kidzdoc Reads Globally in 2015: Part 5

A quote from Malcolm X, who was murdered 50 years ago on February 21, 1965.




Currently reading:

    

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry

Completed books: (TBR = book acquired prior to 1/1/14)

January:
1. Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers (TBR) (review)
2. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (TBR) (review)
3. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (TBR)
4. A Distant Father by Antonio Skármeta
5. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
6. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh (TBR)

February:
7. In the City By the Sea by Kamila Shamsie (TBR)
8. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore
9. I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar
10 Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy by Darryl Pinckney

March:

Books purchased or received in 2015:

January:
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
2. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
3. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (11 Jan, Kindle e-book)
4. A Useless Man: Selected Stories by Sait Faik Abasiyanik (12 Jan, Archipelago Books subscription)
5. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore (20 Jan, LT Early Reviewers book)
6. DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews, edited and compiled by Frank Alkyer and Ed Enright (20 Jan, free book as part of 2015 DownBeat subscription)

February:

2015 Reading Globally Themes and possible reads from my TBR collection:

First quarter: Indian subcontinent



Aravind Adiga, Between the Assassinations
Tariq Ali, Night of the Golden Butterfly
Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age
Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
G.V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr
Roopa Farooki, Bitter Sweets
Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide
Intizar Husain, Basti
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Uday Prakash, The Girl with the Golden Parasol
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Kamila Shamsie, In the City By the Sea

Second quarter: Iberian peninsula



António Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned
António Lobo Antunes, Fado Alexandrino
António Lobo Antunes, The Land at the End of the World
Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
Juan Goytisolo, Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya
Juan Goytisolo, The Marx Family Saga
Almudena Grandes, The Frozen Heart
Carmen Laforet, Nada
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic
Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring
Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda
José Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
José Saramago, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
Llorenç Villalonga, The Dolls' Room
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game

Third quarter: Nobel Prize winners writing not in English

  

Knut Hamsun (1920), Hunger
Thomas Mann (1929), Death in Venice
Halldór Laxness (1955), Independent People
Albert Camus (1957), The First Man; Exile and the Kingdom
Ivo Andrić (1961), The Bridge on the Drina
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Nausea
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), The President
Yasunari Kawabata (1968), Beauty and Sadness
Pablo Neruda (1971), The Essential Neruda; Canto General
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Collected Stories, Volume 1
Gabriel García Márquez (1982), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Of Love and Other Demons; The Autumn of the Patriarch
Claude Simon (1985), The Trolley
Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Midaq Alley; Rhadopis of Nubia
Octavio Paz (1990), The Labyrinth of Solitude; In Light of India
Kenzaburō Ōe (1994), The Changeling
José Saramago (1998), Raised from the Ground; Baltasar and Blimunda; The History of the Siege of Lisbon; Manual of Painting and Calligraphy; Journey to Portugal
Günter Grass (1999), The Tin Drum
Gao Xingjian (2000), One Man's Bible; Soul Mountain
Orhan Pamuk (2006), Snow; My Name Is Red; The Museum of Innocence; Other Colors
J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008), Terra Amata; The Giants; War; Fever; The Book of Flights; The Flood
Herta Müller (2009), The Land of Green Plums
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010), Captain Pantoja and the Special Service; The Green House; The Way to Paradise; The Bad Girl; The Dream of the Celt
Mo Yan (2012), Life and Death are Wearing Me Out; The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine

Fourth quarter: Women writing not in English

  

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins; She Came to Stay
Assia Djebar, Algerian White; Children of the New World; The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry
Diamela Eltit, E. Luminata
Annie Ernaux, Cleaned Out
Sylvie Germain, The Song of False Lovers
Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat
Miral al-Tahawy, Brooklyn Heights
Delphine de Vigan, No and Me

2015 American Author Challenge

  

January: Carson McCullers, Clock Without Hands
February: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
March: Richard Ford, Independence Day
April: Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
May: Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
June: Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
July: Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
August: Larry McMurtry William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
September: Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories
October: Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
November: Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior
December: E.L. Doctorow, The March

2015 British Author Challenge



January: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
January: Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
February: Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
February: Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
March: Daphne Du Maurier, ?Rebecca
March: China Miéville, The City & the City
April: Angela Carter, ?Nights at the Circus
April: W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
May: Margaret Drabble, ?The Radiant Way
May: Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest
June: Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie
June: Anthony Burgess, ?Earthly Powers
July: Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out
July: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
August: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
August: Graham Greene, The Quiet American
September: Andrea Levy, Fruit of the Lemon
September: Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
October: Helen Dunmore, The Siege
October: David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
November: Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent
November: William Boyd, An Ice-Cream War
December: Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
December: P.G. Wodehouse, Love Among the Chickens

Books about Medicine:

TBR Books to Read in 2014 2015:



Tomes (500 pages or more):
      Nicole Barker, Darkmans
      Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins
      Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
      Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
      Ralph Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting...
      Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
      David Grossman, To the End of the Land
      Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name
      George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
      A.J. Liebling, Just Enough Liebling
      David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography
      Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
      Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
      Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
      Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul
      Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
      William Trevor, Selected Stories
      Patrick White, The Vivisector

Non-tomes (less than 500 pages):
      Stuart Altman and David Shactman, Power, Politics and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle
      Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
      Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
      Amiri Baraka, Tales of the Out & the Gone
      Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
      Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
      Jean Echenoz, I'm Off and One Year
      Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
      Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
      Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
      Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake
      Juan Eslava Galan, The Mule
      Jerry Gentry, Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital
      Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
      Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
      Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
      Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
      Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine
      Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
      Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One
      Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
      David A. Mendel, Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and their Doctors
      Simon Mawer, Mendel's Dwarf
      Claire McCarthy, Everyone's Children: A Pediatrician's Story of an Inner City Practice
      Ian McEwan, Atonement
      Andrew Miller, Pure
      Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
      Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
      Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
      Laura Katz Olson, The Politics of Medicaid: Stakeholders and Welfare Medicine
      Brian Orr, MD, A Pediatrician's Journal: Caring for Children in a Broken Medical System
      Orhan Pamuk, Snow
      Roy Porter, Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Lunatics
      Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
      Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir
      Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House
      Richard Wright, Black Boy

Literature from the African diaspora:

Nonfiction from the African diaspora:
Wes Moore, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters
Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped

Planned reads for February:

Sait Faik Abasiyanik, A Useless Man
Frankétienne, Ready to Burst
Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Authority in American Medicine
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Marlon James, A History of Seven Killings
Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Wes Moore, The Work: My Search for A Life That Matters
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Kamila Shamsie, In the City By the Sea
Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests

Hmm...safe? Or is my presence going to thoroughly interfere with your lists and irritate you ;). If that's not a good enough reason to post a message, I don't know what is!

Happy new thread, Darryl.

>10 lunacat: You're safe, Jenny! Congratulations on being first.

>11 BLBera: Thanks, Beth!

Happy new thread, Darryl! Glad to see you have emerged from the crazy busy week in one piece. :)

Wow, that's quite a thread-header!

In reading the recipe for the Carrot Ginger Soup from the previous post, I couldn't find fennel mentioned in the ingredients list. How much was to be in the soup? Or better yet, just let me know where you got the recipe. Was this one from GoNOLA?

>1 kidzdoc: Malcolm X, who was murdered 50 years ago today on February 21, 1965
Hm. 50 years is a big deal.

Happy New Thread, Darryl!

>13 jolerie: Thanks, Valerie! I'm glad to put that work stretch behind me, and I look forward to the vacation free month off from work that I'll earn as a reward.

>14 drneutron: Malcolm X was a complex and flawed but inspirational man, who was misunderstood by many, within and outside of the black community, but his legacy has outlived him, especially his statements toward the end of his life when he turned away from his harsh separatist rhetoric and embraced the teachings of Islam and love for one's fellow man. Unfortunately that change in his stance also cost him his life.

>15 benitastrnad: You're right, Benita. I copied and pasted the recipe from the GoNOLA.com web site, and there was no mention of fennel in the list of ingredients. I posted a hyperlink to the web site, but here it is without the hyperlink:

http://www.gonola.com/2015/01/25/gonola-recipes-at-home-carrot-ginger-soup.html

>16 qebo: Definitely so, Katherine. I knew that Malcolm was assassinated in 1965, but it was only today that I realized that this day was the 50th anniversary of his death.

>17 tymfos: Thanks, Terri!

Happy new thread, Darryl and enjoy your time off work.

Happy New Thread.

Like the top quote; it also reminded me that I have his autobiography here to read.

Happy New Thread, Darryl. It's good to hear you have had a few days off work.

That carrot ginger soup looks delicious. We might try it and leave the cauliflower soup alone. Peet made zucchini soup yesterday. It looks awful (very green) but it tasted delicious.

I woke up just after 4 am after I had a long dream. From what I could understand, hackers had managed to disrupt the entire personal banking system in the US, and as a result the dollar was completely worthless. The country was in a state of chaos: buses and trains wouldn't stop to pick up passengers unless they gave the operators jewelry or other valuables as fares, gas stations were closed and most cars were out of gas, homes were being looted left and right, and citizens were fighting with each other in the streets. I was observing the action with my mother as she drove her massive 1970s station wagon, which seemed to be one of the few private vehicles that had gas. Weird!

Sunday is my usual day to go grocery shopping and cook for the week. Since I'm off from work tomorrow I'll go then, as I have plenty of leftovers from the last two weeks, and because three of the meals I'm thinking of making require alcoholic beverages (white wine for crawfish étouffée, Negro Modelo beer for Emeril Lagasse's New Orleans slow cooker chili, and Guinness beer for Caroline's Irish lamb stew), which I can't purchase before 12:30 pm on Sundays in Atlanta. It's supposed to rain nearly all day here, so it isn't a good day to be outside anyway. It should be a great reading day, though.

>19 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara! I'm already enjoying the thought of not having to go to work on Monday.

>20 avidmom: Thanks, Susie. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in high school, so I'm long overdue for a re-read of it.

I need to catch up on my Club Read thread; I don't think I've posted anything there in at least two weeks. I'll do that later today.

>21 connie53: Thanks, Connie. I love Sunday mornings and early afternoons, but by the late afternoon my thoughts are filled with returning to work on Monday. I do like my job, but it's even nicer to be able to stay home on the first day of the week.

The carrot ginger soup turned out better than I thought it would. I think I'll post the recipe again in a subsequent message, since it appeared at the end of my previous thread.

ETA: Do you have a recipe for Peet's zucchini soup?

I'm an oddball. I love raw and cooked cauliflower (whether by itself, covered with cheese, roasted, or in a soup or stew), but the puréed cauliflower soup tasted awful. On the other hand, I love raw carrots, puréed carrots in soup, and carrot juice (yum!), but I dislike cooked carrots by themselves, although I'll tolerate small amounts of them in stews (I don't like mixed vegetables or American vegetable stews). And, I love zucchini, but I dislike yellow squash.

Here's the recipe for carrot ginger soup from GoNOLA.com again (click on the bolded hyperlink below to go to the web site):



Carrot Ginger Soup

Ingredients:

2 pounds carrots
1 thumb-size piece of ginger root
About 7 oz. of coconut milk
2 -2.5 pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
Lemon zest to taste
Salt to taste
Black sesame seeds or freshly cracked pepper for garnish

Recipe:

In a saucepan, boil the carrots and ginger in water for about 20 minutes. Drain, reserving the water, then puree the carrots and ginger. Combine with the reserved cooking water and coconut milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Add the shrimp and fennel. Cook for about 6 minutes, or until the shrimp are cooked through. Turn off the heat, and add the lemon zest and salt. To serve, garnish with sesame seeds or black pepper.
________________________________________

This turned out very well, and the addition of the shrimp made for a very filling one course meal. I couldn't find the zester that I bought recently, so I added lemon juice to the mix. This soup was a perfect choice for a cold and damp day, and I'll add this recipe to my list of favorites.

Back to >15 benitastrnad:: Benita, one of the members of Club Read asked me the same question about the fennel in the carrot ginger soup. I decided to look it up, and here was my reply to Liz:

"Liz, the recipe on the GoNOLA.com web site didn't include fennel in the list of ingredients, so I used fennel seeds. That web page does mention that the recipe comes from John Boutte, a local musician and actor, and I was able to find a web site from WWOZ that has the recipe, which calls for 2 teaspoons of fresh fennel fronds (can you say that three times fast?).

http://www.wwoz.org/new-orleans-community/food/recipes/carrot-ginger-coconut-shr..."

Congrats on the new thread, Darryl. Like that quote up top. Carrot ginger soup sounds like a good one for this time of year. Hope you enjoy the breather from your tough recent schedule. Debbi and I are shaping up our plans for the September trip to London, and I'll let you know soon.

Happy New Thread, Darryl!

>25 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. That soup was perfect for a cold, damp day, and it's a great example of the type of food I like, with its complex and unique combination of flavors and textures. I'll gladly eat hot soups and stews in the spring and summer months, so I'll definitely make this again in the near future.

ETA: Hmm...that soup might taste good served cold as well. I'll give it a try and let y'all know how I like it.

I look forward to your September plans for London. That is typically when I go there, so hopefully our dates can overlap. I'll probably make my first trip there in June, as I'll request it as my vacation free month off from work.

>26 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! I hope that you have a nice Sunday planned with Tomm and Charlie.

Happy Sunday, Darryl! Happy New thread. Looking forward to your final thoughts on A Brief History of Seven Killings. That one sounds so good.

I might join you on reread of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It's probably been over 20 years since I read it but it remains one of the best memoir/bios that I have ever read. There was another Malcolm X bio out a few years ago, that received glowing reviews.

>29 msf59: Happy Sunday to you to, Mark! I won't finish A Brief History of Seven Killings until next month, as I've barely started reading it.

I agree with you about The Autobiography of Malcolm X, even though it's been at least 35 years since I read it. Let me know when a good time is for you, as long as it isn't before April or after October, and I'll plan to join you in re-reading it.

I read the biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable in 2013, and I enjoyed it and would highly recommend it.

The author and civil rights activist Anne Moody died on February 5th at the age of 74, which was reported in today's edition of The New York Times. She was born in poverty in rural Mississippi in 1940, and cleaned the houses of white families in order to support her family. She attended Tougaloo College, a history black college just outside of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s, and while there she became active in the civil rights movement, which included the famous attempt to desegregate a Woolworth's department store alongside John Salter, a Tougaloo College professor, and Joan Trumpauer, one of the first white students to attend Tougaloo. All three can be seen in the photo below:



Moody was best known for her 1968 memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi, which described her early years growing up in the Jim Crow Deep South and her involvement in the civil rights movement.

>22 kidzdoc:, >29 msf59: The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I read this in 6th grade, not as a class but individually when we had to write a book report, and I plucked it off the shelf in the living room. Why it caught my eye I don’t know; I had no concept of the politics at the time. I might tag along on a reread.

>32 qebo: That's impressive that you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in sixth grade, Katherine. I'll have to go through my old books to see if I have my copy, which I remember that I bought after the television series Roots was aired, as my cover mentioned that Alex Haley was the author of the book that the series was based on.

Booking my seat in the new thread before having caught up on the old one. Yours was the only thread I couldn't read on my smartphone last week because it always gave me a warning when I tried to open it. My ipad and notebook never had that problem. Quite strange.. Maybe one of the recipe links.

Your carrot ginger soup sounds much like the one I often make, but mine has cilantro and no coconut milk. I'll add some coconut milk next time, I'm sure it will be a great addition and bring out the sweetness of the carrots even better.

While your dream sounds fascinating I prefer not to think about it too much, it's almost too realistic. :)

Nice new thread! The carrot ginger soup looks yummy. I might try it without the shrimp while it's still soup weather. (Assuming it ever thaws enough for me to get to the grocery store again.)

>33 kidzdoc: Don’t be too impressed. My favorite book at the time was the more age-appropriate Harriet the Spy.

>34 Deern: Hi, Nathalie! Hmm, I wonder if anyone else had that same problem with my thread. I'll use my Android personal smartphone and my work iPhone, to see if I have the same problem. Let's see...no, I don't have that problem with the Firefox or the installed browsers on my Samsung smartphone, or with Safari on my iPhone.

The carrot ginger soup tasted great, and I suspect that it will taste even better after the flavors blend together in the refrigerator. On that note, I had a bowl of the shrimp étoufée that I made last weekend for lunch today, and as Heather said it does taste considerably better than it did when I originally made it (and it tasted good then). I'm tempted to have it again for dinner.

That dream was one of my typical ones, which are close enough to reality to make me pause and think about them if I wake up and remember them. Why is it that some dreams stay with you, but others quickly disappear like a cloud of smoke?

>35 cbl_tn: Thanks, Carrie! It's always soup weather in this thread, but there are definitely days when it especially hits the spot, like today. My brother got on my case earlier today on Facebook, when he described me as a Soup Robot to one of our cousins for making soups and stews seemingly nonstop lately.

>36 qebo: Over 4000 LTers own Harriet the Spy, and the average rating is just over 4 stars, so you had good taste in age appropriate books in sixth grade, Katherine. I can't remember what I read back then, so count me as still impressed.

My dreams tend to stay with me for a long time - I think the one I remember most is from when I was recovering from a period of an induced sedation/ventilation. Who knows why anyone (ie Michael Jackson) would choose to take propofol.....the recovery was awful!

I can still feel what the dream induced in me, smell the things within it and get sucker punched by the emotion. All very odd, and not an experience I ever want to have again. I'll stick to my 'normal' dreams that last a month or two.

I hope the dream doesn't stick around if you don't want it to.

>38 lunacat: I've had propofol twice, Jenny, when I was put under conscious sedation for a colonoscopy two years ago and an upper endoscopy last year. Both times it put me to sleep before I knew it, and I woke up utterly refreshed and in a great mood. If it had that effect on Michael Jackson I can understand why he would want to take it!

That dream wasn't a disturbing one, so I didn't mind it. It seemed to go on for hours, as I think I woke up a couple of times last night, but then went right back into that same dream. My worst dreams involve something bad happening to a loved one (father struck by lightning, mother falling and smacking her head on a concrete sidewalk), or to me (Cujo like dog jumping from the back of a pickup truck into my open convertible, building being engulfed by a tsunami wave). Those dreams wake me up and keep me awake for hours.

This morning's dream did feature one recurring though not worrisome element, which is a seemingly endless ride on an ancient subway train that doesn't go where I want it to. As a result I keep having to change trains, and I always seem to miss the one that will directly take me to my final destination. I'd love to see what a dream analyst would make of that bizarro theme.

>39 kidzdoc: I'll take your propofol experience over mine please!

It could have been the anti-seizure meds I was also on. Or maybe that I was under for 6 days. Either way, I'd rather not experience it again.

I'd wake up very annoyed by your subway dream. Although not particularly surprised as it sounds just the kind of thing that would happen to me in real life.

Sad about Ann Moody - I loved her memoir.

>31 kidzdoc: wow, that image of the people at the lunch counter is very powerful. It says so much about the time, the place and all the societal issues surrounding the event. I wonder what those white people are like now, and what they think about their part in it all.

And look what I found at the Amberley Markets the other day!


The guy said he was pretty sure that he was one of the only producers of such a sausage in the South Island. Hmm, now what will I do with it?? As if we all dont know it will form the best part of a Cajun Jambalaya!!

> 22 >39 kidzdoc: What on earth have you been reading to invoke such a dream?!!

Well there's a wiki page for interpreting that dream: http://www.wikihow.com/Interpret-a-Dream-Involving-Journeys

For years after we moved into this house I had a recurring dream that there was a hidden upper story to the house where there were people living their lives unbeknownst to us.

Happy new thread Darryl! That's a good quote of Malcolm X. I plan on reading his autobiography right after I finish Quiet - though I'm reading so many books I don't know how long that will take!

>22 kidzdoc: It is funny mate as I had a long and complicated dream myself last night. I was back in college and at what seemed like a North American institution in a group of three trying to complete a complex assignment and disturbed because the three of us were all lusting after young ladies we had eyed in the faculty. Unfortunately Hani woke up with her snoring before any consumation took place amid my slumbers.

Book #8: The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore



My rating:

I finished this book last night, which was my LT Early Reviewers book for December. The author's previous book, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, described his experiences growing up in a single family in a troubled Baltimore neighborhood, and compared his life to another African American young man with the same name who lived nearby. The author found success, whereas his subject was incarcerated for murder.

In his new book, Moore looks back on his impressive life as a Rhodes scholar, an investment banker in London and New York, a U.S. Army officer with the 82nd Airborne fighting in Afghanistan, and a White House fellow. Despite his enviable career, he struggles to find meaning in his work, and he looks to the experiences of past mentors and current friends and colleagues on his journey toward personal fulfillment, as he shares the lessons he has learned along the way.

Despite my somewhat similar but far less interesting path to find this book didn't resonate within me, similar to the self-help books that I read before I chose to pursue a career in medicine. I suspect that other readers will find The Work much more rewarding than I did, though, and the author's own story is an interesting and inspirational one, so I would recommend this well written book to readers at a personal crossroad, or young people who are at the start of their careers or in the process of discovering what they want to accomplish in life.

So glad you've managed to start reading again Darryl, after your busy week! Hope the next book is a better one though.

I have to tell you that having thanked you for sharing the Dali photo in your last thread, I've now seen a print of it for real. It was included in a photography exhibition at the Science Museum that I went to last weekend. I did think of you when I spotted it!

I'm probably going to try the parsnip risotto recipe that you posted on facebook sometime this week. I have a bunch of spinach to use up so I'm substituting that for the kale and should end up with some left overs to take to work for lunches.

I hope this is a good week for you and that you get time to rest and relax after all your hard work recently. And I hope your parents are feeling better soon so you can reschedule your visit.

>40 lunacat: Yes, your experience with propofol sounds hideous, Jenny. I hope that you don't have to go through that anytime soon.

We routinely use propofol in the hospital to provide conscious sedation for children needing to have procedures performed, such as a lumbar puncture, or who need to stay still for a CT scan or MRI. When used properly it has an excellent safety profile, with rapid onset and offset (the time it takes to go from being awake to sedated, and vice versa). I can't prescribe it to my patients, although I have had it prescribed to them by an emergency medicine physician if I needed a larger child to be sedated for me to perform a lumbar puncture.

The first time I had it I was getting a colonoscopy by my parents' friendly and entertaining gastroenterologist, who had heard from them about me and was asking me about hospital medicine. The anesthesiologist was also chatting with me, and I noticed that a milky substance was being administered through the peripheral IV in my hand. I asked him if it was propofol, and he said yes. I was in the process of telling him that we used it in our patients -- and the next thing I knew I was in the recovery suite, waking up from literally the best sleep I had ever had. I was still a bit groggy, and I started to resume my conversation, but the nurse who was at my bedside told me that I was finished.

The second time I received it, from the same anesthesiologist, I was determined to see how long I could stay awake before I went under. That lasted about five seconds at most, and I had the same experience of waking up blissfully, although that time I realized that I was finished with the EGD (esophagogastroduodenoscopy). Being put to sleep with propofol was literally like something from a cartoon or a Benny Hill-like comedy show, in which a guy gets bopped on the head with a blunt object and immediately passes out.

The subway dream is more confusing than frustrating or annoying, as I keep missing trains, getting off at the wrong stop, or going round and round in a loop.

>41 BLBera: I haven't read Coming of Age in Mississippi to my knowledge, unless I did so when I was in grade school. I'll be on the lookout for it.

>42 LovingLit: I'd love to know that too, Megan. That scene took place in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, when I would have been two years old, and it's jarring to think that things like this happened in my lifetime. I grew up just across the Hudson River from NYC, in Jersey City, New Jersey, and I and my parents could have had lunch in a Woolworth's or similar store in Newark or NYC alongside whites without anyone blinking an eye in that year. I didn't make my first trip to the South until 1978, when Jim Crow laws and informal segregation practices were only a distant memory, so I can't directly relate to experiences such as this one and others.

Despite its shameful past I find the Deep South and its people to be considerably less racist than people who live in more northern states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. The white families I meet in the hospital, even ones from rural and isolated areas, are genuine, welcoming and appreciative, and I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who was unfriendly or disrespectful to me based on my skin color. Unfortunately some people from small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia were quite hostile to me and my fellow non-white students when we were in medical school in Pittsurgh, and most of us decided to seek residency positions elsewhere as a result of this overt racism.

Woo hoo! Well done on finding Andouille sausage in Christchurch! I think you've now earned the following award:

>43 tangledthread: I hadn't been reading anything to account for that wacky dream, streamsong! My partner and I who I share an office space with were talking about her recent identity theft on Friday, and my subway ride to work that day was delayed by a broken down train in front of us, so maybe that had something to do with that weird dream.

Thanks for the link to the dream analysis. I'm in a very comfortable position at work, doing a job I love more often than not, which pays well and has excellent job security. My anxiety stems entirely from my parents' old age and declining health, the roles I'll take on when it comes time for me to help take care of them, and whether I'll have to leave my current job and find a new one in the Philadelphia area. Hopefully it will be at least a few years before I have to think about that, so this isn't an acute problem that should find its way into my dreams, I think.

Interesting dream about your "upstairs neighbors"! If that happened to me I'd probably explore the attic and roof in great detail.

>44 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel! I look forward to your thoughts about Quiet, as it's a book that I'm considering reading.

>45 PaulCranswick: Nice dream, Paul! I wonder what a dream analyst would make of that one.

ETA: Hani says to remind you that you two have to include New Orleans on your US visit, so that I can serve as your tour and restaurant guide. With any luck we can plan a larger scale group LT meet up there.

>47 Sakerfalcon: Hi, Claire! That book wasn't a bad one, and it's received more 5 star reviews on LT (six) than non-5 star reviews (I think three, including mine). I've never found self-help books or career guides such as What Color Is Your Parachute? to be the least bit helpful, even when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life after my failed first experiment with college at Tulane. I was supposed to have majored in biomedical engineering, one of the hardest subjects that the university offered, but my primary focus, as I and a couple of former classmates jokingly said about ourselves, was Creole women's studies, as we spent more time with our girlfriends and other attractive young women from New Orleans than we did hitting the books. It wasn't until I returned home, started working in a low paying job during the day and taking classes at Drexel at night (which I paid for with my meager earnings) that I became a serious and focused student.

I'm glad that you saw that photograph of Dalí at the Science Museum. I'd love to see it as well, so I'll look for it when I visit London in the spring.

I'll go to Publix in a couple of hours, once rush hour traffic dissipates, and buy ingredients for the Risotto with Parsnips and Greens recipe that I found yesterday. I'll start making Emeril's Slow-Cooked Chili using the recipe I found on GoNOLA.com first, and then probably make the risotto afterward.

Stephanie (@DieFledermaus) posted an interesting looking recipe on my Club Read thread last week, and I'll buy ingredients for it today and probably try it tomorrow:



Carrot Salad with Tahini, Crisped Chickpeas and Salted Pistachios

Chickpeas:
1-3/4 cups cooked chickpeas, or 1 15-ounce can, drained and patted dry on paper towels
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Salad:
1 pound carrots, peeled and coarsely grated
1/4 cup coarsely chopped parsley
1/4 cup shelled, salted pistachios, coarsely chopped

Dressing:
1 medium garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons well-stirred tahini
2 tablespoons water, plus more if needed
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and red pepper flakes to taste

Roast chickpeas: Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Toss chickpeas with one tablespoon olive oil, salt and cumin until they’re all coated. Spread them on a baking sheet or pan and roast them in the oven until they’re browned and crisp. This can take anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the size and firmness of your chickpeas. Toss them occasionally to make sure they’re toasting evenly. Set aside until needed.

Make dressing: Whisk all ingredients together until smooth, adding more water if needed to thin the dressing slightly. Taste and adjust seasoning; don’t worry if it tastes a little sharp on the lemon, it will marry perfectly with the sweet grated carrots.

Assemble salad: Place grated carrots in large bowl and toss with parsley. Mix in 2/3 of the dressing, adding more if desired. Add more salt and pepper if needed. Sprinkle with a large handful of chickpeas (you’ll have extra and if you’re like us, won’t regret it) and pistachios and dig in.

Do ahead: Salad keeps well in the fridge for two days, however, I’d add the chickpeas and pistachios right before serving, so they don’t get soft.
_________________________________

Is it possible that I've finally found a recipe that Jenny would like?

My parents are recovering from bad colds, and I also have a cold at the moment, so it's good that I didn't visit them. Hopefully we'll all be in much better health when I fly to Philadelphia next month.

That carrot salad looks great and just my kind of thing. I made the smashed chickpea salad I posted on FB the other day, and it's quite good, though next time I will use a bit of mayo instead of hummus as the binder. The original recipe was vegan so mayo was not an option, but I'm not vegan, so in it goes!

Enjoy your time off.

>52 katiekrug: I don't think I saw your smashed chickpea salad on Facebook, Katie; I'll have to take a look at it.

I'm eager to try that carrot salad, too. I'll let y'all know how I like it.

I'm very happy to be off from work today! I hope that you enjoy your day at home as well.

ETA: Oh, I do remember seeing your sandwich made with smashed chickpeas. That looks good!

I've never read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Darryl, and I should fix that. Same with Coming of Age in Mississippi. I hadn't remembered that Ann Moody was part of the Woolworth attempt to desegregate. The photo conveys how brave she must have been. Sorry to hear she passed away.

Now we just had that soccer Paris Metro incident across the pond, with the Chelsea fans. Still a frustrating problem.

Hope your breather week is off to a good start, buddy. I can tell fine meals are going to be part of it. :-)

>51 kidzdoc: I'm with you, Darryl, about the self-help books, although I haven't read the 'what color...' tome I have on my shelf for ages. Most of them are either rah-rah or obvious, with a relentless drumbeat of success, success, success. I agree with the suck part.

I heard Wes Moore being interviewed on some show, and felt that his book would be about how you described it, so I decided then and there to pass on it. If he's doing good work, good for him. I hope he continues and finds it rewarding.

>51 kidzdoc: Emeril has some interesting ingredients in that chili recipe.

>46 kidzdoc: I know the other other Wes Moore from my college days. I used to watch him play college basketball. His wife was one of my mother's piano students when she was competing for Miss North Carolina, and she worked in a different department at my university for a year or two after I began working here.

The New Orleans slow cooker chili has been going for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately it won't be ready for nearly 6 hours, so unless I succumb to temptation and put my face in it I'll have to wait until nearly 8:30 pm to have it for dinner.

>54 jnwelch: I remember that photo taken at Woolworth's, but I didn't know that the African American woman pictured in it wrote Coming of Age in Mississippi until this weekend. I'll read it in the near future, and hopefully re-read The Autobiography of Malcolm X with Mark and anyone else who is interested in joining us later this year.

I'll cook at least four meals between now and Saturday. Since I got a late start I won't make anything else today, but I bought ingredients for the other three meals at Publix this morning, so I'll try at least one recipe tomorrow, probably the risotto with parsley and kale.

I must say that I've been on the London Underground several times when I encountered football fans of several local clubs, including Chelsea and Arsenal. They were loud and boisterous, but not obnoxious. I remember one Chelsea fan who passed me as I was changing trains at Baker Street, who looked back at me with a smile and said something like "Who are you rooting for, mate?". I saw that he and his companions were wearing blue Chelsea gear, so I replied, "Chelsea, of course!", and he said "Way to go, mate!" or something similar. I know that English football fans have a bad reputation, but I can honestly say that I haven't seen a hint of it.

>55 ffortsa: The only career books I've found helpful were ones that were specifically written for people applying to medical school, or for medical students choosing residency programs, which had concrete advice about the processes involved in each step. The new book by Wes Moore would certainly probably be appealing to people who benefit from self-help or inspirational books, but I've never been one of them.

I skimmed over the last 40-50 pages of the book, as it was becoming tiresome. From what I read Moore had dabbled in a couple of projects, but had not yet found his path to personal fulfillment.

>56 thornton37814: You're right, Lori: semisweet chocolate, masa harina (a Mexican corn flour), Negra Modelo beer (a Mexican dark ale), cumin seeds, and, of course, the holy trinity of Louisiana cooking (onions, celery, peppers). Fortunately my local Publix had everything I needed. It's only been going for a little over half an hour, and it already smells righteous!

>57 cbl_tn: Very cool, Carrie!

Yawn...I think an afternoon nap is in order. I'll check back in later today.

>58 kidzdoc: Oh, I somehow missed that there'd be a group read of TAOMX, Darryl. I'm in. I'll wait until then.

>58 kidzdoc: Count me in for the group read too of TAOMX too!

The only career books I've found helpful were ones that were specifically written for people applying to medical school, or for medical students choosing residency programs, which had concrete advice about the processes involved in each step.

Any recommendations? My senior kid is starting down that path. (Trying to anyway!)

Hi Darryl, glad you survived your long shifts.

Very moving article posted on your previous thread by Oliver Sacks.

Favourited the chickpea and carrot recipe.

>31 kidzdoc: I guess we are in the decade of losing these extraordinary survivors of sad and violent times. I recently went to see 'Selma' which I thought a fine movie. Part of me missed his words (Steven Speilberg holding the rights to those at the moment), but I wonder if the film was better for the lack of them, in getting at the man behind them. And then there is the fact that he almost didn't make his 'I have a dream...' speech at that March, as he'd used it several times at smaller meetings, and one of his advisors thought it had become a bit hackneyed.

The chili is ready!





The first photo shows how the chili looks fresh from the slow cooker, and the second includes chopped green onions, shredded Cheddar cheese and sour cream, per the recipe. I also added tortilla strips to the chili. It's rich, complex, tangy and very tasty, and this recipe easily makes eight servings.

Here's the recipe:

Emeril's Slow Cooked Chili

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chili powder
2 tablespoons whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon cayenne
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons dried Mexican or regular oregano, crumbled between your fingers
3 bay leaves
2 teaspoons light or dark brown sugar
4 pounds boneless beef chuck, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2- to 2-inch cubes
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 medium onions, coarsely chopped (about 4 cups)
1 1/2 cups chopped celery, including leaves
6 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 jalapeño chiles, roughly chopped
One 12-ounce bottle dark Mexican beer, such as Negra Modelo
2 tablespoons tomato paste
One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 ounce semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 tablespoons masa harina (corn flour, not cornstarch)
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
Grated cheddar cheese, for garnish
Chopped green onion, for garnish
Sour cream, for garnish

Recipe:

Combine the chili powder, cumin seeds, cayenne, cinnamon, oregano, bay leaves and brown sugar in a small bowl; set the spice mixture aside.

Add the beef to a medium bowl and season with the pepper and 1 tablespoon of the kosher salt. Heat 2 tablespoons of the vegetable oil in a 12-inch or larger skillet over high heat. Add enough beef to fill the pan and cook until nicely browned on one side, about 2 minutes. Turn the pieces over and cook for another 2 minutes. Transfer the browned beef to the crock of a 6-quart slow cooker. Repeat with the remaining beef, adding the remaining vegetable oil between batches as necessary.

Add the onions, celery, and 1 tablespoon of the remaining salt to the skillet and cook, stirring, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic, jalapeños and spice mixture and cook for 1 minute longer. Pour in the beer, tomato paste and crushed tomatoes and simmer for 3 minutes. Stir in the chocolate, masa harina and remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and cook for 1 minute longer. Transfer this mixture to the slow cooker.

Cover and cook the chili on high, undisturbed or stirring only once during cooking, for 6 hours, or until the beef is very tender. Remove the bay leaves and stir in the cilantro and parsley. Serve the chili hot in bowls, topped with grated cheddar, chopped green onion and sour cream.
__________________________________

This is an authentic chili, as it doesn't contain any beans, and it isn't as hot as it would seem to be. Highly recommended!

>62 kidzdoc: Most of the recipes from Emeril that I've tried have been very good. I have eaten at 2 of his 3 NOLA restaurants. I was quite impressed, especially by Emeril's Delmonico.

Thanks for the honorary Cajun flag :) I will treasure my new status.

My goodness me. It's a miracle. I'll be joining you for your meal! Hallelujah!

Happy new thread Darryl! That chilli looks lovely.

Chili sounds so good, Darryl! I think Charlie and I may have to stir up a batch of his own recipe next week...

Good morning, y'all! I crashed at around 9:30 pm last night, as the cold that I had been battling all weekend took a turn for the worse after my midday nap. Fortunately it hasn't moved into my chest yet, and after a good night's sleep I'm feeling much better today. I just whipped up another batch of Southwest Breakfast Scramble, which hit the spot (along with coffee, of course). That recipe makes 3-4 good sized servings, so I'll have it for breakfast later this week as well.

I'll probably stay inside today, as it will be another cold and rainy day here, although the immediate suburbs are experiencing snow, sleet, freezing rain and icy roads. Tomorrow looks to be even worse, so I'll probably call in to the two meetings that I'm supposed to attend, if they are held at all.

I started reading the novella I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar yesterday, which is about the brief relationship between a hikikomori, a young shut-in man who has stayed in his room for the past two years and only recently ventured out to his favorite childhood park, and a Japanese salaryman who has lost his job, but continues to dress in a suit and tie to avoid telling his wife, and spends his days in the same park. It's beautifully written so far, and I'll finish it by this afternoon.

ETA: I'll have a bowl of carrot ginger coconut shrimp soup for lunch, since I'm still a bit under the weather, and probably make the risotto with parsnips and greens for supper.

>59 jnwelch: Mark and I had briefly spoken about reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, but we didn't make any formal plans to read it together. However, I'd be very interested in setting up a group read for it. I could do it anytime between April and October.

If anyone else is interested in participating please let me know, and tell us which month(s) would be best for you.

>60 avidmom: Excellent! What months work best for you, Susie?

Any recommendations?

Ooh. I'd have to say no to that question, at least for the moment. I decided to apply to medical school in 1990 (25 years ago!), so I don't have any of the books I used left, and even if I did they would be badly out of date. However, I can ask the medical students and residents who are currently rotating on our service what books they found helpful, and get back to you later this week.

I did take a Kaplan MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) course in preparation for the exam, which I took in the spring of 1991. Even though I did very well on the test (~95th percentile) I got cold feet in 1992, and I withdrew my applications that year. After I was more confident in my career choice I applied again in 1993, and chose Pitt over the other schools that accepted me.

>61 Caroline_McElwee: Hi, Caroline! I'm glad to have that long work stretch behind me, although I'll start another one (which will be shorter and hopefully less grueling) on Saturday.

I was shocked to read that NYT Op-Ed article by Oliver Sacks on the subway ride to work last week, as I didn't know that he was terminally ill. I'll read it again sometime this week, and I'll look for other articles that he publishes in the coming months.

Fortunately there are survivors from the civil rights movement who are still active. One of the most notable of them is John Lewis, my longtime U.S. congressman, who was one of MLK's closest advisors. He participated in the March to Montgomery, and was injured by a blow to the head from an Alabama state trooper in Selma. He was portrayed in the movie by Stephan James; the two of them appear together in this recnet photo:



And this photo compilation shows the young Lewis alongside a snapshot of James from Selma:

>63 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori; I'm glad to hear that you've enjoyed dining at Emeril's restaurants, as I haven't been to any of them yet.

Three years ago when the Pediatric Hospital Medicine Conference was held in New Orleans one of my friends ate at K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, which is Paul Prudhomme's main restaurant in the French Quarter, but she was disappointed by her meal there. He had a restaurant in Greenwich Village in the early 1990's, named K-Paul's NY on Broadway just north of Houston Street, which quickly became one of my favorite NYC restaurants. Unfortunately it closed suddenly after only a couple of years in operation.

>64 LovingLit: You're welcome, Megan! I am thinking of nicknaming you "Cajun Megan", in order to distinguish you from the other Megan (@evilmoose). Maybe she could be "Evil Megan". ;-)

Have you been to New Orleans? You'll certainly have to go there on your next trip to the US, if only to taste the Crescent City's amazing food.

>65 lunacat: *faints*

What??? I didn't expect to snare you with the chili recipe, Jenny. Woo hoo, my work here is done!

The chili is very rich and tangy, with a rich dark brown color that doesn't show up in the photos. I froze most of it, but I'll bet it will taste even better after the flavors combine in the portions that I refrigerated.

>66 souloftherose: Thanks, Heather! The chili turned out very well, as I expected it would based on its enticing aroma while it was cooking.

I would bet that the beef in this recipe could be substituted with beans and tofu to make an excellent vegetarian chili, although it would no longer be authentic. I learned a few weeks ago from Steven (@StevenTX) in Club Read that authentic chili (chili con carne), which was created in Texas, does not contain beans, although I think that most chilis sold in the US do include them.

>67 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! When you say "his own recipe" do you mean the one I posted by Emeril Lagasse, or one that Charlie came up with? If it's Charlie's recipe I'd love to hear about it!

>69 kidzdoc: Mostly lurking (and getting hungry) but sign me up for the Malcolm X reading. I was so glad I was able to see Selma and I left the cinema thinking that I would like to know more about the movement.

>71 charl08: Hi, Charlotte! I'm glad that you'll join us in reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm was born on May 19, 1925, so what if we read this book in May, in celebration of his 90th birthday?

I think I'll see Selma either on Friday of this week, or on Thursday or Friday of next week.

>70 kidzdoc: Hey! I resemble that comment...

(also, all of this delicious food in your thread makes it murder to read through for one who is hungry and out of reach of convenient food!)

>73 evilmoose: You do indeed resemble that comment, as you are Evil Megan. ;)

I'm in for the Malcolm X read, I'm sure I have it somewhere. May will be good. So, he was a fellow Taureen.

>73 evilmoose: Oops! Sorry, Megan...

...and sorry again! I think that cooking has temporarily replaced reading as my favorite hobby. I hardly cooked at all until about 18 months ago, so this is a new development.

>74 lunacat: *keeps mouth shut to avoid antagonizing Megan further*

>75 Caroline_McElwee: Splendid, Caroline. If others express an interest in participating I'll create a group read thread at the end of April.

I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X a long time ago, possibly 1972 or 73. I would like to participate in the group read - and May sounds like an appropriate time, if that works for everyone.

I've got to try your chili recipe soon. It sounds wonderful.

>77 catarina1: Excellent, catarina! I will set up a group read of The Autobiography of Malcolm X for May, then.

This was my first attempt at making chili, and I'm very pleased at how well it turned out.

>78 kidzdoc: I just ordered a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X from Amazon where the paperback version is only $6. There unfortunately is no Kindle version available.

>79 catarina1: Thanks, catarina; that's good to know. I'll look to see if I still have my old copy of it, from the late 1970s; I doubt it, though.

I'm in for The Autobiography of Malcolm X

May works for me too - thanks for organising this.

>81 brenpike:, >82 charl08: Great! I'll also mention this group read in the appropriate thread in this group, and mention it to the Club Readers as well.

I will try to join the group read in May if I can fit it in. I have no living memory of Malcolm X. Martin Luther King Jr's death is one of my earliest memories. I was not quite 4 years old. On the news they kept saying that he died at a Tennessee motel. I knew I lived in Tennessee, and I was sure that he died at the motel on a hill that we passed every time we drove into Knoxville. I think I finally mentioned it to my parents months or years later and they cleared up my confusion.

I will definitely join in the group read of The Autobiography of Malcolm X in May.

Oh yum! Chilli is a favourite of mine so I may have to give that recipe a try. I don't have One 12-ounce bottle dark Mexican beer, such as Negra Modelo on hand, so would have a substitute to recommend??

>84 cbl_tn: Excellent, Carrie! I would have been a month shy of 4 years old when Malcolm X was assassinated, and I have no memory of the news of his death. I was seven when MLK was murdered, and I remember my (white) elementary school teacher and principal (Mrs. Gallinda and Mrs. Hinchey) crying about the news, either on the day it happened or the following day. I went to a grade school that was affiliated with the Lutheran church that we attended, which had roughly equal numbers of white and black students, and the pastor and its members (who were a unique mixture of mostly first-, second- and third-generation German Americans and African Americans) fully supported the civil rights movement and worked alongside members of other churches to provide services to Jersey City's poorest residents.

That's an interesting story about your assumption that MLK was assassinated in the hotel close to Knoxville, rather than the one in Memphis!

>85 laytonwoman3rd: Welcome aboard, Linda! I'm glad that you'll be joining us.

>86 jolerie: I haven't tried Negra Modelo yet, so I'm not sure how it compares to other dark ales. I would suspect that Guinness or a similar stout would work just as well, though.

Back to >84 cbl_tn:: The Atlanta area is now under a winter storm warning, as we're supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow in the city and northern suburbs starting late tomorrow morning. The north Georgia mountains will get 5-6 inches of snow, and possibly more. Our practice manager just informed us that Children's will go into a Code White status tomorrow morning, and the two meetings I was supposed to have attended have been cancelled.

What is the forecast for Knoxville?

>89 kidzdoc: I'm sad to say, more of the same. Right now the models seem to have the heaviest snow south of Knoxville. Our local forecaster thinks we're likely to get about the same amount of snow that we had today, beginning tomorrow afternoon and ending early Thursday. I hope I have a late morning window to get to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription that wasn't ready yesterday. The pharmacy was out of stock and had to order it in. I've got enough to last through Saturday.

Do you still get the day off tomorrow, or will the winter storm change that?

>90 cbl_tn: I'm still off tomorrow, although I am scheduled to work from 5 pm to 1 am Thursday into Friday. As long as there isn't any significant ice the roads should be clear by then.

Last year I ended up sleeping in the hospital for three straight nights on two separate occasions due to snow and ice. Our work area has two rooms with beds, for the overnight doctors on the General Pediatrics and the General Pediatrics Neurology services, and there are other sleep rooms on the ground floor for residents and attending physicians. I would assume that the roads will be okay by late tomorrow afternoon, but I may bring an overnight bag if I think I won't be able to drive home early Friday morning.

I hope that you're able to make it to your pharmacy tomorrow. Does it provide a delivery service?

>91 kidzdoc: No delivery service. I can probably get a neighbor with 4-wheel drive to pick it up for me. The pharmacy is in the same shopping center as the closest Kroger. Surely someone I know will need to make a grocery run.

UA has just announced that it will be closed tomorrow because of the weather forecast is for snow. It will be nice to have a day off as I have lots to read in On the Reproduction of Capitalism and will need to read Brown Girl Dreaming - also a class assignment.

>92 cbl_tn: I hope that one of your neighbors can pick up your prescription, Carrie.

>93 benitastrnad: That's good news, Benita. Georgia Tech, which is in Midtown not far from where I live, has announced that it will close tomorrow, and I would assume that Emory, Georgia State and the other colleges and universities in town will soon follow suit.

ETA: How much snow is Tuscaloosa supposed to get?

Sorry, you haven't been feeling well, Darryl. I hope you begin to improve. The Southwest Breakfast Scramble sounds fantastic. I should jot that one down.

A G.R. of the Malcolm X bio, for May, you say? I am in!

>95 msf59: Thanks, Mark. I'm now feeling much better than I did yesterday, and I'm at least 90% back to normal now.

The Southwest breakfast scramble is fabulous, and it's very easy and quick to make.

I'm especially glad that you'll read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in May, as you were the main influence of this idea.

I'm in too. It's been a while since I read it.

>97 drneutron: Great, Jim! I'm glad that you'll be joining us.

>50 kidzdoc: Yes Darryl, it does rather look like you will get your way there with Hani and New Orleans.

>96 kidzdoc: I read it fairly recently so I probably won't join but I might try to find something of a similar theme as a show of support. Any suggestions?

>70 kidzdoc: No, I haven't been to New Orleans. Cajun Megan would be a suitably bizarre name for me and is in keeping with my efforts at eccentricity. Ironically, my nickname as a kid was moose ;) Now that's is confusing (but I hasten to add that I was never evil).

>46 kidzdoc: I found The Other Wes Moore fascinating but haven't read his latest. He'll be at Chautauqua while we're there this summer, though, and I certainly plan to go and hear him.

Waving Hi!! Hope you feel better soon.

>99 PaulCranswick: Great! I hope that NOLA lives up to my warblings about it. Once your plans are set, whether this year or next, please let me know, so that I can be sure to have time off to join the two of you. The flight from Atlanta takes less than an hour, so it's easy for me to get there.

>100 LovingLit: Awesome! Cajun Megan it is. The next steps to your transition to full fledged Cajun status is to learn how to cook Louisiana food (all of the Cajun girls I know, including Heather, can throw down in the kitchen) and dance well, like Jane from Club Read and the young woman in this video:

http://youtu.be/9tsnZy1g858

Alternatively, we could nickname you Good Moose Megan...

>101 RebaRelishesReading: Nice. I look forward to your comments about Wes Moore when you do see him. I'll have to pay attention to see if he comes to Atlanta as well.

>102 Berly: Thanks, Kim! I'm completely better now.

The snowfall total has been downgraded to 1-3 inches in metro Atlanta. Hopefully this storm won't be as bad as the forecast models indicated yesterday.

No downgrading happening here. They're still predicting 2-4 inches for my area. :-(

>104 cbl_tn: Unfortunately I'm not surprised, Carrie. The forecast for the north Georgia mountains hasn't changed, as those areas are still forecast to receive 4-6 inches of snow. If it gets colder here earlier than what is now predicted we could potentially see much more snow, but I'll bet that we only get an inch or two in the city.

The longlist for this year's Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction was announced yesterday:

THE ZONE OF INTEREST by Martin Amis
THE TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN by Sebastian Barry
THE MINIATURIST by Jessie Burton
THE LIE by Helen Dunmore
VIPER WINE by Hermione Eyre
IN THE WOLF’S MOUTH by Adam Foulds
MR MAC AND ME by Esther Freud
ARCTIC SUMMER by Damon Galgut
WAKE by Anna Hope
THE WAKE by Paul Kingsnorth
THE UNDERTAKING by Audrey Magee
A GOD IN EVERY STONE by Kamila Shamsie
THE ARCHITECT’S APPRENTICE by Elif Shafak
THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS by John Spurling
THE PAYING GUESTS by Sarah Waters

"The judging panel will announce the shortlist – usually of six books – on 24th March. The winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2015 will then be announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in Scotland, on 13th June 2015."

http://www.walterscottprize.co.uk/news-and-media/

There are quite a few interesting books on this longlist. I've read Arctic Summer, and I own The Zone of Interest, The Wake, A God in Every Stone, and The Paying Guests. I plan to read the Shamsie and the Waters in March, since I didn't get to them in February.

It's a miracle! I own The Zone of Interest. I NEVER have any books on the lists you post as I don't read that well ;)

>107 lunacat: Two miracles in one week! First the chili, now the longlisted book that you own. Shall we shoot for a trifecta?

>108 kidzdoc: Hmmm..........but what would we go for? You posting a recipe for a vegetable that I'd like to try? Seems implausible, even for such a momentous week!

>109 lunacat: Sounds good! Let me put on my thinking cap...

Good morning! I think I'll also join in for the TAOMX since I've never read it.

>76 kidzdoc: Love your new hobby, your enthusiasm with sharing it, and the generosity with the recipes.

>106 kidzdoc: Two of the authors on the list will come up later this year in the British Authors challenge. I will plan on The Lie for Helen Dunmore month and i might consider switching my Martin Amis selection.

>87 kidzdoc: Speaking of MLK and the motel, I grew up in Mississippi near Memphis. I remember being young and being driven by the Lorraine Motel so family members could see the place he was shot. I went to undergrad in the Memphis area, so I actually went by the place on many occasions before it became a museum. It had become quite "run-down" in those days. It is nice that they have made it into a museum to showcase the Civil Rights movement.

>111 streamsong: Good morning, Janet (or early afternoon here in Atlanta)! I'm glad that you'll also join us for the group read of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

I'm glad that so many people here and on Club Read have enjoyed my new hobby. It gives me inspiration to keep trying and sharing new recipes.

Madeline has asked me to choose the vegetable of the month for March, and I've decided to go with the parnsip, as it's a vegetable that I'm unfamiliar with cooking or eating. I was going to cook the risotto with parsley and kale for dinner, but I'm about to have the winter potatoes, white beans and kale soup for lunch, so I'll make it tomorrow or Friday.

>112 cbl_tn: I'll definitely keep my eye for The Lie, but I already own The Siege and The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore, so I'll read one or both of those books first, unless The Lie is longlisted for this year's Booker Prize.

Speaking of new books, I was surprised and pleased to learn today that the British Caribbean author Caryl Phillips has a new novel coming out in the US next month, titled The Lost Child, which is "a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it." It's set in the moors in the north of England, and is loosely based on Wuthering Heights. He is one of my favorite authors, so I'll definitely buy and read this soon.

>113 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori. I had heard that the Lorraine Motel has been renovated and converted into a civil rights museum. I have yet to visit Memphis, so I'll have to spend a weekend there and explore the museum, and Beale Street.

Still no snow, or even rain, on the ground here. The latest forecast for the city calls for 1/2 to 3 inches of snow, but the meteorologists are stressing that the actual amounts that north Georgia will receive are still uncertain.

>69 kidzdoc: As a fellow Taurus, I am all for a May read of the Malcolm X autobiography.

Any help, from anywhere, about anything would be useful at this point! High school graduation and the beginning of college is right around the corner and he has all sorts of questions that I have no clue how to answer (except ask someone else!)

I love parsnips and look forward to your recipes, Darryl. I've enjoyed them roasted, and I had a superb cream soup with parsnips in a restaurant last weekend.

>114 kidzdoc: I made the parsnip risotto last night, Darryl, and it's delicious! I used spinach instead of kale because I had some that needed using up, and I must admit that I didn't follow the recipe, just made risotto the way I always do and added the steamed spinach and roasted parsnip cubes at the end. I look forward to seeing how your attempt turns out!

>115 avidmom: I'd be happy to be a source of advice to you and your son, Susie. One thing that medical schools view favorably is volunteer or other experience of applicants in a hospital, clinic, physician's office, etc. I volunteered one summer at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the hospital I work at has a similar program for teenagers, although the patient exposure is very limited. If your son is able to spend time with his doctor that would be ideal.

If he hasn't already selected a college I would suggest that he visit the schools' pre-med offices, if possible, and try to find out which of these schools have particularly good track records of having their students accepted into medical schools. Colleges that are affiliated with medical schools, especially on campus, are definitely a plus, though not necessary.

I graduated from Rutgers, which had a great pre-med office, and what was UMDNJ and is now Rutgers Medical School was adjacent to the library that I often studied at, so I was able to visit the office and speak with administrative staff while I was a student and after I graduated. I also greatly benefitted from an advisor (Dr. Francine Essien) who kept in touch with me after I graduated and was working at a research lab at NYU's medical school; she urged and encouraged me to apply to medical school, especially after I got cold feet after I aced the Medical College Admissions Test. If it hadn't been for her I doubt that I would have taken the MCAT or applied to medical school.

>116 lauralkeet: That's good to hear, Laura! I only have this one recipe for parsnips at the moment, but I hope to get good recommendations from fellow LTers, online sources, and my cookbooks.

>117 Sakerfalcon: I'm glad to hear that, Claire! I'll definitely try that recipe either tomorrow or Friday. If you have any recipes you like I'd love to hear about them.

I've read The Miniaturist from the list and thought it was an interesting read and in the end gave it 4 stars. I've seen The Zone of Interest at the library but never had the time to pick it up. I haven't read anything by Amis yet so something I should remedy at some point.

>118 kidzdoc: Thanks so much, kidzdoc! I'll pass the word on. (Interestingly enough, Rutgers did send him some literature along the lines of "come to our school" .......) Our mailbox is full of colleges sending stuff like that, though. We are waiting for an acceptance letter. Every trip to the mailbox these days is a bit dramatic. LOL!

Conditions are deteriorating rapidly in Atlanta. Snowflakes have been reported here in Midtown, the Governor declared a state of emergency at 2 pm, and local meteorologists are urging everyone to get off of the roads. The most disturbing image was this one posted by a friend of mine from medical school, who is a primary care pediatrician just north and east of Atlanta, which she took at her local Publix supermarket:



When Publix runs out of pancake mix and syrup, it's time to call out the Georgia National Guard, 'cuz things are going to get real ugly real fast.

>121 kidzdoc: Blimey! How much snow are you expected to have?! I assume at least a metre if a state of emergency has been declared?

>119 jolerie: Thanks for mentioning The Miniaturist, Valerie. I won't plan to read it yet, though. I own one or two other books by Martin Amis, but I haven't read any of them yet.

>120 avidmom: You're welcome, avidmom!

>122 lunacat: Half a centimeter of snow in the city may be more like it, Jenny. The latest forecast calls for a trace to an inch of snow in the central part of the city, but the near northern suburbs already have 1-2 inches on the ground, and may see up to 6 inches by tomorrow morning. It's only raining here, but if the freeze line shifts 50 miles or more to the south we could get 3-6 inches of snow.

The hospital I work at is located in Sandy Springs, Georgia, which is the first suburb north of Atlanta. Even though it's only 11 miles north of where I live there I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of inches of snow there by morning, even if Midtown Atlanta gets nothing. On Monday two of my partners who live between Sandy Springs and Midtown posted photos of 1/2 to 1 inch of snow outside their homes, but there was nothing here.

>121 kidzdoc: Our grocery store was beginning to get low on quite a few things. I got the last of two or three items and the next to the last of another couple of items. I didn't check out the pancake mix isle, but then it's easy to make your own as long as you have flour. I think I even have some store-brand equivalent of Bisquick in the house so it won't be hard if I decide to make those -- and that does sound good. The guy who was stocking the milk told me that the eggs that were on the display rack were all that they had. I decided to go ahead and grab another dozen even though my neighbor had picked up a dozen for me yesterday. I have plenty to get me through. Temps should be above freezing by Saturday.

>124 thornton37814: Well done, Lori. From the years I spent living in Pittsburgh I learned to keep my place stocked with plenty of food, in case of (genuinely) bad weather. I just took a quick survey of my refrigerator and freezer; I have enough home made food for lunch and dinner to last at least a week, and ingredients to make three recipes that I had intended to, and a fourth that Madeline posted in the Kitchen, which would give me at least another week's worth of food. I also have enough coffee, tea, bread, oatmeal, granola bars and leftover breakfast scramble to last for two weeks as well. If I was going to pick up anything it would be more Greek yogurt, red wine and juice, but after my trip to Publix on Monday I really don't need anything. Of course there probably won't be any significant precipitation in Midtown (and it's still only raining here), so all of this is a moot point for me.

>121 kidzdoc: Uh-oh.

I never understood the cleared-out grocery shelves in anticipation of a snow storm phenomena. I never saw a run on a grocery story until I moved to Alabama. Like you, I come from the North and keep my pantry fairly well stocked, especially in the winter, so don't need to go to the grocery store and buy everything in sight at the mere mention of snow or ice. The first time I saw this the spaghetti was completely gone and most of the pasta aisle was cleared out. I just stood there in astonishment. I could understand bread and cold cuts being completely gone as that is easy food to consume if the electricity goes off, but pasta? I think it is a uniquely Southern phenomena.

I do "get it" that people down here are unaccustomed to snow and ice, but really? It is hard to fathom what they are thinking.

-Bad weather hint- have enough batteries for a radio or have a " crank one" handy. ( if the power goes out - you want to know what is going on.

We've been upgraded from an advisory to a winter storm warning. They're telling everyone to stay at home and off the roads. They're predicting wet, heavy snow which could lead to power outages. I'm glad I remembered to buy batteries in the checkout lane on Monday. A colleague who was going out this afternoon picked up my prescription for me so I don't have that worry now.

>121 kidzdoc: Yep. You just don't want to be at Publix, Target or especially Walmart when supplies of essential items like milk, eggs and, apparently, pancake mix are running low!

Lisa, who graduated from Pitt's medical school a year after I did, posted that photo and two others on Facebook in jest, as she was amazed at the frenzied shoppers at Publix buying last minute items. We were friends in medical school and remain very close; I'll probably call or text her later tonight or tomorrow morning to find out how conditions are in Gwinnett County. (BTW, it's still just raining here in Midtown Atlanta.)

>127 benitastrnad: Right, Benita! I quickly learned to do that soon after I moved to Pittsburgh, as we had our first significant snowfall just before Halloween and there was a continuous cover of snow from around Thanksgiving until late March. It's a very hilly city, comparable to San Francisco, although fortunately my neighborhood (Shadyside) was one of the few flat ones and the trip to Oakland, where Pitt's campus was, didn't involve going up any significant hills (although we did have to climb "Cardiac Hill" or pass through two hospitals to get from Fifth Avenue to the medical school building). Fortunately one of the city buses stopped at the corner of the building I lived in and stopped directly in front of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, so I alway took the bus to and from classes during my first two years of medical school (Pitt students could ride for free with their student IDs). So, in the dead of winter I would only use my car on weekends to go grocery shopping or to meet up with friends, especially if the roads were snow covered.

I'll usually make a weekend trip to Publix soon after it opens to get most of what I'll need for the week (and write down the things I plan to buy on an index card, crossing off items as I get them), and only rarely stop there during the week for a random item or two.

It seems to me that people in Mid-Atlantic states are more similar to Southerners in making last minute runs to supermarkets just before a storm is due to hit. Pittsburgh is much more similar to Midwestern cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati than it is to Philadelphia and other Mid-Atlantic cities and areas, and people there tend to keep their pantries, refrigerators and freezers well stocked in the wintry months.

>128 torontoc: I agree completely, Tui! I have one portable radio that is battery operated, which is has AM, FM, shortwave and NWS (National Weather Service) capability, and another one which uses batteries and has a hand crank. I keep both of them on a shelf, so I know where they are. I also have a lantern, a large flashlight, and a large supply of AA batteries, in case of a power outage. If for some reason the heat goes out or it's so cold that I need another source of heat (which happened in Pittsburgh but hasn't happened in Atlanta) I also own two space heaters, although they are electrically operated.

The biggest concern here are tornadoes and severe thunderstorms with damaging winds. Fortunately the building I live in has an indoor parking garage. The apartment building I used to live in had outdoor parking, and I have a convertible sports car with a soft top, and a couple of times when I lived there I spent the night in the hospital (which has parking garages for staff and families) when there was a threat of a tornado or a significant hail storm. It hasn't happened recently but there have been several occasions when dozens of automobiles suffered broken windows or dents as a result of large hail here, and several years ago a tornado passed through downtown Atlanta, which would have been catastrophic if it had passed only a few hundred yards to the south of its path (two of the downtown sports stadiums were filled with tens of thousands of spectators, and a direct hit on either building could have easily caused thousands of casualties, especially if the roofs had collapsed).

>130 kidzdoc: I was watching the SEC tournament when the tornado went through Atlanta. It was terrifying to watch.

"Fortunately one of the city buses stopped at the corner of the building that I lived in". Which street? I lived on Howe Street between Negley and Ivy.

>129 cbl_tn: I just looked at the radar on the Weather Channel app on my iPad, and saw that Knoxville is in the middle of the snow bad that stretches from southern Kentucky to as far south as Sandy Springs, just north of I-285 and barely north of where my hospital is located (which is about 1/2 mile south of I-285). The snow line is now starting to extend to the south, so we may get snow here in Midtown later tonight.

My father wisely bought me a large box of Duracell AA batteries from an Asian distributor several years ago, so I'm well stocked on those batteries, although I need to check to be sure that I still have extra large batteries for my lantern and large flashlight.

I'm glad that you were able to get extra batteries and your prescription filled! Please let us know how your conditions are tomorrow morning (and you too, Benita and Lori), and I'll do the same.

Oh, one other essential item for inclement weather, especially in the South and in other places where tornadoes frequently touch down, is a battery operated weather radio, which can be set to broadcast an alarm in emergency situations. The tornado that touched down in downtown Atlanta several years ago caught everyone by surprise, as it formed after a tornado warning had ended, but my alarm gave me a minute or two of advance notice before it passed through town, about 2-3 miles south of where I live.

Another helpful resource is the web site SF72 (http://www.sf72.org/home), which was created by the City of San Francisco to alert residents what they should do in case of a serious earthquake. It encourages residents to keep a store of essential supplies in their homes for a three day period (or 72 hours, hence the name "SF72"), but that list is also a good idea for anyone facing a weather emergency.

>131 cbl_tn: So was I, Carrie! My weather radio went off, and within a minute or two the signal from the CBS feed flickered and went off for a few seconds, from what I remember. I remember seeing a metal structure dangling ominously to and fro from the roof of the Georgia Dome, and the local affiliate (CBS 46) broke into its coverage of the tournament to announce that a tornado had passed through downtown. It passed just north of CNN Center, the connected Omni Hotel, the Georgia Dome (where the SEC basketball tournament was taking place) and Philips Arena (where the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA were playing a game). It passed through Centennial Olympic Park, just across Marietta Street from CNN Center, and it demolished an older building on a side street where I often parked when I sat in the park to read. It's a miracle that only one or two people died as a result of that tornado; if it had passed 200 or 300 yards to the south there could have been hundreds of deaths if those four buildings (CNN Center, Omni Hotel, Georgia Dome, Philips Arena) had taken a direct hit.

>132 catarina1: The apartment building I lived in was on Ellsworth Avenue, between Negley and Summerlea. I took the 71C bus, which stopped at the corner of Ellsworth and Summerlea and dropped me off on Fifth Avenue in front of Children's Hospital. I almost always took that bus to and from school, although I'd occasionally take the ?71A, which ran down Centre Avenue if I wanted to shop at the supermarket that was on the corner of Centre and Negley on my way back home. Pitt also provided a shuttle bus service from Oakland to Shadyside, which stopped on Negley Avenue near Ellsworth. I was there from 1993-1997; how about you?

I did pick up more yogurt today. I was almost out of fresh fruit and picked up some more. I also got "chocolate." I must not run out of that storm essential!

>135 thornton37814: Ha! I have plenty of chocolate at home, as I bought semisweet dark chocolate morsels for Emeril's chili and I'm still working on the German and Belgian chocolate that Bianca gave me when I saw her in London last year (clearly I'm not much of a chocoholic). I only have one container of Greek yogurt, but I do have plenty of blueberries.

My essential storm item would be coffee. Fortunately there is a Starbucks within walking distance, and no snow storm would keep me from going there if I ran out.

Back to >132 catarina1: This is a photo of the building I lived in when I was a student at Pitt:

>136 kidzdoc: My essential storm item would be coffee.
Hah, yes. Coffee is the one item that will force me to the grocery store. I can always find a can or a box of something if I need food, but for coffee there is no substitute.

>137 qebo: for coffee there is no substitute.

Amen, sister.

I forgot to mention that I finished I Called Him Necktie this afternoon. I'll give it 4-1/2 stars, and I'll review it tomorrow or Friday.

Re: coffee, make sure you grind whole bean coffee in advance of the storm. We once had a snowstorm+power outage and while we could boil water on the gas stove in order to brew coffee, the only ground coffee on hand was decaf. The horror!

Woo hoo! No snow accumulations here in Midtown Atlanta, and the roads look to be wet and not icy at all. The northern suburbs and exurbs did see significant snowfall accumulations, though.

The storm has now passed, and is taking aim on North Carolina to the east. Temperatures here will warm up to the mid 40s today, and to the lower 60s by Monday. So, hopefully this will be the end of winter weather here in Georgia, as it typically starts to definitely warm up by early March.

>139 lauralkeet: Ooh...now there's something I hadn't thought of! I do buy whole beans and grind coffee just before each cup I brew. I actually like the taste of coffee beans, though, especially if they are covered in chocolate but even plain, so if I had to choose between ground decaf and whole beans, I would happy munch on beans to get my fix.

It seems that the run-on-the-supermarket panic is pretty much an all-states thing (or at least it's also here in the mid-west). My family has always been a bit puzzled by it, but then again, we're the kind of people who menu-plan and then go grocery shopping once a week only and always keep stocked up on the staples, which is a product, I suspect, both of having parents who lived through the depression and growing up in a rural setting (i.e. not in a city where groceries are to be had by walking just down to the corner).
Here's hoping that the snow ended up not being too bad down there. I thought of you yesterday when I received an email from the Fabric.com warehouse telling me that my order would be delayed, since they were shutting down for at least a day due to the weather reports (the warehouse is somewhere in Georgia, apparently). I thought it was quite nice of them to send me an email instead of just letting the order run late!

Here are my planned reads for March:

Sait Faik Abasiyanik, A Useless Man: Selected Stories
Paul Beatty, The Sellout
Jerry Gentry, Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital
Intizar Husain, Basti
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Marlon James, A History of Seven Killings
China Miéville, The City & the City
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone
Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests
Gilbert Welch: Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care

I measured between 4 and 5 inches of snow in my driveway. It looks like my road has been plowed so I should be able to get to work if I can make it out of my driveway. The best thing is that the power is still on!

Morning Darryl! Glad you dodged the winter bullet, at least in your area. Whew! We are not so lucky. I want sunshine and warmth. Is that to much to ask?

>141 scaifea: Good points, Megan. My parents and closest relatives were identical to yours in their shopping habits, with the one difference being that they grew up in large cities, namely Jersey City and NYC. When we lived in Jersey during my early childhood (birth to age 13) my father had the family car, and typically drove to work in Brooklyn, and my mother didn't drive. There was no supermarket within walking distance, so we only occasionally went to the small local grocery store during the week, and stocked up on supplies at the large supermarket on Sundays after church.

So you can see why I usually go shopping on Sunday mornings; it's also great time to be there soon after it opens, as hardly anyone else is there before 9 am. I also got into the habit of buying larger quantities of non-perishable or frozen foods when they were on sale, and I still do that when Publix has its BOGO (buy one, get one free) sales. I'll also stop at Kroger if I get home from work late, as the branch near me is open 24 hours a day (Publix closes at 11 pm). I'm working from 5 pm tonight until 1 am tomorrow, and since I'm working this weekend (but off tomorrow) I'll probably stop there on my drive back home.

However, now that my parents have moved a suburb close to a busy shopping and entertainment area (the amusement park Sesame Place is less than two miles away, and one of the major malls in suburban Philadelphia is even closer), and now that my mother also owns a car, they tend to go to the supermarket two or three times a week each. And, oddly enough, their house is less well stocked of already cooked food than mine is, even though they have a large stand alone freezer in the garage in addition to their refrigerator/freezer (which is larger than mine). My father, who now does most of the cooking, does usually have at least some containers of previously prepared soups and stews in the freezer in the garage, but most of what's in there are meats and other items that need to be thawed and cooked. We've been talking about my new found cooking habits, as recently as last night, and they are planning to adopt my plans and try some of my favorite recipes.

I'm glad that Fabric.com informed you about the delay. I did a quick search, and it looks as though the warehouse is located in Kennesaw, which is about 15-20 NW of Atlanta. That area did receive snow and mixed precipitation, and the interstates and major roads are icy this morning, so I can understand why it would have shut down. Hopefully they will open again later today, as conditions in metro Atlanta are supposed to improve quickly after 10 am, when the temperatures will rise above freezing.

Oddly enough the flight that I was supposed to have taken yesterday from PHL to ATL was cancelled, even though the Atlanta airport is well south of downtown and have only received rain yesterday. My parents are recovering from their bad colds this week, and I had a cold as well, so it was good for everyone that I postponed my visit.

>143 cbl_tn: I'm glad to hear that you didn't get a crippling amount of snow and that you have power, Carrie. Apparently Chattanooga and the adjacent areas in the north Georgia mountains were hit the worst, which is pretty typical. Please drive safely today!

>144 msf59: Good morning, Mark! I'n glad that Atlanta missed out on the snowfall, although I know that my friends in the northern suburbs and exurbs weren't so lucky.

Come to Atlanta next month if you want sunshine and warmth! Um...actually come here next week if you want warmth, as it will be in the mid 60 for most of the week, but were supposed to get rain for three or four days. The normal high at this time of year is around 60 degrees, as spring here usually begins in late February and takes up residence by early March.

>142 kidzdoc: Ooh, I've actually read two of the books on your list! The turn of the screw and The city and the city. I'll be interesting to see your thoughts on them.

Glad you seem to have escaped the snow; we've had almost none here in London this winter which is actually a bit disappointing to me. I do like to have just a day or two of it!

>106 kidzdoc: Some good looking stuff on that list, Darryl. I have a few of them on the shelves and many I will add when they make it to Malaysia in mass paperback editions. Audrey Magee's book has had very good reviews. I might read that one next month.

>142 kidzdoc: Ambitious list. It will be my first Mieville book next month as it isn't really my genre. Have you read any previously?

>147 Sakerfalcon: I had meant to read The Turn of the Screw this month for Mark's American Author Challenge, but I probably won't get to it before next week. The City & the City is a book that I've wanted to read for a while, so I'll take advantage of Paul's British Author Challenge to get to it.

I suspect (and certainly hope!) that this storm was winter's last gasp in metro Atlanta, as this area's drivers don't handle snow (or rain) very well. It will mainly be in the mid 60s (18-20 C) next week, and spring shouldn't be far behind, as the flowers are usually in bloom here by the first half of March.

I did see snow twice this year, both times when I visited my parents, for Thanksgiving (which was the first White Thanksgiving I've experienced since I moved from Pittsburgh) and in early January. That's enough for me. Midtown Atlanta missed out on snow, but the city's neighborhoods north of here did have a little bit of accumulation earlier this week, even though they are only 5-7 miles away from here.

>148 PaulCranswick: I agree, Paul. I posted the Walter Scott Prize longlist here because of the interesting books on it, and because I like well written historical fiction. The City & the City will be my first book by Miéville. I've wanted to read him for a while, so thanks for encouraging me to do so next month.

Well, I'll be looking forward to both of your thoughts on Mieville. And I think you picked the right one to start - his more fantastical books can be somewhat polarizing, with people loving or hating them.

>150 drneutron: That's good to know, especially since I haven't purchased The City & the City yet. Thanks, Jim.

>149 kidzdoc:, >150 drneutron: I've read all but one of Mieville's books and I agree that The city and the city is the one you're most likely to enjoy, based on what I know of your reading tastes. I have to say that even though I'm a big F&SF reader and loved most of his books in those genres, City might actually be my favourite Mieville.

I know Bianca enjoyed Turn of the screw when she read it earlier this year.

I hope you are correct in your surmise that you've seen the last of the snow this year. It's time for spring!

>152 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire. I read very little F&SF, but I am eager to give The City & the City a try. I almost bought it several times when I was in London, but couldn't pull the trigger.

I wouldn't rule out another cold snap here, but I would be surprised if we had any more frozen or mixed precipitation in the city for the rest of the year.

We have 6 to 7 inches here, at least according to my nearby neighbors who have gone outside to measure. I'm so sick of shoveling snow. Where is "I Dream of Jeannie" when you need her to "blink" and make the snow go away?

Ah, good to know the predicted snow missed Atlanta, Darryl. Love that photo in >121 kidzdoc:.

I loved The City & the City! I also heard the author speak a couple of years ago- when he signed books at the end of the talk he put a quote from various authors and poets on the page as well as his signature.

>154 thornton37814: Ugh. Sorry to hear that, Lori. Hopefully this will be the South's last snowfall of the year.

>155 jnwelch: Same here, Joe!

>156 torontoc: Nice touch by China Miéville! I was tempted to download The City & the City onto my Kindle, but I think I'd rather have a print copy of the book.

Dang, adding The City & the City to my WL.
Glad to hear the storm didn't turn out too bad.

We get storms often enough and that white stuff is a regular part of living up north so the whole supermarkets and the empty shelves doesn't happen unless it's Sunday, in which case there is always something missing when I do my weekly grocery runs.

>134 kidzdoc: 1993 - I had left Pgh for Cleveland, for grad school at Case. So we just missed. But I did go back to Pgh every month or so, so our paths might have crossed. I stayed with a friend who lived in Squirrel Hill. She ran a craft gallery then, and then left for Phil. to go to rabbinical school and is now a rabbi in San Diego. There was a very good independent bookstore in Shadyside - The Stonewall Bookstore. And I recognize your apartment bldg. Another friend of mine who was a clay artist had a studio just around the corner from Ellsworth on Alder St. Your apt bldg was just about 3 blocks away from my house.

I'm glad that you enjoyed I Called Him Necktie. That one is waiting in the pile. With the AACI, AACII, BAC, Chee-Leaphorn/Longmire read, I've having a difficult time squeezing any other books in. I guess I over-committed again.

>141 scaifea: Fabric.com - I just got an order from there a few days ago. I hadn't noticed that they were located in Georgia.

Baltimore got about 2 inches of snow this AM but now the temp is hovering around 32 and the streets are clear. But it was enough for all of the public schools in the area to be closed for the day. I certainly hope this is the last gasp of winter.

I had to laugh at the image of everyone wildly throwing in pancake mix and Aunt Jemima's syrup in their carts in preparation for the storm that never came.

I'm glad the 'storm' was a miss for you ....although, if you all really need to justify closing schools.. come over and get as much snow as you'd like from us. Really, we won't even charge you for it.

After I saw that picture of the empty pancake shelves, someone, coincidentally, posted this on my FB wall. I get it now pancakes!!!!

http://www.godvine.com/Kids-Bust-Dad-Dancing-In-The-Kitchen-You-Go-Daddy-fb-gv-6...

Is this why IHOP restaurants look like a church? ;)

>106 kidzdoc: Well I own The Miniaturist and The Paying Guests, which (embarrassingly) was an ER win way back last July. Maybe I'll make that my next book since I loved the only other Waters I've read, Fingersmith. I'm glad you missed out on the snow. I wish we could miss out on some of it. My son, who lives in Raleigh, got blasted with a combination of snow/ice that shut the city down. I've had my fill of this winter Darryl.

I'm enjoying your forays into the kitchen too.

My crazy busy shift in the hospital will be over in half an hour. It's nearly 12:30 am, we've had well over 30 admissions since 8 am yesterday morning, and the ER is still chock full of sick kids.

>158 jolerie: I'm glad that the storm was far lighter in the city than what was originally called for on Tuesday night. However, we seem to be doubly busy tonight as a result, as many of the kids who were sick on Wednesday didn't show up in our ER.

the empty shelves doesn't happen unless it's Sunday, in which case there is always something missing when I do my weekly grocery runs.

That's why I get up early on Sunday and get to Publix soon after it opens. Sometimes I get there too early, before the employees have had a chance to put out all of the meats and vegetables, but they are always willing to locate something for me if I ask them, especially since many of them know me from my weekly visits.

>159 catarina1: Nice! Our paths may well have crossed, either in Shadyside or Squirrel Hill, where my best friend lived (he's the guy who I visit in Madison, WI, along with his wife and kids). Dave lived in a house on either Beacon Street or Hobart Street near Murray Avenue, close to the Giant Eagle supermarket. I'm sure that I never went to that bookstore in Shadyside (I probably read less than 10 books for pleasure in the four years that I was there, summers included), but Dave and I would sometimes go to a bookstore on Carson Street which had poetry readings; I think it was called City Books or something like that.

I haven't been back to Pittsburgh since I graduated from Pitt in 1997, so I'm long overdue for a return visit.

I Called Him Necktie was very good, and it would seem to lend itself to repeat readings to get more out of it, especially since it's a novella. I chose it over my planned reads for the month because I want to keep my streak of reading 100 or more books per year since 2003 intact, and I'm already behind for the year with only 10 books completed so far this month. Hopefully my reading output will improve significantly in March.

>160 cameling: We all had a good laugh at that photo, Caroline. Most of our mutual friends are from Pitt or are local pediatricians in Atlanta, and the non-Atlantans were amazed at how people reacted to this non-event. Her area had no snow accumulation that day, and schools opened at normal times yesterday morning.

>161 avidmom: ROTFLMAO! That video is outstanding! I admittedly do a little dance when I'm chopping vegetables or meat, especially to Konono No 1's album Congotronics, and the opening song 'Lufuala Ndonga':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcwvEtg14Iw

I can't compare to that father, though! Coolest dad ever.

>162 brenzi: I don't own The Miniaturist, but I did buy The Paying Guests during one of my trips to London last year. I still haven't read anything by Sarah Waters, so I'm eager to get to this one, and The Little Stranger in the near future.

Hmm...it seems as though this year's Orange Prize Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction longlist should be coming out soon. I wonder if The Paying Guests will be chosen for it.

I remember Peggy saying that North Carolina was supposed to catch the brunt of the storm after it passed through Georgia and Tennessee, but I didn't see which parts got hit, and how much snow they got. Hopefully Raleigh and the Research Triangle area will recover soon.

Woo hoo! It's almost 1 am, so I'm outta here.

>161 avidmom: It is impossible to watch that video and not smile! Thanks for posting it . . . I'll definitely be back to watch it again :)

Sad news: Mr. Spock has left us. May he live long and prosper in the Great Beyond.



NYT: Leonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83

>165 kidzdoc: Wow! It's hard to imagine a world without Dr. Spock, isn't it?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X was one of my favorite books, years ago. He was quite a character. I'd be in for a re-read in May. Also, there was a more recent biography, wasn't there? I keep meaning to read that.

Sad to hear about dear Spock, definitely a fixture of my childhood.

>106 kidzdoc: I have two-thirds of this list interestingly, and have so far read 3:

The Miniaturist very good, but flawed
The Lie very good
The Paying Guests very good, but flawed

Hense of those three I'd probably go for The Lie.

Will catch up with the rest of your thread later.

>166 banjo123: *Pssst* MR. Spock. Dr. Spock was somebody else, and he's been gone a long time. But, yes, in my world, there will always be Spock.

>168 laytonwoman3rd:--oh, right, sorry.

I've just finished making Risotto with Roasted Parsnips and Kale, using a recipe that I found on The New York Times' web site. I thought I would like it, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well this turned out:



Ingredients:

½ pound parsnips, not too large
Salt and black pepper
Olive oil
½ pound kale, broccoli rabe or mustard greens
1 large onion, finely diced
1 ½ cups arborio rice
¼ cup dry white wine or vermouth
4 cups unsalted chicken or vegetable broth, or more if necessary
2 tablespoons butter
3 garlic cloves, minced
8 sage leaves, roughly chopped
Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese, for grating

Preparation:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Peel the parsnips, quarter them lengthwise, and remove the tough core with a paring knife. Cut into 1/2-inch random shapes, put in a roasting pan, season with salt and coat with 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Roast until tender and lightly browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven.

Remove the stems from the greens and cut them into 1/2-inch-wide ribbons. Bring a pot of water to a boil over high heat, add salt and cook very briefly. Drain, cool and squeeze dry. Set aside.

Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to a heavy bottomed soup pot or large saucepan over medium-high heat, then add the onion, season with salt and pepper, and cook till softened, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and stir together with the onions until the onions are barely brown, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine or vermouth and cook until it evaporates. Add 2 cups broth and adjust the heat to a brisk simmer. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring well with a wooden spoon every minute or so. When the broth is absorbed, add 1 cup more and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the last cup of broth and cook for another 5 minutes, until the rice is cooked, but the grains are still firm. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding another splash of broth if necessary. Turn off the heat.

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and the butter in a wide, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and sage and let sizzle without browning, about 1 minute. Add the roasted parsnips and chopped greens, season lightly with salt and pepper, and stir to coat and heat through, about 2 minutes more.

Transfer the risotto to a warm serving dish. Spoon the vegetables over and fold them gently into the rice. Serve with grated pecorino or Parmesan cheese.
_________________________________________________________

This is the first time I've made risotto, and the first time I've cooked parsnips; it may also be the first time I've had parsnips! I ended up using the entire one pound bag of parsnips that I bought on Monday, and I probably cut them up too finely. I'd probably roast them for a little longer than 15 minutes as well. However, I'm thoroughly pleased with this recipe, and I'll definitely make this again.

That risotto sounds really good. I'm fond of parsnips (the "not too large" part is pretty important, because they can get bitter and woody), but have never done anything with them other than roasting. I have a recommendation for the next time you make it. I always heat my broth, so you're not adding cold liquid to the simmering pot; it will cook more evenly, and take a little less time.

>164 brenpike: That video is priceless!

>166 banjo123: Very true, Rhonda. Mr. Spock must be one of the most loved and recognizable characters in the history of television.

I hope that you join us in reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X in May. The biography you're probably thinking of is Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable, who died less than a week before it was published in 2013. I liked it, and would definitely recommend it.

>167 Caroline_McElwee: I think that Spock, and Star Trek, was a fixture of nearly all Western childhoods in the 1960s and 1970s, Caroline.

Thanks for your comments about those three books.

>168 laytonwoman3rd:, >169 banjo123: The good Dr. Benjamin Spock was famous in his own right, thanks to his popular book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, but he can't touch Mr. Spock!

Back to the kitchen...

>171 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks for those hints, Linda. I only saw one type of parsnip sold at Publix, and the one pound bag I bought contained five parsnips. Even though the recipe called for 1/2 lb of parsnips I used the entire bag, as the removal of the woody cores meant that there was far less left to use in the recipe.

I'll definitely keep your idea of heating up the chicken broth in mind the next time I use it, in this recipe and other ones.

Hmm, I've gotten quite sleepy all of a sudden. I think I'll take a nap before I cook the crawfish étouffée.

>170 kidzdoc: favourited this recipe, was thinking of looking for a recipe with kale in. Will pick some up tomorrow.

I cannot believe you haven't had parsnips before Darryl. They are great roasted or mashed. I sometimes blend mashed carrot and parsnip together too.

Nope, won't eat. Try again my dear sir.

>174 Caroline_McElwee: Sounds good, Caroline. I hope that you like it.

It's possible that I may have had parsnips as part of a dish, but I've never ordered it in a restaurant or had it in a cafeteria, and I'm all but certain that my mother never cooked it. I loved the taste of it in this recipe, and since it's the vegetable of the month for March in The Kitchen, I'm all but certain that I'll have some in one or more different recipes next month.

>175 lunacat: How about some crawfish étouffée, Jenny?



This turned out very well, although it makes a blonde roux instead of the brown one that I'm used to (and Heather confirmed that it's supposed to be that way). Here's her recipe:

Crawfish étouffée (makes 6 to 8 servings)

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons butter
2 medium onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
3 rib celery, chopped
1 pound peeled crawfish tails
1 (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of shrimp
1/2 cup water
½ to 3/4 cup dry white wine
Salt, cayenne and hot sauce to taste
Minced green onions for garnish
Add Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning to taste

Instructions:

In a heavy pot, melt the butter and sauté the onions, garlic, bell peppers, and celery until wilted.

Add the crawfish tails and cook for 10 minutes.

Add the soup, water, and wine and stir. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the seasonings and simmer another 10 minutes, add the green onions and serve over steamed rice.

Note: If you have extra serve it over baked fish.

I like this recipe after one day. Cook it and refrigerate for one day.

I occasionally use parsnips with a roast. Earlier this week I cooked a roast with red potatoes, carrots, celery, parsnips, and a turnip. I liked that combination, and I'm still enjoying the leftovers.

>177 cbl_tn: That sounds good, Carrie; I'll have to keep that in mind. I hate turnips, though!

>178 kidzdoc: You can use onion instead of turnips. Onions make me violently ill so I have to find other things to use to add flavor.

>179 cbl_tn: Yikes! My father was allergic to onions, but he is now able to tolerate them in modest amounts after he underwent repeated exposures to increasing amounts of them, under the supervision of his internist, many years ago. His allergy was nowhere near as bad as yours, I'm sure.

I love onions, especially Vidalia or other sweet onions, along with red onions, both raw and cooked, so I'm glad that I didn't inherit my father's allergy.

Thank heavens I'm not intolerant of onions, I love them.

Passing thru & trying to catch up ..... impossible really

Interesting list for the Walter Scott prize this year, The Miniaturist has been on my radar for awhile, got & continues to get a lot of buzz from UK.

Will be interested to see your take on The City & The City

observations on Storm food hoarding is that its often Urbanised folk, having been brought up in Rural areas myself, even today have a good stocked pantry so doesn't matter when we get the rain & storms that pass thru Auckland (not snow or anything like you folks get, more tropical rain/wind)

Stopping by to wish you a wonderful Sunday, Darryl and to snag a copy of the risotto recipe. All this talk about empty grocery store shelves has reminded me that I need to come off LT and go grocery shopping. ;-)

Also wishing you the very best of Sundays, mate. I started off my new thread today with a few hastily drawn limerick sketches of some of our LT gentlemen. Yours ran:

75/4
Darryl is known to follow the Booker;
When he sees a good book he's never mistook her.
The charming Kidz Doc
Now maintains his good stock
By displaying his skills as a cooker.

I of course have to be careful with rhymes for 'Booker'!

Love the limerick!!

LOL... good one, Paul

Parsnips tend to be a vegetable that is more common up north. I love them with roasts. They are delicious tossed with olive oil and salt and roasted plain. I often roast them this way with fennel, carrots, and or brussel sprouts as all of them take about the same amount of time to roast. They make a delicious dish by themselves or as an accompaniment to meat.

>184 PaulCranswick: Perfect! Love it.

>184 PaulCranswick: funny, Paul

>187 benitastrnad: We cook parsnips that way also! Delicious.

>184 PaulCranswick: very funny.

This weekend at work wasn't a bad one, at least not for me. Even though I was on call today, yesterday (when I wasn't on call) was a far busier day. Hopefully the rest of the week will be relatively calm as well.

>181 Caroline_McElwee: Same here, Caroline. I'm sorry that you're so allergic to onions, Carrie. :-(

>182 roundballnz: Sometimes I have a hard time keeping up with my own thread, Alex! I greatly appreciate all the visitors and comments, though, especially when I'm on clinical service and don't have time to keep up.

The Walter Scott Prize (for Historical Fiction) is quickly becoming one of my favorite literary awards. I won't read the longlisted books as ?faithfully as I do the Booker Prize longlist, but I'll look at the Walter Scott Prize finalists closely.

I ordered a copy of The City & the City from The Book Depository a few days ago, which should arrive here in about a week or so. I'm thrilled to see that this bookseller has returned to its previous, and hard to believe, policy of shipping books from the UK to the US for free, and at a discounted price. I generally prefer the UK version of books to US ones, so it's nice to know that I can order books from England and not have to wait to travel there or pay pricy shipping fees across the pond to get them.

Interesting comment about the differences in storm food hoarding in people who live in urbanized versus rural areas. I've always been a city boy, and even the suburb that my parents live in just outside of Philadelphia has plenty of supermarkets and other stores within a 15 minute drive, and it's easy to get to Center City Philadelphia via automobile or a commuter train. I'm definitely spoiled by living in the central portion of a major city, which is filled with plenty of urban professionals and college students, as there are a massive number of stores to shop at within a 2 mile radius of where I live, or on the way home from work if I drive (I normally take the subway to work on weekdays if I'm not working late). It makes sense that people like myself who live so close to supermarkets would be less likely to stock up on food than those who have to drive a considerable distance to their stores (and I stopped by my local Publix supermarket on the drive home from work not long ago, mainly to pick up tonic water for G&Ts and V&Ts).

>183 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori! Even though I had to work today it was a very pleasant Sunday, as all of the families were very pleasant and I enjoyed chatting with my partners, the subspecialist physicians, and the nurses in the hospital. I like nearly all of the people I work with, and love a good number of them, and the hospital often has a family like atmosphere that makes me feel very much at home. Many of my favorite partners and nurses were working this weekend, and it was a pleasure to be at work today.

I hope that you like the risotto recipe! It was a hit with the nurses on the floor that I spend most of my time on, as I brought a container for them to try yesterday, and one of my partners who tried it today loved it as well. It tasted even better today than it did on Friday, and I'll add this recipe to my list of favorites.

>184 PaulCranswick: That is a fabulous limerick, Paul! I am honored and humbled to read it, and I loved reading it. I'll continue to try new recipes, but I should be able to pick up my reading output now that March has come.

>185 lauralkeet:, >186 cameling:, >188 Ameise1:, >189 brenpike:, >191 Caroline_McElwee: Paul's limerick is brilliant!

>187 benitastrnad: Thanks for that recipe idea, Benita. I love the taste of parsnips, and I'm very pleased with how well they turned out. I'll definitely want to try them again in the very near future, and I'll take your suggestion in mind.

>190 banjo123: Thanks, Rhonda. BTW, do y'all remove the woody central core, or leave it in when you cook parsnips?

I don't have to read labels and avoid things like onion juice and onion salt so I'm not sure if it's an allergy that causes my problem with onions. It may be an unpleasant reminder of my gallbladder. I was told after it was removed that I still might not be able to eat foods that caused my gallbladder attacks (i.e., onions) since the ducts are still there. If I'm eating roast that someone else has cooked with onions I'd just eat around them since they're usually in large enough chunks to avoid easily. I just don't buy onions since I can't eat them and my dog shouldn't have them.

Just caught up on your thread and see that you have a group-read of Autobiography of Malcolm X planned. I had been planning on reading it right away, but perhaps I'll wait until May and read it with everyone else. :)

>193 kidzdoc: -- If the parsnips are younger and fresher, the center isn't woody; and it's fine. Once in a while, there is a woodiness to the base, and we do cut that out.

Parsnips FWIW, my MIL used to boil and mash parsnip in with potatoes. I don't mash...so I sometimes boil them with baby yukon gold potatoes 'til tender and toss with butter and fresh parsley...and a teeny bit of salt.

>187 benitastrnad: Love that idea.

We eat the whole parsnip, centre and all, although if they are really big ones we might take the majority of the woody bit out.

>198 lunacat: I too have rarely if ever needed to remove the middle of the parsnips. Maybe the UK supermarkets stock younger/smaller ones?

If you are looking for more parsnip ideas, Darryl, curried parsnip soup is a classic. I'm afraid I don't have a recipe* but I'm sure there must be some good ones online.

* I don't make soups, as I own neither a blender nor a slow cooker.

I just took an indepth look at the Walter Scott Prize Longlist for 2015 and all I can say is WOW! There are some intriguing books on that list. I added about 10 titles to my wishlist. Some that caught my eye Architect's Apprentice, The Undertaking, The Wake, God in Every Stone, and Mr. Mac and Me. These look wonderful and I can't wait to get started on them at some point. I have Bastard of Istanbul in my library and think that perhaps I should read all of her work at some point.

>194 cbl_tn: Ah. That sounds more like onion intolerance than an onion allergy, Carrie.

>195 The_Hibernator: Hi, Rachel! I hope that you decide to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X with us in May.

>196 banjo123: Thanks, Rhonda. I was able to distinguish between the core and the more peripheral portions of the parsnips I bought, although I didn't taste the central portion to see if it had a significantly different taste.

>197 tangledthread: That sounds like a good idea, as does Benita's, of course.

>198 lunacat: Thanks, Jenny. I've never bought, or seen, parsnips before last month, so I'm not sure if the ones I brought home are larger than usual (mine were about the size of large carrots).

>199 Sakerfalcon: Curried parsnip soup sounds potentially good, Claire. Thanks for mentioning it. I do have a slow cooker and a food processor, so I should be able to make this based on your comments.

>200 benitastrnad: There are some excellent looking books on that Walter Scott Prize longlist, Benita. I won't get to most of them, but I'll keep my eye out for those titles.

Yawn. Today was a long day at work, so I think I'll go to bed early.

I am not even trying to catch up, Darryl, just waving as I head through some threads :)

>103 kidzdoc: I cant see that video link just yet, but I will make a mental note (however reliable that is!) to look at the link tomorrow at the fancy (ie: functioning) university computers!

Good Moose Megan also has a certain ring to it. I suppose? :)

>136 kidzdoc: I think a lot about storm items, seeing as they are also emergency items that might apply to earthquakes (or are storm items thing that you bring with you to work for if you are trapped in side for days?). My earthquake items, over and above food/water/clothes/medicines/cooking gear/sleeping gear are always books, treats (lollies or chocolate) and kids entertainment items like games and cards.

Last time I visited these parts you were metaphorically snowed under! The rest of your country sounds literally snowed under. What is it with snow for you guys this winter!? We had a cracker day yesterday- that means hot- and today was far more autumnal. Reminding me that our summer is nearly over :(

>184 PaulCranswick:!!! Loving the limerick. Who says its a dying art!!??

>142 kidzdoc: I'm horribly behind, but just delurking to wish you well with Rohinton Mistry. It's been a long time since I read him, but your post has reminded me that I have a book of his short stories unread, er, somewhere in the house that I really should get to. Look forward to your comments.

Living, loving and lying awake at night and Zenzele : a letter for my daughter have come in at the library, so I'm looking forward to a week of Southern African reading.

>202 alcottacre: Hi, Stasia! Congratulations on another successful term. Enjoy your well deserved break!

>203 LovingLit: Cool. I doubt that all Cajun girls can dance as well as the one in the video, but all the ones I know, including one of my favorite partners and her sister, who works for Children's as a nursing administrator, like to dance. Music and food are essential elements of Cajun culture, along with LSU (Louisiana State University) football.

'Good Moose Megan' sounds better to me now than it did a few days ago!

There definitely can be an overlap between storm items and emergency items, especially if a bad snowstorm or an ice storm lead to a prolonged loss of electricity or heat.

The last storm did dump up to 8 inches of snow in the northern suburbs, exurbs and the mountains near the border with Tennessee, but the city of Atlanta saw only rain. Spring weather starts early in the Deep South, so I'll bet that last week will be our last blast of winter weather.

>204 charl08: Hi Charlotte! I'm also behind nearly everyone else's thread, both here and especially in Club Read. I loved the two books I've read by Mistry, A Fine Balance and Family Matters, so I'm loking forward to reading Such a Long Journey. Is the book of short stories you're referring to titled Tales from Firozsha Baag? I bought that last year.

I'll look for your comments about those two books, particularly Zenzele.

>205 kidzdoc: Those of us in the not-so-deep South aren't quite done with winter. Tomorrow's high is supposed to be in the mid-60s, but by evening they're expecting sleet changing over to snow by Thursday morning. One of the local weather stations is predicting anywhere from 1/2 inch to 3 inches of ice for my region. I sure hope they're wrong.

>206 cbl_tn: And Baltimore is to get ice pellets, freezing rain, sleet today. Rain all day tomorrow and then snow on Thursday! I shouldn't complain, Boston has it worse, but I am complaining. We're sick of it.

P.S. Darryl - the jambalaya was not quite as good because I didn't have a green pepper this time and only had chicken stock rather than beef. Have to remember that the next time. But it was still good, super easy and I love having left-overs around.

>206 cbl_tn: I hope they are wrong, but with temps in the 60s on Wednesday, I hope that the ice doesn't stick if it does.

>206 cbl_tn: Ugh. I'm sorry to hear that, Carrie. That same cold front will pass through north Georgia, but it's supposed to reach 72 degrees tomorrow, and it will apparently be warm enough in Atlanta to keep the precipitation in liquid form. I hope that eastern Tennessee escapes that dire forecast, too.

>207 catarina1: Double ugh. I usually miss living in the Northeast, but that definitely doesn't apply now.

I'm glad that you still liked the jambalaya even though you didn't have all of the ingredients in Heather's recipe. I probably won't make it again until I visit my parents, as I don't want to get tired of it after having made it three times this year so far.

>208 thornton37814: Good point, Lori.

>103 kidzdoc: I have had a chance to look at the Cajun chick dancing video now, and I can report that I am more likely to look like the guy in the blue singlet to her far right, even though I may feel like I dance just. like. her. Coordination is in the mind!!
Which is a good reminder of why we should not to allow mirrors or recording devices at music gigs :)

>210 LovingLit: Ha! As long as you think that you dance like the girl in the video that's good enough for me, Megan. Your honorary Cajun status remains in good standing.

Woo! My work week is officially over, and I'm looking forward to a book filled four day weekend. But first, it's time to catch up on sleep...

Sweet dreams Darryl! You deserve it. A book filled four day weekend sounds heavenly to me right now. :)

>114 kidzdoc: I think The Lie was published in January 2014, and would have been eligible for last year's Booker and Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction.

The Siege and The Betrayal are about the same characters, so I would recommend reading The Siege first - also, I think it's the best novel by Helen Dunmore of those I've read (3 others recently, at least two novels and a collection of short stories a long time ago).

I'd love to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X but it's in the category of books I owned and read a long time ago, I think for a first year university course though it might have been third year. Some of those simply disappeared after university, and I'm wondering if others are hidden in my shed or if I lost those too. I had a lot of house moves between 1990 and 1998 it, and a lot of my books were in my mum's house during the year it was rented out before she sold it.

More on the Walter Scott longlist

I've realised that of the 6 novels I've read there, 2 are WWI and 2 WWII - of those, I think Audrey Magee's The Undertaking - WWII Germany, the main characters are a family who support the government - was my favourite, and A God in Every Stone was one of the best and most different of the many WW1 novels that came out last year, as it was set in Turkey and the part of the then India that is now Pakistan, and offered a really different angle. Interesting that at least 5 of the novels are about war, and in another one the characters are quite affected by WW1.

Enjoy your weekend, Darryl! That sounds like bliss.

The small pleasures in life are often the most rewarding ones.

I'm still sleepy, but I feel very good after I made another batch of Southwest breakfast scramble, along with a mug of Peet's Ethiopian Fancy coffee. *happy sigh*

Today I'll read Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry. Grady Memorial Hospital is the public hospital for the city of Atlanta, and the two counties that comprise it, Fulton County and DeKalb County (oddly enough, although the city is mainly in Fulton County, a portion of it, which includes the campus of Emory University, lies in DeKalb County just to the east of Fulton County). Grady (which we called "The Big House") is one of the largest hospitals in the country, with 16 stories and just under 1000 beds, and it serves as a primary teaching hospital for medical students and residents of the city's two medical schools, Emory and Morehouse. I spent several months at Grady in the Term Nursery, Intermediate Nursery and Neonatal ICU (NICU) during my pediatric residency, and many more months at Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital, across the street from Grady, which was originally the children's hospital for Grady but recently was taken over by Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, the organization that I work for. I've owned this book for at least 10 years but never read it, so I'm looking forward to finally getting to it.

It will be a cold and rainy day in Atlanta (which I'll gladly take instead of frozen precipitation), which will be quite a contrast from yesterday when the high temperature reached 78 degrees. The high temperature for today occurred just after midnight, and the temperatures will continue to fall through the 50s to the low 30s by midnight tonight, before rebounding to the upper 40s tomorrow and the low 60s (which is where we are supposed to be) by the weekend.

I'll probably stay inside today, make carrot salad with tahini and crisped chickpeas for lunch, have leftovers for dinner, and go shopping tomorrow morning to buy ingredients for the meals I'll cook this weekend.

>212 jolerie: Thanks, Valerie! I didn't have much desire to read during most of my previous breaks from work this year, but I'm raring to go now.

>213 elkiedee: Thanks for letting me know about the publication date for The Lie, Luci. So, it wouldn't be eligible for this year's Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction longlist then. BTW, the longlist will be announced on Tuesday, March 10th.

I'm looking forward to reading The Siege in October, for Paul's British Author Challenge; hopefully I'll be able to get to The Betrayal as well.

I'll have to go through my boxes of old books to see if I still have a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. If I don't, I'll buy the paperback edition of it, which only costs $7.99 in the US.

Oh...that reminds me. I've volunteered to lead the second quarter Reading Globally theme on Iberian literature (Spain and Portugal), which will start on April 1st. I'll set up a thread for this group in the next couple of weeks, and start working on it as early as this weekend. Once the thread is up I'll let everyone here know about it.

>214 elkiedee: Interesting observations about the Walter Scott Prize longlist. I plan to read A God in Every Stone this month, for the current Reading Globally theme on literature from the Indian subcontinent. I loved her previous novel Burnt Shadows, which should have won the Orange Prize in the year that it made the shortlist, and I hope her new novel is at least chosen for this year's Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction longlist.

>215 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire! This work week (Thursday through Wednesday) wasn't as bad as previous weeks have been, but we were still busy and my days were long ones, so I'm grateful to have four days off before I go back on Monday. I'll work with a senior resident from Emory next week, so as long as she's good it will be an easier week than usual.

I've become terminally addicted to Beth's Southwest breakfast scramble! It's become my favorite dish to have on my mornings off from work. I'll probably try huevos rancheros this weekend; I'll let you know how it turns out.

Morning Darryl! I hope the week is going well. That breakfast scramble sure looks tasty.

The Siege is fantastic. My favorite Dunmore.

>218 msf59: Good morning, Mark! I read about your back problems yesterday just before I went to sleep. I hope that you're feeling better, and that the time off from work will help you recuperate fully.

The Southwest breakfast scramble is quick and easy to make, and it's very tasty. The Budget Bytes web site has numerous other excellent recipes, and I'll take a look at it later today to see if I want to try any more of them this weekend.

I'm glad to hear that you liked The Siege. I've owned it, and The Betrayal for quite awhile, so I'm eager to finally get to both of them this year.

>216 kidzdoc: carrot salad with tahini and crisped chickpeas
Hmm, that looks good and plausibly within my capabilities. Not for regular meals, but occasionally I want something to make for a potluck.

>216 kidzdoc: We had similar weather over here in Charleston. It's been in the 70s yesterday and today and tomorrow it will drop to the 30s. Very bizarre. Enjoy your day!

Another fan of The Siege here, Darryl. You're in for quite a read.

>220 qebo: I would think that this recipe would be well within your capabilities, Katherine! I still think that if I can make these recipes I've tried and posted, so can anyone else.

Actually, I think I'll make that recipe tomorrow. I'm much more in the mood for the Moroccan lentil and vegetable stew (another Budget Bytes recipe) that I've tried at least twice before, and I have everything on hand to make it, although I don't have enough chickpeas to make both recipes. (I need to remember to stock up on extra beans and peas when I go to Publix tomorrow.)

>221 rosylibrarian: I'm glad that we'll only get rain from this cold front, Marie. I saw that Philadelphia and NYC are expecting 4-6 inches of snow from this storm, which has already started. Yesterday was a bit too warm for my liking, at least coming on the heels of cold weather the past few weeks, but temps in the low 60s this weekend will be nice.

I hope that you have a good day and upcoming weekend as well!

>222 jnwelch: Good morning, Joe! I'm glad that you're a fan of The Siege as well. I'll definitely read it this year, and October should be a good time to get to it and The Betrayal.

>217 kidzdoc: Hmm, I don't have plans for Saturday yet. Maybe I'll use the morning to try out the Southwestern Scramble recipe!

>225 Sakerfalcon: For some reason I thought that you had already tried the Southwest breakfast scramble, Claire! I think you'll love it, but I'll be curious to get your take on it.

ETA: Can you buy duck eggs easily in London? A couple of years ago Fliss and I had brunch at a restaurant close to the National Theatre, which offered duck eggs and lox over either toast or a bagel, and I loved the taste of duck eggs in comparison to chicken eggs, which I'm also very fond of.

>226 kidzdoc: I've never looked for duck eggs, but I bet Waitrose would have them. I haven't knowingly eaten them.

You probably thought I'd already tried the scramble because I commented on your making it a while ago now. But I haven't yet had time to try it myself. I'm really looking forward to it.

>227 Sakerfalcon: I'd bet that I could find duck eggs in Borough Market, too. I don't know that I've had them before I tried them in London (possibly at Benugo in the BFI Southbank?), but I remember being surprised and pleased with how rich and flavorful they were.

You're right; I did think that you had tried Beth's Southwest breakfast scramble because of your comment about it, either here or on Facebook.

>217 kidzdoc: Any plans to read Jose Saramago as part of the Iberian theme? I have always meant to read more of his books, after a rather sticky time with Blindness, but I've been told that's one of the least accessible of his books.

I really like the Walter Scott list this year, will come back to it later on when the current crop of library books have been read and returned (and yes, it is Tales from Firozsha Baag, and I still have no idea where it might be!)

>229 charl08: Absolutely, Charlotte! José Saramago is one of my favorite authors, along with Mario Vargas Llosa, James Baldwin, Caryl Phillips, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and Haruki Murakami. I own nearly all of his books and have read a majority of them, including Blindness, which blew me away, but there are plenty that I haven't gotten to yet. I'll probably read Journey to Portugal and The History of the Siege of Lisbon, especially since I'm seriously considering a trip to Lisbon in June. As payback for working more shifts from November through February I'll receive a month off from work, vacation free, as I did last year. Last June I spent two weeks in London and 1½ weeks in Barcelona, and I'll probably spend this coming June in Europe, although I'll probably spend the bulk of my time in Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon.

One of Saramago's more accessible and most entertaining books IMO is The Stone Raft, a humorous novel in which the Iberian peninsula separates from the European continent and drifts aimlessly in the Atlantic Ocean. Death with Interruptions is another lighter and funnier novel by him.

The Walter Scott Prize longlist is a good one. I suspect that I would enjoy reading it more than I would this year's Booker Prize longlist, based on the recent choices by the Booker judges.

>231 charl08: Sounds like a lovely holiday. Lisbon's gorgeous. Spent time in Coimbra as well, which was also beautiful, sun-filled and rather hazy in my memory, but I have since seen various pictures of the university library (500 years old!) which makes me want to visit again and see the books. Will keep an eye out for the Iberian challenge, and thanks for the recommendations, will look out for them.

>230 kidzdoc: Not quite a year ago I hiked from Porto up into Galicia and thought it was incredibly beautiful. If you're going to be there that long, I wouldn't skip Porto.

Btw, if you're going to be in Europe all of June, we should have a LT meetup in Amsterdam. I'll be over there for a few days at the end of the month. ;-)

>231 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I haven't made any definitive plans yet for June, but I'll probably do so when I have a long break off from work at the end of this month and into early April (I thought I would travel to London then, but I'll probably stay in Atlanta and accomplish some long put off tasks instead).

>232 TadAD: That sounds good, Tad. I'll keep Porto in mind.

>233 TadAD: Hmm...I haven't been to Amsterdam but I've wanted to go there. I'll keep that in mind, and I may well take you up on that!

I have relatives who use all kinds of eggs. My Aunt says that duck eggs make the best custards and cakes but you have to be careful and measure them for volume instead of just blithely using the number of eggs stated in the recipe. Duck eggs are larger than chicken eggs and will add too much liquid to the recipe if you aren't careful.

I got the afternoon off from work. UA closed at 11 this morning and it started sleeting about noon. However, it has now stopped and it looks like the sky is trying to clear up. Most people are out and about today and the traffic on the main roads is heavy. I am at Dunkin' Donuts drinking coffee because Starbucks was too crowded.

I started reading Brown Girl Dreaming and am finding it tough going because it is written in free verse. That is a format that I don't like all that much, but I will give it a go and see what I think. I have liked other Woodson books I have read so maybe this one will turn out to be a good read.

>235 benitastrnad: Thanks for that information about duck eggs, Benita. I had read earlier today that they are larger than chicken eggs, so your comment about measuring them in recipes instead of simply adding them to a recipe that calls for chicken eggs makes sense. I'll probably look for them at the DeKalb Farmers' Market on a weekday toward the end of the month.

I also found this image about duck eggs and chicken eggs:



Good for you for having the afternoon off from work, and I'm glad to hear that the weather wasn't as bad as it could have been. There is a line of rain that is just entering the Perimeter now, so it will start raining here within the next few minutes and probably last for an hour or two. We're now under a winter weather advisory, as there's a chance that some roads could have a thin layer of ice by late evening, when the temperature will dip below freezing. I was thinking of going to Publix when it opens at 7 am tomorrow, but I may wait until mid-morning if the roads are slick.

I loved Brown Girl Dreaming, in large part because I do like free verse. I also loved Maxine Hong Kingston's book I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, and Adam Foulds' book The Broken Word: An Epic Poem of the British Empire in Kenya, and the Mau Mau Uprising Against It, which were also written in free verse. I hope that Brown Girl Dreaming gets better for you.

BTW, I received a signed hardback edition of Brown Girl Dreaming in the mail this week, in thanks for my donation to the organization We Need Diverse Books after the flap that arose after Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) made that regrettable watermelon joke about Jacqueline Woodson at the National Book Awards ceremony last year. I bought the Kindle version of it, and I'm happy to have a hardback edition of it, especially one signed by its author.

>216 kidzdoc: I'm going to do the carrot and chickpea dish as part of a meze lunch on Saturday Darryl (I make hummus and feta and mint boreck).

I love that cartoon. I KNOW that feeling.

>236 kidzdoc: lucky you re Brown Girl Dreaming, I bought this book too after a couple of resounding recommendations from Laura and Linda.

>216 kidzdoc: That salad looks terrific. I will have to try it.

Another fan of The Siege here. I think it is a fantastic book.

>237 Caroline_McElwee: I didn't cook anything else besides the Southwest breakfast scramble yesterday, but I'll make the carrot salad today. I'll go to Publix, my favored local supermarket, shortly, and start cooking later this morning.

>238 alcottacre: I'll let you know how the carrot salad turns out, Stasia! It's nearly 6:30 am, so I'd better get dressed and get to Publix before rush hour gets too heavy.

Morning, Darryl! I'm in the middle of Brown Girl Dreaming and very much enjoying it so far.

>241 kidzdoc: Good morning, Amber! I'm glad that you're enjoying Brown Girl Dreaming. Have you read any of Jacqueline Woodson's other books?

I've gone to Publix, successfully dodged a round of unexpected snow flurries, and had breakfast, so I'll start making Irish lamb stew now.

>241 kidzdoc: *holds out deep bowl* Lamb stew....yes, please.

>242 laytonwoman3rd: The lamb stew will be ready for dinner! In the meantime, can I offer you a bowl of freshly made Moroccan lentil and vegetable stew?

That will do nicely...thank you!

>244 laytonwoman3rd: You're welcome!

This thread is making me hungry!

>246 banjo123: I can't compete with Joe's thread, though!

I really like duck eggs, but they're not readily available at my supermarket. So whenever I do see them, I snag a carton of them. They're so much more flavorful than regular hen's eggs. I also like quail eggs, but I can only get them when I go to HMart.

>247 kidzdoc: Sure you can! :-) Plus you're making the delicious stuff in RL - very impressive.

>248 cameling: Right, Caroline. The scrambled duck egg I had in London a few years ago was the best egg I've ever tasted, hands down. I looked for duck eggs at Publix this morning, as I bought eggs to make huevos rancheros this weekend, but of course it didn't sell them. I suspect that I'll be able to find them at a local suburban farmers' market just east of Atlanta, as it specializes in hard-to-find domestic and international goods. I'll shop there on one of my weekdays off from work toward the end of the month, and if I find them I'll make Southwest breakfast scramble and huevos rancheros with them.

>249 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe! I'm sure you and everyone else can tell that I'm enjoying my new hobby of cooking, and I think I've spent more time cooking than reading so far this year.

More time cooking than reading? WHAT?

Happy Friday, Darryl! I am just hitting the halfway point in The Narrow Road. What a terrific read. Do you have it on the pile?

>252 LovingLit: is huevos rancheros the same thing as scrambled eggs?

And, I don't believe a word of this nonsense about you cooking more than you have read his year, I mean, really.

>251 msf59: I think that's the case, Mark! I'm still stuck at 10 books for 2015 so far, which is two weeks' worth of reading for several people in this group.

I read The Narrow Road to the Deep North last year, after it was longlisted for the 2014 Booker Prize. It was my favorite book from last year's longlist, and it was one of my favorite books of the year.

>252 LovingLit: Here's a photo of Beth's Huevos Rancheros from her weblog Budget Bytes, which I plan to make for Sunday brunch:



Believe it, ma'am!

Dinner will be served in the new thread.