 5/25) - a cautionary tale about AI
“Six People to Revise You”, by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25) - a cautionary tale about letting other people definie you
“In My Country”, by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25) - a cautionary tale about authoritarianism
“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, by E.M. Linden (PodCastle 2/18/25) - the ghosts left behind when the last of an island's population evacuates to the mainland
“Because I Held His Name Like a Key”, by Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25) - Alan Turing among the fae
“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25) - the intersection of superpowers and disability
The Name Ziya by Wen-Yi Lee. Nebula finalist, Novelette. I was impressed by the richness of world-building and character development packed in such a short word count.
"Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh" by Marie Croke. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another example of particular, immersive worldbuilding.
"We Begin Where Infinity Ends" by Somto Ihezue. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another lovely story, one I'd classify as hopepunk, with a beautiful spare elegance to the writing style.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. Nebula finalist, Novella. In a near-future San Francisco (2060s? 2070s?) a group of sentient robots take over an abandoned restaurant, and found family and delicious noodles happen. I loved it, though as a (State of) Washingtonian, I was a bit miffed that the civil war in the backstory led only to Californian independence. If this country falls apart, the West Coast had better stick together! Unless we go with Oregon (and British Columbia if they want to come with) and form the Republic of Cascadia.
The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella. Nebula finalist, Novella. The challenge of judging a contest like this is that you get stories that are so very different from one another, yet all so good at being what the author set out for them to be. This story, which is basically Death having a debate with a mountain it was sent to kill, reads like a fable you might tell around a campfire on a mountain. And it's lovely in an entirely different way than Automatic Noodle.
Descent by Wole Talabi. Nebula finalist, Novella. A really interesting piece of Afrofuturism with a far-future human community living on a gas-giant-type planet encounter dangers using newly developed equipment to explore their planet's dangerous depths...and if I'd known what I was getting into, I wouldn't have read this one the day before the Artemis II crew returned to Earth. Because it's not like my Gen X Challenger-Columbia anxiety needed extra fuel.
Goblin Girl by K.A. Mielke. Nebula Finalist, Andre Norton Award. This one was a little slow to start, but ended up being fun. The lessons about prejudice and reconciliation weren't at all subtle, but that's not atypical for middle grade fiction.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Nebula finalist, novel. Gorgeously written and memorably disturbing historical horror.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Nebula finalist, Novel. This is tagged as dark academia, though it didn't seem especially dark to me--maybe because I read it just after The Buffalo Hunter Hunter! In any case, it's a magic boarding school story from the POV of a teacher, and I enjoyed the intersection of the magical world with mundane bureaucracy and academic infighting.
Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey. I don't think I'm really the target audience for this one--it feels more like a series of lectures for a women's retreat than a work of theology/scholarship, which is what I was expecting.
Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch. A history of the battle/massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, plus a couple of final chapters on how the battle has been interpreted in German culture in more recent centuries. A bit dry and academic, but short and readable.
Heart of Iron by C.M. Alongi. I got this because it's based on the author's CaFae Latte video series on TikTok and YouTube--one of those fun serials of short videos where the creator plays all the parts using different costumes and props. The book is more violent and dark--the author recommended that readers take it as a sort of AU to the cozier, more lighthearted video version--but still fun and not at all grimdark.
Darksight Dare by Lois McMaster Bujold. A new Penric & Desdemona novella always means I'm dropping everything to read it right away, and this one did not disappoint.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. Nebula finalist, novel (which, yes, I finished after the voting deadline passed--it wasn't included in the judging packet from SFWA, and the hold took awhile to come from the library). More dark academia, and certainly an insightful look at the flaws and challenges of university life, at least as they appear to me in my academic research administration day job at UW.