~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So I grabbed the next book off the top shelf of my bookcase, looked at it, and groaned.
“What?” Fred said.
“LOOK at this book!” I said, and held it up. “It’s chick lit – Red Dress Ink – but it’s four hundred and fifty pages long!”
“Damn.”
“Chick lit should NOT be that freakin’ long. It shouldn’t be any longer than… like… three hundred and twenty pages!”
Fred laughed. “That’s a pretty specific number.”
“And it should only be longer than three hundred and twenty pages if it’s by an author I really, really like. This author, I’m not crazy about.”
“So don’t read it.”
“But I feel bad for not reading it. I bought it, I should read it!”
“Bessie,” Fred said, and then uttered the truest of the true. “Life’s too fucking short to read books that suck.”
And so I tossed in the box of books we’re donating to the library and picked up the next book on the bookcase.
Because life IS too short to read books that suck. It really is!
(The Myron Bolitar series would be an example of books that rock. In case you were wondering. I’m currently reading The Final Detail and only have another two books in the series left to read. This makes me sad, because I wish this series could go on FOREVER.)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There’s no
Cold Stone Creamery here in the Madison area, but Fred and I went to the book store one day a few weeks ago, and I found that they’ve put in a “Marble Slab Creamery”. If that’s not an obvious ripoff of the Cold Stone Creamery, I don’t know what is. In fact, the name – Marble Slab Creamery – just makes me laugh. (
Edited to add: Apparently Marble Slab Creamery came first. Who knew?)
I haven’t given it a try yet, but I’m sure I will one of these days.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I spent quite some time on Netflix the other day, and found that – holy mother of god! – Season One of The Brady Bunch is coming out on DVD! In fact, I went through all the TV shows on DVD and now my netflix queue is 226 long. Man, that’s going to take me forever to get through!
While I’m waiting for Netflix to send me the first disc of Season 4 of
Coupling to watch while I’m on the elliptical, I’ve been watching the first season of
Sex and the City. Man, I miss that show. The first season was back when Carrie dressed NORMALLY instead of the hideous way she started to dress after the show became a hit.
Oh, there goes my Netflix queue. I just added seasons 2 – 6 to it…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
We had
curry-cajun chicken for dinner last night. As always, it was faaaaabulous. We always have it with brown rice, and use the sauce from the pan to put over the rice and it is DAMN fine. And I don’t usually care for the taste of curry, but this stuff is good.
Speaking of cooking, the spud has to make flan to take to school for her Spanish 2 class tomorrow. The other kids got to make easy-to-make easy-to-transport stuff like cookies, and my kid gets flan. How fair is that? No fair, man. NO FAIR.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
We watched
Napolean Dynamite last weekend, and ever since I’ve been having a craving for tots. Sonic actually sells them with – if I’m not mistaken – chili and cheese on top. I can’t decide whether that sounds really good or really gross.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Apparently
that little fucker saw his shadow last week. Bastard. It’s getting COLD again, after several days with the temps in the mid-fifties. I don’t WANT it to get cold again, I want it to get WARM again and STAY WARM, damnit!
I need to just suck it up and move to the Bahamas. Anyone want to finance that for me?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Is that a happy looking cat, or what?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~]]>
Was this 400 page RDI book “Rescuing Rose” or anything else by Isabel Wolff?? She really isn’t that bad, although I do have to agree, she could make her books a bit shorter!
Yeah, that Marble Slab Creamery is the same thing as Cold Stone. I’ve been to the one in Johnson City, TN. They don’t have the wonderful yellow cake batter flavored icecream that I love at Cold Stone though.
Mmmmm…flan…I could go for a whole batch of it right now (although a woman I know who makes the best homemade flan uses 12 whole eggs–yikes!).
Spanky is totally smiling! :o)
oh – i have a flan recipe!
1/4 c granulated sugar (plus 4 teaspoons for caramelizing)
1 c fat free half and half
2 egg yolks
1 egg
3/4 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
4 deep 4-oz custard cups or ramekins
sprinkle 1 tsp sugar in the bottom of each ramekin and caramelize (either with a torch or a aim&flame or a oven on the broil setting)
preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Combine 1/4 cup sugar and half ‘n’ half in a saucepan. stir well while heating until almost the boiling point.
in another bowl, briskly stir the egg yolks, whole egg, vanilla, and salt, without beating until very liquid. Try not to create too many bubbles. continue to stir briskly and add the cream mixture slowly in a thin stream until all is blended. Strain mixture through a fine sieve and fill ramekins.
Place in a hot water bath** and bake 40 min until the centers are softly set. They should jiggle slightly. remove the water bath from the oven and allow the custards to cool in the water for about 10 min. remove ramekins. cover. chill 2 hours.
To serve, remove the custard from the ramekin and place upside down on a plate.
**hot water bath** place a dishtowel in a deep pan. Place ramekins on dish towel. Fill pan with hot water about half way up the ramekins. Take care not to get hot water in the custard.
***seriously these things need to be refridgerated until served. Will the spud have somewhere to keep them cold while at school?
Krista: That’s exactly what it was! No, she’s not bad, but if I’m going to invest the time to read a book that long, I want to LOVE the author, y’know? 🙂
Rachael: The cake batter ice cream is absolutely my favorite! I was happy to see, looking at the Cold Stone Creamery page, that they’re going to be putting a Cold Stone in Huntsville, which won’t be too far to travel. Yum!
LOL! I can’t believe that I picked it out…but she is only one of the few RDI authors that have large books!
Big fan of RDI books…you should read “Mike, Mike and Me” by Wendy Markham…cute and a little different!
Actually, Marble Slab Creamery has been around longer than Cold Stone Creamery. I checked the websites, because we’ve had a MSCs here for more than 10 years, but CSCs are a recent addition.
Cake batter ice cream? That sounds so yummy!!! I think I might need to stop by the ice cream shop on my way home from picking up scads of Girl Scout cookies.
I will finance you to the Bahamas if you finance me to Hawaii
Went to the Big Island last week and spent a day in Honolulu
So pretty, but abhorr the flight time
Robyn, Did you know that Kemps is coming out with Pillsbury icecream? I found the link at Pop Culture Junk Mail and oh my God! They have one called cake and ice cream that is frosting flavored ice cream with yellow cake pieces and sprinkles. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Cold Stone Creamery is definitely better. We have a couple of Marble Slab Creameries here and while good they just aren’t the same 🙂
Robyn – thanks for reminding me about season 4 of Coupling! Just added it to the queue. (Isn’t Netflix just the best!) And Amy, that cake & ice cream flavored ice cream sounds SO YUMMY.
We had Marble Slab here in Houston long before Cold Stone, but now that we DO have Cold Stone, and I have discovered the gift from heaven that is Cake Batter, I’m afraid I’ve fallen into the “Marble Slab WHO?” crowd.
Oh, and Fred? Is indeed the wisest of the wise.
Sonic tots = GOOD! Do it on your free day though. Nice and greasy but very satisfying! Their tots are much better than their fries, but their onion rings are to die for!!
Had to laugh about the tots because I got the same craving after watching ND! We don’t have any fast food places that have them here in Northern VA (that I know of) so I had to make do with the frozen kind. Still good though! Did you enjoy the movie?
Marble Slab has Birthday Cake. It’s amazingly yummy. Though, my favorite is still Chocolate Swiss. I don’t know about chili and cheese, but I think tots dipped (okay – dunked) in ranch dressing is the food of the Gods.
Krista: I did, actually – I read it on the plane coming home from Maine in January. I liked it – it was messing with my head because I’d decided she’d ended up with one Mike and then decided that no, it had to be the other one! 🙂
Amy: I am SO going to check that out, it sounds amazing! 🙂
Just to show what a sick and twisted person I am…Marble Slab Creamery gave me a mental image of necrophelia…you know…laid out on a marble slab…anyway…
I love flan and I use a super simple recipe that is really, really good. I got it from allrecipes.com. If you’re interested, the link is:
http://dessert.allrecipes.com/AZ/CrmyCrmlFln.asp
Now if you lived in SW Ontario, Wiarton Willie, the only albino groundhog around DID not see his shadow so therefore it will soon be spring here however seeing as we get REAL winter here I imagine that our spring is similar to your winter so I don’t suppose you’ll be moving here anytime soon.
Figured I’d be the oddball and say I LOVE MARBLE SLAB!!! We had it in San Antonio. Here in Ann Arbor we got a Cold Stone and I think the ice cream is very, very sweet versus creamy. Plus the 2 of 3 times I had a combo with nuts, they were bitterly rancid. =(
Give me Marble Slab cheesecake with strawberries in a waffle cone ANYDAY! =P
Robyn, what did you think of Napoleon Dynamite? I loved it so much I bought it, and was just curious what you and Fred thought!:)
Actually Cold Stone is taken from Marble Slab. Marble Slab was founded in 1983 in Houston (where I partook in its goodness often!) and Cold Stone wasn’t founded until 1988. Marble Slab is better! Cold Stone is too gooey.
I want a sonic here in Los Angeles!!
I was about to leave a sternly worded comment to inform you that the Marble Slapb came first! Then of course, I read your editted to add and it was a big let down because I got all worked up for nothing. heh
Anyway, Marble Slab is TO DIE FOR! I love their cheesecake ice cream with strawberries mixed in, in a white chocolate, sprinkled dipped cone. I am drooling just thinking about it. No ice cream for me tonight though – the nearest one is 100 miles away. Thanks for getting my taste buds all excited for nothing Robyn. You sux the fun out of everything. I hope you are happy.
I have to go with Marble Slab, also. Sweet Cream is my favorite, plus they have the cones dipped in white chocolate.
I am also dying to know what you thought of Napoleon Dynamite. It cracked me up.
Marble Slab has no Sorbet 🙁 That is what I go to Cold Stone for. Their Lemon Sorbet is to die for. Not as rich as some of their other. My bud got the cake batter mixed with some stuff and almost couldn’t finish it because it was so rich.
Man, that looks so cozy that now I want to curl up on the floor in front of the fire — but only because I luvs some spanky.
Harlan Coben’s one off books are pretty good too- but same as Dennis Lehane, I wish he’d start up his early series again. I don’t know if it’s that these mystery guys use already having books 1-4 of a series written to get their book deal and then decide that they’ve had enough of those characters or what happens. Seems they tend to abandon series once they have their first big seller though.
But yeah, love me some Myron Bolitar. What a name!
Don’t forget to get “Cold Feet” on Netflix too! They just came out with season 1 on DVD. It’s Coupling meets Thirty Something. ROCKS. I’m just done with Coupling and Sex and the City and so I’ve moved on to Northern Exposure….