Not So Famous Openers Quiz - The Answers

So, the not-so-famous opening lines are from:

1.  The Witching Hour, Anne Rice (Her early, creepy phase, but not bloody)
2.  The Chosen, Chaim Potok (A classic bildungsroman)
3.  The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett (A great historic novel with romance and mystery)
4.  The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton (One of the early bio-medical disaster novels)
5.  The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (A metaphor for how Africa has been used by so many, as well as a family saga of survival)
6.  Salem's Lot, Stephen King (An early vampire novel that is still one of the best of the genre)
7.  Snow in August, Pete Hamill (Another bildungsroman, but with golems, and where you ask yourself what really happened)

     Did you guess any of them?

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading any of the above, give them a try; they're just fun, past-paced, interesting reads. And while I am recommending, I highly recommend Chris Bohjalian's The Double Bind.  When I finished that book, I said outloud,  "What the heck just happened?"  And then I had to start to read it all over again.  You may want to re-read The Great Gatsby as a prequel, also, which is what my book club did.  It made a great tandem read.   

I'm currently reading Amy Waldman's The Submission.

Final Thanksgiving Thoughts

So is Thanksgiving really all about the turkey or is the stuffing what it's all about?  There are some who definitely feel it's the sides that count.  Next big question for T. Day is whether to go traditional or ethnic or innovate.  I always want tradition, but love to try something new.  Afterall, why purchase and read all of those Thanksgiving magazines which feature hundreds of recipes if you are never going to try them?  (And that is not counting the 22 separate emails Williams Sonoma has sent since 11/6/11!  That's more than 1 a day.)  

 The Big Problem is that we have to eliminate something traditional to be able to add something new (unless a small army is on your guest list).  This year we are not having apple pie for the first time in more years than I can remember.  I hope that Chococlate Chess Pecan Pie is worth it...

The Stuffing has not changed, thank goodness:  we make our own bread cubes from French baguettes and add sausage, chestnuts, onions, mushrooms, and celery.  Technically, I think, it is dressing because we stopped stuffing the turkey to cut down on roasting time.  

Sides will be old, green bean casserole and sweet potato/pineapple and marshmallow casserole; new, brussel sprouts with bacon confetti and roasted butternut squash with maple syrup and crumbled pecans. Mashed potatoes are eternal and ageless.    

Desserts are: Cranberry pound cake (made its debut last year) and Chocolate Chess Pecan Pie (replacing my fave Apple Pie) - and the old standby, Pumpkin Pie (yum).  Plenty of whipped cream.  Our crusts are always from my grandmother's homemade recipe. 

Drinks: A off-dry rose bubbly and/or a cabernet sauvignon will do nicely, as well as mulled apple cider. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE

Hockey Food

The Hockey Arena Food Situation

Hockey games usually start at 7:30.  So if you live about 30 -40 minutes from the arena, it poses a dilemma of eating dinner at home quite early or eating arena fare.

The ubiquitous hot dog (of all lengths) is there, dressed anyway you like it – all beef, some beef, no beef?  It’s cousin, the sausage, medium and mildly spicy, or sweet, is also there with or without onions and peppers. And how about those turkey legs?

 Did I mention beer: tall cans, small cans, bottles, mugs?

Nachos, appear frequently, too – though I just noticed a BBQ nachos cart, which I did not stop to oogle.  Seems an odd couple, if you ask me. Did I mention a tall one?

The freshly baked sweet pretzel cart disappeared from last year, replaced by “Philly”-type pretzels and sweet pretzels, not freshly baked but heated in a microwave and kept “hot” in a glass enclosed hangar, crusty and hard.

And, speaking of Philly, there are the Philly cheese steak carts, which dish out “Philly” look-alikes, but not taste-alikes.  Obviously they have never been to Philly or lived in Philly and tasted the real deal.  Did I mention light beer, ale, bottled beer, on tap beer?

Dippin’ Dots appear, also - that freeze-dried ice cream created for astronauts in the now defunct NASA manned space mission program.  Think of all the food treats they could have come up with in the future.  Though I must say I am glad Tang went the way of the dinosaurs.  (Okay, okay! I confess, I did think it was cool when I was a kid to drink something the astronauts drank, also.)  And there is its natural cousin nearby, soft serve ice cream, in glorious twisted Matterhorn shaped mounds in waffle cones, covered in chocolate syrup, sprinkles optional.  Did I mention beer? 

Popcorn abounds in bags and souvenir logo buckets, calorie laden, neon yellow color added, so salty it could be a  salt lick in disguise. A nickel’s worth of product sells for $6.50, just like in movie theaters. Would you like some beer?  How about a chaser of warmed up pizza or burgers and fries? Another beer anyone? There are serious signs on beer stations that there is a two drink limit per customer.  Ha!  With dozens of beer stations and thousands of people, who is going to enforce that?

And best of all, this week the up and down jumping, gum chewing perpetual motion machine in front of me was not with her husband.  He brought a male guest who stayed properly in his seat, except for exceptional plays when everyone else rose to their feet.  I got to see the goals! 

Let’s have a beer, y'all.

Not So Famous Opening Lines

The opening lines of a novel are Important.  It is that moment when a potential reader flips through your novel and either decides to buy in and read on, or puts it back on the shelf.  The opening lines of so many classics have become quite famous and I am not going to repeat them here. 

But here are a few opening lines from some very big bestsellers that are also some of my favorite novels.  Can you guess the novel?  

Send in your guesses via the comments.  No prizes, no bells or whistles, no standing ovation, no ribbons - just bragging rights if you guess all or any of them -- okay, okay, here's a little confetti .

 

Not So Famous Opening Lines

1.    The doctor woke up afraid.  He had been dreaming of the old house in New Orleans again.  He had seen the woman in the rocker.  He’d seen the man with the brown eyes.

2.     For the first fifteen years of our lives, Danny and I lived within five blocks of each other and neither of us knew of the other’s existence.

3.      The small boys came early to the hanging.  It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots.  A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a coat of new paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface.

4.     A man with binoculars.  That is how it began: with a man standing by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town, on a winter night.

5.      Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.  First, picture the forest.  I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees.  The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason.  

6.      Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son.  They crossed the country on a rambling southwest line in an old Citroen sedan, keeping mostly to secondary roads, traveling in fits and starts. 

7.      Once upon a cold and luminous Saturday morning, in an urban hamlet of tenements, factories, and trolley cars on the western slopes of the borough of Brooklyn, a boy named Michael Devlin woke in the dark.

Answers will be posted soon. 

Book Blurbs

So, if you are an avid reader, you also, most likely, read the book blurbs in ads on a regular basis. And, I assume, you notice that the authors who write the blurbs have long ago run out of words to describe the books they are reviewing. 

New Rule:  Authors and book reviewers can no longer use the following words...
1.  "instant classic" - I mean, classic means enduring, historically memorable, right?  How can anything instant be a classic? Isn't this an oxymoron? Besides, how many instant classics can we have in a season?
     a. "instant bestseller" - Though publishers want us to get on this bandwagon quickly, I think this description is a bit of wishful thinking.

2.  "If you only read one book ..." -  They use this one to recommend the most obscure books. (Kind of like the recent Nobel winners for Literature.  It doesn't get any more obscure than that, does it?)  And who's really going to read only one book?

3.  "Riveting" (Also, spellbinding, mesmerizing, gripping) - These words are often used in the "thriller" category and when I see them, I don't shiver. News Flash: There's going to be a macho hero (and lately a macho heroine), stilted dialogue, subterfuge, a little mayhem, a little lovemaking, and a terrific windup to the finale.  In the end, we're usually not surprised.  Mesmerizing indeed.
     a.  Sometimes riveting, et al, is used for historical books as well when they want you to think you are going to enjoy the book as much as a work of fiction.  It usually applies to very long books that the editor could not convince the author to pare down.

4.  "crafted" - Crafted means to make or produce with care.  So, I don't care whether it's finely crafted, well-crafted, beautifully crafted, or any other kind of crafted - unless it's a basket or a woven rug.   What's wrong with using "written"?  We're talking words on a page or a screen, people, not objects created out of granite or wood or steel. (I know, I know, writing is often called a craft; but is it really?)

5.  "epic" -  The Odyssey, Beowulf, the Iliad, and Don Quixote - classic epics - have morphed into Superman, John Blackthorne, John McClane,  Harry Potter.  When the word epic is used we are going to get a hero who goes on a quest, faces adversaries, returns home having learned something Important. (Like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet). Very often the hero has a heroine whom he rescues (sometimes she rescues him) and they live happily ever after - or not. Oh, yes, some important characters are going to die along the way, too.  Enter the Kleenex.

  I've got a few more forbidden words I'll dish on later, like heartbreaking, chilling, and page-turner.
I just hope you found this post to be a finely crafted, mesmerizing, instant classic.

Pumpkin Iron Chef

So, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, we are faced with a Major Pumpkin Dillemma: Leftovers.  We can't let them just sit in all those lots and vegetable stands unused.  Pumpkin pies are ubiquitous, of course.  So what to do with those leftovers?  How about pumpkin brulee?  Pumpkin breads with chocolate chips are a family favorite.  Pumpkin muffins?  How about sweet pumpkin butter?  Roasted pumpkin seeds, too, are very common.  Many countries, like Argentina, make a delicious native meat stew in a pumpkin, including beef cubes, peaches, ears of corn, tomatoes, potatoes.  In Argentina it is called carbonada criolla.  Can we dry pumpkin?  Dehydrate it?  Are there pumpkin candies?  Crystalized pumpkin?  Chocolate covered pumpkin?  How about pumpkin jerky?  Pumpkin smoothies?  Saw a recipe recently for a pumpkin bread pudding served in very small pumpkins.  How about shaved pumpkin gratinees (ices)?  Pumpkin ice cream?   Pumpkin face mask...exfoliant...eye mask?   

Spices you can use: cinnamon - of course - cardamom, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, salt and pepper, cumin, smoked paprika,  brown sugar, turbinado sugar, basil, thyme

Add-ins:  Caramelized onions, sausage, chorizo,  chocolate chips, macadamia nuts, pecans,  apples, pears, dates, figs and, if you have to - marshmallows. 

Liquids:  Cream, milk, broth, bourbon, rum?  orange liquer?  maple syrup?  orange juice? 

Have I tried any of this stuff?  Other than pies and breads - no - but perhaps I'd better get started inventing...  What would an Iron Chef do?   Ideas welcome. 

Manolos

Took off with friends last night in search of a restaurant which had been recommended, but I couldn't remember the name, exactly where it was located, or what type of food it served.  Just knew it was on Tarpon Ave. Turns out we found it quite easily: Tarpon Springs is just not that big and anything east of Alternate 19 is actually away from the main restaurant drag.  It serves "Mediterranean" food, one special corner of the menu reserved for Spanish food.  Manolos is the name of the place and the chef/owner.

Manolo himself greeted us and he pushed the wine quite heavily;  since wines are a very BIG profit center, I can understand why.  He even brought a glass of white sangria for my husband to try.  I found it too bubbly and too sweet.  We stuck to water and his disappointment was palpable.

He brought a basket of bread that was more like an instant bread rather than a traditional yeast bread and the ubiquitous olive oil with spices.  When someone asked him for butter instead, we got a little lecture about how butter was an inferior product.  And that, BTW, he did not serve coffee Americano, either, only espresso or cafe con leche or cappucino. 

I ordered the Churrasco (skirt steak), grilled medium, with chimmichuri sauce.  It came medium rare, and heavily charred, swimming in well seasoned chimmichuri sauce, sitting around a bunch of spinach and sitting on top of four sliced, roasted potatoes.  It was very tender.  When the chef/owner came  by to see how we liked our food, he asked how my steak was and when I said good, he immediately asked if he could cook it a bit more.  He knew it was too rare.  When he took the plate away, he said, "Perfect color."  But for me, it wasn't "perfect."

Two people ordered the Zarzuela de Mariscos (seafood stew) served on a bed of linguine, which they both pronounced excellent.  Shrimp, scallops, squid, snapper, clams and mussels sauteed in a tomato, saffron and lobbster sofrito.  The menu says it is served over rice, but the owner told us it would take 35 to 45 minutes if it came over rice because he did not have precooked rice.  It could be served, instead, over the linguine.  Since we were not ordering appetizers, they opted for the linguine.  It looked and tasted beautiful.  And one person ordered the Pargo a la Sidra (red snapper), which came in a very tasty broth of apple cider, yellow onions, cilantro, and lemon juice.  It also sat on roasted potato slices.  The broth was excellent and delicate.  There were a few tiny bones, though.  Dinners came with a very small Caesar salad. 

Dessert offerings consisted of two items: tres leches cake and chocolate cake which he said were his own family recipes and made right there, so we ordered one of each.  They came our with four spoons on each plate.  (And with the spoons for our coffees, we suddenly had 10 spoons on the table at the end of the meal!) The tres leche cake was extremely sweet, but very moist and spiced up with a sprinkle of cinnamon.  The chocolate cake filling was a bit too gummy for me and did not have a deep enough chocolate flavor for me.  In the future, I will avoid both.

Coffee was good and hot, though I did get a cappucino even though I ordered cafe con leche. 

The place had been open for a little over a year, but there were not many diners the night we were there.  It was a long and narrow place and our tables were smack up against a very rough brick wall.  So close that when I sat down, I scraped my knuckle. There was additional seating upstairs.  Only one table would be able to accommodate six people on the first floor.  I'm not sure about upstairs.  Prices were moderate.

Verdict:  We would definitely go back.  I would not order my skirt steak again because the char was too heavy for me and the dish sat in too much oil. I would not order the desserts.  But I would try some of the other interesting main dishes, most of which were Italian, and not Spanish in nature. 

All in all, it was a non-chain place I would return to at least once more.  But the owner could back-off a little.

The Walkers

Did you ever notice those sneaky dog walkers in your neighborhood?

They proudly and prominently tie plastic grocery store bags onto the leash.  They walk slowly, nod ever-so-pleasantly to you as you pass by, maybe raising the leash a little so you are sure to notice the bag tied there as the dog stops to do its business.  But if you walk past and then very quickly turn around, you will see the dog's business on the lawn and the plastic bag is still tied to the leash!

They walk in tandem, matching their pace to one another, smartly dressed in almost-but-not-quite-matching jogging outfits.  They could grace the next L.L.Bean cover. They loom large on the sidewalk as you approach.  You wonder which one of them is going to go in front of the other to let you pass by.  Should I feint left or right?  You get closer.  They are not moving.  "I am not going to give up my space for them.  I am not going to move.  One of them is going to have to give way.  I WILL NOT MOVE." I jump off into the street to avoid a collision.  

There is that runner, too.  Fast, sweaty, really sweaty,  and very skinny.  An unhealthy skinny.  She is older, hair tucked into a baseball cap, wearing a tight runner's bra and biking shorts.  Very tan, very wrinkled skin.  She holds a bottle of water as she whizzes by. 

There are the walking mommies - pushing strollers and chatting, looking at their newly done nails, texting, laughing, patting the child for a minute. No sweat there!

Me?  I amble, listening to books on tape, wearing baggy clothing and a funky hat, thrilled I can get to the end of my walk without passing out. 

Premature Thanksgiving-itis

It's only early November and already I am thinking turkey and pumpkin.  Maybe I should have a pre-Thanksgiving dinner, just to taste test all the other recipes I won't make on Thanksgiving?  Perhaps instead of that oldie but goodie - sweet potatoe casserole with crushed pineapple and marshmallows I'll try something more sophisticated? How about pecan praline and bourbon sweet potatoes? (Extra on the bourbon.)

Why, really, does the table have to have anything green on it at all, I wonder?  Is it to assuage our guilt?  I'm in favor of an all protein and carb dinner, though the other long-standing traditional casserole (green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and Durkee French fried onions) is still a fave with everyone.  But wouldn't garlic roasted brussel sprouts taste wonderful, too?

Desserts are dominated by pies: apple, cherry, pumpkin, pecan-sometimes, but last year we snuck in a cranberry pound cake which was fab.  Once we ran out of pie plates and made our pumpkin pie in an 8 x 8 square!  (Not easy to cut, I must say.)  Does the absence of chocolate not bother anyone?  How about a chocolate-pecan chess pie?

And we could have stuffing three-ways:  sausage, apple, chestnut; spicy corn bread; wild rice...hmmm --

Now, that's a new tradition I could live with.  I'd better get cooking.