Book & Baking Blog Entry 27

Baking season is just getting into swing.  It's shaping up to be an exciting year.

Thanksgiving created an opportunity to test my skills in creativity and artistry as well as timing (can one have skills creativity or is one merely creative--or am I neither...[sigh])  It was fun.  Ruth and I worked together and made two turkey cakes.  For those of you grossed out by the thought of a meat-cake, never fear--they were turkey-shaped cakes.  And not even really turkey shaped.  However, no one complained....

It was relatively simple and given more time I think it could have looked better.  I took a layer cake, cut it in half and put it up on the flat side created by the cut. So, I realized this is how I can make a rainbow cake the next time Ruth  wants one as well.  So, now that I have the turkey 'fan' (for this is what it will be when decorated) I frost the cake in chocolate.  Then I take a cupcake and use the frosting to 'glue' it on as a head (it has to be on the tray, it will NOT stick 1/2 way up (did I NEED to say this, SERIOUSLY?!!!!)

The decorating is what makes it:  Using pasty bags put red, orange, and yellow hershey kiss shaped dots on the top of the crescent.  On the  head portion you need eyes on each side, a yellow beak, and of course, a waddle--red!  Let's be real.  It doesn't look exactly like a turkey, but really turkeys are ugly.  The kids really enjoyed the turkey.  A big thanks to Safeway bakery that inspired this cake.

The fun is really that Thanksgiving and my husband's birthday generally fall during the same week.  I, of course, needed to make a birthday cake for him as well as a fantastic dinner.  Well, do you remember my begging for a great pie crust recipe: I got one.  It was from Tasty Kitchen.  It came recommended from a friend on facebook.  It was great.  Easy to make and easy handle.

http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/desserts/sylviae28099s-perfect-pie-crust/

My husband pointed out that it tasted similar to my mother's recipe (which I like but is often difficult to handle.)   I thought so too.  Let me tell you, I was highly skeptical about anything with vinegar in it.  Don't like the stuff.  But you really couldn't taste it.  Although the recipe did say to freeze it, but I just put it into the 'fridge.  It kept for a number of days.

So I used the pie crust to make empanadas.  Shrimp, spinach, goat cheese, tomatoes, and pine nuts.  Soooooo wonderful and now, easy to make with my new crust.

The cake was a  whole different matter.  Having decorated two cakes and made empanadas and mashed sweet potato I really needed a simple cake solution.  Luckily my husband doesn't mind experiments.  Better Homes & Gardens cookbook had a great pound cake recipe.  It called for lemon yogurt which I didn't have and lemon zest.  I used vanilla yogurt and added chocolate chips. It was moist and tastey!  Hurray!!!!

Next stop:  gingerbread houses....six of them.

Book & Baking Blog Entry 26

Crush: The Final Moments

I have to say that I wrote my last blog believing that Jacobson's Crush  really had no further hilarity to be shared.  I wrote the blog without the true badness that the ending brought to me.  How bad?  Bad bad.

I don't think that there can be a spoiler.  We have some real fun as the book winds down.  A character introduced about 1/2 to 2/3 through the book ends up being our killer.  Of course he was hitting on (successfully) our local hottie cop.  What's amazing is that the FBI agent had the entire department chasing a number of others, jumping from one theory to the next with wild abandon.  Two of these suspects were police themselves.  She totally ignores the one cop who is acting suspiciously which is telegraphed in a heavy handed way.  Can I say again that I hope that the FBI are not quite so arrogant or ineffective as Agent Vail.  And how embarrassing for the FBI mentioned in the acknowledgements.  Really, did you LIKE the character?  Seriously?

So, Vail gets a number of people killed, only finds the killer because he tries to kill the cop that he's hitting on when she gets the call with his name given to her by a microsoft tech!  (Thumbs up to Microsoft--the true hero of this tale.)   Vail follows up her fiasco of a manhunt with an embarrassingly amateurish interview.  Was it supposed to seem like she even knew what she was doing?  AND since when do you really just send one very tired cop in to question such an important suspect.  It's also funny that Napa Valley still has no idea that there was a serial killer in their midst.

So, to end this the suspect just tells our "heroine" that she just doesn't get and probably never will and he knows that this will make her crazy (which she acknowledges to herself is the truth--why not just walk away from this nut-job?), her boyfriend has disappeared, and our actual suspicious cop has been somehow secretly working with the killer because his wife and son were threatened.  THE END. 

So, no ACTUAL payoff at all.  Except hours wasted.  I wish I read faster.

Book & Baking Blog Entry 25

I'm sure that there's a spoiler in here somewhere!

Well, Thanksgiving is coming up.  Today and tomorrow I am scheduled to bake & decorate 2 cakes and bake a pie.  It should be good.  However, I want to return to books.  Books so bad that you HAVE to keep reading.  Books so bad that you can't believe that someone actually wasted time writing them.  Books that are so bad that they have more entertainment value than Danielle Steele (potentially the most over-paid human ever in the history of mankind.)  Steele is merely trite, banal, etc etc etc.


Crush by Alan Jacobson:  I couldn't conceive of a heroine as heartily unlikeable as Karen Vail.  She is pretentious, uptight, a bad mom, a crappy significant other, supercilious, and an all-around know-it-all.  It's clear to me that Jacobson hates the FBI.  Otherwise why create such an unlikable heroine.  The only understandable thing about this book is why is cost 0.00$.  Yes, for those about to mock me for actually buying such a lousy read please note:  it was free.  Well, OK, it costs me a few hours of my life.  I just thought that if I kept reading something good would happen, alas and alack, no.


So, first, Jacobson gives us this snobbish FBI creature as our heroine.  Her boyfriend couldn't be any more lackluster.  She is surrounded by people who are one dimensional at best.  The murderer, I am sure that I will discover, is merely a mcguffin to write this bizarre travelogue about Napa Valley.


Seriously, are we supposed to believe that 3 Napa Valley government agencies (sheriff, police, and district attorney's office, not to mention the FBI) would give out a false cause of death on 4 murder victims to hide that there had been murders in "the valley".  It was a nice touch that there was a reporter on the scene of one of the victims dump spots but HE DIDN'T TELL ANYONE or report it.  Clearly an all-around nice guy.  Seriously?! So as I read on what's interesting is that the lawyer of 2 of the victims didn't know that they had died when at least 3 other people thought that they had had strokes...consistency would help.


It's also interesting to read a book that will take a break from "the plot" to give a bizarre travelogue.  A fascinating description of how wine is made, the beauty of the scenery, etc etc. It is not a good travelogue.  I would use the word abysmal.  I have to admit, having been to Vallejo, which seems little better than some of the skankier parts of Detroit, I was amused by the clever description is this burg as a delightful place.  Clearly Jacobson has seen something of Vallejo that I haven't.  His description of the Napa and Carneros wineries is banal and uninspired.  And some weird choices.  I can't believe he has much experience up there.  It's like he spent a couple of months, picked out some random wineries and areas and then wrote about them without understanding the culture.  I really hope that he's not native to the area.  That would add an entire level of insult to the writings.

So, back to Karen Vail, intrepid heroine.  If you've seen So I Married an Ax Murderer you'll understand when I say that clearly Jacobson believes, or thinks the reader believes (which is kind of insulting) that cops/feds are heroic rogues who have gruff but ultimately kind bosses who "go to bat" with the "commissioner" when they go rogue.  If I were Karen Vail's boss I'd fire her.  She's ineffective, has a superiority complex, and drinks on the job.  She pushes her way into the investigation, brutally and aggressively, and then whines that since her vacation was interrupted it's OK that she does some wine tasting while on the job.  Her boss tells her distinctly not to question a suspect and yet she does it anyways and blames it on the local cops (nice sense of responsibility.) 

This is a woman who leaves her teen aged son behind and then is "frantic" when the killer is supposedly after him.  Where does this stupid tangent come from.  And "show, don't tell" to quote a favorite English teacher of mine.  So we don't really hear/know anything about the son to begin with and then there is a frantic few pages of worrying and getting the entire Fairfax county police out (including the cop who is now guarding her son that she had a "run in" with--cause she's a bad-ass who runs roughshod over other humans because they're just not as smart as her.)  Then, bye-bye son.  I'm sure we'll get a vague reference to him again.

Jacobson isn't a storyteller, he's a drunk trying to spin a tale with details that are totally irrelevant.  Why do we need to know about the wineries?  Does it move the story forward?  Why the information on Vallejo?  Why go there at all?  Why do we need to know that she doesn't like this cop guarding her son (who ironically doesn't seem to remember her.)  There is so much "stuff" that doesn't move the story forward at all.  Did the ready really care that Karen enjoyed her Opus One more than whatever else?  And WHY would the killer drink a Cakebread Cabernet when they are known for their fabulous whites.  At least get it right.

So, recommend it?  If you don't want to spend any money and are desperate, sure, why not.  if you have to pay even $1.98, I don't think so.

Happy reading.  Hopefully my apple pie (put together while our electric was out) will be fabulous.  A friend just had a baby and I thought, hey, why not add another baking chore to the weekend.  Naw....a gift of love.