Saturday, October 20, 2012

Improvised pancakes

I improvised a pancake recipe this morning and I have to write it down, because they turned out great!

1 1/4 cup white flour
1/2 cup corn meal
1/2 cup oatmeal
2 cups milk
a teaspoon salt
a big squirt (sorry about the inaccuracy) of agave nectar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2-3 Tablespoons canola oil (once again, dumped without properly measuring)
Butter (for pan)

Mix flours (reserving a little white flour) and milk together thoroughly. Let sit for 10 minutes or more.

Mix remaining flour with sugar, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.

Combine everything and whisk thoroughly.

Melt a teaspoon of butter in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Cook pancakes, about 1/3 cup of batter at a time. Flip when bottom is getting brown and top has bubbles forming and not immediately closing.

Serve with maple syrup, agave nectar, or honey.

New recipe count: 27

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Ten on Tuesday: 10 favorite mystery novels

This is going to be tough! Although I read a lot of mystery novels from the library, there aren't all that many that I would call favorites. Let me see what I can come up with...

1) Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers (and everything else by her, also!) Although Peter is a terrible snot in the early books, Harriet is the perfect match for him and I love watching their courtship progress over the series.

2) I am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley (and the rest of the series, although I think this is the best). Flavia DeLuce is a marvelous narrator; think 1950's Harriet the Spy in England with a lot more snark, and a bent for chemistry.

3) Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (and the rest of the Discworld stories about Commander Vimes and his merry crew.) These are fantasy - mysteries, so not traditional at all, but marvelously well done.

4) The Dead of Winter by Rennie Airth. I don't like the sequels as much as this one, which is the the start of the series. It's set in England, winter of 1944...

5) A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt. This is a perfect example of the science fiction - mystery, with a little archeology thrown in.

6) Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (and everything else she wrote, too!) This is a wonderful story of murder, mistaken identity, love, and double-crosses.

7) The Skull Mantra by Elliot Pattison. I don't love the sequels (in fact, I barely like them) but this book is a marvelous merging of locale (Tibet) and murder mystery.

8) The Case of William Smith by Patricia Wentworth (and many of her others that star the marvelous Miss Silver. Other favorites include The Clock Strikes Twelve and Through the Wall.)

9) Rivers of London (also known as Midnight Riot in the USA) by Ben Aaronovitch (and sequels). This is modern police procedural meets magic realism and the results are magical.

10) Glass Houses by Jane Haddam, and many of the others in her long-running series about Gregor Demarkian.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Ten on Tuesday: 10 things I did last weekend

It wasn't a vacation weekend for me (I get my long weekend NEXT weekend) but I still managed to get a few things done.

1) Coached my JV volleyball team to their first win of the season.
2) Got lost in Simsbury, CT.
3) Lost my cell phone for almost 48 hours.
4) Read the first chapter of This Case is Gonna Kill Me by Phillipa Bornikova and got utterly hooked. (Human female lawyer in a male-dominated vampire firm. Clearly written by someone who knows her law firms.)
5) Caught up on the first 2 episodes of Bones.
6) Caught up on NCIS, also.
7) And NCIS-LA
8) Cooked shakshuka and a curried squash soup.
9) Cursed my doctor's office a lot (they won't handle refill requests on the weekend, and I ran out Saturday night... and they weren't open Monday, either.)
10) Started looking into switching doctors.

And oh yeah, cleaned the stove and watched a little baseball and graded a huge pile of papers.