Merry Christmas!

Did you know?

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December.

Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring.

Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.

...shoulda known... ONLY women would be able to drag a fat-ass man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

And on that note: for those who celebrate, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Image credit: Happy Christmas Santa by Kurhan

2010 Book Round-up & The Stephen King Challenge 2011

I will be participating in The Stephen King Challenge 2011!! More about that at the end of this post. First, here's a round-up of books read in 2010:

Unfortunately, this year has NOT been much of a reading year for me. According to my entries on GoodReads, I have only read 28 books this year. Only. Last year I logged 35 (also a bad year); contrast that to 2006 where I consumed 80. I have a good reason though... starting that Massage Therapy certification program really sucked A LOT of my time and energy away from books (and no, I'm not going to log my text books here, although I guess that would add at least two more: Trail Guide to the Body Book and A Massage Therapist's Guide to Pathology)(but it doesn't explain the dry spell in the first half of the year either, shhhh!)

So here's my tally for 2010:

Many of this year's were re-reads:

1. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
2. Grave Peril - Jim Butcher (I was going to reread the entire Harry Dresden series, but kinda got bored here :p oops!)
   
3. The First Betrayal - Patricia Bray
4. The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss (a "reread" b/c I listened to the audiobook version this time around, and had Kosh listen in too, during some long-distance driving.)
5. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

I had some serious, non-fiction books too:

6. NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children - Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman
7. On Writing - Stephen King
8. Who Moved My Illusion?: Discover The Secrets Of The Mover, The Moved, And The Moving - David Cain
9. Energy Medicine for Women: Aligning Your Body's Energies to Boost Your Health and Vitality - Donna Eden
10. Energy Medicine: Balancing Your Body's Energies for Optimal Health, Joy, and Vitality - Donna Eden


And my usual fantasy fare mixed with some random regular fiction, Buffy graphic novels, and a horrendous foray into the realm of paranormal romance fantasy thingy (gag!):

11. The Long Way Home (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 Vol. 1)
12. No Future For You (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 Vol. 2)
13. Wolves at the Gate (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 8 vol. 3)
14. The Testament of Gideon Mack - James Robertson
15. People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks
16. The Tower of Solitude - Valerio Massimo Manfredi
17. Nothing To Lose (Jack Reacher Series, #12) - Lee Child
18. The Book of Fathers - Miklós Vámos
19. Night Pleasures (Dark-Hunter, #1) - Sherrilyn Kenyon
20. The Colorado Kid - Stephen King
21. U R - Stephen King
22. Burn Me Deadly - Alex Bledsoe
23. Horizon (The Sharing Knife, #4) - Lois MacMaster Bujold
24. The Sword-Edged Blonde - Alex Bledsoe
25. The Girls with Games of Blood - Alex Bledsoe
26. Warbreaker - Brandon Sanderson
27. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury (audiobook)
    
28. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen

Yes, I went through quite a few of Alex Bledsoe's works this year :)

As usual, you can find my ratings and reviews over at GoodReads, so click on over and enjoy! (I'm not sure, do you need to be my friend in order to easily access my reviews? if so, feel free to do so, just please drop me a line saying how you found me, k?)

.... and now, back to The Stephen King Challenge 2011 I started this post with


According to wikipedia, As of 2010, Stephen King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories: I count at least 37 that I have read.

I do not recall the first book of his that I read, but I do know the one that made the biggest impression: IT!! I still remember reading it back when I was in Form 3 (I had bought it for my brother's birthday but he wasn't to read it until he was done with his exams so I went ahead and read it first ... couldn't put it down,,, but my oh my, I was reading it in bed in the dead of night and I could have SWORN Pennywise was under my bed, ready to grab me if I dared dangle my feet over the side, if I wanted to go pee... I was terrified!

Loved The Stand (got the revised version as a gift in college), and remember laughing out loud at a short story where the protagonist realises "OMG I'm watching a vampire pee" :)

I remember squealing in joy when I discovered Wizard and Glass on the bookshelves, and proceeded to buy and consume all four (then available) Dark Tower books, so thirsty was I for Roland, his ka-tet, and the Man In Black.

My long-distance romance with Kosh featured the then-newly-released Wolves of the Calla.

When I was done with Book 7 of the Dark Tower series, I bitterly, grudgingly acknowledged that Mr King probably could not have "ended" it any other way. Kosh on the other hand felt angry and cheated: I totally understand!

In the meantime, I've been rather unimpressed with Mr King's more recent works. “Cell” was an insipid rehash of The Stand. Then there was Lisey's Story (thanks, Zuzu!) that I could barely get through. I picked up The Colorado Kid only because I wanted to know just how much of the book was reflected in the SyFy series (hardly). Under the Dome sounded like the plot of The Simpsons Movie. The title Full Dark, No Stars sounds interesting, but I've not bothered to find out what it's about.

And this brings us to the end of 2010. Just a few weeks ago I was telling Kosh that it's high time I reread the Dark Tower series. Just today I realise that I last read them through back when Book 7 came out, way back in 2005. That's over five years ago. Ummm, yeah, high time.

Then I find out from Sezin that there's this Stephen King Challenge 2011 organized by Book Chick City, where participants will read and review 6, or 12, or more of Mr King’s works.

Heh. The Dark Tower series alone will get me to 7 ... and I intend to (re)visit a few of the DT-related books (The Talisman, Black House, Desperation, The Regulators, some of the Richard Bachman short stories...) and would put me right past 12, and that's not including excursions into his more recent works, because, you know, I’d love for Stephen King to redeem himself in my eyes :D

But why join The Stephen King Challenge 2011? Well, just because I've read most of these books before, it doesn't mean I've reviewed / properly written about them. And I want to (re)read them anyway. So here I am, throwing my hat into the ring of The Stephen King Challenge 2011.

Won't you join me?

(Tinyurl for this post: http://tinyurl.com/27v6q96)

Please pardon my language, but...

So you know how back in December 2008 I started a malaysian abroad (and later another blog too) at today.com for the promise of getting some moolah for the blogging I was doing anyway? They paid well enough, then changed their terms and didn't pay well anymore and alienated many members in the process, but I stuck with them, cutting them lots of slack... then out of the blue they moved domains to blogdog.com -- how ugly a domain name is that?? -- and I decided not to join them there. We parted ways amicably. I specifically asked that my email addy be removed from all administration emails (i.e. so that comment moderation requests wouldn't continue to be sent to me in the faint chance that someone would do so); they said it was done. That was back in June 2010.

Fast forward five months. I wanted to look up an old post of mine, and whaddaya know, NOTHING is available online anymore... the blogdog domain doesn't even look taken... wtf??

Fast forward another month... All of a sudden, this is my inbox:
click to embiggen

Un-fucking-believable.

Earlier this morning I sent a polite message to support at both domains asking what was going on and to please fix it.

Now it looks like I need to escalate this to WordPress.

Ugh.

Any other ex-today.commers having this problem?

Foody Friday: the butternut squash edition!

Last month I noticed bags of fresh cranberries on sale, and impulsively grabbed one. Then weeks passed, and I still had no idea what to do with it. So I went a-huntin' for cranberry ideas, and found this Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake recipe that seemed simple enough for me. Once I prepared that, however, I ended up with quite a bit of leftover butternut squash, which I decided to make into "fries". I also decided to process the seeds. All in not just one day, but in one friggin' morning.

Procrastination *is* a wonderful thing, isn't it?

(butternut squash & seeds)

Here are the details:

1. Butternut Squash Apple Cranberry Bake
Pretty much followed the instructions, except, since I had so much of 'em, I used a whole cupful of cranberries LoL! It could probably do with a sprinkling of nuts; another improvement would be to dice the squash into much tinier pieces: the 1" chunks were a little too large and overpowering, and I tired of the taste really fast - Kosh ended up eating most of it.

2. Butternut Squash Fries
I thick-sliced the remaining squash into a mixing bowl, then poured a generous amount of oil over them and mixed to coat all surfaces. Then I liberally sprinkled ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg into the bowl and mixed 'em up again. Didn't need to spray the pan/foil because I'd been generous with the coating oil. Followed the instructions about turning them over twice, and putting the heat down at the last stage. This did not come out good at all, they were soggy, unappetizing. Shoulda puréed them and made a soup or something instead.

3. Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds
I was surprised: I got about a half cup of seeds from this one squash. Separating the seeds from the membranes was ... interesting: can you believe it actually strained my thumb a little? LoL!! I probably wouldn't have bothered with the seeds at all except that I'd already had the oven going for the previous two dishes, so why not just keep going? Waste not, want not, right? Thing is, just a few minutes after popping the tray of seeds into the uppermost rack of the oven, it sounded like I had some popcorn going in there ... the seeds were popping/exploding, and the shells were starting to litter the bottom of the oven! Yikes! So I took 'em out well before the minimum 10 minutes! Thankfully, they were nice and crunchy, and worth the mess in the oven :)

... so there you have it ... a cranberry adventure turned into a butternut squash excursion instead. Two out of three were edible - according to Meat Loaf, that ain't bad :)

Gobble gobble, foil and (apple) crumble...

... turkey turn and casserole bubble?



Here's wishing everyone in -- or of -- the USA a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!


(with apologies to William Shakespeare, LoL!)

Foody Friday Sunday: recycled meatloaf! (Part Two)

Last week I blogged about how I recycled some of my leftover meatloaf by wrapping biscuit dough around strips of the stuff. Today I'll share my other recycle strategy: QUICHE!

As always, a good place to start for getting proportions right is 1 Blog & 2 Sides' Quiche recipe that I discovered almost two years ago.

Here's what I did:

Warm up and unroll 1 deep dish unbaked pie shell. Place it in your pie dish. I have a nice glass one now, whee! Preheat the oven to 450F. Generously prick the bottom and sides of the crust with a fork. Place in heated oven for 6-8mins, to get the crust slightly cooked. Remove immediately, and let cool.

Reset oven to 350F.

Sprinkle bottom of the pie with some cheese.

Add a layer of well-drained diced tomatoes.

Sprinkle chopped fresh basil.

Add another thin layer of cheese.

Crumble leftover meatloaf into the pie.


In a separate bowl whisk together 6 eggs and 1 cup of half-and-half, and pour carefully over the pie contents (the portions this time were perfect! Filled to the rim without spilling!!). Sprinkle with the remaining cheese.


Pop it into the oven for about 45mins. The quiche was nice and puffy when I took it out, but soon fell once it cooled.

If you're not sure about doneness, you can use a toothpick, or stick a thermometer in there (mine shot up past 160F so fast I figured it was fine!).

Let it cool a little before gorging. It could have done with perhaps more egg/less half-and-half, but the excellent cheese mixture more than made up for any slight lack of egginess.


Bon appetit!

Here's a proper list of ingredients:

• 1 deep dish unbaked pie shell
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups grated cheese (I used Kraft's Italian Five Cheese with a touch of Philadelphia Cream Cheese creaminess)
• 1 can diced tomatoes (I used Ro-Tel's hot with habañeros)
• 3 leaves of fresh basil, chopped fine
• 1 thick slice of leftover meatloaf, crumbled

The beauty about such a dish is you can totally mix it up and chances are you can't go wrong. Just need to keep an eye on the volume so you won't overfill the pie. Gonna try this out? Take pix, blog about it, and come tell me in a comment here, k?

Have a great week ahead!

Foody Friday: recycled meatloaf! (Part One)

So last week I shared my latest meatloaf experiment. That was a lot of meatloaf, and I grew tired of it really fast, despite it being really pretty good! So by the time Wednesday rolled around, I knew we had to run through the rest of the leftovers quick!

Notice the thick vein of cheese in the meatloaf? Yummmmmmm!



Recycle #1: Meatloaf biscuits

1 can Pillsbury simply buttermilk biscuits (10 biscuits)
2 thick slices of leftover meatloaf, each cut into 5 strips

One at a time, flatten a biscuit to about a 6 inch diameter
Place the strip of meatloaf in the middle

Fold it up

Place seam down on an ungreased cookie tray (I always line with foil because I hate cleaning up burned stuff!), and cook as per the biscuit instructions (I think it was 350F for 20mins)

Verdict? Here I quote my hubby who finally tried some last night: "Oh my god babe these are GOOD!" :)

Part Two will feature Recycle #2: Spicy meatloaf & tomato quiche. I'm about to get cracking on that now. Will update either tomorrow or next week. Stay tuned!