A Civil Contract - Book 6

Another Georgette Heyer re-read.  I loved this book.  I agree with every word I wrote in this review I posted back in 2016.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

World Literature

I'm planning Becky's 12th grade already.

Math - Saxon Algebra II/Advanced Math (1st 3rd of textbook)
Science - Physics at the co-op
Elective - Psychology - looking into doing this online through Oak Meadow
History - Didache Church History supplemented with documentaries etc about other cultures
Literature - World Literature course designed by moi!

This year she's studying Ancient history and Ancient Lit. I'm focusing mostly on short novels, plays and poetry with a couple of classics thrown in. 

Week 1 - Selection of writings of Church Fathers
Week 2 - ditto
Week 3 - ditto
Week 4 - A couple of tales out of 1001 Arabian Nights (Persia)
Week 5 - El Cid (Spain)
Week 6 - El Cid
Week 7 - Medieval play like Piers Plowman or Everyman or the like
Week 8 - Murder in the Cathedral
Week 9 - A couple of Canterbury Tales
Week 10 - Shakespeare's sonnets (She's done several Shakespeare plays already and we usually see one play a year).
Week 11 - Fairy tales from Perrault, Grim and Anderson (France, Germany, Denmark)
Week 12 - Her pick of classic English novel - Austen, Dickens, Bronte, etc
Week 13 - ditto
Week 14 - ditto
Week 15 - The Romantic poets
Week 16 - Tolstoy short story (Russia)
Week 17 - Song of the Scaffold (France)
Week 18 - Maybe something by Kipling - British colonialism plus Tagore poetry
Week 19 - ditto
Week 20 - Short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Poland, Eastern Europe)
Week 21 - My Heart Lies South (Mexico)
Week 22 - The Good Earth (China)
Week 23 - ditto
Week 24 - Anne Frank (Netherlands)
Week 25 - ditto
Week 26 - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russia)
Week 27 - ditto
Week 28 - Short story by Borges (Argentina)
Weeks 29 - 32 Senior paper

Lenten Plans

Lent is upon us early this year!  And Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine's Day.

As someone who gets migraines from chocolate, yet can't help indulging in it, often to excess, I am kind of happy to have a reason not to eat chocolate on Valentine's Day.  Plus, being the curmudgeonly type, I resent how a saint's feast day turned into something Victoria's Secret uses to boost sales  So I'm happy!

We plan to do up Mardi Gras here by making some gluten free, dairy free cookies.  I plan to do the regular peanut butter cookie.  I also learned of a cut out sugar cookie recipe that uses almond flour instead.  So we are going to attempt those.  And also I think I will make rice krispie treats tomorrow to bring to our AHG meeting.  So we'll get some cookie eating in between now and Wednesday.

My plans for Lent are getting rather complicated so I thought I'd spell them out:

1)  This is the first year of many years that we haven't gone to one daily mass during the week. With community college schedules that has gone by the wayside in the 2017-18 school year.  So I am going to get myself up on Wednesday and Friday mornings to go to the 8 a.m. at a nearby parish.  I doubt anyone will come with me which is just fine.

2)  At my own parish I hope to attend each of these at least once in Lent:  Confession, Adoration, Stations of the Cross and Sunday evening Benediction.

3)  One time praying in front of an abortion clinic with 40 Days for Life.  My parish always does this on Thursdays, which is a day I can't really.  So I'll have to figure this out.

4)  I finally joined a small community of faith group at my parish.  That starts February 21 on Wednesday evenings at 7.  Usually, I procrastinate planning for my co-op classes, but in Lent I am going to have be more responsible and plan ahead of time, if I am going out on Wednesday nights.

5)  We've already given up so much food because of this dratted anti-inflammatory diet that we aren't going to give up any particular food this Lent.  We'll fast on Ash Wed and Good Friday and refrain from meat on Fridays, but that's it.

6)  Instead I am going to give up junk mail!  It is a fairly arduous task to get yourself off of mailing lists, I discovered, so I am going to try to do a little of that each day.

7)  Finally, I am going to refrain from facebook, except for 15 minutes in the a.m and 15 minutes in the p.m. (using a timer to keep me honest!).  I still want to go on facebook for the Catholics for Zero Waste group as well as a few others, but not too much!

I am trying to think about more in the almsgiving category of fasting, prayer and alms practices for Lent.  Coincidentally I do cook for the homeless the first Wed of the month so there's still that.  And also coincidentally I am dinner captain for our next Hypothermia Shelter week.  We have St. Patrick's Day as well as the Wednesday before.  So I will be doing that, but probably we should come up with another thing to do as well.  Something that includes the whole family.

Easy, No Waste, Gluten, Dairy, Soy Free Side Dishes

Here are some things I've been doing lately for our dinner sides.  I used to rely on Kerry Gold butter a lot.  And then recently I had switched to a local Amish made butter that was wrapped in wax paper.  the label was still plastic, but the rest of it fit in with my attempts at zero waste.  But, alas, I don't really cook with butter anymore since B got put on this diet.  I do think  maybe ghee is considered ok?  I am not sure about that and plan to ask the dietitian when we see her on Monday.  So here are some of the ways I'm trying to get around cooking without butter.  I try to buy all my produce without packaging.  A principle I've discovered in zero waste cooking is you go to the store to see what you can find that is package free and then you come up with your dishes from that.  It's the opposite of planing from recipes first and then going to the store to get needed ingredients (which often makes you compromise packaging-wise when you discover that the item can only be found packaged).

Potatoes:

Roast potatoes are delicious - cut them up into small uniform-sized chunks, toss them in olive oil so they are well coated, season, and roast in the oven.

Fried potatoes - I like to use leftovers or I par-cook the potatoes in the microwave (or you could parboil them) then I cut them up and cook them in my cast iron skillet with lots of olive oil , garlic and onions.  If you save bacon grease, you can substitute this for the olive oil or combine the two.

Oven fries - I have cut up both white and sweet potatoes, tossed them in melted coconut oil and seasoned with salt and tumeric.

You can do mashed potatoes but you've got to have something else going on with some kind of sauce or gravy.  You can mash the potatoes substituting some of the water they were boiled in for the milk and butter to make them creamy.  Adding the correct amount of salt is crucial!  Then you can pour your au jus or gravy over it.  It's pretty good.

Baked potatoes are just depressing without butter, sour cream or cheese!  Likewise with boiled.

Veggies:

Roasted veggies - I have been cooking veggies like this for a while, so this wasn't new.  Same principle as the roast potatoes above:  chop up carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, broccoli or cauliflower.  Throwing in a bell pepper of some sort is always good.  Toss in olive oil, season and roast.  Very delicious!  And if you have leftovers, they make a great addition to your salad the next day.

Butternut or acorn squash - I used to add a lot of butter to these winter squashes but you actually do not need to, to make them delicious!  Instead I cut them in half and bake them cut half down (scrape out seeds first) on a baking sheet.  Then I scoop out the tender cooked squash and mix with a drizzle of maple syrup and a robust pinch of salt.  It is really delicious!  The roasting and the combo of the maple syrup and salt really brings out the sweetness of the squash.  Mashed sweet potatoes or yams are delicious like this as well.

Carrot slaw - grate up some carrots (depending on the size, about 1 per person).  Marinate in the juice of an orange or two.  Add in some salt and some raisins and let it chill in the fridge for an hour or so before serving.  If it isn't sweet enough, sprinkle a little sugar on (but don't tell anyone.)

Steamed, marinated veggies - steam up some broccoli, cauliflower and carrots.  When they are just tender, put them in the fridge to cool.  After they have cooled just a couple minutes, pour some homemade vinaigrette over them (hopefully you have some left over from last night's salad.)  Let marinate for as long as you like.  You can serve this cold or warmed.

Green beans - steam some green beans (but don't overcook!).  While they are still piping hot, melt a bit of bacon grease over them and toss so thoroughly coated.  Serve hot.

Salads - of course most nights of the week, we have some kind of tossed salad.  Sometimes that is our only veggie, but I try to have salad plus another veggie as well.  Don't always make that goal each night though.

Crudite platter - carrot, bell pepper, cucumber and celery sticks, sugar snap peas - this is nice if you have guacamole to serve with these.  If my family were normal I would include cherry tomatoes, but sadly they despise them.

Sauteed mushrooms - this is nice to top some beef or chicken with.  Chop up your favorite mushrooms, saute in olive oil and garlic.  I like ours really cooked down and starting to brown up.

Future sides I want to try!

I noticed that B ordered red cabbage as a topping at Cava Grille the other day.  Cava is one of the few easy carry out places for people on an anti-inflammatory diet.  So now I'm thinking, hey if she likes cabbage. . . . So I think I'm going to try to add some chopped red cabbage to salads and maybe find a recipe for a red cabbage slaw she might like.

I also plan to cook some green cabbage for St. Patrick's Day next month.  But also I think I want to explore some Asian recipes that might use cabbage, where I could substitute .Coconut amino acids.

Also, my mom used to make Waldorf salad with apple, celery and walnuts.  I might attempt that soon.

When the weather gets warmer, we can switch up to potato salads which don't require any dairy to make the potatoes delicious.

Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle - Book 5

This is a reread.   It was thoroughly enjoyable again!  Here's my review I wrote back in 2014.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Easy No Waste Guacamole

I made some really delicious quick guacamole last night.  I didn't even have any cilantro.

2 avocados (loose produce), nice and ripe and all mashed up in a bowl

1 tomato (loose produce), chopped finely

1/4 of a big yellow onion (loose produce), chopped finely

Juice from 1/2 a lemon (loose produce)

Liberal sprinkle of ground cumin (glass jar)

Some table salt (Morton's in a cardboard round box)

Mashed up altogther and it was delicious!

Chips - the bag of Bearitos brand of corn chips can be recycled at Mom's Organic.  Bearitos has the Terracycle symbol on the bag, so it might be recyclable at other locations as well.

Sylvia's Lovers - Book 4

Sylvia's Lovers is by Elizabeth Gaskell, author of Wives and Daughters, Cranford and North and South among other novels.  This I think is the one novel I hadn't read yet.  I didn't have a clue what it was about.  It was good read but I don't think it is my favorite Gaskell.  It did not charm my heart like Cranford and Wives and Daughters and it didn't have the social analysis of North and South or Mary Barton, both of which were about the poor during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, England, the epicenter of it all.

Sylvia is a young beautiful girl who has recently moved with her parents to a small farm off the Yorkshire coast near the village of Monkshaven.  Her cousin is a shopkeeper in the village and has fallen in love with her.  She doesn't return the feeling though.  She meets a brave and handsome sailor and does fall for him, creating jealously on the part of Stephen, the reserved, intelligent, Quaker influenced shopkeeper cousin.  All the plot unrolls from this tension.

Gaskell set the novel during the Napoleonic Wars when government impressment gangs roamed seaside villages, kidnapping young men to fight against France.  While the village folk are patriotic they do not want their sons or husbands kidnapped.   They rely on their income from fishing and whaling and of course don't especially embrace the dangers of going off to war (though fishing and whaling were pretty dangerous too, they at least got to see their men for a number of months out of the year.)

While Gaskell is wonderful writer and draws characters with nuance and agility, I just didn't care for these characters as much as in her other books.  They aren't unlikable, but to me they just didn't seem as interesting as some other characters.  The novel is didactic in that Victorian way.  There is tension between one's faith and what one does, how to resolve the giving in to temptation and the injury that flows from that, how to forgive, and many other moral questions.  And the big question is, what is the difference between passionate love and making an idol out of one's lover?

I give Sylvia's Lovers two thumbs up just because is it better than most books, but it isn't my favorite Gaskell.

For more book reviews go to 52 Books in 52 Weeks.