The Week in Books and Food

What I have today is a series of brief blurbs on interesting eats and reads from the past several days.

The success of the quinoa pinto bean salad that I posted last week means that many more hearty salads are going to be put together. I cooked a big batch of short pasta (bows and corkscrews) and had some left over. Somewhere, I had seen an idea for an avocado pasta sauce and that's how this salad came to be: cooked pasta tossed with sauteed zucchini, cooked black beans, raw shredded red cabbage and a creamy sauce made by blending ripe avocados with a bit of yogurt, mayo, lemon juice, salt and pepper and handfuls of cilantro. Sound more than a little hodge-podge, but it was a treat to eat cold out of the fridge on a warm afternoon. I drizzled my portion with a little sriracha sauce.

Neighbor Girl and I celebrated our birthdays recently and exchanged gifts and cards by mail (sob!) She sent me nice-smelling handmade soaps and the most gorgeous cookbook (more on that another time), and I sent her freshly-baked cookies and a gift certificate for a massage at a spa local to her (Thank you, Internet). The cookies were these espresso shortbread cookies and they were good but not great. I felt like something was lacking. She was gracious enough to gush about them anyway.

On Sunday, we had some people over and for a very casual meal, we set up a grilled cheese bar. We set out:
Breads- sourdough, sliced multigrain, ciabatta rolls;
Cheeses- brie, cheddar, cream cheese, goat Gouda, mozzarella, etc.
Fillings- sauteed spinach, mushrooms, marinated artichokes, caramelized onions, bananas and apples, sliced tomatoes, and a potato-pea mixture for Indian style sandwich toasts;
Sauces- mustard, jalapeno jelly, raspberry jam, peanut butter, pesto.

Everyone was invited to assemble their own grilled cheese. All sorts of crazy combinations were made and enjoyed. One was a peanut butter, banana and brie, grilled and then slathered with raspberry jam. The one in the picture is cream cheese, artichokes and spinach. Oh, it was fun.

From food to books...

Image: Goodreads

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith (fiction). This was a real treat, starting a new (to me, that is) series from one of my favorite authors. McCall Smith wrote a serial novel for a Scottish newspaper, and the book is a collection of the episodes. 44 Scotland Street is a small apartment complex, and we get acquainted with the quirky residents- a child prodigy and his helicopter mother, a college student and her narcissistic roommate, and so many others. Just like the sitcom Seinfeld ("a show about nothing"), nothing earth-shaking ever happens but these are stories about the hilarity of everyday situations, and the diverse personalities that make up life on this city block. I'll definitely read the rest of the books in this series.

Image: Goodreads

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams (fiction; YA mystery). I picked up this book for the Criminal Plots reading challenge that I signed up for, and one of the challenges is to read a YA crime novel. The story is a bit implausible but hey, it's a story that someone made up so one has to go with the flow. Ingrid is 13, athletic, a lover of Sherlock Holmes and an aspiring actress. From her very normal, suburban background, she finds herself in an unusual situation that connects her to the murder of a woman in her town. Of course, she has to investigate, and the resulting story is fast paced and quite entertaining. This book is the first in the Echo Falls series but personally, I'm in no hurry to go out and read the others.

Image: Goodreads

No Rest for the Dead by Andrew Gulli and 25 other authors (!) (fiction; mystery). Again, as part of the Criminal Plots reading challenge, the goal was to read a crime novel written by more than one person. I picked one that's written by 26 people, no kidding. It was pretty interesting to think about how a couple dozen writers could have collaborated on one story and kept up the flow pretty well. For all the mysteries I read, I knew only 1 author out of the 26- and that author was Alexander McCall Smith. The premise of the story is devastating- a woman, a mother of two small children, is accused of murdering her husband and is executed. But she is innocent of the crime. The book tells the story of how the repentant lead detective goes back and solves the crime. The story is engaging enough but there's a 600 lb gorilla in the room- the woman is dead and no neat wrap-up of the mystery will ever bring her back. What a horror capital punishment is.

While I certainly enjoy my share of fiction, there's nothing quite as rewarding as reading a non-fiction book/article and learning something about this world that we live in. Much of the time, I come away fascinated, thinking, "Wow- you can't make this stuff up". Some of the most interesting non-fiction articles that I read come from the New Yorker magazine (the only magazine we subscribe to, as it happens). A website called Longform recommends non-fiction articles, and their selections are often really compelling. (Longform= my favorite way to kill time at the computer when I should be doing something more important).

Image: Goodreads

Confessions of an Alien Hunter by Seth Shostak (non-fiction). My mother picked up this book from the library and I ended up reading it as well. Shostak is a senior astronomer in the SETI program- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This is a breezy, entertaining and informative book giving an insider look into the real-life version of the X files, discussing whether alien life is already out there, what forms it might take, and what it could mean for humans. The writing was a bit cheesy for my taste and liberally sprinkled with dorky jokes. And the book is very light on technical details, which is a pity because the average reader is intelligent enough to learn something new about the science of astronomy while she's at it.


Any interesting recipes or books you'd like to tell us about? I'm all ears.

P.S. Please come back on Friday if you want to sign up for the next round of the Spice and Something Nice Swap.