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. 

BLACK BEANS AND RICE WITH A CUBAN FLARE

Recently we were invited to a dinner where the hostess was making pulled pork and wanted a side dish to go with it.  I decided to make black beans and rice and after searching the internet I combined a couple of recipes to creat this.  It was a hit!  A little different, crunchy and delicious.  It would be a very nice vegitarian main dish.  


BLACK BEANS AND RICE WITH A CUBAN FLARE
1 C. finely chopped sweet onion
2 Cloves of garlic grated
2 T. olive oil
4 T. butter
1 T. fresh ground cumin seeds (mortar and pistol)
Saute these until nice and brown add:
1 Cup golden raisins or chopped dried apricots
1 roasted red pepper chopped
1 roasted Anaheim chili chopped or 2 jalapeno peppers (chopped fine) seeded with white membrane removed to control the heat.
( For Peppers: broil or put on the grill until all sides are brown and blistered. Put in a plastic bag and let sit for 5 minutes, peel thin skin and remove seeds)
1 tsp. chili powder
½ tsp. thyme leaves
2 tsp. oregano leaves
¼ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
10-15 grinds of fresh pepper
Barely cover with water and simmer low for 15 minutes.
If using apricots instead or raisins add them here. 


Rinse and drain 2 cans of black beans. Mix with 4 cups of cooked rice.   Toss together with vegetables and put in a casserole. (adjust salt) Toast 1 Cup pecans cut in half or coarsely chopped toasted almonds and sprinkle on the top. Put in the oven until just heated through.

BOOK REVIEW -THE PRIZEWINNER OF DEFIANCE OHIO

If it is true that it's not what happens to you in this life but how you react to your circumstances, then Evelyn Ryan is a poster child for that philosophy.  She was rearing 10 kids in a dilapidated 2 room house in the 1950's with an alcoholic husband who drank away any security they might have had.

Evelyn Ryan took her jaunty writing skills and created jingles for the myraid of consumer contests that were part of the advertising culture at this time.  Evelyn had been writing all her life and decided to try turning her love of words into a way to augment their meager existence with some short, pithy, humorous prose.  She ended up entering thousands of contests and won hundreds with her wit, wisdom and family experiences turned into poetry. 

Folks endowed with
Luck or virtue
Get the tissue
To the Kerchooo

Her contesting career began with Berma Shave roadside rhymes.  I am old enough to remember them with delight.

The book is written by the second daughter and sixth child, Terry Ryan, after her mother died and she retrieved the piles of information left as memoribilia by her mother.  All 10 children submitted memories of their family events to Terry for her wonderful story.  If this story was fiction it would be charming but maybe just a little "too much", but as a memoir of this remarkable mother it becomes an enigmatic treasure.

Evelyn Ryan felt a keen responsibility to stay home to rear her 10 children but she also had a desperate desire to advance their financial needs in some way.  Two miraculous wins came on separate occasions when the family was about to lose their very humble abode.  The children went to Catholic schools and although religion wasn't a prominant theme in the story I saw this woman with faith that astounded me.  She was tireless, agressive in defense of her "chicks", funny and upbeat when she had every reason to go to bed with the covers over her head.  Leaving her useless husband was never an option in her thinking.  She tried to focus on his good traits.  And I believe because of her acceptance of him he learned to appreciate her over the years and maybe even try harder.

There was an angel in the story in the form of an Aunt who bailed them on several occasions and took the children in times of stress and need.  I believe God sends these angels to people who are trying.

Baseball may have been another saving element of this family.  Two of the boys were gifted players and the family practiced with them and united with excitement as they played during their youth.  Both boys ended up playing with the pros for awhile.

In my family writing classes I try to convince my students that if they share their stories with family members that they will be motivated to write their own stories.  Evelyn proved my theory. Everything she wrote was critiqued by the family first.  Many of her children ended up writing.  The youngest daughter Betsy wrote a moving afterward that I can't help copying here.

There is a movie by the same name made in 2005.  I hope to find it and leave a review of it.  Stay tuned.

Betsy Ryan: My mother wrote from her own life, recording embellishing, or ignoring as she chose, in the middle of everything.  From the newsroom of her girlhood to the ironing board of her family life, the writing went on, shaping itself while she worked toward wildly differing goals.  Whether for her cheeky column in her grandmother's newspaper, the fourth line of a breezy Birds Eye jingle, or the turn of phrase in a short story that might express, once and for all, the combined affection and horror we all felt for Charley the Chicken, it was a writing of humor and ease, rooted in her daily life and uniquely expressive of it.  When many writers might retreat from the world for some needed solitude, she grabbed that writing pad and got it down, the prize won, the moment captured, the other hand on the iron.

But biography was not exactly her aim.  She was more of a poet--someone who tinkered with words and shades of meaning and phraseology for the fun of it, someone whose search for the telling detail was a source of joy.  In this way, she shaped her surroundings as much as they shaped her.  And let's not forget laughter.  She had an unerring sense of what was funny, coming as she did from a strict Methodist upbringing and learning through living to leave it well behind, and could double over from the effects of her own writing.  It was a focal point for her talent, yes, but also a necessary release.

The thought used to cross our minds that Mom could have had a wonderful life writing advertising cipy on Madison Avenue instead of raising 10 children on no money in the middle of nowhere.  But this was before we really knew her.  We have learned from the things she left behind that hers was a remarkable life, defined most of all by the wish to include everything.  From a child's poem or a paid-off loan note to her rural Ohio domestic life that allowed, or inspired, the perfect turn of phrase in a prizewinning entry, one thing was as important as the next, and equally absorbing.  Looking through these things she left for us in the months after she died allowed us to see, piece by piece, what she was all about, and to appreciate the true extent of her accomplishment.

I have a recurring dream about my mother.  She is sitting on her living room couch, holding this book in her hands.  "This is wonderful," she is saying, with tears in her eyes.  "But where did you find all of this material?  Where did it come from?"

From you, Mom.  It came from you.
(p. 363-364)
A LOVELY BOOK! 
Thanks to Margene Snow for recommending this for our Book Club reading this year.

BOOK REVIEW - THE GIANT JOSHUA

Twenty years ago or so I read “The Giant Joshua” by Maurine Whipple. It is a story that speaks to my heritage because it is about the settling of St. George. The first Mormon convert in my family was Jacob Hamblin and he was there on the front lines of this pioneering experience. Jacob wanders in out of the pages of the story but it is not about him. It is about a young girl who arrives in the first wave of this desert settlement, 17 years old and the third wife in a polygamist marriage. This week I read the book again and I know that it will take a few weeks to recover from the emotions I have experienced reading this story again.

Some years ago, when Eugene England was still teaching at BYU, he taught a class at Education week about the book. I was lucky enough to be there. I have never forgotten what he said, that the book was the most beautiful Mormon fiction ever written--I would say this assessment still holds. I recall him reading a passage, typical of many wonderful images from the book:


There before them, carpeting the depression, were thousands of fairy bells with lavender hearts, tossing their lovely heads. Flowers wilting at a touch, so delicate as to be almost other earthly there among the black rocks. Sego lilies! Sown as thickly as a desert sky with stars. Poised like heavenly butterflies there on the grim lava surface as if they needed no roots, would float upward at a breath...P. 174


The story is about the survival of the human body and spirit amid the raw dessert elements...heat, starvation, floods, plagues of death and polygamy—why we mortals are not good enough to live polygamy. Maurine Whipple portrayed every possible side to the good bad and ugly aspects of the principle.


Maurine Whipple wrote the book in 1941 and entered it into a national first novel competition. She won. Brother England said she was hailed across the country for the book but it couldn’t be purchased in Utah. The church thought it was too negative a portrayal of polygamy. My mother said that you could borrow it at the library but there were long waiting lists of those wanting to read it. 1941 was still close to the very ugly ending of polygamy and I understand how the leaders of the church would still be sensitive.


Attitudes did change, however, and the book has been republished several times and sold in church bookstores. It is sad that Maurine felt such rejection from the homefront that she never wrote another novel...a tragedy indeed because her ability to capture the wrenching, loving, dreaming, suffering spirit is beyond anything I have ever read. If I have a favorite novel this is it.

CASHEW CHICKEN

I found this recipe on  http://thepioneerwoman.com/tasty-kitchen/  My husband gave it the thumbs up and he is fussy.  I liked it also.  It is surprisingly quick and simple and would be a respectable dinner party entre.  I thought it needed a little more sauce and changed things a little to eliminate some of the fat with the heavy whipping cream. We didn't miss it but if you want to make it very rich use all cream and eliminate the water and flour.    If you are not a curry fan there is not enough here to tell it is curry. It serves about 6 but not huge servings.

4 chicken breast halves cut into bite size pieces.

1/4 C. dry sherry or apple juice.  (I used the juice and it was fine)

2 tsp. cornstarch

1 large clove of finely grated garlic

1 1/4 tsp. salt

3/4 tsp. curry powder

Mix these ingredients together and marinate for 15 minutes to a few hours

Melt 2 T. butter in a large frying pan.  Saute 8 oz. sliced mushrooms until they begin to brown.

Remove from the pan and set aside.  Melt 2 more T. of butter (I used lt. olive oil here) in your pan and when it begins to sizzle add the chicken with marinade.  Stir fry until the chicken is nice and brown.  Add the mushrooms.

In a bowl mix together 1 C. whipping cream 1/2 C. water and 1 T. flour until smooth.  Pour over the browned chicken and simmer for 10 minutes.  Serve over rice or noodles.  Sprinkle each serving with salted cashews or pass around the table.  Add chopped parsley if desired. 

WALLACE GODDARD YOUTUBE ON HEALTHY MARRIAGES