Cake, cake, cake, cake

By the time you read this I will be hanging out with my bestie Alexis who is flying into spend Thanksgiving with us. The girls are super excited but not nearly as excited as I am. And seeing as how I will be spending all my time over the holidays enjoying her company and stuffing my face I thought I'd schedule a post for you.

I just finished reading Beautiful Redemption. It is always bitter sweet to end a series. Especially a series as amazing as this one. Check out my review on goodreads here. This completion brings me back on track with my Reading Goal for 2012:

After my burn out last year in October I decided to not push my luck and just got with an easy one book a week. I'm right on track. How are you all doing? Any favorites that I must read before the end of the year? These are the three books vying for my attention right now. I'm still unsure which one I will pick to read first.

And since it's almost thanksgiving and since that means pumpkin pie and since I despise pumpkin pie, I'm going to share with what I made for "pumpkin pie day" at work. Last year I made this delicious chocolate layered pumpkin torte:

That was fun, my first go around I forgot to add the flour. The year before that I made my absolute favorite go to when you want to impress people layered pumpkin cake. Sorry no picture but here's the link to the recipe. You use brown sugar to make the whipped cream frosting... Trust me it's amazing.

This year I wanted to be lazy and do something easy. And thanks to pinterest I had options. I saw a Better than Sex Pumpkin Cake pin floating around and was pretty set on trying that. Better than Sex Cake other wise known as Skor cake, is amazing. You use a whole can of sweetened condensed milk, how could it be anything but amazing? I started out with this recipe from Something Swanky. However as I assembled the cake I was immediately put off by the consistency of the batter. The pumpkin and the dry cake mix alone looked like some that would bake up to be dry and dense and completely unappealing. So I googled easy pumpkin cake and noted that several other recipes said to still use the eggs that the original boxed cake mixed called for. Then because I was feeling wild I threw in the spices that make up pumpkin pie spice. No measurements just shaking a little here and there. Like I said WILD.

The result was pretty darn good. For someone who doesn't like pumpkin this cake was great. It had a VERY light pumpkin flavor and despite the entire can of sweetened condensed milk and entire tub of cool whip it wasn't too sweet. 

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix

1 small can pumpkin puree (14.5 oz)

3 eggs beaten

1/2 t pumpkin pie spice

1 - 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

1 - 8 oz. tub cool whip

1 -2 Heath bars crushed

Instructions:

Mix together the cake mix, the pumpkin puree, the eggs, and the spice.

Pour batter into a well greased 9x13 baking dish. Bake at 350º according to the directions for a 9x13 cake on the cake mix box.

Using a chopstick poke holes all over the top of the cake (The original recipe links to a post that has "great step by step photos for this part". Really? You're just stabbing the cake).

Pour the sweetened condensed milk over the cake, filling the holes. Refrigerate until ready to serve. It's best to let it sit over night to really soak up that sweetened condensed milk.

Before serving spread the cool whip over top of cake. Sprinkle on the heath bits. 

Enjoy and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

The end of a saga...

Sniff sniff sob... The last Twilight movie came out last week and true to my obsessive book nerd form I bought tickets for the movie when they went on sale way back on October 1st. We avoided the crazed screaming crying teenagers by going on a Sunday evening instead of braving the midnight showing (just a tip for you Utah people, Sunday evening is the BEST day to go to the movies).

I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some Twilight paraphernalia. So at our monthly craft day I made a Breaking Dawn shirt. 

"I came to witness. I stay to fight." It wasn't in the movie but it was one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite vampires in the book.

We had a great big group of 12 and my awesome sister made us swag. Blood bites, cake pops, and Breaking Dawn themed pins. My nerd posse if fierce. 

Yes, I did take Beautiful Redemption to the movie with me. I literally don't go any where without a book. And one of the highlights of the evening was when the trailers came on. The first one was for Beautiful Creatures. Here's one of my weird traits cute quirks, I don't watch trailers. At least not for movies I'm really excited about seeing. So I covered my ears, closed my eyes, and sang to myself. I really hope my coworker who came to the movies with us wasn't too freaked out by my bizarre behavior. Then when we thought the City of Bones trailer was about to start I was ASSAULTED from behind by my sister. She grabbed my face and tried to pin my head to the seat so I couldn't look away while yelling "watch it!". Luckily for me, unfortunately for her, they did not show the City of Bones trailer. 
  
A quick movie review. It was good, probably the best of the 5. You probably won't believe me but Kristen Stewart actually had various facial expressions and conveyed emotions. The CGI Renesmee was creepy as hell - as in super creepy, gross, not cute at all. I had to work hard not to laugh too loudly when they first showed her on screen. I don't want to give away any spoilers but at one point in the movie I nearly walked out. I was seething mad at the deviation from the book. I mean ridiculous, no way you could even pretend this happened, holy SHIT that did not just happen deviation. I think the people around me were scared because I was radiating rage. But in the end I stay and they did an excellent job of working the deviation into the story in a believable way. Pretty much everyone in the theater exploded into chatter when we figured out what was going one. My exact words were "well that was unacceptable." But over all I like it a lot. And I want to go back now that I know what's going to happen so I can actually pay attention and not be distracted by my book nerd indignation. 

So who else went and watched Breaking Dawn? Thoughts? 

Book Nerd Parenting

Today was a good day to be a book nerd. I'm reading the wonderful Beautiful Redemption, the fourth and the final book in the Caster Chronicles by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia. It's really a wonderful series for YA paranormal fans.

 I'm also listening to The Eyre Affair which is a fun mystery crime novel for literature loves. Someone is stealing characters right out of Jane Eyre.

I picked up the LONG awaited spin off series of Fever, called Iced. I absolutely cannot wait to start reading this.

I also hosted a book club meeting: The Scarlet Letter held at Red Ginger. It was probably the best book club meeting I've been to in months. A good group, who talked, had read the book, and were fun to hang out with.  It helps that the food was delicious.

But the best part of today was that the naughties got to go to their first book signing. You really can't expect children with a mother like me, an aunt like my sister (who made the dress from the book Matched just for the release party), and a grandma like my mom to not be book nerds.  They have no choice but to become book nerds even if I have to beat them... with a copy of Wuthering Heights. The signing was held at the lovely Kings English bookstore. Rosemary Wells is the author of the Max and Ruby series and was there promoting her newest book, Max and Ruby's Treasure Hunt.

I unfortunately had to be at that silly place called work so I wasn't able to go. But my amazing mom got the answer to every parents burning question: Where are Max and Ruby's parents?! Mrs. Wells explained that the characters were based on her own kids, 5 and 1. And her five year old was always bossing the one year old around, telling him how to act and what to say and what to do. And she's be listening from another room, which is why you never see the parents in the story. The girls were super excited when they got home and told me all about how they met Max but Ruby couldn't come, and how they met Rosemary Wells who's the author of the Max and Ruby books, and how she read them a story and signed their new books. It was a proud moment for this nerd parent.

2011 Book Roll

It's probably wrong that I'm taking the time to write this post when I have yet to write Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hunger Games posts... But I've been waiting to do this all year.

I joined the Goodreads.com 2011 Reading Challenge with a goal of 50 books. I was then inspired by the lovely Nina Badzin to read a book a week. I had no life at the beginning of 2011 and was burning through books at a rate much faster than one a week so I decided to really challenge myself and upped the goal to 100 books. I was right on target until about October. Life got busy, book club books slowed me down, Game of Thrones really slowed me down and I burnt out. I think during the entire month of October I finished all of one book.

To offset that between December 26th and 30th I read 5 books, bringing my total for 2011 to 88 books. In addition to that I discovered books on tape... or more appropriately books on MP3. I listened to a total of 20 books. So you might say I exceeded my goal... Although I'm not convinced that listening to a book counts as "reading" a book.

So here you go the 88 books I read in 2011:

I keep getting asked which was my favorite and what I'd recommend and those are such hard questions to answer because there are so many good qualities to almost all of the books I've read. But I've tried to pick some category winners:

Least Favorite Adult: Follow the River or Tinkers.

Least Favorite Young Adult: the entire House of Night series

Best Adult Paranormal Series: Fever

Best Young Adult Paranormal Series: Mortal Instruments or Vampire Academy

If I had to choose an overall favorite: Hunger Games

Honorable Mentions: Divergent, The Graveyard Book, and The Giver

Honestly as I look over the book covers I loved so many of them and depending on your genre preferences I could recommend 95% of them to one person or another. It makes me sad that I can't include ALL of them on my favorites list.

I'm going to aim for a goal of 52 books in 2012. I don't think I'll have a problem reaching that goal but I do plan on reading at least 8 classics and 2 non-fiction. I'd love to hear about your 2011 reads and plans for 2012!

Happy New Year... or as Lanna says Have a New Year! 

Book Club: The Book Theif and Normandie Cafe

I'm a little behind on my book club reviews so let's just do a quick synopsis before I get to today's:

The Room by Emma Donoghue at Village Inn. This was a solid 3 star book. An interesting yet unbelievable story of a woman who was kidnapped and kept in a shed (Room) for years. The story is told from the perspective of her son, who was born in the room conceived by her kidnapper. Worth reading but not worth bumping to the top of your list. Village Inn was well generic.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card at Training Table. Wonderful book one of my favorite in the Ender's series. I HATE sci-fi and yet I loved this book. Card does a wonderful job of moving the story line along while still developing the world around him in an understandable way. Worst book club meeting I've ever been too. Everyone bailed. Training Table was blah - completely overrated I probably wont ever eat there again.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson at Chicago Pizza. When I first finished the book I HATED it. HATED.IT. It was slow and boring; it could have been so exciting but it just wasn't. However after the meeting and the awesome discussions I bumped my rating from a 2 to a 3.5. It's definitely not my cup of tea but I had to admit that there was a lot of very interesting history embedded into the story. The fact that it's a non-fiction makes it great but also leads to the boringness. If you enjoy American history or like architecture it's must read. Chicago Pizza was surprisingly tasty. A little over priced - but then again I think most pizza places are. I went simple and shared a thin crust prosciutto pizza and the house salad and was quite satisfied.

Today's book was The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

This was one of the first books that I listened to on MP3. It was amazing. I honestly loved it. A non-Nazi family in Nazi Germany. The story its told from the perspective of Death. Really a brilliant tale; it made me laugh out loud and then sob. I really think everyone should read this book and I would love to see it in school curriculum. The discussions about the book were good, we did get off on some tangents but over all it was interesting. A lot of people there were history buff which I am not so it was interesting to listen to their additional knowledge. The restaurant we ate at was Normandie in Holladay. My review? Meh. The food was fine but way over priced for the portion size and quality. Teardra got a mac-n-cheese that she deemed the best she's ever had. I got a steak sandwich and caesar salad and it was fine.

There are a ton of meetings coming up that I'm really looking forward to including The Giver, Tinkers, and The Reader (the last two I haven't read yet but look):

If by chance you are a historical romance or period piece person pick up The Gentleman Poet by Kathryn Johnson. I picked it up on the whim at the library and I was pretty sure I'd hate it and not finish it but I LOVE it. 

Happy Reading

Book Club #2 - Matched and Blue Plate

My second book club meeting was for the book Matched by Ally Condie.

After my first book club experience I was looking forward to discussing a book I actually liked (rather than seriously hated). This book has been compared to the Hunger Games - one of my all time favorite series. And I should have known - because I've done this before - that going into a book with high expectations is a mistake.

A side note: After seeing a tweet by the ever amazing Nina Badzin I'm going to try to be fair but not mean in my reviews. I don't think I mentioned this in the first post but if you're a writer, an aspiring writer, or dream of being a writer you really should follow Nina on twitter and subscribe to her blog.

On to the review. I don't know if it's because I read this with the thought that I will be discussing it for a book club in the back of my mind or if it really just wasn't up to my expectations but I felt extra critical of this book. Matched was slow. Very very slow. When I read a book I want to connect with my heroine and for the first 300 (out of 400) pages Cassia is dull; void of personality and character. I think a good author can build up the back story at the same time as she moves the plot along. IE I don't want 300 pages of back story and explanations. I found myself being easily distracted and having to go back and re-read paragraphs because while my eyes saw the words my mind didn't register the meaning. It just wasn't keeping my attention.

My second problem is that I don't consider myself well read. Yes I read a lot but I read a lot of fluff. And one of my literary pet peeves is when authors extensively use quotes and poetry that I recognize. There are so many amazing poems out there to choose from that when I see one in a book that I recognize I think the author was not motivated enough to search from something unknown and they took the easy way out. This stems from the fact that I don't usually recognize poetry quotes because of the actual poem but because they are quoted so often by others. Condie bases a large chunk of Matched on Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night. Who doesn't recognize the words "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Thirdly, I think Condie just tried too hard. She has a habit of repeating a sentence twice. She would take Cassia's thoughts and try to turn them into poetry. I understand she wants Cassia to be a poet and passionate but it felt forced - particularly during those first 300 pages when Cassia had no passion or personality.

But this reviwe is not all bad. After the first 300 pages Condie had me falling in love with Cassia and Ky, and even Xander and her parents. Finally everyone had fire and passion and emotions that I can connect with. I admit to crying on Trax and almost missing my stop because I was so into the story. If only she could have written like that from page 1 or even page 100. And that's where I feel like this book falls short of Tanya's standard of literary greatness. I have high hopes for the next two books. Hopefully Condie can keep the momentum and fire alive and not revert to Society dullness.

The meeting itself was GREAT! I had my doubts after the first meeting which only lasted 45 minutes, had very little discussion, and terrible food. This time we met at Blue Plate. The family took me there after my confirmation earlier this year so I knew I liked it. I'm sorry the conversation was so good that I forgot pictures. I got the corned beef and hash with eggs. True to the waiter's words the corned beef is made in house with the breakfast potatoes as the hash. They add shredded cheader cheese - which is good but unnecessary and oily. Next time I'll get it with poached eggs sans cheese. The portion is huge and I'm excited to eat it for breakfast.

Next Tuesday we're meeting at Chapin Cafe and reading Room by Emma Donoghue. I plan to take notes as I read and write up a few questions that I hope encourage better discussions and analysis of the book. Why yes I am a nerd.

Synopsis:
To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.


Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Books And Brioche

Books and Food! The two loves of my life after my naughties (ok maybe tied with my naughties).

I found a book club through meetup.com after being inspired by one of Nina Badzin's recent post. I've always wanted to join a book club but have never really made the effort to find one. One of my biggest concerns was how opinionated I am... I have strong feelings about books and I don't think I should have to censor myself. My second concern is my choice of books. If you're my friend on GoodReads.com you know I have an ummm immature taste in books. I'm currently trying to remedy this by reading through Time's 100 novel's everyone should read list but over all I'm a young adults or urban fantasy addict.

Then I realized a book club would be great because of those two concerns. I like to be opinionated and my reviews on GoodReads.com isn't always enough to satisfy my need to opinion-ate. And what better way to expand my reading list then by reading books others have suggested.

So for this first book club meeting we read Follow the River by James Alexander Thom. 

I was a little apprehensive when I read the synopsis...

"This is a true story about a young woman during the French and Indian War who witnesses much of her family and village massacred and then is taken by Indians. With her two young sons, and a baby due any day, she travels hundreds of miles on horseback and foot to the Indian camp, then has to make a heart-wrenching decision - stay and marry an Indian, even as her two sons are taken away to another Indian camp, or leave her baby in the care of another Indian woman and travel on foot with nothing but a tomahawk and the clothes on her back back to her home and husband."

Wait what? Leave her kids? So she could go back to civilization and be with her husband? But I read it, and hated it because yes indeed she leaves her kids in the hands of the savages. Top that off with 200+ pages of walking through the woods, eating roots, and having diarrhea, the book was a huge fat bust in my opinion. This of course made me worried about the meeting because I STRONGLY hated the book and the main character. 

We meet yesterday at Stella's - which incidentally had TERRIBLE food - and it was a group of 6 other women. 3 who were regulars and 3 who were new like me. 

After ordering food, discussing the upcoming books and doing a little "tell me something about yourself" we get to the point where we discuss Follow the River. As it turns out it's one of the girl's FAVORITE book of all time. After she talks about why she loves it. Teardra the book club leader asks me what I like about it... Pause... "Nothing." Then I go on to explain and it turns out everyone else hated it too. Over all it was a lot of fun, the other girls were nice - even if they were a little condescending about my genres of choice.  The next meeting I'm going to is at Blue Plate (a restaurant that I love) and the book is Matched by Ally Condie, a book that I'm truly looking forward to.

And now the best part: Brioche. At 10:30 last night after book club I thought to myself "what would be better than chocolate brioche for breakfast?" So I dragged myself out of bed and made some dough. I followed this recipe loosely http://www.cookyourdream.com/2010/02/chocolate-brioche-and-monthly-mingle.html.

I was pretty worried because when I say loosely I mean, I used the right ingredients and proportions but didn't follow the instructions at all.

Still the results were fantastic! The only thing I'll do different next time is put more chocolate in the middle.

Happy Reading and Happy Baking!