BOOK REVIEW - THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN

From the inside jacket of the book: " A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913.  She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book--a beautiful volume of fairy tales.  She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own.  On her 21st. birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity."

The premise was intriging and I wanted to love this book but I thought the writing style created a very choppy story.  The author Kate Morton, jumped around in time periods to the point of irritating me.  I felt like I was just getting into a rhythm with the characters and time period and then she would switch.   I know detail is intended to be the bones of a story but some of the same detail in this book was repeated a little too often.  The mystery was compelling and there were some surprising twists that I had figured out long before the author let us know, but I guess that is fine.  For all her detail I could not picture how the secret garden wall functioned and it was important to the plot.   I finished it and enjoyed the story in many ways.   I would give it 3 stars out of 5.

HOMEMADE MARSHMALLOWS

After finding a recipe for Homemade Marshmallows: http://hotgarlic.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=37  I got excited to try to make some.  My mother often talked about making them when she was a kid but she never did with us.  They were amazingly easy.  My friend Janet Thaeler came to help me.  The most important ingredient is the vanilla.  My bottle of Mexican vanilla was depleted and Janet brought some real Vanilla but the flavor wasn't good.  I made a second batch after getting good vanilla and they were so much better.  We made them for Valentines Day but Easter would be fun too. I just bought some little metal Easter cutters so I can do them again.   Dipping them in chocolate was heaven, of course.  This is the best way to melt chocolate:  Put it in a glass dish and into the oven with the oven light on.  If you do this when you go to bed in the morning your chocolate will be ready to dip and since the marshmallows need to sit for 12 hours this is perfect.

Marshmallows Made from Scratch

1 cup cold water, divided
3 pkg. Of gelatin or 2 ½ T. bulk
1 3/4 c sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1/4 t. salt
1 T. vanilla
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Place gelatin in a small bowl with ½ C. very cold water. Let sit for 15-20 minutes.

Prepare a 9x13 or larger pan by greasing with not stick spray. Then line with baking paper or wax paper, and dust liberally with powdered sugar. 9X13 makes a very large marshmallow. I used a little larger pan because I wanted to cut some with cookie cutters and wanted them thinner.

In a heavy saucepan combine remaining 1/2 cup water, sugar, corn syrup, and salt.

Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to the boil. Cover and let cook for 3 minutes.

Remove lid, and increase heat to high. Cook without stirring until the softball stage. It took 6 ½ minutes in my kitchen. I am not good at candy thermometers but I am good at doing a water test. A softball is softly firm when dropped in a bowl of cold water. I would start testing about 6 minutes.

Remove sugar mixture from heat. Turn mixer with the hydrated gelatin on to low. Slowly incorporate by pouring sugar mixture down the side into the bowl. Gradually increase the speed of the mixture.

Once all sugar mixture is poured in, whip on high for 8-10 minutes, or until marshmallow mixture has increased in volume by 3 times and is fluffy white. Add vanilla at this point.

Carefully and patiently! pour marshmallow into prepared pan and smooth out as best you can. Dust the top with more powdered sugar. Leave overnight or for 12 hours to set fully. Cut into squares and dust cut sides with powdered sugar.

Dip cookie cutters in powdered sugar to cut or if cutting into squares the best tool is the one shown in the picture. I am not sure what is called (Everyone needs one of these) Dip in chocolate and nuts or anything you might like. Janet made Marshmallow Rice Crispy treats with some of hers and said they were delicious.

A little food color works

 

Pan ready for the beaten marshmallow cream

Covered with powdered sugar - maybe more than it needed.

Notice the cutting tool.  It makes a nice clean cut.

Michaels has this great two heart cutter . Take your 40% off coupon.

Chocolate melted with the oven light ready for dipping.

Dipped hearts -  These are amazingly easy and such a fun adventure. 

 

THE BIKE

THE FAMILY ABOUT BIKING AGE

JACK AND CLIFF BEFORE "THUMBING" TO PRACTICE

(My mother was good at chopping off heads in photos)

OUR BIKE LOOKED SOMETHING LIKE THIS

A spring day in the desert has a softness about it. The sagebrush, normally muted, looks almost fluorescent. The gray hills take on a purple hue. The new fields and wild grasses are a fresh pale green. My mother loved the desert. She would raise her face to the warm sun, sigh contentedly and say, “I love this beautiful place.” I would look around and wonder what she was talking about. It looked shabby to me. I had seen mountain meadows and still water lakes in the Uintas and I thought that was beauty. How is desolation beautiful, I wondered?

My mother read Zane Gray and when I got old enough she passed on a couple of his books for me to read. His descriptions of the desert made me look at barrenness differently. Besides, I wanted to hold my face to the sun and see like my mother.

I began to notice the subtle colors in the rocks and hills, the mildly pungent aroma of sage, and cedar trees, the beauty of shaggy Tamaracks with spiked pink blooms growing along the alkaline creek. Oh Yes, I am beginning to see.

Our Wellington house was 3 miles east of town—the last outpost before the long expanse of desert that stretched out toward Moab. There is a turn off Highway 50-6 that takes you down a lane in front of our old house—the house my dad built on six acres of alkali desert. If you continued down the lane it would take you to the community Rodeo grounds. (We called it “grounds”, nothing so exotic as “Arena”) The half-mile down this lane passed alf alfa fields, sprightly green in the spring and then purple with blooms at harvest time, then covered with rows and rows of rectangular bales—bales that my brothers would heft onto a hay wagon working for the farmers who owned the land.

My parents got a bike for the 4 children to share one year when I was about 11. It would have been nice for my brothers to have bikes to ride to baseball games and practice. But, maybe that big highway was too dangerous for a boy on a bike--was it more dangerous than hitching a ride with strangers? My frugal dad wouldn’t let my mother drive them. They had to “thumb” a ride. We could see the boys from our living room window across the wash, standing on the highway, in their freshly washed uniforms, clutching their mitts in one hand and a thumb in the air. My mother watched until they got a ride—they always did. I suppose times were different then. I would never have let my boys do that.

No one enjoyed that bike as I did. It was a delight for me to ride down the lane back and forth to the rodeo grounds, with the wind blowing my hair and my eyes learning to appreciate the desert surroundings like my mother. Sometimes after a rodeo I would search under the bleachers for lost pocket change. It was nothing for me to make the round trip a dozen times. Being the only girl in my family I learned to cherish the solitude of dreaming and that bike ride was the perfect get-away diversion from the stresses of home. There were Meadowlarks in the fields singing “Wellington is a pretty little town.” My mother translated that song for me. But even today when I take my bike on a 10-mile meditative run along the fields of West Farmington the Larks sing, “Farmington is a pretty little town.” I now can say I see with my mother’s eyes and hear with her ears.

PARMESAN TILAPIA

Tilapia has never been my favorite fish but I like it this way very much--parmesan cheese, butter and mayo makes everything better--and it is very quick and easy.  I cooked it on the grill the second time and it was nice cooked there but the oven was good also.  I thought 2 T. was too much lemon juice. One was perfect for my taste. I am thinking this might be good on Salmon or other fish.   http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/recipes/main-courses/broiled-tilapia-parmesan/ 


Ingredients
 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
 1/4 cup butter, softened (don’t melt)
 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
 1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
 1/8 teaspoon onion powder
 1/8 teaspoon celery salt
 2 pounds tilapia fillets


Directions

1. Brush a little olive oil lightly on each side of the fish and sprinkle with a little salt, pepper and garlic powder. 
2. Preheat your oven's broiler. Grease a broiling pan or line pan with aluminum foil.
3. In a small bowl, mix together the Parmesan cheese, butter, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Season with dried basil, pepper, onion powder and celery salt. Mix well and set aside.
4. Arrange fillets in a single layer on the prepared pan. Broil a few inches from the heat for 2 to 3 minutes or on the barbecue grill. Flip the fillets over and broil for a couple more minutes. Remove the fillets from the oven and cover them with the Parmesan cheese mixture on the topside. Broil for 2 more minutes or until the topping is browned and fish flakes easily with a fork. Be careful not to over cook the fish.

MOVIE REVIEW - THE PRIZEWINNER OF DEFIANCE OHIO

I joined Net Flix just so I could get this movie.  I enjoyed the book and wanted to see how they translated the story to the screen.  I liked the movie.  Julianne Moore was maybe a little too glamerous for the part but she was good as the mother and believable.  Woody Harrelson was sleezy enough to play the angry alcoholic father.  His portrayl of drunken tantrums were very real (I know because I was a child sitting there with the family)  His swearing was graphic and some of the domestic anxiety might be hard for small children to watch.  It wasn't really a movie for children.  It was a PG 13 and I think that might be an age to see this.  It is definately not a comedy but had some light hearted, charming family scenes. The children were adorable.  Seeing 10 children mill around this small family home made me wonder how the mother did it when they were all young.  They would have carried me off, I believe.  Read my book review below for the story.  There were a few scenes in the book I missed but all in all I liked the movie version.  I would give it 3 stars.