Books and a Snack

"You must be reading so much during quarantine!"

Someone said this to me the other day, and I'm not sure that all of my friends get that "working from home" doesn't mean "laying around on my couch reading books". I am reading some, though, and the last time I counted up books for my year end tally was at the end of February, so here's everything I've read since then:

Movies (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano is a funny walk through a bunch of movies that Shea and I apparently have in common as favorites. Each chapter asks a question (Who had the worst death in "Kill Bill"? Did the Rockford Peaches make the right decision trading Kit? If all the high school movies were one movie, who would Regina George's friends be?) and then argues the way to the answer along with some funny illustrations. There are some thoughtful points here, and also some reminders that I should see some of these movies again if it's been too long since last time I did.

I like Robert R. McCammon, but Tales from Greystone Bay is too short. Each of the short stories here is a little interesting, but there are only three in the whole book, so I read it in less than a day. All three stories could have been fleshed out a little more, into novellas, and this would have been a lot better.

Harbor, by John Ajvide Lindquist, is an odd sort of horror story, starting out with an ordinary family and slowly building to ancient god-monsters, ghosts, human sacrifice, and destruction. In the middle of Scandinavian winter, Anders and Cecelia take their daughter, Maja, across the frozen channel to see the lighthouse. Somewhere on the way home, in clear weather and with their backs turned for only a second, Maja vanishes. Anders returns to the island a few years later, drunk and broken, and discovers that Maja isn't the only one to disappear from the village, but instead that one person disappears into the sea every year, and has for hundreds of years. There's also a weird subplot about a magic symbiotic insect that lets the host control water, which is the part of this that was really odd. This was marketed as horror, but not really scary or disturbing.

The Fortress at the End of Time, by Joe McDermott, was much more interesting. The entire novel is a long confession from Ronaldo Aldo, an Ensign from Earth stationed at the Citadel, the farthest human colony. Humanity is connected by the Ansible, a faster than light link that lets them transmit things and people along its length, sort of: patterns are sent along to Ansible and then assembled out of raw materials at the other end, so Aldo is actually a clone of Aldo, and if he gets promoted off of the Citadel, the Aldo sent to the next colony will be another clone, leaving the original and the Citadel clone behind. The Citadel is the last outpost of a century old galactic war, forever listening for the enemy's return, and Aldo will do anything to escape from it. As his confession unfolds, we find out exactly how much of anything.

Lev Grossman's Warp is a non-event. The story of Hollis, a recent college graduate still living near his school and struggling to force himself to get a job and become an adult, is like a worse version of "Catcher in the Rye", a feat I didn't think possible.

F. Paul Wilson's The Keep pits evil against evil in the Romanian alps of World War II. A garrison of Nazi soldiers is warned by the village not to spend the night in the Keep, the ancient fortress towering above them, but the soldiers pay them no mind. By the end of the first night, two soldiers are dead, and another dies each night, killed by an enemy that moves through shadows and drains them of blood. Trapped in the middle of the struggle, a Jewish professor of folklore and his daughter must decide whether to side with the evil of the supernatural or the evil of humanity without becoming monsters themselves.

Masked, a story collection edited by Lou Anders, is a fantastic set of superhero stories, written by some of the biggest names in the industry. Authors include Gail Simone, Bill Willingham, Mike Carey, Peter David, and more, and all of the characters are originals. There are some great stories in here, and the one that finishes the book was amazing.

Like I said at the beginning, though, reading isn't all I've been doing. I've also been sitting at my new desk a lot for work. Since my new desk is right next to my kitchen, a problem a lot of my friends are having (I'm not naming names, but one of my friends set up her work from home station on the second floor so that every time she contemplates getting a snack she has to decide if it's worth a trip up and down the stairs), I'm struggling with the idea of having snacks only feet away. I'm also trying to eat better in isolation, going lower carb and looking for healthy snacks, and I landed on nuts. I'm allergic to some kind of nuts, but I love peanuts and cashews. In perusing the nut selection at Kroger, though, I discovered that getting spiced, flavored nuts adds a dollar or two per can, and I can just do that myself for cheap.

So...

Homemade Spiced Nuts

1 egg white
2 cups nuts (unsalted or lightly salted)
1 tablespoon brown sugar (the recipe called for 3, but like I said I'm trying to cut back on carbs)
4 tablespoons total of spices

You can use whatever kind of spices you want. The recipe wanted oregano, thyme, parsley, and chili powder, but again, this is up to you and what you have in the cabinet. This time, I wanted something mustard based, and a lot of recipes pair mustard with cinnamon, so I went with dry mustard, cinnamon, nutmeg, and Chinese 5 spice:



Preheat your oven to 250 F.

Mix the egg white into the spices:



and then add the nuts and stir them around to get them really coated:



Spread your nuts out on a cookie sheet:



Bake for 15 minutes, then stir them around a little on the sheet (some of them might be stuck together, so break them up a little with the spatula), bake for 15 more minutes, stir again, then bake for 15 more minutes and take them out. They'll be hot and soft, so leave them alone on the cookie sheet for 15 more minutes, then put them into a container:



and you have homemade spiced nuts. The recipe said they will keep for 5 days as long as you keep a lid on your container, but these aren't going to last five days.

If you're wondering how mine turned out, they're good, but I can't taste the mustard at all, and it might have been a bit of a waste. They're still good, though, and I've been munching a handful every time I pass my desk even though they are supposed to be for work this week.

For the next batch, I'm thinking of going for an Indian sort of mix, with curry, ginger, and garam masala. That should be low key delicious.

The Rainbow Ribbon Mold

We get Good Friday off from work. We don't call it Good Friday, because there's a separation of church and state, so instead we actually get Spring Recess off. It's a floating holiday that always just happens to land on Good Friday every year, but never happens to land on Passover, Purim, Vesak, or any other religious holiday that occurs in Spring. There also aren't any floating holidays on our calendars that land on those days, so we don't get them off.

Since we had Friday off, for whatever reason, I spent the morning assembling a desk to take zoom calls at, rather than taking zoom calls. Working from home has been an interesting experience so far, but I really needed a work space, rather than a recliner and TV tray. I don't have a dining room set, because I live alone, so I ordered a folding table from Amazon. Amazon shipped my folding table from Indianapolis to Nashville, and then lost track of it on the three hour drive from Nashville to Knoxville, so after they refunded it I ordered a desk that I put together on Friday morning. I only hit myself in the head with a piece of the desk one time, so assembly went fairly well.

Now that I have a desk, I've suddenly started eating at it, and feeling like I need to sit at it and do projects and things. Since I didn't want to do work on the weekend, as I am trying really hard to separate work activities and home activities while both are taking place in the same place, I looked around my apartment for other projects I could do at my desk.

Rather than write a novel, I decided to make Jello.

Like most totally normal home cooks, I have ten Jello cookbooks, dating back several decades. In reading them at my desk, I noticed two important things:



1) Almost all of them feature the Rainbow Ribbon Mold, and

2) the Rainbow Ribbon Mold only requires two ingredients, which I have here in the house during lockdown.

The Rainbow Ribbon Mold recipe calls for 5 flavors of Jello and sour cream, although you could make it in five layers with the same flavor of Jello as long as you have five boxes. The only real challenge to the recipe is the time and patience required, and God knows that now is a great time to work on patience.

I assembled my five boxes of Jello (I had six, in case the mold turned out to be bigger than I thought, but it turned out to be smaller, so I only got through ROYG, rather than ROYGBV) my mold, a Tupperware Jello mold that my friend Donna sent me a few years ago, when I was experimenting with Jello more often, and a collection of measuring cups of various sizes for easy microwaving and pouring.

The recipe is fairly easy: you make a box of Jello (using less water than the box instructions specify so that your Jello stays firm), and then half of it goes into the mold to set in a layer. The other half gets mixed with a few tablespoons of sour cream, to make a color-tinted creamy layer, and when the first half is set you spoon the creamy layer on top of the clear layer. After the creamy layer sets, you repeat the process.

Being an impatient person who needs to learn patience, I tried to rush the first layer setting by putting the mold in an ice bath. The mold would float evenly, though, so I had to give up on this idea or else end up with badly crooked layers.



Instead, I got a book, and started setting the timer, over and over, figuring out from the red layers how long it would be:



After the red layer, I fell into a routine:

1) Microwave water for clear layer. Mix in Jello, and put that container in the fridge for about twenty minutes.

2) Check consistency of foam layer by dropping one droplet of clear onto it. If it's ready, measure out clear layer, then carefully add it to the mold. Do not pour it directly into the mold, because the force of the pour may punch through the foam layer. Either spoon it in, or pour it onto a spoon over the mold to blunt the pour.

3) Put the rest of the clear in the fridge for ten minutes. Microwave and mix the next color, and let it cool on the counter for a bit.

4) Take out the rest of the current clear layer and mix in the sour cream to make the next foam layer. Set timer for ten more minutes, but do not put foam layer back in fridge or it will firm up too much.





5) Check consistency of the clear layer in the mold, and add foam layer. Set timer for ten more minutes.

6) After ten minutes, put the next color in the fridge and set the timer for ten more minutes. Wash the measuring cup you used for the foam layer you just added. I used a 4 cup and an 8 cup to mix the Jello in, and a one cup for other measuring.

7) You're now back at Step 2.

The mold stays in the fridge almost the entire time, and after the first layer the setting time between layers is a little shorter because you're putting the Jello onto a cold surface. Even with all that, you may need a few extra minutes on each set based on your fridge. When I finally finished all the layers, I put the lid on the mold and ignored it for six hours.

And then it was time to unmold.

To unmold, you dip the mold into a bowl of hot water for a few seconds, but that's the tricky part: too long in the hot water, and your Jello starts to melt. Too short, and it won't release from the mold. You have to try to guess as best you can in an interval of only 5 to 10 seconds, and sometimes you hit it and sometimes you don't. I dipped, put a plate over the top of the mold, and turned it over.



Layers! Red, orange, yellow, and green! If I'd used my Bundt pan, which is deeper, I would have gotten blue in there, too. The mold still wasn't out of the mold, though. Would my layers survive?

I didn't quite dip long enough. A little of the green foam, which was the bottom layer on the plate after being the top layer in the mold:



came off and stuck to the mold.



Still, I think I was pretty successful with my showstopper.





Several friends asked how it tastes, and it just tastes like fruity Jello. The sour cream has no flavor at all, most likely because the flavor of Jello is so strong, and you can't really taste the individual Jello flavors when you're getting several in each bite. If you use the sugar-free Jello, this probably even counts as diet food.

Just be sure you have a book and a lot of time to sit around between settings.

Dueling Bread Bakes

Are you making banana bread this weekend?

I'm asking because it seems like everyone's quarantine bananas went past ripe at the same time this week, since five people I know were making banana bread yesterday. I found out because I was also making banana bread yesterday, and when I mentioned it in texts or on social media, everyone else chimed in. My friend Kathryn and I compared recipes, and ended up both using the same one, a basic, easy to follow recipe from the Food Network. Kathryn decided to put chocolate chips in hers, and I opted not to, but other than that we both followed the same recipe.

When we compared breads, though, an odd thing happened.

Kathryn's bread:



is much lighter in color than my bread:



Both of us were very intrigued by this, so we started comparing notes.

Pan: Kathryn used a metal pan, and I used a vintage glass Pyrex pan. I don't have any metal loaf pans, and Kathryn doesn't have any glass ones.

Baking time: I baked mine for an hour and ten minutes, and Kathryn baked hers for an hour.

Cooling time: Kathryn cooled hers for fifteen minutes in the pan, then for 45 minutes on a cooling rack. I cooled mine for an hour in the pan.

Other than those three things, we couldn't spot any other differences, so today we turned to our friend Stacy, a much better and more experienced baker than me and, possibly, Kathryn. (I don't want to say for sure that Stacy is a better baker than Kathryn because I've never directly compared, so we'll just say she's better than me and leave it there.) Stacy offered the following ideas:

1) Different baking times are definitely a factor.

2) Even though we both set our ovens to what we think is the same temperature, our ovens are not precisely calibrated, and there may actually be differences. This never occurred to me, but it makes sense.

3) One of us may have had riper bananas, which would have more sugar.

4) The chocolate chips increased the volume of Kathryn's loaf, so we should have had different baking times. Stacy thinks Kathryn should have had a longer baking time, not a shorter one, which could support the idea that our oven temperatures are a little different, or raises the possibility that mine may actually be a little bit overbaked. (I raised that possibility. Stacy did not.)

Both of us agree that our bread tastes good, but we both live alone, so there are no second opinions.

You'll have to take our word for it.