lemon bars and Cannery row

I managed to get thru 85%  (I know this EXACTLY because of my Kindle) of Cannery Row before we met for book club on Thursday night.  I enjoyed it very much.  I like the way Steinbeck writes.  
There were only 6 of us present at Book club this month---last month there were 16.  It ebbs and flows.  I must say tho, that the discussion was much better with fewer of us--but of the 6 of us there only 3 had finished the book.  I will finish it, but I'm not sure the other two will.  While they appreciated  Steinbeck's writing style, the storyline was difficult for them.  It didn't hold their interest. 
If truth be told, I didn't love it so much that I had difficult putting it down, but I liked it well enough to want to finish it. 
At this book club,  The Lit Wits, we also feed the masses who show up, be it 6 or 16.  And most of the time we try to cook according tho the theme of the book.   This night we had clam chowder and salad and hard rolls and lemon cake for dessert.  We were all enjoying the chowder and saying how good it was and our host Heather had to 'fess up' and admit to using Campbell's Soup.  How funny is that?
It was really good and the evening was such fun!

On Friday morning, I made some lemon bars.  I was inspired by Cathy from Wives with Knives.  Her pictures just looked so good!  And,  as you know if you read my post from yesterday,  I have my grandbabies this weekend and I wanted to make lemon bars for my daughter-in-law.  I was exchanging one for the other.  Babies for lemon bars.  Sounds like a fair trade, dont' you think?  I also gave her my Kindle for the weekend, so she can read a book I have on there.  (I will finish Cannery Row--Scouts honor)....it's not like I'm going to have time to read anything  this weekend anyway!

I have a 'go to' lemon bar recipe, that I usually use, but after seeing the pictures from Wives with Knives, I thought I'd try Cathy's recipe, which is Ina Garten's recipe.   It had much more fresh lemon juice.  Like 1/2 cup more.  Plus fresh lemon zest, which mine does not have.    These were very tart.  Very tart.  But I liked them very much.  Very much.  I am repeating myself---to make a point--they were very good.
The only thing I did wrong was:  I used a 8x12 pan instead of a 9x13.   So, they were a bit thicker than they should have been.  Perhaps they should have been baked  just a tad bit longer than I baked them.  But other than that, they were really good. 
A perfect dessert....with steaming hot tea or hot coffee...I want one now! 

Luscious Lemon Bars from Wives with Knives  (and Ina Garten)

For the Crust:
1/2 pound unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 pound granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp kosher salt

For the Filling:
6 extra large eggs, room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
2 Tbs grated lemon juice  (4-6) lemons
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup flour
Confectioners' sugar fro dusting.

For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Combine the flour and salt, and with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed.  Dump the dough onto a well floured board and gather into a ball. Flatten the dough with floured hands and press it into a 9x13x2 inch baking sheet, building up 1/2 inch edge on all sides.  Chill.

Bake the crust for  15-20 minutes, until very lightly browned.  Let cook on a wire rack.  Leave the oven on.

For the filling, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and the flour.  Pour over the crust and bake for 30-35 minutes, until the filling is set.  Cool to room temperature.  Cut into squares and dust with confectioners sugar.

Snapshot Saturday

I have about 3 blog posts I want to put up....but I'm busy with my grandbabies. Twins.  So, this is the only one that will get posted today.
  And yes...that IS my phone stuck in the ball-toy-thing.   Oh...and it looks like there is a domino in there too!

We are off to Walmart now....to buy SLIPPERS.  And more balls, so perhaps they will use them instead of my phone...which is STILL stuck in the ball-toy-thingy.  It rang too--when someone called.  We all just sat and looked at it.

I'm linking this to Snapshot Saturday, a meme from Alyce, "At Home With Books".     Stop by and check out all the great 'snapshots'.

White Chicken Pizza

You really must try this chicken pizza.  It's really good.   And it was really fast.
I don't like to cook much Mondays thru Thursdays.  I love to do it on the weekend, but coming home after work and getting supper started and then cleaning up?  Leaves little time to read books.  Seriously.

So, sometimes I get in a  'weekday rut' with what I make for dinners.   Actually, its usually leftovers on Mondays and we go to  $1 Taco night on Thursdays. but that Tuesday and Wednesday meal planning really gets to me!  I mean EVERY Tuesday, Wednesday, Tuesday Wednesday, Tuesday....well,  you get the picture.  How many times can a person make tacos and pork chops?  Tacos and pork chops, tacos and pork chops, and a sloppy joe thrown in every once in a while to spice things up. 

Okay, so maybe I exaggerate on how much of a rut I'm in--but you can sympathize, right?  Last night tho, Lara at  Recipe Shoebox came to the rescue.  She had a White Chicken Pizza recipe on her website, that I had printed out a few weeks ago and I have been carrying it around in my purse just waiting for the perfect time to try it out.
Yesterday was that day.  This was so easy, I even ran to the store at 5:00pm when I got off work.  And I dread nothing as much as I dread the "after work, grocery shopping crowd".   But as I said, this was easy.
I just ran in and got my 5 ingredients  and checked out and I was home by 5:15!  We had full and satisfied tummies only an hour later!    And clean up was a breeze too.  It was a good night.

Besides being a quick and easy weeknight meal, this was very good too!  We loved it.  If you like a white pizza, this is for you.  And caramelized onions.  And chicken.


White Chicken Pizza with caramelized onions

2 Tbs butter
3 cups thinly sliced onions
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp thyme
2 oz garlic herb cream cheese
1 pre-baked pizza crust
1/3 cup Alfredo sauce
1 cup shredded rotisserie chicken
1/4 cup Italian blend shredded cheese

Melt butter in a skillet and cook onions and sugar for 20-25 minutes until a deep golden brown and caramelized.  Stir in thyme.
Stir cream cheese and Alfredo sauce together. Spread over the pizza crust. Top with chicken, then onions then shredded cheese.
Bake at 450 for 10 minutes or until heated thru.

There you have it!  Practically perfect in every way!
Altho.....if I were making it on a weekend,  I would make my own pizza crust.   And I would use more of the garlic cream cheese.  And more onions.
But come a Tuesday or Wednesday....Boboli Crust all the way!  

2 new memes for me

I just found a new meme. A bookish meme.

I must be feeling bookish lately and not so much foodish (foodish? Cookish?)
But it sounded like fun, so I thought I'd give it a try!

It's Tuesday, Where Are You? is a meme hosted by An Adventure in Reading. The object is to tell us about the book you are reading by describing where you are fictionally.


Let me see..... right now I am extremely poor and living with a group of friends or acquaintances in an abandoned house on a certain street in a small town on the coast of central California. Our street is lined with fisheries. It's during the depression and we are living by our wits, which sometimes doesn't turn out to be so good. I am the leader of my group and we want to do something nice for Doc, a man who has helped us all at certain times.


I am in Monterrey CA, the setting for John Steinbecks, Cannery Row. I am reading this book for my book club "the Lit Wit's".
*****************************************************************************

Another new meme I found is
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.
This week we're being asked to list our Top Ten Love Stories.

This was a bit difficult for me.  I looked at everyone else's lists before posting mine.  There was a ton of Jane Austen and a lot of Vampire Love going on.  Some Harry Potter and Ginny  Weasley, and again, lots of Austen.   But it says "our" Top Ten.  'MY' Top Ten.  Mine.  Love Stories that spoke to me.

So, here goes.

1. Mrs. Mike by  Benedict and Nancy Freedman--1949.  I didn't read it in 1949, I'm not THAT old...but I did read it in 1972 when I was in Jr. High School.  I love Mrs. Mike, the Story of Katherine Mary O'Fallen  and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergent Mike Flanigan set in the Canadian wilderness in the early 1900s.
It's a great book!  A great love-story.

2. Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly--1942.   It was my first love story, about a boy and girl who dated the summer after high school graduation, and (God forgive her) kissed on the 3rd date!!

3. Out of Africa by Isek Dinesen.   Just a beautiful book.

4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger.

5. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Laud Montgomery.  I don't need to say a thing, do I?

6. Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding.  I actually read the book.  And I liked it.   Just the way it was.

7-10.  I am not going to lump all romances together, but a lot of mystery books with recurring characters together.   Stephanie Plum and Joe Morelli/Ranger books by Janet Evanovich.  Tess Monaghan and Crow by Laura Lippman.  Deborah Knott and Dwight Bryant by Margaret Maron, Claire Ferguson and Russ Van Alstyne by Julia-Spencer Fleming.
It's been fun to watch these relationships grow over the course of many books.

In closing, I've decided that I'm really going to have to read "The Princess Bride" because it turned up on a lot of  lists.  A LOT OF LISTS.  I've seen the movie many times, but never have I read the book.

One more for the TBR pile.

 

It's Monday--evening, but still, you want to know what I'm reading, right?

My little granddaughter 'fist bumped'  me last night on the computer screen while we were Skyping. She is 17 months old.

She is so cute!  As seen here showing off her new "high tops"

Let me tell you something about the 'fist bump'. When it first came about that everyone was doing it, the Handyman and I went to a college football game in Reno. UNR vs. WSU. We sat on the WSU side, as we are originally from the state of Washington and were showing our support. And our friends, who were WSU alumni were going, so we sat with them


There were some Fraternity guys sitting in front of us, who were having a grand time. I'm not sure what was in their water bottles, but they certainly were having fun!


At first UNR was winning, but then WSU started to make a comeback. When they made the touchdown to pull ahead, everyone on our side of the stadium was going crazy....one of the frat guys in front of me turned and presented me with his fist. In keeping with the celebratory mode and not wanting to appear old and uncool, I "one potatoed" him/his fist. (this was before you did the sideways fist bump--so to be fair to me, he did look like he wanted to play one potato, two potato)


Okay, that made me appear REALLY OLD, because I had forgotten the cool new 'fist bump'
This is what consoles me tho:  he was too drunk to notice.


Yes, even now up at Washington State University in his fraternity, I believe they have a secret 'one potato, two potato' handshake.
They just don't know why.




I'm supposed to be reading "Cannery Row" for my bookclub on Wednesday....Oh, it just dawned on me our meeting isn't until Thursday! HOORAY! I have an extra day. It's not that I don't like Steinbeck, because I really liked the one and only book of his I've ever read 'The Winter of our Discontent'. It was the kind of book that stayed with me for quite some time. He's a great author.
He won the Pulitzer Prize and a Nobel Prize.


It's just that I waited to the last minute to start it, and his books, well I can't read them while watching TV. Not that I do that much, but I just mean they take a little bit of commitment. They deserve attention...and now at least, I get one more day of giving Cannery Row, the attention it deserves.

So, for "It's Monday, what are you reading" I guess you know what I'll be reading for the next couple of days....Cannery Row. Then I'll need to finish up "the Hand That First Held Mine" because we meet for that book club NEXT Wednesday. (see--it wasn't so strange of me to think I had to get one of the books done by Wed. It was just the wrong book and the wrong week)

Let me move on to "Musing Mondays"
This week’s musing (in honor of St. Valentine‘s Day) asks two questions, but you only need to answer one…

 If you read romance novels, answer this question:
Who are your favorite “romance” authors? Why?


If you do NOT read romance novels, answer this question instead:
Do you read love-themed books in honor of Valentine’s Day? Or, Valentine’s Day books, specifically? If so, give us some examples! If not, why not?

Well, I used to read historical romances all the time. In fact....and this is kind of embarrassing...my oldest son got his name from a romance novel by Rosemary Rogers, called "The Wildest Heart".    

  The Handyman did not know this at the time, he just liked the name Lucas, when I suggested it to him. I confessed to this when our Lucas was a preteen. Both of them, my son and my Handyman just looked at me without much expression and refuse to this day to admit that his name is taken from a romance novel.


He, the Lucas in the book, was tho: a devastatingly handsome half-Apache renegade, whose reputation as a feared outlaw both attracted and repelled her.
And I was in love with him (the character in the book)! How can one NOT fall in love with a devastatingly handsome half-Apache renegade?


(laughing)... I have not read romance novels in years and years, but there was a time when I really enjoyed them. And, no I do not read themed Love storys for Valentine's Day. I don't know why not. Maybe I should.


I remember once when I was in my favorite bookstore "The Bookworm" (see a small glimpse of my fav Bookworm store here  --only if you want.  It's a boringly long old post of mine)
and there were these 2 little old ladies (probably they were in their 50's like me now) and they had a notebook to keep track of their romances. They would confer, "Ethel, have we read this one?" and Ethel would look in her notebook and say, "No, Enid, but we really like that author".


I giggled to myself and ---on no, I just realized something ----OH MY GAWD!!!     I have a notebook now!!! When did I become old like them? Of course my notebook is not for romance novels, but for mystery and suspense with recurring characters---so I read them in order, duh!
Dang, that's funny.
Here is a link to my "notebook" which I wrote about when I used to do my "books only" blog.
This was from March 2009.
I'm really not organized at all...I just have a strange love affair with lists and small notebooks.


Hmmm... well, I give you a "fist bump" to getting older and still loving to read!!

Before I go to bed, I have to tell ya

I made these great Peanut Butter Cup Bars!

(just a little treat from another blogger)

....but before I go there.....

My friend Laura and her husband won raffle tickets to the Grammy Awards, so I've been watching the awards for the past 3 hours trying to catch a glimpse of them.  I'm not sure we saw them at all, but it was fun saying we did.

This is Laura in front of the Staples Center before going in. They didn't allow cameras but they had their phone, so were keeping me and other updated on facebook.

I've noticed something about the Grammy Awards--the music isn't all that good.  Not the songs, but the sound.   I mean, when you hear these people in concert or on the radio another media venue, they sound so much better.  But I don't know, it's like the sound system when they broadcast from the Grammy's, they just don't sound---as well, as I've heard them before.

It's just an odd little thought running thru my brain as I am STILL looking for Laura and Tony.

Here they are!  All settled in their seats waiting for the show to begin.  I hope that sometime during the night, she ran into someone fun in the bathroom!

While we watched, we ate these peanut butter cup brownie treats.  I got the recipe from Brenda at Brenda's Canadian Kitchen.    If you'd like the recipe just click on the link to her blog.
They were a good treat to have  tonight, BUT, I have to take them to work with me tomorrow, because I don't want to eat the whole pan of them.   And I could.

Hmmmm....if you look close, you can see my thumb print in the middle of the  brownie.  It was falling off the spatula and I caught it.    Funny.

These were really good....and really rich. 

I'm off to try to read some of   'Cannery Row', which I haven't started but it's our book club pick for Wednesday. 

I better get to reading.

Snapshot Saturday

Every Friday night, if we are not busy and our friends, The Miltons, are not busy, we have dinner together.  We've done this for years. 

Last night Robbie (Milton) brought the wine....in this cool blue bottle.  And I drug out my cool record player--circa 1973--from the garage, as well as my 45's from the  70's, the Handyman his LP's from the 60's, and we had a grand time.

We even had a stray 8-track to  try out.

But back to the records--it was great, all the scratching and popping and hissing  of the old records.  We accidentally put on an LP on 45 speed and got a big laugh out of that.  Or maybe we got a laugh out of the wine!

John (Milton) had just purchased Time-Life's Woodstock Collection on CD and he let me borrow them.

So, as I sit here writing a short post for Snapshot Saturday,  I am downloading them onto my computer, so I can upload them to my Mp3 player later.

Ha ha--times have changed.

Alyce at  "At Home With Books" hosts  Snapshot Saturday.

Stop by and check out everyone's snapshots.