Archive for April, 2010

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Congrats to 2010 Edgar Winners

The Egdar Award is given to authors each year by the Mystery Writers of America at their yearly Gala Banquet.

Here are the Edgar Award winners and runners-up/nominees for 2010:

My Favorite Books

I love books and I’m one of those who keeps their favorites around and re-reads them until the covers fall off (which reminds me, I need to get a new copy of Dragonsinger).

From my GoodReads Favorites shelf, here is a glorious montage of all of my favorite books; click a cover to view it’s full details:

This Book Is About

Viva Xoltotl!

Tenochtitlan, once known as Mexico City, is the hottest, most exciting city in the year 2045. Stainless steel pyramids pierce the sky. Aztec fundamentalists, with artificial hearts, worship the sun with blood and lasers. And Xólotl Zapata, renegade cartoonist, is running for his life.

Everyone is after Zapata: the government, the Mafia, street gangs, cults, and garbage collectors. Why? Because 21st century science has developed a virus that can “infect” any human mind with religion – and Zapata is the carrier!

Weekly Geeks 14 – Reading Globally

So, over at Weekly Geeks they’re tasking readers to talk about their experiences of Reading Globally.

Twilight of Sexism?

I’ve noticed that, despite all our social progress, we humans of America still have some odd double standards. And I think the young adult vampire romance series, Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer is prime proof of that. more »

Review: Skull Bunnies by Ben Seto

This Book Is About

On a walk in the woods Usagi Jane finds a strange object half-buried in the dirt. Curious, she digs it up and discovers that it’s a bunny skull. Sad to see just a skull, she builds a bunny body out of dirt and sets the skull on top. To her surprise, it comes to life and runs from her. She soon discovers more skull bunnies in the woods, but they run from her as well. How can Usagi Jane approach the timid skull bunnies? And will they ever accept her as a friend?

Graphic Novel Favorites

I really enjoy graphic novels. Here’s a montage of my favorite ones; click a cover to view it’s full details on GoodReads:

Original Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Online

I’m just brimming over with Alice in Wonderland geek joy! You can now read, online, the original manuscript complete with Lewis Carol’s hand drawn illustrations. This isn’t the first published edition, this is Carol’s original hand written and illustrated book. You can also listen to it using the Audio option.

Superhero Noir From Marvel

If you’ve ever played the superhero tabletop RPG Mutants & Masterminds’ Noir variant then you know that four-color superheros are really cool in a noir setting. It never occurred to me, though, to wonder what existing superheros comic characters would be like re-envisioned this way.

But it did occur to Marvel in 2008.

I tend to be more interested in small press and self-published titles. So I didn’t find out about Marvel’s Noir line until yesterday when I did an internet search for “historical fiction graphic novels” and found the trade for Spiderman Noir.

I think my squeal of geekly delight at the discovery must still be floating around in the ether somewhere.

All of Marvel’s dark new line are set in the grit and grime of 1930s America; Uncle Ben was murdered by mobsters, Jim Logan is a P.I. and ex-knife fighter, Daredevil’s a loyal assistant to shamus Foggy Nelson, and Xavier runs a reform school.

Viking Pudding Experiment

The book review for this week was Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and I figured the perfect article to accompany it would be one about Norse cooking. After reading my friend’s cooking blog, A Fools Taste, I decided making something to eat and writing about it would be much more interesting than researching. Tastier, too.

So, I started searching the internet for a recipe the Vikings could have used. And found a tasty one for a hazlenut pudding on House Barra’s page for Norse Foods.

That’s “pudding” in the European sense of a cake-esque kind of baked good (like bread pudding) and not the wiggly, sweet goo we American’s mean we talk about “pudding”.

The Recipe

This is the Wheat and Hazelnut recipe I found on the Norse Foods page of House Barra (an SCA group in North Carolina).

Cook 8 ounces of bulgur wheat according to package directions. Crush 8 ounces of shelled hazelnuts by placing them in a tea towel and pounding with a hammer. Toast in a medium oven until they start to brown. Beat three eggs with 1/2 cup sour cream and 2 cups milk. Add the bulgur wheat, hazelnuts and 1 cup of honey. Place in a large baking dish. Slice 3 ounces of butter and place on top of the mixture. Bake in a medium oven for about 1 hour. If it begins to look dry at any time, add more milk. For a richer dish, replace one cup of milk with heavy cream.

- Recipe researched and written by House Barra

What I Used

I went shopping at Henry’s, a grocery store that carry’s foods not common to big grocery stores and that has a lot of grains, beans, nuts, and candy’s you can buy by the pound.

Ingredients

1 cup medium coarse bulgur wheat
1 cup of crushed hazelnuts/filberts (took about four cups of whole, shelled filberts to make one cup of crushed nuts)
3 large brown eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups non-fat milk (I’d meant to get regular milk, but grabbed the wrong bottle at the store)
1 cup clover honey (I’d use just 1/2 cup next time I make it)

Crushing the Hazelnuts/Filberts

So, first of all, “hazelnut” and “filbert” are the same nut. Sometimes they’ve called one, sometimes the other, sometimes both. The ones I bought were labeled on the by-the-pound barrel as “Whole Hazelnut Filbert Nuts”.

The suggested method of crushing the nuts in the House Bara recipe was to put them in a towel and hit them with a hammer. I didn’t want to loose any hazelnut pieces to the towel, though, so I decided to use my new little fist-sized mortar and pestle to pound the filberts into a crushed state.

I quickly realized I had to hold one hand over the top of the mortar to keep the nut pieces from flying out. This made things very exciting since I couldn’t actually see what I was doing.

Thankfully, only the hazelnuts were hurt.

It took awhile, too, and I realized the virtue of the long, tall mortars I’ve seen pictures of; pieces can’t fly out of a mortar that’s tall like they can with a short one.

As an aside, seeing that the hazelnuts/filberts were pretty much $8.00 a pound I now appreciate what a princely gift it was when an obscure nut-farming relative mailed my family a small cardboard box filled with filberts.

What’s ‘Medium’ Oven?

The Norse recipe I found called for the pudding to be cooked in a ‘medium’ oven. I had to do another internet search for what temperature that means in a modern kitchen. I found that ‘medium’ translates to pretty much 350°.

Toasting

I noticed too late that I was supposed to toast the crushed hazelnuts before adding them to the bulgur wheat. So I ended up toasting BOTH the wheat and the nuts. It made it tasty. It took my oven about half an hour at 350°.

The Honey

With a whole cup of honey, though, it’s almost too sweet (at least, if you eat a large piece of it). I think next time I make it I’ll only use half a cup. That, or use a milder honey than clover. Maybe avocado honey. Mmm, that’s a nice mild honey that wouldn’t be too sweet with a full cup.

The honey pretty much sinks to the bottom of the pan, too, so it might be just as well to pour it into the pan first and spread it around before pouring in the rest of the mixture.

Proof In The Pudding

Bulgar Wheat and Hazelnut Pudding is YUMMY! Definitely a tasty Norse food.

All of the ingredients settle in layers based on how heavy they are, so the end result is layered. The heavy honey and bulgur wheat are on the bottom and the lighter eggs are in the middle and the nuts are on the top.

The course bulgur wheat takes some chewing, but not in a bad way. It just means that you take longer to eat a slice. The pieces of crushed hazelnut are little surprises as you get to them, too. It tastes like nutty honey.

I had slices for re-heated breakfast for about two weeks. But Viking What & Hazelnut Pudding is at its BEST, and softest, hot out of the oven.