Knitting, Cooking and Book updates.

What I have been up to lately in this delightful Oregon weather is reading, knitting and cooking. This may or may not interest you, if it doesn't, well, don't read it. I have decided a review is in order.

Knitting: I have almost finished a vest for my mom. Unfortunately, when I had a friend try it on(who I estimated to be the same size as my mom - more blessed in the chest area than myself) it emphasized those protruding frontal portions in an unflattering way. I think it is too small... guess who will be pulling it all out and reknitting it?

Cooking: Lately I have been trying some recipes out of a cookbook I recently purchased called Great Food Fast. I have made the Pear Custard Tart featured in an earlier blog, the Curried Carrot Soup which was a big hit with my vegetable loving boobear, a homeade Pasta and Easy Italian Meat Sauce which was lovely, and Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger - to which I added apples and bonus ginger. I may not add so much ginger next time..very eye opening! For the brunch I made Double Chocolate Cheesecakes from the Epicurious site. If you want jaw-dropping amounts of chocolate I recommend it. 16 oz of semi-sweet chocolate into one cheesecake, plus a chocolate wafer crust.

Books:
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens of course): I was in the bookstore the other day, and realized I have only read A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, and felt a bit guilty that I haven't read some of the major classics, so I got this one. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Dickens isn't as hard to read as I recall him being. The only time I had trouble was with some of the dialogue. When he is writing the speech of some of the uneducated country folk, he tries a bit too hard perhaps. I expected this book to be depressing, but it wasn't really. The copy I purchased printed both Dickens' original ending, which his editor claimed was too sad, and the one he rewrote more happily to please this editor. I didn't really feel that the endings were so different emotionally. Do I recommend this book? Hmmm - only if you feel some sense of responsibility to have read the classics. Otherwise I am fairly neutral on this one.

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle: I know this is sort of a kid's book, but I love the whole Wrinkle in Time series by this author. Unfortunately this time I noticed that the "science" in it a bit muddled. My favorite example of this being the idea that Polly (the main character) has a grandmother with her own personal electron microscope sitting on a bench in her lab. Last time I checked these cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were far to large to be sitting on anything. But, I digress-otherwise this is a fairly good book, but perhaps is more readily appreciated by kids.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon: This is probably my sixth reading of the Outlander series, but I love these books, they have everything I love in them. Scotland, herbal doctoring, a love story between married people (new concept!), adventure, men in kilts...I could go on and on. These are my favorite books of all time.

Olivia books: I am sure you have all read the Olivia books, but I have to say, these are almost as good as Calvin and Hobbes at portraying children in all their lovable insufferability. My daughter loves them so much, in fact they have been read so often that we had to replace one of them because some of the pages were so taped up they were no longer readable. Her other favorites are Curious George and Dr. Seuss books.

Have a fun weekend y'all.