Sunday Blatherings - New Books and a Recipe

Good Morning Readers! How was your week?  I'm happy to report that we didn't have ANY snow in the last 8 days, so I'm hoping that means that Spring really is around the corner. With 3 days of mid 50's temps we saw lots of snow melting, and although there is still plenty of dirty snow to be found, patches of grass can be found here and there.

This week I finished the audio verion of Andy Weir's, The Martian. It's a book I never imagined I would enjoy, but it was terrific. If you like audiobooks, try this one.  I am deeply engrossed in, A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara, which is one of the best written works of literary fiction that I've read in a long while. It is a story about male college friendships, but focuses heavily on one of the indivivuals who had a horrific childhood. An extremely dark story, a hefty tome (700+), that I read in small doses ---it's so so good, but hard not to dwell on afterward. This book is sure to my my tops list this year -- so powerful and such a talented author.

A few new books arrived by mail last week. Have you read any of these?

• The Dead Lands; Benjamin Percy (Grand Central)
• The Year My Mother Came Back; Alice Eve Cohen (Algonquin)
• The Calorie Myth; Jonathan Bailor (Harper Wave-paperback swap)
• The Cake House; Latifa Salom (Vintage)
• Dog Crazy; Meg Donohue (William Morrow)
• Where Women are Kings; Christie Watson (Other Press - amazon vine)
• The Life We Bury; Allen Eskens (Seventh Street Books-paperbackwap)

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Finally, I thought I would share this recipe. I made these healthier version of oatmeal cookies yesterday, adding dried cranberries to the recipe and they were delicious.  I used qiuck-steel cut oats.

Healthy Honey Oatmeal Cookies

By Secret Teenage Chef on December 05, 2005

97.00%;

 89 Reviews

Photo by Daffachoolapip

• Prep Time: 10 mins
• Total Time: 25 mins
• Serves: 10, Yield: 30 cookies

About This Recipe

"These are easy to make! and healthy for you too (small amount of butter & sugar), but still so very sweet and wholesome. The cookies are chewy and go great with any other add-ins (raisins, cranberries, chocolate chips, etc.) Courtesy of FoodNetwork.com"

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour ( all-purpose is good too)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats ( aka oatmeal)
• chopped dates (optional) or figs (optional) or raisins (optional) or currants (optional) or chocolate chips (optional) or chopped nuts, etc (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray (just for convenience :]).
2. Using a mixer with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter, brown sugar, honey, egg and water thoroughly.
3. Sift together the dry ingredients then stir in the oats. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix. Add any additional ingredients you've chosen.
4. Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls onto the cookie sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.