First Chapter

I love First Paragraphs!   I bought this new board game to take with me over Christmas vacation, called  "It was a Dark and Stormy Night".  We were headed to our son and daughter-in-law's and I thought it would be a fun game to play.

Well, I  should have realized it would be fun for Sadie and me, not so, for The Handyman and certainly not for my son Marcus.   They gallantly suffered thru one game.  That was all they could do.
I bought it from  Bas Bleu and they say:
This is officially Bas Bleu's favorite board game ever! The concept is simple: Your opponent reads you the first sentence(s) from a work of great literature--categories include children's books, mysteries, nonfiction, novels, poetry, Shakespeare's plays, and short stories--and you name the title and/or author. Correct answers earn a cute little book token…collect eight and you win. The production value of "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" is top tier, from the wooden pawns and tokens to the "library card catalog" of clue cards. The difficulty of identifying the opening lines varies greatly; we think giving clues makes the game more fun. For adults, two to four players or teams.

examples:
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. --Gabriel Garcia MÁrquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude


When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable looking child ever seen. --Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

To be honest...it was very difficult...but Sadie and I had fun.  I kept saying to the  grumbling, sighing loudly, slouching men at the table, "but this will be nice to know if you're ever at a dinner party and someone brings up the subject of this book. You'll be glad you know this stuff."

Two things...
1. They didn't care.  They didn't ever think they'd be at a dinner party where someone would bring up  "The Secret Garden"  or  "100 years of Solitude" to  them.  Nor did they have any intention of 'remembering' that stuff.  (first lines of great novels)
2.  My friend  Brenda from Brenda's Canadian Kitchen teases me about using the term,  "dinner party."  So I just thought I'd throw that in there.

(for the record,  there is another book game I am going to buy soon, and make them play: Bookchase.  I think it's good for their characters.  Being well-rounded.  They are going to kill me.)

I digress again!

I'm joining in with Diane at  Bibliophile by the Sea on her  "First Chapter,   First Paragraphs" meme.
Every Tuesday, she'll be posting the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she's decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along. 


This week, I just felt the need for something simple... a cozy mystery.  Something I can cuddle up by the fire to.  I haven't started it yet , so tonight's the night!
Here is my first paragraph  (QUICK!  Name the book and  I'll give you a game piece.  ):
Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.  She might even have gone to her daughter's end of term pageant at Miss Edward's School for Girls, or 'girths' as CC liked to tease her expansive daughter.  Had CC de Poitiers known the end was near, she might have been at work instead of in the cheapest room the  Ritz in Montreal had to offer.  But the only end she knew was near belonged to a man named Saul.


from "A Fatal Grace" by Louise Penny.

The 2nd in the  Three Pines Mystery series.  




Wow CC!!   

Mean to her daughter and cheating on her husband, while not punishable by murder, certainly deserved something!!

I'll have to let you know how it is as soon as I finish.

Cookbook Countdown, What's Outside my Kitchen Window and Library Loot.

Wednesdays are long for my blog posts.  If you are looking for library loot,  don't be discouraged....just scroll down to the very end!

This could possibly be the longest post I've ever written.
(**not ture....there is mostly pictures, so written is subjective)


I'm not quite sure what to do about that. I mean, I KNOW my mom will read it and maybe my mother-in-law. My daughter in-law Sadie, a few Friday Friends, here and there.... but really, reading it to the end?


If a post gets too long and it's not that captivating --if my sense of humor and my quick wit doesn't reel you in, in the first couple of paragraphs, (because if truth be told, my recipes are not TO DIE FOR), well, then, you probably won't get to the end of my longest post ever.
That makes me a bit sad.    Also, knowing I just passed by my 400th post without having a big celebration....like a give-away--makes me feel bad too!

My first blog post ever? (click HERE for trip down memory lane and my first post)  It was about the same thing as my 400th blog post.  In a round about way.
I'm trying not to laugh, for fear of falling off my seat, --it wasn't a "food" post, or a "book" post -- BUT it did mention my trip to Virginia and me having
Sweet Tea.   It was not until my 2nd post, July 2007, that I mentioned having started my blog.   (   You have to remember, that it was not a food blog, but just a way to keep in touch with all my "Friday Friends" )



HOW WEIRD IS THAT?
That my 1st post and my 400th post mentioning the same thing: ICED TEA.
If I would have only thought ahead...... I would have done a give-away.  Maybe I can do one for my 425th post!
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Let's move on to my Cookbook Countdown!

I am going to count one of my "put together notebooks" as a cookbook... I have notebooks and notebooks of recipes I've collected over the years.

 Look at this notebook, (if you can read it ) it says:   
Soups, Hometown cooking misc. and Diet Recipes.
There is no rhyme or reason to my organizational skills.

On Sunday,  I was hungry for a stew that my daughter-in-law, Mara's, mother had made when we visited them last fall.  We were in Arizona visiting my son and his wife and most importantly, our new granddaughter, Cassandra, and we ate lunch at a restaurant where my DIL's mother works.



It's been on my mind for quite some time, so I thought I'd try my hand at making this original Mexican Stew.

Here we are....  the two grandma's.  Me and Maxine.  Which isn't her "real" name, but that is the Americanized version of it.   She speaks no English and I speak no Spanish.
REMEMBER, the camera adds 10lbs. Not to mention how many pounds are added when flying thru camera to computer to internet!

She made us these great dishes! (no cheese, no Fritos)

 "My" family makes a soup/chili dish that we call Chalupa.   It has pork, pinto beans and a  broth with spices...it's  really good.    But of course we "Americanize" it by adding cheese and crushed Fritos, among other things.
I thought I'd "UN-Americanize" it and make it like the stew last fall.

This stew (my photo is blurry)  came to the table with the beef and the broth and then my daughter in law added the cabbage and onions, which were in a bowl beside the soup/stew bowl.
 
So.... I got out my cookbook notebook and looked at my Chalupa recipe, called my daughter-in-law  and asked her if she knew what Chalupa was.
She said "from Taco Bell?" She had never heard of it before. She did say that different regions of Mexico cook different dishes, so it could be a dish, that she just hadn't heard of.



Next, I looked thru my Diana Kennedy cookbook "From My Mexican Kitchen" where she does indeed have a Chalupa recipe... that is nothing like what we make.

Her chalupa --meaning little boats-- is a concoction of flour, like a thicker tortilla, filled with toppings/fillings.

I will have to try them someday, but for now this is my Chalupa/or Pork stew.
 
If I'm honest with you---yes, I did buy Fritos for my family to crush up. And I had some Jack Cheese, and I set the sour cream on the table too..... I couldn't "UN-Americanize" it too much. The rest of my toppings were onions, cabbage, radishes, tomatoes and avocadoes.

 



The verdict was...it was REALLY GOOD. But we've always known that. It was good when it was just Chalupa with the Fritos crushed into it and the cheese melted on top of it.


I didn't have any Fritos in mine.... I made it more of a "stew". I think.

Chalupa--our way
(I add this as part of my cookbook challenge in my very own cookbook countdown --click here to see how far I've come)

3 pound pork roast
1 pound pinto beans
1 4oz can diced green chilies
1 tsp oregano
1 Tblsp ground cumin
2 Tblsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 small onion -chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
7 cups of water

soak beans over night, drain.
Simmer all of the above for about 5 hours.  Remove the roast, shred and add back into the broth.

Crush some Fritos into a soup bowl, add the Chalupa and top with the following:
tomatoes
avocados
lettuce
cheese
onions
salsa 

to make it more original ( I thought) I also topped it with:
cilantro
cabbage  (instead of lettuce)
radishes


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As long as this is the longest post ever, (for me)  I will mention that the Handyman and I played a game and voted on it in our "Weed out the Games" resolution for 2010. (Brainchild of my dil Sadie) 
This way it will be recorded.

We played Showdown Yahtzee.

It was fun enough. We decided that we should play it with four people to make sure.


I said, "maybe this is a cabin/lake game" (meaning we'll take this one to my parents cabin and leave it there)
Handyman said, "I thought all the ones we didn't like were going to the cabin?"
Me, "no, we're selling them in the yard sale."
Handyman, "oh."  And then he looked at the Keeper pile (very big) and the loser pile (only 2 games) and he sighed.


So the verdict on this one is tabled for a while.
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What's Outside My Kitchen Window?
Lots of brown stuff right now. Brown grass, brown leaves, brown weeds......
But I can see spring...in my mind.

My "dining room" window.....

Just after Christmas, we had a sad thing happen---our old Basset Hound died. Monroe. He waited until all the boys were home and said good-bye and then he just lay down and died. He was very old. It was very sad.

But now....the Handyman and I have decided to live dog-free for a while. It has been over 30 years with a dog in our lives.


so what does one do with the old dog house? Since Monroe's pen and dog house (not that he was ever penned in his life) shared space with our garden.
See our garden space last year/click here.
 
Outside right now...

We plan to take the chain-link fence down and cart the dog-house somewhere and enlarge our garden area. I might even consider composting. I want to, but I have to research it.

Last Summer

Right now

I can't wait for it to get warm enough to plant something!

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Library Loot.



Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva (a striped armchair) and Marg (reading adventures) which encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!



Poor, poor library looters, who have come to see what loot I've gotten and then had to wade thru a rambling recipe and a gazillion pictures of my yard.


Ask me how I'm going to have time to read these book?! I have no idea.
But....here is my loot for this week.....

I'm a little obsessive, I know.
Happy Reading everyone!

Mexican Fiesta, Cooking from the books and Game Night

Keeping good on the challenge from my daughter-in-law, Sadie (it wasn't so much a challenge as an idea) to play games from my game closet, with friends, and then vote them -- in or out (Not the friends, the games), we had a game night last Saturday.

Even tho, it was a potluck dinner (a great 7-layer dip and a green salad were brought by my friend Theresa), I thought I would combine it with my cook from the books challenge.

I pulled out 2 cookbooks from my shelves of 219. One, The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking, I had never used before, and the other one, A Cause for Celebration, holds the version of Chili Verde that I call my own and have been making since 1996, but for the sake of documenting all of my cookbooks, I am going to post the cookbook here.  For the post on the recipe  my Chile Verde Click on this.    the Chili Verde is really good tho, so you should really try it out.
I do have to note tho, that once I dug this cookbook out again to get the recipe, I am enamoured of it once again.  It's a JCPenny Associate cookbook...similar to a church cookbook...all the associates (employees) around the country sent in recipes for this book.  Everyone always sends their very best for books like these... ones that that are tried and true.  It has sections for every holiday you could think of.
 
From the first one, The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking, I made  Chicken Flautas....which seemed like taquitos to me, so I did a little investigating and found out that the name is interchangable in the U.S., but in Mexico they are usually called flautas or  tacos dorados (golden tacos).
I have made and do make my own salsa most of the time, but since it was a potluck-game night, I took the easy way out and bought pre-made fresh salsa and pico de gallo.
 
 

These little crisp fried tortillas with a cheese and chicken filling were----very good. I'd make them again, although, next time I would use yellow corn tortillas, but I only had white corn in my fridge. I think the yellow would make for a better presentation.

But they were perfect for a game night.  (also probably a light supper with a salad)

Chicken Flautas from The Complete Book of  Mexican Cooking on the left and Chili Verde from A Cause for Celebrations--holiday recipes for every occasion on the right.                       

Chicken Flautas

from The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Jane Milton

Ingredients:
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 onion (a small one. I usually just use half as much onion as a recipe calls for)
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 1/2 oz feta cheese, crumbled ( I used Queso Fresco )
12 corn tortillas
oil for frying
salt and ground black pepper (I used a bit of cumin, because it seemed just a tad bland to me)
Put the chicken breasts in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. Remove the chicken from the pan and let it cool a little, then shred. Set aside.
Chop the onion finely and crush the garlic. Heat the oil in a frying pan; add the onion and garlic and sauté over low heat for about 5 minutes or until the onion has softened. Add the shredded chicken with salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Remove from the heat and stir in crumbled cheese.
Before they can be rolled, soften the tortillas in the microwave, a few at a time, on high for 30 seconds. Place a spoonful of the filling on one of the tortillas. Roll the tortilla tightly around the filling. Secure with a toothpick. IMMEDIATELY cover the roll with plastic wrap as you make your other flautas, to keep them from drying out. Fill the remaining tortillas in the same way.
Pour oil into a frying pan to a depth of 1-inch. The trick is to make sure the oil is ready/hot to prevent the flautas from absorbing too much of it. Heat it until a small cube of bread, added to the oil, rises to the surface and bubbles at the edges before turning brown.

Add the flautas a few at a time and fry for 2-3 minutes, until golden, turning frequently.
Drain on paper towels and serve immediately. With good salsa, sour cream and guacamole!

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We ate, we visited, then we got down to "game playing"  and voting.

First, we got out  "Twenty Questions".  It's kind of a classic and I couldnt' see how  it could be voted out.

(seriously, there are some games that I love, but what if no one else does?)  But  it was voted a keeper!!

The new game.... Adverteasing.

The game of slogans, commercials and jingles.

Luckily it turned out this way:

two thumbs up  (they were the winners)

one thumbs down  (poor Max.  He didn't quite know the answer to:

hold the pickle, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us..

and one thumb sideways.  Hmmmm...

I had a thumb up, you just couldnt' see it  (and it was really hard to snap a photo with my thumb held up!)

So...Adverteasing! It's a keeper.

And my pile of games is adding up!

I'm still in mourning over Planet Hollywood.

Project 365 and another resolution

I'm going to do Project 365....but don't expect great things.

Project 365 is a "Picture a day" project, which many bloggers do. It's fun to see what people take pics of.

(my Friday Friends were SUPPOSED to do it with me last year, but they bailed on me... ) Check that out by clicking Friday Friends...

I already do many of the things it (project 365) suggests....

I take my camera everywhere...EVERYWHERE.

But I'm not so sure that my photography will get better by years end.

But I do love a good story.....so this should be fun.

Another "New Year's Resolution" that I'm going to work on this year, because of a suggestion by my daughter in law, Sadie, is to have people over and play a game a week from my game closet. YES, I probably have close to 50 games and can do one a week. But a lot of them are....not very good.

The idea is in addition to playing a game, the company and the Handyman get to vote on the game and decide if it is a "keeper" or not.
Take for instance, Planet Hollywood. Although, I love this game, no one else in my family does.

I have agreed to this...a deal is a deal, so poor "Planet Hollywood, the game" is out the door. Everyone voted it out!!

I am excited tho, about having friends over every Saturday, or at least 2x a month to eat and play board games. I will document our evenings here in my blog.

Who came

What we ate

What we drank

What game we played

On Southern Plate,

a blog I enjoy, Christy has a "hostess book" where she documents her dinners with company. Like a guest book....with guests writing their names down and She documents all food, and goings on for the evening.

It sounds like a good idea to me. I will need a pretty guest book/hostess book. For now, I have this school journal.

So far this year, 2010, we played:

1/2/10--We bought take and bake pizzas and breadsticks

Cheesecake and left over Christmas cookies for dessert

Apples to Apples--voted a keeper.

present: Rich, Debbie, Mark, Sadie AND our voting company, The Mavitys: Mike, Theresa, Macie, Makenna and Max.
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1/3/10--Subway sandwiches for Mark and Sadie, leftover breadsticks and marinara sauce for Rich and Debbie.

Phase 10 ---voted a keeper.

present: Rich, Debbie, Mark and Sadie were present. Sadie won.

Planet Hollywood --voted out by everyone but Debbie!

Team #1 Dustin and Sadie

Team #2 Rich, Debbie and Mark

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1/7/10--we had popcorn.

In a Pickle--voted out by everyone but Debbie (I find it hard to get rid of board games and cookbooks.  And some of the board games have won awards....not that that matters to my family. Maybe my friends will be more forgiving.)

Finish Lines--voted a keeper. We all love it.

And that's as far as we've gotten on our game cupboard resolution.

I will keep you updated on this.... we're going to come to some really old games during the year.

This isn't a very good start to Project 365 (or perhaps it is.....perhaps it's all about family and friends and enjoying each others company), but this post is going to be my first week's round-up (I got a late start...)

I will leave you with this.....

the marquee. Where I work, we rent the marquee for people to put up events and messages, etc.

I have the nicest man, who changes the sign for me, but he doesn't read English very well.... I am always sure to type it out for him, so he doesn't get confused by my handwriting.

But, sometimes he still gets confused.

Al? All?

We left the sign up as it was... we thought wishing Al Happy Holidays was a good thing!