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What I've been up to recently
Jun. 3rd, 2009 11:08 pmFirst, I would like to discuss the wonders of coconut milk. See, I was making a pie the other day with lots of fresh berries, and Rombauer* recommended putting a bit of granulated tapioca in with the berries to absorb some of the moisture. So I bought a box of tapioca, but the recipe used only a few spoonfuls, and I needed to do something with the rest of the box. It had a recipe on the back for coconut milk tapioca, so I went out and got some coconut milk, and that used the tapioca nicely, but then I had leftover coconut milk. Today, however, Daniel and I were cooking dinner, and we had some sauteed vegetables that were nice and all, but were going to be very boring. So we threw in a bunch of curry powder and the coconut milk and some dried Thai chili peppers, and WOW! Conclusion: if you have coconut milk and curry powder, they turn every dish of sauteed vegetables into something amazing. Don't be shy, though! Use lots of curry powder (a couple of tablespoons, probably---we didn't measure)and lots of coconut milk. Coconut milk is cheap, too! I'm going to have to start keeping it in the kitchen more often and experimenting with it. I've already tried to make cookies, but they didn't turn out so well: coconut milk essentially does the job of butter, but the flavor lost by omitting butter is not counterbalanced by the flavor added by the coconut milk, so overall they were pretty bland, and the texture suffered.
On to books. I think I've mentioned before that I'm reading Trollope. Well, I've had a lot of work this past semester, and he was a prolific writer, so I'm still reading Trollope. Since I finished school two weeks ago, I've read The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, and I've started The Prime Minister. The Eustace Diamonds is really a wonderful book. The most obvious comparison is with Vanity Fair---in fact, Trollope makes the reference himself---in terms of flavor and major plot arc, but it is not as earnest or moralizing, and it has a lovely, tight plot arc that stands alone quite well, but still includes all the other major characters from the other Palliser novels, and I think is really quite good. I cannot, alas, say the same of Phineas Finn, which reminds me quite a bit of the second part of Henry IV: the author realized he had a good thing going with one of his characters, and so wrote another book without quite deciding what he was going to do with it.
In Phineas Redux the titular character from Phineas Finn is brought back, but where Phineas Finn had another lovely, tight plot arc with excellent characters, Phineas Redux has a bit of a sprawling plot that doesn't really go anywhere, and so many of the characters that were really strong in the first book ( spoilers! ) I can only hope that The Prime Minister, which is next, is good. It probably will be: Trollope's original plots tend to be good; it's the ones he makes by rehashing unfinished threads (or even finished threads) from previous books, like the Lily Dale part of The Last Chronicle of Barset, or all of Phineas Redux, where things fall apart.
Aside from cooking and reading, however, I have been hiking! Daniel and I took lots of photographs on our previous hikes, and it would be too complicated to separate the pictures up by date of hike or location, so I will separate them up into
( Flowers )
( Critters )
and
( Views )
*That is, Irma S. Rombauer, the author of The Joy of Cooking. I have no idea why I refer to that cookbook as if I've spoken to the author, but it's what my mother always did, so it's what I do.
On to books. I think I've mentioned before that I'm reading Trollope. Well, I've had a lot of work this past semester, and he was a prolific writer, so I'm still reading Trollope. Since I finished school two weeks ago, I've read The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, and I've started The Prime Minister. The Eustace Diamonds is really a wonderful book. The most obvious comparison is with Vanity Fair---in fact, Trollope makes the reference himself---in terms of flavor and major plot arc, but it is not as earnest or moralizing, and it has a lovely, tight plot arc that stands alone quite well, but still includes all the other major characters from the other Palliser novels, and I think is really quite good. I cannot, alas, say the same of Phineas Finn, which reminds me quite a bit of the second part of Henry IV: the author realized he had a good thing going with one of his characters, and so wrote another book without quite deciding what he was going to do with it.
In Phineas Redux the titular character from Phineas Finn is brought back, but where Phineas Finn had another lovely, tight plot arc with excellent characters, Phineas Redux has a bit of a sprawling plot that doesn't really go anywhere, and so many of the characters that were really strong in the first book ( spoilers! ) I can only hope that The Prime Minister, which is next, is good. It probably will be: Trollope's original plots tend to be good; it's the ones he makes by rehashing unfinished threads (or even finished threads) from previous books, like the Lily Dale part of The Last Chronicle of Barset, or all of Phineas Redux, where things fall apart.
Aside from cooking and reading, however, I have been hiking! Daniel and I took lots of photographs on our previous hikes, and it would be too complicated to separate the pictures up by date of hike or location, so I will separate them up into
( Flowers )
( Critters )
and
( Views )
*That is, Irma S. Rombauer, the author of The Joy of Cooking. I have no idea why I refer to that cookbook as if I've spoken to the author, but it's what my mother always did, so it's what I do.