50 Recipes, #18 & 19: "Leaping Frog" chicken and Mexican chocolate pudding

[nonelvis]

We shall not speak of Saturday, for Saturday was weak, and I was grouchy all day. Sunday, however, has been much better.

First of all: MOJITOS. Made with mint from the garden, of course. columbina cut down most of it today, but that only means we have six or seven plants now, instead of fifteen or twenty.

Second: "Leaping frog" chicken. The instructions on how to turn the chicken into a "leaping frog" seemed complicated when written down, but Gourmet helpfully provided photographs for reference, and in the end, I'd say this is an easier technique than butterflying a chicken. The house smelled like garlic, smoked paprika, and cumin most of the day (not a problem, IMO), and the chicken was moist and flavorful.

I also found a recipe on Gourmet's site that handily dealt with the almond milk in my fridge left over from that vegan chocolate cake: Mexican chocolate pudding. I added a little nutmeg, ginger, and cayenne to this, and it was fabulous – lovely, soft texture, and tons of flavor. Could probably be made vegan, too, if I subbed in a Buttery Stick instead of actual butter.

Third: I've finally finished all the Hugo nominees for Best Novel! Well, "finished" is more like "read them all except for the last 40% or so of Saturn's Children, because it was so shitty I wondered how it got nominated in the first place." It makes me regret not having gotten off my ass to nominate Joe Haldeman's Marsbound, which is a far better book and more deserving of the space Saturn's Children is taking up.

Frankly, the field is pretty disappointing. There are only two books I thought were absolutely terrific: Anathem and The Graveyard Book. The other three are weak, all in different ways:

Zoe's Tale: Perfectly adequate as a Heinleinesque YA novel in terms of plot and exposition, but Zoe never sounded like a teenage girl to me. Scalzi says in an afterword that he had a female author friend of his check the voice, so maybe she knows some very different teenage girls than I knew way back when I was a teenager. Either way, not Scalzi's best effort.

Little Brother: I am not normally in the Cory Doctorow-haters club, but this novel just about put me there. It features an outlandish, unrealistic, straw man plot about Homeland Security taking over San Francisco, a plot designed to allow Doctorow to pontificate about why jackbooted government thugs are coming to take away our privacy, and also to show off how many cool hacker friends he has who contributed to the book. Look, I already know the jackbooted government thugs are coming to take away my privacy, and so does anyone else with half a brain. I don't need Doctorow to repeatedly hammer this point into my skull using the +3 Blunt Hammer of Smug Superiority.

Saturn's Children: I've already bitched about how this is the kind of book that authors write when they want to show off their mad sci-fi terminology skillz. Its other major flaw is that again, Heinlein did it before, and Heinlein did it better. A thriller starring a futuristic sexbot shouldn't bore me, dammit.

Well, at least that's done. Next up: novella, novelette, short story, and graphic story ... by July 3. Somehow.

Comments

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

+3 Blunt Hammer of Smug Superiority

This made me laugh. It also made me wonder why I do not yet have a Rubber Mallet of Exposition icon.

[iainpj.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to seeing what you have to say about the graphic novel category. It's a very ... odd list. (And more than that I will not say at the moment.)

It's kind of interesting to see the responses to Little Brother. I don't think I know anyone who likes it.