Reading List Update 2

Well, I've thought of a few more books I'd like to recommend to my loyal readers here.
As before, I've included the full list from earlier posts so you don't have to go looking through the archives to see what all was on there.

Enjoy!

• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury 
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein 
• 1985, Anthony Burgess

Here's the original list (including the earlier update), just in case you haven't finished them all yet:
Read, learn, and enjoy:

• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle 
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis 
• Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
• Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

• Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Anthem, Ayn Rand [free gutenberg.org version here]
  
• The Unheavenly City, Revisited, Edward Banfield
• The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
• That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow [free creative commons version here]
  
• 1984, George Orwell
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  
• We, Eugene Zamyatin
• The Martian Way, Isaac Asimov
• Freehold, Michael Z. Williamson
• Ted, White, and Blue, Ted Nugent

One More Reason ...

that I'm done with college sports.

In step with the tradition of going after the big bucks, rather than caring about the students, the "student" athletes, or even alumni, the Big Ten (10? 11? 12?) has expanded in order to add a football championship game to its schedule each year.
This extra game will bring in plenty of TV money, no doubt, but it has the added benefit of making all the traditional rivalry games of the end of the season less important, and much less likely even to be at the end of the season.
Michigan-Ohio State, Indiana-Purdue, Wisconsin-Minnesota, Et cetera-Et cetera. 
It doesn't matter if your students and alumni have always (or at least for several decades) looked forward to ending the season against that one main rival. 
It doesn't matter that in some cases, that win might be the only redeeming act in an otherwise futile season.
All that matters is that ESPN will give us a whole pile of money to spend on more football stuff, so we can play more football and get more money from ESPN.

What a bunch of crap.  College sports once were about the students and the student athletes playing for their school's glory and honour.  Now it's just the minor leagues, with major league budgets.  [I know, many will say there never was such a time, but I think that's simply revisionist history attempting one of two things; either to justify the current batch of hypocrisy (because it's always been this way), or to say that all college sports are always bad.  I don't accept either position.]

grr.

Carnage du Jour - 13 August 2010

Well, there are storms coming, so we'd better do our grilling today, right?  Right.

I've got some chicken breasts and some bone-in ribeyes - guess I'll just cook them both and we'll eat whatever.
The chicken is a couple boneless, skinless breasts, so I dropped in some Italian dressing and mixed in some smoky horseradish sauce as a marinade before cooking.
As to the steaks, I'm usually a "salt and pepper is more than enough flavouring for a good piece of beef" kind of guy, but with the horseradish working in my head already, I made a quick glaze / sauce / whatever of some prepared horseradish, a bit of (real!) vanilla extract, and some (also real!) maple syrup.  It still tasted mostly like horseradish, but with a little of the edge gone and its flavours mellowed and pointing slightly back from where it normally would be.

Once the fire was ready, on went the steaks, having been salted on both sides.  A turn halfway through the first side to give those nice cross-hatch grill marks was executed to perfection, they were flipped, and given their turn on that side when the mixture was applied.
Oh my.
The smoke and heat really did a number on that stuff - it was still a tad hot, but mostly it just melded with the beef flavour and did a virtual dance on our tongues.

As to the chicken, they went on once the steaks came off to rest.  With them went a nice little head of radicchio that had been halved and slathered with a bit of Italian dressing and a few leftover ears of red corn to reheat on the grill.
Wow.
The chicken was so tender, juicy, and flavourful that there were no complaints around the table.

Even better (although the radicchio and corn were fine), Heidi made her new variation on a Caprese salad, adding in some fresh chopped green chiles form the garden.  That extra heat is a beautiful addition to the flavour profile of that classic salad, and once again it was difficult to decide what to leave - so I didn't leave anything.  Fortunately, I didn't serve everything up, so there was only a little too much on the plate to start to go with the nothing left at the end.

Try that mixture on your next steak - it was spectacular!

Carnage du Jour - 11 August 2010

"There is simply no more versatile cut of meat than the pork tenderloin." 
- Antonin Lavoris

 OK, I actually made that up, but had Antonin Lavoris said that (or even existed), I would agree most heartily, and last night's meal was a particularly tasty example of that versatility.

A whole tenderloin was rubbed with a mix of chipotle chili powder and beau monde, then slow roasted on the charcoal grill, using the indirect cooking method.
This let the flavour of the charcoal permeate the meat - mixing beautifully with the chipotle's own smokiness - whilst not charring the outside.
In about 20 minutes (it's hard to know for sure, as I was also mowing the lawn as I cooked the tenderloin), with a couple flips and turns in there, the internal temperature was north of 160F and all was well with the pork. (I love my instant read thermometer!)

The side dish was a delicious chick-pea salad that Heidi made using scallions, tomatoes, parsley, cilantro, olive oil, lemon juice, and white balsamic vinegar.

All in all, a delicious repast, and a wonderful end to an overly hot day.

Try it - you'll like it!

Reading List Update

OK, I've come up with some additions to the reading list, and they're likely quite familiar to many of you.
You may look at them and say (to yourself, one hopes) that those are just children's books - how can they be worth reading as an adult?
Well, my friends, here are my thoughts on that topic.  It seems to me that the best children's books are those that can be read at any age.  Typically, there is a period in one's life where reading those books (whichever they might be) is beneath one.  With maturity, though, comes a time when those books are once again appropriate.
I think you'll find that you appreciate much more of the stories and the writing than you did when you encountered them as a child, and that you'll have a doubled reading experience - you'll get that nostalgic feeling for when you first read the book, and you'll get the enhanced experience of understanding parts of it for the first time. 

Try it, you'll like it.

• A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle 
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis 
• Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
• Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

Here's the original list, just in case you haven't finished it yet:
Read, learn, and enjoy:

• Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Anthem, Ayn Rand [free gutenberg.org version here]
  
• The Unheavenly City, Revisited, Edward Banfield
• The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
• That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow [free creative commons version here]
  
• 1984, George Orwell
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  
• We, Eugene Zamyatin
• The Martian Way, Isaac Asimov
• Freehold, Michael Z. Williamson
• Ted, White, and Blue, Ted Nugent

I Miss Them Already

Just a few days ago, I finished listening to the Chronicles of Narnia which had been dramatised for radio by Paul McCusker of Focus on the Family.
These are simply spectacular.  The cast is great, the sound effects and music are spot on. 

My only quibble is that they present them in the revised order (chronological within Narnia) rather than the original order (in which they were written & published).
That was easily overcome by simply listening in the order I prefer, rather than in the order in which the CDs were labeled.

With Paul Scofield as the storyteller (narrator) and David Suchet as Aslan (no, he doesn't mention his moustaches, nor does he sound at all like Hercule Poirot), there is a real sense of authenticity, and a real sense of the stories as being really real.  (I know, I just used real thrice in that sentence, but I don't care.)

As I said in the title, I miss them already.  My first trip to work and back after I had finished the series meant I was back to the radio or music CDs or whatever, and while that's what I had always done on these drives, it wasn't right, somehow. 
"Oh bother," I thought, "I miss Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, Digory, Polly, Puddleglum, Reepicheep, Aslan, oh, all of those friends one makes in Narnia."

I don't think I can recommend these highly enough - they really are wonderful in all the senses of that word.  Please, find them and listen!  Of course, nothing can replace the books, so you ought to read them as well, but this is a great way to get your Narnia fix on the go.

Suggested Reading List

OK, many of these may be a bit depressing, given the state of things in our world, but here are some books that I think are important and (sadly) timely. They're listed in no particular order, just how they came to me as I was typing up the list, and I'll be adding to it as more relevant titles occur to me.

Read, learn, and enjoy:

• Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
• Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
• Anthem, Ayn Rand [free gutenberg.org version here]
  
• The Unheavenly City, Revisited, Edward Banfield
• The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
• That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow [free creative commons version here]
  
• 1984, George Orwell
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  
• We, Eugene Zamyatin
• The Martian Way, Isaac Asimov
• Freehold, Michael Z. Williamson
• Ted, White, and Blue, Ted Nugent
•