This week I finally received the book I ordered. Geez. I love blacklisted books. Still can’t believe this country bans books. Oops…I mean “challenges” them. I guess we don’t call it banning anymore.

Yes, “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo was amazing. I read it in two sittings. I could barely put the thing down. I wish I had read this book in highschool…could of skipped Silas Marner. What a book.

It hurt to read it. But you just can’t stop.

A young man, age 20, is drafted to go off and fight in WW1. He gets hit by a shell, loses his arms, legs, ears and face, but was able to be ’saved’ by doctors. He’s doomed to live a life of solitude with nothing left to do but think. Kind of drives you mad.

Metallica actually has used scenes from the old “Johnny Got His Gun” movie in their song “One” which (not purposefully) had a very similar story line. It’s a really good clip and I can assure you, it isn’t a ‘headbang-y’ song. It won’t hurt your ears.

Watch it here.

I’ll leave you with an entry from the book. Here, the main character is remembering the time when he and his fellow soldiers find an enemy soldier, lying dead in the trenches with a rat chewing on his open wounds:

“Somebody let out a yell and they were all yelling like crazy men. The rat sat up and looked at him. Then the rat started for the dugout entrance. But he started too slow. Yelling and screaming the pack of them were after him. Somebody ripped off a helmet and hit the rat in its hind-quarters. The rat squealed and turned to snap at the helmet. Then it dragged itself into the dugout with all of them after it. They caught it there in the dim light and beat it into red jelly. Then they were all still for a second. They felt kind of foolish. They left the dugout and went on with the war.

He thought about it afterward. It didn’t matter whether the rat was gnawing on your buddy or a damned German it was all the same. Your real enemy was the rat and when you saw it there fat and well fed chewing on something that might be you why you went nuts.”
-Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo.

Didn’t mean to gross you all out. I just thought the whole point of it was sort of profound.

No news about cupcakes yet. I baked a ginger-buttermilk cake right before dinner, but haven’t tasted it (because I haven’t made the frosting yet!). The cake looks good. Oh, and if you are wondering why I said ‘cake’ and not ‘cupcake’, well, I poured the cupcake batter into a cake tin, because I was just too plain lazy to pour it into a bunch of little paper cups. I was short on time. Gimme a break!

One thing was for sure though- dinner was an absolute success! I know, it was only fried chicken and a salad, but it’s also one of the few times that I have made Joe dinner. He is so limited to what he eats, mainly sandwiches and steak or chicken. He’s perfected the art of preparing his meals, so I never really wanted to try and make him something new (because there is a very good chance he might not like it).

So I decided to stick to something simple, but new to both of us. Walnuts as a breading seemed like a novel idea. I had never cooked with grapeseed oil either.

Oh and let me tell you about this salad that I first experienced while visiting my mom a few weeks back. My mom’s friend made this for her and my mom had to make it for me. Now I am passing on the goodness to you.

All it is is a head of romaine lettuce cut in half lengthwise, sauteed for a few seconds in garlic infused olive oil. The dressings are a balsamic vinegar reduction and a gorgonzola/cream reduction drizzled over the head of lettuce. You eat the salad with a knife and fork. I ended up using the dressings as a dipping for the chicken which worked perfectly together.

I’m tempted to make this dinner again tomorrow it was so good!

*If you were curious about how to make the chicken, the recipe is in the May 2007 issue of Body + Soul p. 122.*

Yum. Brunch was good today. I was in the mood for baked brie and apples, but didn’t have any brie on hand, so I used Muenster instead. I topped some rosemary foccacia with a slice of Muenster, tart apples and a sprinkling of parmigiano reggiano for extra flavor and put it in the broiler until it was bubbling and gooey. Another way to do it (which is also really good) would be to heat the bread and cheese and add the apples uncooked at the end for a more tart finish.

What was that?

Did I make any delicious cupcakes this week, you ask?

Well, I think I must be cursed. I tried the avocado cupcakes last night and again…not. very. good. The cake was greasy and the palm sugar buttercream frosting was a little step closer to what I was looking for in a frosting, but had an unfinished touch that I can’t really put my finger on. Why oh why can’t I make a cupcake to my liking (that doesn’t come from a box)??

I’m not giving up. Although, I probably should. I’ve got a million other, more important things to do. But after the disappointment last night, I went on an online search for another frosting recipe. I’ve found cream cheese based and even sour cream based, both I plan to give a try. I’ve got a cupcake book that I haven’t used yet, so I’ll find my cake recipe from there. Maybe my next post will be a triuphant victory over the cupcake curse? Probably not…I don’t want to get your (or my) hopes up.

At least good ol’ savory meals are kind to me…such forgiving meals they are. Tonight I’m going to make walnut and parmigiano encrusted chicken breasts (and just walnut encrusted for Joe who can’t stand cooked parmesan. I don’t know what is wrong with him, I think he was dropped as a child).

A scholar asked a boatman to row him across the river. The journey was long and slow. The scholar was bored. “Boatman,” he called out, “Let’s have a conversation.” Suggesting a topic of special interest to himself, he asked, “Have you ever studied phonetics or grammar?”

“No,” said the boatman, “I’ve no use for those tools.”

“Too bad,” said the scholar, “You’ve wasted half your life. It’s useful to know the rules.”

Later, as the rickety boat crashed into a rock in the middle of the river, the boatman turned to the scholar and said, “Pardon my humble mind that to you must seem dim, but, wise man, tell me, have you ever learned to swim?”

“No,” said the scholar, “I’ve never learned. I’ve immersed myself in thinking.”

“In that case,” said the boatman, “you’ve wasted all your life. Alas, the boat is sinking.”

Just had to let everyone know about AfricanKelli. It’s a wonderful blog by a wonderful girl who takes frequent trips to Africa to care for children who aren’t as fortunate as we are. Very less fortunate.

She will be heading to Mozambique in May and is asking that volunteers send plastic baggies filled with goodies like soaps, toothpaste, dental floss, pencils, stuff that you would think everyone in the world would have a right to, these little kids don’t. Imagine your kids happy with a bag full of soap and toothpaste. Laughable, isn’t it? It kinda makes me angry that these kids have so little that they can be excited about basics like that.

I decided to participate and hopefully will be sending a couple of them out. It also gives me an opportunity to try to write in Portuguese, since this is the official language of Mozambique and volunteering requires that you write a note in both English and Portuguese.

I hope that this inspires you to participate as I think little things like this help immensely by directly impacting the lives of these children. For more information on this, go to AfricanKelli’s blog here.

I’m getting pretty good at this breakfast thing. It’s become my favorite meal of the day. Although, I haven’t been doing much for dinner. I need to work on that! Well, I guess I haven’t been entirely ignoring dinner. I did try Orangette’s lentil soup recipe and OH MY GOD, how I loved it! It is the cheapest meal ever. Well, I suppose, not so much if you don’t already have the spices on hand. I didn’t, but I have access to Indian food stores where I can get big bags of spices for like a buck. I feel like I’m ripping them off when I have my arms full of spices and only have to hand them a ten dollar bill (and I even got change back!). If I had bought the same stuff at the grocery store, I’d be spending three times as much. I recommend searching out any ethnic food stores in your area. You can find all sorts of exotic items on the cheap.

Anyways, I also tried to make cupcakes and let me tell you….they were awful! I followed the recipe for Chai Spice cupcakes over at the Cupcake Blog and the cake part was alright. It was a bit dry (I’ll blame myself for that) and the slight hint of spice just made it weird, it took away from the chocolate flavor rather than enhancing it, but the frosting is what really killed them. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t eat frosting that is so sweet that it hurts my teeth. I can’t deal with a box full of powdered sugar in my frosting. I didn’t even add as much as the recipe called for and it was far beyond my sweet limit. Far beyond any sweet limit.

Anyone know a good frosting recipe that doesn’t include loads of powdered sugar or any whipped cream style frostings? Maybe I should try a cream cheese based frosting?

In other cake news…

I finally got my palm sugar in the mail (you can’t buy it anywhere around here for some reason) and will soon be trying avocado cupcakes with palm sugar buttercream frosting. Hopefully, I’ll be successful. I still cannot find Pandan leaf anywhere and that is one of the ingredients called for in the frosting, but I’m hoping I can get away with not using it. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

I’ve also been experimenting with pancakes and have yet to find a pancake recipe that creates pancakes that look good, are fluffy, AND yummy. First I tried buttermilk pancakes. They turned out really flat and heavy. Then I tried a ricotta pancake with lemon and boy did it taste good, but it sure looked crummy. It wasn’t as fluffy as much as I would have liked either. The search will continue on…

I know everyone is saying something about what happened yesterday and I feel like I can’t post today and not say anything about it when I have so much on my mind. While the act was a huge tragedy, I am not surprised. I’m not shocked. I feel terrible though. To die with fear in your heart must be one of the most terrible ways to pass on. To have your life ripped from you by someone who is so off in their way of thinking, is a most terrible thing indeed.

But I know that these tragedies have happened before, and will happen again. I know soon after the shock and grief has worn off, the media frenzy will begin, shouting out those buzz words like “fear” and “danger” and “evil”. We’ll all be wondering what could have done to prevent that terrible incident from happening. And I do believe that if the school had responded quicker to the first shooting that maybe things would have turned out different. But I’ll tell you, whatever preparations and precautions we take in the future, something of that magnitude will inevitably happen again. It always finds a way.

I don’t think it’s really much of a phenomenon that has happened recently either. The media is touting this to be the most deadly college mass murder in this country’s history, but it’s not the deadliest school mass murder that has happened in the good ol’ U.S. In the 1920’s a farmer drove his truck full of explosives into an elementary school and killed 42 people (mostly children around the age of 7), and that was two days after he murdered his own wife and an hour after blowing up his own farm.

Nope, sadly, some people will just go berserk. Whatever emotional upset they have to deal with, big or small, some people just can’t hack it and turn violent.

My roundabout point with all this is, let’s just try and be understanding and kind to others. If you notice someone having a hard time in life (I know it’s not always very obvious), give them someone who understands. Let’s not alienate eachother. And just hope for the best, because that’s really all we can do.

It’s not the most revolutionary idea, and maybe it’s not all that well thought out, but it’s simple and I think we don’t do it enough.

I hope you aren’t getting too bored with all these breakfast pictures, I have been trying to document this whole week’s worth of breakfast as just an experiment and a personal motivator.

I made blueberry muffins on Wednesday night for Thursday’s breakfast, but I chose a less than standard recipe from AllRecipes called ‘Health Nut Blueberry Muffins’. I figured since the recipe called for oats, wheat germ, walnuts, banana, buttermilk and whole wheat flour and by some strange miracle, I had all ingredients on hand, I figured I should probably go with this recipe. It also had rave reviews. Great. I can make the muffins I had been craving and make them more healthy than they normally would be, but still have them taste great! Right? No.

I added a bit of ground cloves and allspice to the mix and (being one of those weirdo batter eaters) I loved the batter. I thought how can this possibly NOT taste spectacular after baking them? They are already good! But sometime in between putting them in the oven and pulling them out, they severely degraded in appeal. They tasted ‘healthy’. They tasted ‘wholesome’. They tasted just how all the reviewers described them, but they did not taste how I wanted them to taste.

Don’t get me wrong, they were edible. They were fine. They just weren’t anything that I’d be willing to make the same way again. I’m definitely never going to crave them. Oh well. Maybe I’ll omit the wheat germ next time. I think that was what did them in. I love wheat germ sprinkled on my yogurt, but just can’t seem to appreciate it in baked goods.

Today I was set on making biscuits inspired by Anna over at Twelve22. I hadn’t made biscuits since I was a child helping my grandma out. Why hadn’t I thought to make these sooner? It’s so simple!

I’ve also been meaning to tell you about this wonderful device I picked up at Ross for under $10. I didn’t really understand what it was when I bought it, despite having read Blair’s coffee post. How flaky am I? Sheesh.

I thought what I was buying was some sort of coffee press. Nope. I bought a stove top espresso maker! I’ve always wanted to be able to make my own espresso instead of shelling out almost $4 for a small latte at the coffee shops, but the electric espresso machines (even the personal sized ones) were just too expensive to be worth it.

My little stove top one is ridiculously simple to use and takes a total of 5 minutes before I have a nice shot of espresso. Now all I need is one of those milk frothers that Blair talks about in her (very informative) coffee post and I’ll never need to go to the coffee shops again!

I went ahead with the idea of asparagus and eggs this morning. Before I went to bed last night, I looked up a few recipes (the idea isn’t so unique apparently, but really what is?) in preparation and while all looked very tasty, I ended up sticking with my lazy…er, easy approach to it.

I think I made the most fluffy, most delicious eggs I’ve ever made. I thought that I had eggs down already, but nope, NOW I have eggs (well, scrambled eggs) down pat. Aside from mixing in a bit of heavy cream with my eggs while whisking them, I added a bit of water as well. Then as they were cooking I grated just a light sprinkling of Romano and Muenster cheese. Perfect! About half way through cooking the eggs, I tossed in the precooked, prechopped asparagus and cooked for a tad bit longer. A little salt, a little pepper and you’re ready to eat!

I added a side of blackberries for my morning fruit and how do you like that? I had vegetables AND fruit all before lunchtime! That’s a long way from my usual cereal or (I hate to admit), poptart breakfast.

Got back from Tehachapi on Thursday night and had a great weekend. So much has happened during my blogging break and I have so much to share! I don’t want to cram everything into one post, so I’ll probably be posting a lot the next few days. Maybe more than once a day.

Right now I want to talk about my endeavors into eating more healthfully. Not eating less calories or carbs or any of that junk. Just better. I usually don’t get enough variety into my diet. I get on food kicks where I can eat the same meal over and over and over again for weeks, then inevitably grow so sick of it that I can’t bear to so much as look at that meal for months (sometimes years!). Renee over at Wolfie and the Sneak got me really excited to document my attempts and make this official as she has been trying to get more variety into her meals as well.

Now that I have a kitchen worth using, I better damn well use it…and I have, as you can tell from my last posts. I’ve even managed to make my own version of Greek Avgolemono soup which actually turned out well! I also had a chance to taste an abolutely wonderful salad while visiting my mom. Both will be shared soon. I promise!

My main focus, though, has been breakfast. I have been managing pretty well. The hardest part it trying to think up a creative meal while half asleep and starving. I wonder how long I can go trying to think up new and healthy morning meals? I’m running out of options, so even the asparagus wasting away in my refrigerator has come to mind. In an omelette, perhaps?

If you would like more breakfast inspiration, go to Jen’s beautiful website, Simply Breakfast, where she photographs her daily morning meals. The photos are both stunning and inspirational.