And so begins Floraganza

Happy New Year!

I pickled some daikon on Saturday, the Mister preserved some lemons and I think I inadvertently am growing a vinegar mother, so never fear, acid explorations will continue; but the new moon was yesterday, Janet's birthday was weeks ago, the year of the snake is here and with it the new resolution.
It's flower year.
Welcome to Floraganza!
This year I will celebrate flowers.
I will be spreading out my specific goals and the rationale behind Floraganza* over the week (among other things, we have a different sickness in our house and I must attend to the youngest member and his feverish rasps) but we will start with the big one.
1. I will have flowers in my house or office (and preferably both) every week.

*The term Floraganza is from the Mister.  It was a joke.  One can't make many suggestions in jest around here without someone taking them seriously.

**The photo captures the lingering nature of these resolutions.  Flowers (2013), sparkling wine (2003-- this bottle a gift from FiL and MiL from Greece) and pink (2004) are all represented.  And somehow I didn't even discuss the acidity of wine in acid year (2012).

Following Recipes (I looked at the list of ingredients)

The Mister purchased five pounds of turnips from the Oklahoma Food Co-op in January.  The first night I roasted them, I proudly proclaimed that I had actually followed a recipe (from Diane Morgan's beautiful Roots).
The Mister eyed the book in front of him, open to Turnips and Leeks in Miso Butter, Roasted Turnips with Thyme, and White Balsamic-Glazed Turnips, glanced at the turnips I cooked, which were noticeably lacking in leeks, glaze, or thyme, and asked quizzically, "You did?"
"Yes, I did.  Well, I looked at the list of ingredients.  That counts."
Doesn't it?

I follow recipes when I bake (much of the time).  I read cookbooks.  I read food magazines.  I like recipes.  I like them a great deal.  I just rarely cook with them.

So it's a good thing that this cookbook using, recipe following resolution is the Mister's and not mine, because, well, what can I tell you?  The roasted turnips (turnips and olive oil, finished with sel gris but otherwise unadorned) were really good, as far as roasted turnips go.  That's hardly a revealing review of the book.

Since the Mister (and everyone else in the household) has been under the weather with various cruds.  I'll kick off the much-delayed cookbook reviews.  Two weeks ago, I followed the "Master Recipe" (pg. 480) for rack of lamb in Bruce Aidells and Dennis Kelly's The Meat Cookbook.  Here I present photographic evidence that I both cooked meat and used the cookbook.  I followed the directions closely (searing in a cast iron skillet before roasting) and the lamb was delicious, as evidenced by the Mister picking up my bones to scavenge any remaining bits.  The pan sauce from page 481, was great, too, and I followed the recipe for that as well.  Except that I tripled the garlic, added some port, didn't have any stock or thyme, used twice as much of a different kind of mustard and supplemented with cherry preserves . . . 

Happy Groundhog Day!

I hope you are taking some time to celebrate the season (whatever season it is where you are) and to appreciate the humble rodent.

The big party here has been postponed due to illness and inertia until February 16.  That gives you two weeks to supply ideas for the first "Groundhogs in Love" party.

Regular resolutions, a new twist, a new author and cookbooks!

Besides the annual themed resolutions, here at the SpSq household we make more pedestrian resolutions each year: lose weight, read books, eat whole grains and so forth.  For 2013 The Mister has resolved to cook more from our extensive cookbook collection.  We are going to hold him accountable, which I read every year is essential for successful resolutions, because he is going to publicly post the results here on Sparkling Squirrel
Welcome to The Mister (code name coderprof)!
The reading public anxiously awaits reports of your culinary adventures (and I like eating the food myself).

There must be acid in the air

I'm trying to wrap up acid year (you might recall these resolutions are on a lunar cycle, even though I have already started the new one) and acid ideas just keep popping up.
My brother and sister-in-law gave us more fermentation books for Christmas, I opened a (non-acid) new cookbook yesterday and the page fell to recipes for pickled carrots and kimchee and flipping through today's mail led me to a bon appetit article on making one's own vinegar with this conclusion:

Making vinegar reminds us of a love affair.  As in all great romances, you must pay attention to its needs, take care of it, and have patience as it ages and transforms into something beautiful.* 

Vinegar and love affairs: there is clearly still acid left for me to explore.
*Hamilton and Hirsheimer (2013) "Sour Grapes" bon appetit. February 2013.  p. 62.

Without any acid

Who is Santa's helper?

Another elf

Before sledding

Before sledding

Among some of their favorite people

I'm not adding any tart to these sweet photos.  Sorry if that screws up the balance of the blog.

"They'll be scary ghost stories"

I read two ghost stories last week (Author's note:  last week was Dec. 20 as of when I was first typing this).  Like most Americans, I don't think that Christmas is the season of ghost stories (see discussion in the comments of Wuthering Expectations here about cultural seasonality of ghost stories) so every time I sing along with Andy Williams  I wonder about the scary ghost stories I should expect along with "kids jingle belling" and "marshmallows for roasting" (at Christmastime?  Really?) during this most wonderful time of the year.  I also don't particularly like ghost stories, so I was surprised to find myself reading two of them in the week before Christmas.
A Christmas Carol, is, of course THE Christmas ghost story.  I had not read the original before and was pleased to find that it is fabulous.  Readers who find Victorian novelists in general, and Dickens in particular, to be cumbersome and intimidating, aren't thinking of the opening of A Christmas Carol:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. . . .

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.

Haven't you wondered what is dead about a door nail?

Dickens includes delectable (and unintimidating) descriptions of the produce and sweets.  The action moves at a good clip.  And while some readers might find it manipulative, I find it an indicator of good writing that tiny Tim's death made me cry because of the the way it changed his father's gait; even though I knew that Scrooge would reform and Tim would not die in the actual, rather than potential, future. 
If you've read A Christmas Carol recently, I'd love to discuss it with you, and it you haven't, you really should (although if I were you I'd wait another year because there is something special about reading it at the right time of the year).  Let me know.
As for the other ghost story: it was Jennifer Crusie's Maybe This Time, and it stunned me.  Crusie writes some of my favorite romantic comedies (I love lit professor Rohan Maitzen's explanation of why she enjoyed some of Crusie's novels despite not being a "romance reader").  All of them include quirky characters, who are rarely conventionally beautiful, living in Ohio.  Some of the more recent ones include some mystery or crime investigation, which is always secondary to the relationships.  None of the others have included ghosts.
Maybe This Time included hints of ghosts from the beginning, but I kept waiting for the big reveal.  As the action proceeded I became increasingly afraid that Crusie would totally Scoobie Do it: we'd suddenly realize it was just projectors, mirrors and an overuse of salvia, but equally worried with the alternative: that the ghosts in the story are really ghosts.  About ten pages from the end (despite the ghosts, it is a fun, fast read), I looked up and told The Mister, "There are ghosts in my book."  I couldn't quite believe it.  The Mister guessed I had to be talking about A Christmas Carol because the library romantic comedy I was holding in my hand clearly didn't have ghosts.  But it did.
As I look into it, I learn that Maybe This Time is based on The Turn of the Screw but, as I have never read any Henry James, I was completely unaware.  MTT would probably be a fun read for the person who is a fan of Henry James the way I am a fan of Jane Austen:  enjoying both the original and the sometimes silly derivatives.

Books, kids, flowers, recipes and vinegar all to come soon.  Stay tuned to Sparkling Squirrel!