a collection of tried and true
Heartbreaking story of one modern family immigrating to America from Panama and the challenges they face – interwoven with chapters about other families doing the same. Wonderfully written. An excellent book from another first time novelist. Highly recommend.
PJH rating: ****1/2
A novelist returns to his mid west home after his father suffers a serious stroke. He hasn’t been home for over a decade during which he published a best seller based on many people in his town. A sad but funny story. The second Tripper novel that I have read and enjoyed.
PJH Rating: ****
Grace and Sophia have become obsessed with macarons. I first had some in Quebec City and then I started bringing them home from Coquette Patisserie, the great new patisserie in University Circle. The girls can think of little else. They are expensive little suckers – usually $2 a piece, so we thought we can make them ourselves surement. I am very proud that we conquered them with surprisingly little trouble. We have made two batches over the past two weekends and they both turned out great. Sophie had done a lot of research looking at recipes, reading tips and watching videos which helped a lot.
Macarons
makes about 12 -18 completed macarons depending on how big you make them
Sift together the almond flour and confectioners sugar into a bowl. In a separate bowl mix the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar to mix. Add the 1/4 cup of white sugar. Then mix on high until hard peaks are formed. About 5 minutes or so. Add whatever food coloring you’re using now and mix well. Also any other flavors that you want with your cookies. With a spatula, mix the dry mixture into the meringue a little bit at a time. Take your time. Once all is mixed together continue to mix until the batter is smooth and the ribbon stage. this took us about 5-8 minutes. You want it to be incorporated and smooth. Put your batter in a piping bag and pipe onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper into 1 inch rounds. They will spread a bit as they sit. Let the cookie sheets sit for 1/2 hour to get slightly hard on the top. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Our oven took about 15-18 minutes. Don’t brown them at all. Let cool and ours popped right off the parchment paper. Make your favorite filling, pipe some onto flat side of one cookie and then very gently press another cookie onto the filling. Keep refrigerated and let sit at room temperature for a bit before eating – doesn’t usually happen.
Our raspberry macarons had no flavoring in the cookies – just red food coloring – which is typical of most recipes. We then made a buttercream filling with fresh raspberry puree. The lemons ones we added a 1/2 t of lemon juice and 1 t of zest in the cookies and made another buttercream with lemon juice and zest.
An Asian-American family living in suburban Ohio town in mid 1970’s deals with the death of their teenaged daughter. Suburban angst, racism, sexism… but an interesting story, well written and a good read. Impressive first novel from an ex Shaker Heights resident. A tad depressing but I enjoyed it.
PJH rating: ****1/2
Story of woman who was a professional ballerina, not quite a world-class ballerina, got pregnant and settled into life. It turns out her son becomes a star in the ballet and some deep held secrets are brought out. Interesting, easy to read story that spans several generations.
PJH rating: *** 1/2
better late than never…a few pics
Thursday, October 16th 2015
Courtney, Grace and Sophia picked me up at work around noon and we took off for a quick two-day Ohio college visit. After stopping at chic fil a in Strongsville we had about a four hour drive to Oxford. We stayed at Huston Woods, a state park just 5 minutes away from Miami University. We arrived around 4:30, checked in to our nice cabin we were staying in for the night and went for about an hour walk through the woods. Our hike brought us to the Lodge about mid-way where we stopped for a cocktail break. A Manhattan for me, beer for Courtney and Shirley Temples for the girls. A nice way to take a hiking break :). We walked back along the road as we were nervous about getting lost in the woods at dark. We brought food along with us for dinner and had a nice meal of burgers. We hung out after our late dinner catching up on Project Runway and going to bed early.
Friday, October 17th 2014
Courtney woke up and made monkey bread that we had for breakfast with fruit. Courtney drove Grace and I to Miami at 9:00 as we were attending a day long red carpet admissions event. Courtney then drove back to Huston Woods and her and Sophie relaxed and then spent the morning doing more hiking in the state park. The Miami event was nice, getting the admissions spiel, a panel of professors, a panel of students, a long tour, lunch in the dining hall and then a few hours at the College of Business where Grace is interested in attending. It was a perfect fall day and Miami is beautiful. Not sure who wouldn’t want to go there when seeing it on a day like that. We met up with Courtney and Sophia around 3:30 and then took off for Granville for a quick visit to Denison. We got to Denison around 5ish and walked the girls around the campus showing them the important landmarks of our earlier lives. We haven’t been to Denison in a long time and there were several new buildings and actually a whole new quad off the main quad. Very nice. It was a ghost town though… hardly any students. It was nice to be back though. We had dinner in town at a new bar that we think used to be the grocery store. The main drag is very different now, quite a few boutiquey stores that made me sad to see instead of the old drug store, butcher and things that are now gone. We hit the road and pushed ourselves making it home around 10:00.
A mysterious rapture event occurs where a large part of the world’s population disappears into thin air all at the same time. The novel follows four members of a typical family in how their “normal” lives evolve after this event. Again I liked the characters and the mysterious setting. An expose I would say on American suburbia in the 21st century. A good read that is an HBO series now that I didn’t have a chance to watch before we got rid of HBO ):
PJH Rating ****
A family tries to escape their family troubles by traveling to Spain for a week long vacation. Strong characters, interesting setting and fun story made this a fun book to read and hard to put down.
PJH Rating: ****
Our Fresh Fork Market bounty continues with an interesting week including raw sauerkraut and sweet potato vines. huh??
