So last year, I came across a really easy recipe for “pumpkin muffins.” (Okay, I just searched on Google for the original page I saw, and I think it was this: Easy Pumpkin Muffins).

The recipe involves
- a can of pumpkin puree (that you normally use to make pumpkin pie)
- a box of yellow cake mix (any brand, I assume)
- spices.

Around Halloween this year, I made a batch. I used 2 teaspoons of “Pumpkin Pie Spice” (by McCormick) instead of recipe’s combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The back of the spice jar says it includes cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice, so…yeah.
Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes. It makes your apartment smell really good. I recommend baking them on the longer side because they do end up a bit… over-moist?

Today, I’m making it in a loaf pan instead. I have no idea how it’ll turn out. I set my timer for half an hour. XD

Oh yeah, and Bowen’s always saying the cooking posts need pictures, so I’ll try to remember to do that too.

[edit] Added 10 more minutes in the oven. The loaf pan may not have been a good idea, because the dough is not very stiff after it’s baked, so it’s hard to serve? I had to basically dig it out of the pan in crumbles.
But here’s a picture:

So I was chatting with my sister today and she mentioned that her butter wasn’t soft enough. When I asked her what she was making, she sent me this link: Mint Chocolate Candy Cane Cake.

It reminded me of when I was at Tech and when the holidays rolled around, we would go to Coldstone and get the “Mint-night Snack” shake, which had the seasonal dark chocolate peppermint ice cream blended with Oreos. Yum! It tasted like a blended Girl Scouts Thin Mint cookie, actually not very peppermint-y (mint mint vs candycane mint). Erin (White) and I were in love with the stuff.

And it also made me think about how Torrey doesn’t love sweets in general, but we used to go to Coldstone for ice cream or shakes and he would get that cake batter shake. I think it had graham cracker crust in it or something.

Anyway, the whole Coldstone thing makes me think of Tech. Erin, Torrey, Rene, Aimee, Bill…
which makes me think of other places and people: Corner Bakery and Tanya, Robbie and Akshay being silly at Denny’s, Svenge blasting “Sound of Silence” through my wall…

Good memories, honestly. I don’t have that many negative memories of Caltech, which is surprising given my general trend of memory-keeping.

But yes. Chocolate and peppermint. Holidays. Warm memories.

Hope everyone is well. :*

So I sort of created a queue of future posts for this book-a-week thing, and then I forgot about it since I’ve pretty much fallen off all my other New Year’s resolutions too. But I actually did read a few more books, I just didn’t want to have to use them as my book count. But I noticed today that this week is actually empty, so I thought I’d fill it in quickly with the last “The Mortal Instruments” book that I read, which is City of Fallen Angels, book 4 in the series.

So the series is actually getting kind of…used up? The storyline is becoming a soap opera, and what reviewers had said about the first book (that it’s predictable and the characters have been done, etc.) is really really starting to come out and bother me. I have a copy of book 5 on my computer right now, but I think it’s saying something that even though I read the first four books straight through, at the end of City of Fallen Angels I was actually loathe to start City of Lost Souls (book 5). And I think there’s actually a sixth book that’s supposed to be coming out soon that wraps up the series?

So lately, because of the hype about the upcoming movie, there has been an explosion of edits/gifs/quotations from Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones on my Tumblr dashboard. So I finally got off my lazy butt and located a copy of the book. There’s one blog that I follow in particular which has recommended several books in the past which I have read and enjoyed: Angelfall, Delirium, The Fault in Our Stars.

City of Bones is the first in a series, of which the Tumblr-rec actually told me through PM that they couldn’t really get into until the second or third book. But I did enjoy book 1 and had the foresight to locate a copy of the other books in the series before starting. (I hate waiting for the next book when I get into a series’s story.)

The weirdest thing about it is that even though none of the story felt particularly familiar, when I got to the major plot twist, that seemed familiar. I wonder if I read a clip of the story somewhere else? But who would go around posting just the plot twist to the public? Seems like a jerk move. But that section seemed…so familiar.

Anyway, one annoying thing about reading City of Bones is that with all the movie stuff I couldn’t get certain faces out of my mind. And so I just read the whole thing with the shadow of a movie looming overhead. Clary was Lily Collins of course, but oddly Hodge was the new Dumbledore in my mind (just re-watched Half-Blood Prince recently), and Luke was Alaric from “The Vampire Diaries” (weirdly, there was another character in the book named Alaric, who was connected with Luke, so that just strengthened the image). I think I had an actor in mind for Simon too but his face has faded, so oh well.

More generally, City of Bones sits partway between Angelfall and “The Dresden Files.” It has a lot of magical/myth-y stuff, and the premise is that “all the myths are true.” And then the main band of characters are demonhunters (Shadowhunters is what they call themselves). Only Clare has mixed in the myth of nephilim as well, which is what reminded me of Angelfall.

I rewatched “You’ve Got Mail” today because I was feeling sick and it’s one of those movies I watch when I’m sick – partly because it’s an old favorite, and partly because Kathleen gets sick in the film and Joe is nice to her and it’s sort of a turning point in the movie.

Two things that I wanted to talk about:

1. The movie is based on an older movie, “The Shop Around the Corner,” of which there was a musical remake that starred Judy Garland (!). And the movie was based originally on a play called “Parfumerie.”

2. The movie is about an independent bookstore that’s put out of business by a book superstore. And I thought, when I was a kid (hah!) I used to love going to Barnes & Noble and I had no problem with book superstores. In our area, B&N was like…THE bookstore. When I first stepped into a Borders I disliked it instantly for no reason other than that it wasn’t my B&N.

Aside: When I moved to Ann Arbor, there was no B&N, only a Borders. I found out when Borders was closing that it actually was founded in Ann Arbor. ^^; And I just found out when Wiki-ing Borders to confirm that fact that it was opened by two brothers whose last name was Borders. I always thought the name came from the noun.

Anyway, when Borders went out of business, and around the same time B&N declared bankruptcy right? Or maybe it was just a rumor. Everyone was talking about how eBooks and eReaders were going to put all the bookstores out of business. How even if they started making their own eReaders (which they did) the storefronts would still have to close since they wouldn’t make enough money to keep up the actual stores and keep the shelves stocked with actual physical books that nobody buys anymore…

MY POINT is that I never super identified with Kathleen losing her store. I mean it was sad, intellectually, I guess, but I didn’t really feel it. But now that the physical bookstores are being put out of business by say, Kindle/Amazon… I’m really starting to feel a twinge. Like I’m losing something. Either a part of my past, or a part of…what I want my life to be like in the future?

I recently got all these Wheel of Time books, right? And then Mike’s mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I thought it would be cost- and theme-appropriate thing to ask for the first book of the series. And she had trouble finding it! I mean not like, trouble trouble. It’s a popular series and I’m sure if you walked into the fantasy section of a bookstore they’d have it. But she couldn’t find a new, hardcover version online or something. Or it was expensive? But she found a mass-market paperback version easily and I didn’t know if I was going to keep the whole set forever (and the book 2 I picked up was paperback anyway), so I thought that was fine. Especially since I have to bring it back in my luggage. =P

But yes. I don’t think I’d feel the same if I had the series on an eReader? And you can’t just “pick up” eBooks on the free table in your laundry room.

And I once said that I feel rich when I have an armful of books. Holding a plastic eReader feels cheap. It’s…so light. It has no heft, substance. LOL. I don’t know. IT JUST DOESN’T FEEL THE SAME. Plus books smell good. =P

OMG, I just tried to Google the “old book smell” GIF that I’ve seen. I searched “smell of books” and I got this awesome link with the description: “The smell of e-books just got better. Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience? Have you been avoiding ….

But yeah, lignin.

Not as good as Part 1. It just seemed more chaotic and some of the time I was confused about who was on which side and all the characters seemed to get jumped together in my mind. Curious to see where Part 3 is going to go, as it seems to have ended quite decidedly. Then again, that just shows how little I know my history, since there obviously must be at least one whole play’s worth of material left in the story.

So today I went to the laundry room to hang a blanket out in the sun to…freshen it up a bit, I guess. On my way back to the apartment, I noticed several stacks of big, hardcover books. I glanced at the spines and saw Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Stephen King, and Isaac Asimov. I immediately ran back to the apartment to get Mike to help me carry all the books back to our place. So now I have three stacks of books and I’m not sure what all’s in it but I’m about to make a list and I’m really excited. Feels like Christmas, but better, because at Christmas you would only get one or two books, and I have at least 15 it looks like.

Organizing while listing…

Robots and Murder – Isaac Asimov

The Great Hunt (WoT 2) – Robert Jordan [ratty paperback =/]
The Dragon Reborn (WoT 3) – Robert Jordan
The Shadow Rising (WoT 4) – Robert Jordan
The Fires of Heaven (WoT 5) – Robert Jordan
Lord of Chaos (WoT 6) – Robert Jordan
A Crown of Swords (WoT 7) – Robert Jordan
The Path of Daggers (WoT 8) – Robert Jordan
Winter Heart (WoT 9) – Robert Jordan [awwww, B&N 40% off sticker]
Crossroads of Twilight (WoT 10) – Robert Jordan
Knife of Dreams (WoT 11) – Robert Jordan
New Spring (WoT “In the Beginning”) – Robert Jordan

Wizard and Glass (DT 4) – Stephen King
Wolves of the Calla (DT 5) – Stephen King
Song of Susannah (DT 6) – Stephen King
The Dark Tower (DT 7) – Stephen King

Into the Labyrinth (Death Gate 6) – Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
The Seventh Gate (Death Gate 7) – Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

…
Well, it looks like I’m going to have to get myself a copy of the first “Wheel of Time” book now. ;D

Strangely, I actually added this book to my to-read list because it was by the same author as another book I added to my to-read list, An Abundance of Katherines, which I had added because of the title’s similarity to a book I had previously enjoyed, Eleven Karens.

And then I had recently started following a tumblr account… actually I cannot remember how I stumbled across it in the first place. Possibly some Harry Potter/Emma Watson posts. Anyway, this person kept talking and talking about TFIOS. They also talked a lot about Delirium which I wrote briefly about here. Anyway, at her (general) recommendation, I had followed a link to a free online copy of Delirium, read it, and enjoyed it. So when I found a free copy of The Fault in Our Stars on the same website, I bookmarked it.

Finally got around to reading it. I started it at night and then just stayed up a bit past my bedtime to finish it. I was completely surprised by the main characters. I guess I expected a sort of Romeo and Juliet type star-crossed lovers story, but not in the way that John Green actually did it.

A lot of the quotations that stuck out I recognized from being repeated by the tumblr TFIOS fandom. And I agree that they are the sort of quotations you would latch onto, and probably deserve the attention. John Green has a way of repeating a theme without making it overdone, and that helps strengthen some of the quotations too.

So I’ve done this recipe a few times now. You can find “version 2″ here: Beef Stew (v2).

It’s not that I have anything to add, except that I wanted to try it with canned tomatoes. I bought a box of canned diced tomatoes from Costco. So I basically did the same thing as “v2″ except I used two potatoes, didn’t have the “other half of onion” since I was using up an onion Mike bought originally for burgers. And of course, instead of the two tomatoes, I used one can of the diced tomatoes. I considered using two cans because when I dumped it in the pot it looked sort of paltry. But then I thought that they were already somewhat smooshed so maybe it would be the equivalent of two non-smooshed fresh tomatoes. Also added a splash of red wine, because I think Dad did that in his original post, and we happened to have an open bottle on the counter.

Will post an edit when it’s ready. I hope it doesn’t end up being a disaster…

[edit]
So I checked on it after the initial 15-minute heating stage, and thought it looked like it needed more tomatoes, so I did end up dumping another can in.

I think someone recommended this book to me, but I honestly cannot remember who it was. Maybe it was given in a list of “fractured fairy tales” which I’ve recently been inclined toward (they’re so fun, and they’re relaxing, quick reads, and the authors usually manage to surprise you, which also surprises you).

Anyway. The Penelopiad is a “fractured fairy tale” of The Odyssey told from the point of view of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. Because it was written by Margaret Atwood (and also because it’s based on a Greek myth), I thought it would be deeper than the fractured fairy tale series I’ve been previously reading that goes through the more mainstream fairy tales (Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.). It really wasn’t. It was very light, and it started out with Penelope just getting married at the age of 15, so it had that youthful feel of the other princess-y books.

I did learn a lot of things about the myth surrounding Penelope and Odysseus and various factoids about Ancient Greece, so I liked that Atwood threw in those tidbits. And it refreshed my memory about The Odyssey. Atwood did a very clever thing with Penelope’s twelve maids, making them the chorus (ah, Greek tragedy). It sort of reminded me of the group project we did on Antigone in high school. Anyway, even though it was an interesting device, it seemed a little sloppy sometimes and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. The anthropology one though, reminded me of Tom Robbins somehow.