Book Review: Life After Yes by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

One of the authors I read recommended Life After Yes: A Novel by Aidan Donnelley Rowley on her Twitter feed so I decided to check it out. I was pleased.

Life After Yes follows a young corporate lawyer through her post-engagement freak out. Rowley does a great job creating complex characters. We learn about their relationships with their parents, her drinking problem and the complexities of their relationships from side comments or nuanced references. Reading this novel felt like peeling back an onion layer by layer.  It's a great read to cozy up to on the plane or by the fire. 

2011 Cookbook Challenge: Chicken Adobo with Bok Choy

The February 2011 edition of Real Simple featured Chicken Adobo with Bok Choy. We had all the ingrediants in our fridge and it uses one of my favorite appliances: the slow cooker. I set everything up mid-morning on Sunday so it would be ready by halftime of the 4:00 pm game. It was great being able to just chill out and enjoy the game while everything cooked.

Ingredients


2 medium onions, sliced

4 garlic cloves, smashed

2/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 bay leaf

black pepper

8 skinless, bone-in chicken thighs (about 1 3⁄4 pounds)

2 teaspoons paprika

1 cup long-grain white rice

1 large head bok choy, cut into 1-inch strips

2 scallions, thinly sliced

Directions

1.In a 5- to 6-quart slow cooker, combine the onions, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, bay leaf, and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Place the chicken on top and sprinkle with the paprika.

2.Cook, covered, until the chicken and onions are tender, on low for 7 to 8 hours or on high for 4 to 5 hours (this will shorten total recipe time).

3.Twenty minutes before serving, cook the rice according to the package directions.

4.Ten minutes before serving, if the slow cooker is on the low setting, turn it to high. Gently fold the bok choy into the chicken and cook, covered, until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Serve with the rice and sprinkle with the scallions.

The Verdict - The chicken turned out very tender and moist, but this recipe does need dark meat to work. The sauce had good flavor, but was overly acidic. Next time I make it, I will lower the amount of vinegar and add red wine or stock.

Book Review: An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

I was very excited to hear that Steve Martin had a new novel coming out. I loved ShopGirl so I jumped at this one.



An Object of Beauty: A Novel by Steve Martin is a fantastic novel. The story is set in New York City in the art auction community. One of my favorite things about the novel is that it features reproductions of the art pieces to highlight the nuances of the story for those of us art novices. Martin does a great job crafting complex female characters. He tells a story that manages to feel sweet and harsh - all at the same time. I definitely recommend picking this one up.

2011 Cookbook Challenge: Spiced Peanut Butter Cookies

I just couldn't resist trying this recipe: Wicked Good Peanut Butter Spiced Cookies from Tasty Kitchen. I was intrigued due to the minimal amount of flour and no butter. It was really easy to put together.

•1 cup Peanut Butter


•¾ cups Granulated Sugar Plus Extra For Sprinkling

•¼ cups Dark Brown Sugar (I used light brown sugar)

•1 whole Egg

•2 Tablespoons All-purpose Flour

•½ teaspoons Vanilla Extract

•¼ teaspoons Ground Cinnamon

•⅛ teaspoons Ground Nutmeg

•⅛ teaspoons Salt

•1 dash Coarse Sea Salt, For Sprinkling

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Add all ingredients to a mixing bowl.
Using your mixer, mix on low for a few seconds then turn it up to medium until well blended. I used my hand mixer because I really wanted to try it out. If you don't feel like getting yours out, you could pretty easily combine all the ingrediants by hand.

Roll dough into balls with your hands. I use a big heaping tablespoon, because I’m too poor to buy a proper cookie scoop. I used the trusty melon baller and ended up with 18 cookies.

Place cookie balls on a parchment lined baking sheet. If you have a silicon baking mat, that works just dandy too. I used silicon.

Use a fork to flatten the balls slightly.

Lightly sprinkle the cookies with a little extra granulated sugar and sea salt. All the ridges you added with fork will help adhere the sugar and salt to the cookies. It also makes them look sparkly and pretty. Now this sea salt and sugar step - I don't think I accomplished. The cookies were not sparkly or pretty. The sea salt did not melt so I basically ended up with a large crystal of sea salt on top of the cookie.

Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Then remove from the oven and let stand on baking sheet for a minute or two, then remove to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

The Verdict - These turned out very well. I ended up adding a little more salt to the top. The favors were well balanced. The lack of flour made for a rich dense cookie. We'll add this to the cookie line up.

2011 Cookbook Challenge: Spicy Lemon Garlic Shrimp

I found this recipe on the Pioneer Woman's website

Ingredients


•2 pounds Raw Shrimp, Deveined, Shells On

•2 sticks Cold Unsalted Butter Cut Into Pieces

•1 teaspoon Kosher Salt

•4 cloves Garlic, Peeled

•¼ cups Fresh Parsley

•½ teaspoons Crushed Red Pepper

•1 whole Lemon, Juiced

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse frozen shrimp to separate, then arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet.

In the bowl of a food processor, add cold butter, garlic, lemon juice, salt, parsley, and red pepper. Pulse until combined. Sprinkle cold butter crumbles over the shrimp.

Bake until shrimp is opaque and butter is hot and bubbly.

Serve with hot crusty bread. Peel and eat the shrimp, then dip the bread into the butter in the bottom of the pan.

The reason I was attracted to this recipe is that the recipe is designed to use frozen shrimp. I am very good at having a stocked pantry and freezer. I am not so good at remembering to dethaw. The other great piece is that it uses peel-on, uncooked frozen shrimp. These are much cheaper than peeled, cooked shrimp and I can easily stock up when it is on sale.

I adjusted the recipe to use up the 1 pound of frozen shrimp we had left. I didn't have hot pepper flakes so it didn't end up spicy, but both my husband and I found it to be very good. Instead of crusty bread, I used whole wheat pasta to soak up the extra sauce. This made it more of an entree.

Overall - a very good, simple recipe that I will definitely make again.

My 2011 Resolutions

So I definitely have some carry-over from 2010:

Be healthy - Continue the morning gym habit and focus on including more fruits and veggies in my diet.

2011 Cookbook Challenge - Once a week, try a new recipe from a cookbook or blog and post it on this website.

Finances - Get that retirement plan in shape

New this year, I want to:

Continue to blog at least three days a week - I am going to try to keep up the six days a week habit, but giving myself a break makes that a lot easier.


Focus on being home - 2010 felt like a year where most of my time was spent travelling across the country and a couple oceans. It was fun and exciting. I am really feeling a pull this year to scale back on travel - at least cross country travel and spend more time exploring what the Tampa Bay area and Florida has to offer. We are even considering buying a tent to check out some of the nearby campsites. I also want to scale back on the scheduling. I tend to schedule our weekends to be pretty full. I want to keep more time open for opportunities that just pop up.

Check out a couple new ball parks - Even with the focus on staying home, I can't wait to see at least a couple more ball parks.

Capture history - One project that has been on my mind is how to capture our family stories. As we get older, I don't want that to get lost. I got a new video camera for my birthday so I am going to try to get my family members to cooperate in telling their stories in front of it at family gatherings this year.

Write another novel - This year I participated National Novel Writing Month and it was fantastic. As you have read here, I actually finished a novel. I would like to write the sequel to that month in 2011.

What about you? Do you have any resolutions this year?

2010 - How'd I do?

At the beginning of this year, I set out a series of resolutions so I thought I would check in on how I did:

Be healthy. I am taking a new assignment at work that will involve more travel and responsibility. Last time, this resulted in workaholic hours, bad eating habits and a few too many pub crawls. This time, I resolve to take proactive steps to manage stress, exercise, eat healthy and continue to ensure that my family, friends and husband get the best of me - not what's left over.

On a scale of 1 to 10 - I give myself a 5 on this one. I did make progress in better eating habits and managing my work hours. I quit my job in November because of some of those issues. My husband and I have started a great habit of getting up at 5:30 am to go to the gym so that has been really good. Plus - it is CSA season so the bags of veggies we pick up at the farm every other week forces me to eat better. I am definitely ending the year more strongly than I began.
Actually use the cookbooks gathering dust on the shelf. I love to buy cookbooks. I have lots of beautiful cookbooks with pictures of amazing food. This year, I am going to make some of that amazing food. Each month, I am going to pick a cookbook and make at least 4 dishes out of the cookbook. I'll share the results here - minus the cursing, cries of desperation and mess of course.

If you have read the posts on the 2011 Cookbook Challenge, you know I did not do as good of job on this as I should have and I am already taking steps to tackle it in 2011. I did try a lot of new recipes off the web and shared many of them here with you.

Be charitable. Carve out time to volunteer. Select charities and be intentional in giving.
I think I will always feel like I didn't do enough. My two months off at the end of the year allowed me the time to volunteer quite at a bit at a local homeless ministry and the local library. I enjoyed both experiences very much and will work to put in a few hours every month in the upcoming year.

Get a better handle on my finances and develop a concrete plan to save for retirement. I will not be an elderly person eating dog food out of trunk of my broke-down Saturn Vue.
Yeah.... not so much. I did get a better handle on finances, but did not complete the retirement plan. Though my mom did point out that dog food is just as expensive as regular food so I should consider that if I am living out of my trunk.

Laugh a lot and often
This definitely got accomplished. It was a truly remarkable year filled with great memories from trips with my husband, time with family, and visits from and to friends. I am very blessed to have a life that is filled with laughter.

Try to limit reality TV to 4 shows. JUST KIDDING! We all know that is impossible.
So I think I actually came pretty close on this one. After much consideration, I made the difficult decision to break up with the Real Housewives series and I scaled way back on Big Brother this summer. It just got to be too much. I think I have narrowed down to: Survivor, Top Chef, Amazing Race, Hell's Kitchen, The Next Food Network Star, The Next Iron Chef, Chopped, BrewMasters, Drinking Made Easy. Given many of these shows are competition shows, I feel much better about my reality TV watching habits, but if Bret Micheals comes back with another Rock of Love - all bets are off.


Now to think about my resolutions for next year.... What about you? Did you set resolutions? How did you do?