J.R.R. Tolkien Inspired Meal!

2014-01-18 19.11.38

 

A friend of mine started a new blog, Project A Month, at the beginning of the year. Each month he introduces a project and then he and his design, plan and execute. The first month was to:

Make a meal based on your favorite movie, book, song, or game – Whatever your favorite piece of entertainment is, there’s bound to be some way to make a meal based off it. Maybe food is a central component to a pivotal scene, or perhaps a character happens to be a spicy chicken. Either way, this month you need to think hard about what meal would represent and give homage to your choice. Be sure to take pictures of the process, write down your recipe, and explain a little bit about the choices you made.

I loved the premise of the blog and wanted to participate. I mentioned it to D and she also thought it would fun. The first problem though was coming up with a favorite anything to be our inspiration for the meal. I knew I wanted to do the project with D, instead of us each doing our own, and that meant that the book, movie, song, or game had to have meaning for the both of us… It didn’t take too much rumination to settle on J.R.R Tolkien’s Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings as our inspiration. The two of us not only grew up with the books but we’ve read them too each other as well during our courtship and marriage. I felt we got lucky with our pick as Tolkien infused his work with a love of food and eating (especially his hobbits…) Almost immediately I knew I wanted to do a take on the Elves’ magical lembas bread that served as the main staple for most of the Fellowship’s journey to Mordor. D said we should do some sort of hearty breakfast to go with the bread and call it “second breakfast.”

Lembas Bread
Lembas Bread

My first thought for Lembas bread was a multigrain loaf, full of nuts and berries. This fits with the description of the bread in LOTR but wouldn’t make for exciting eating or recipe making. I then thought a biscuit might work, something like hard tack but not so bland. The biscuit idea finally lead me to a scone. A scone was perfect: sweet, filling, transportable. I looked up a basic scone recipe and then went to tweaking! Continue reading “J.R.R. Tolkien Inspired Meal!”

Books Read in 2013

I did quite a bit of reading in the last year. I’m hoping to do just as much if not more this year!

January (6)
John Dies at the End by David Wong
Our Gleaming Bones Unrobed by Grant Loveys
Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen
Bad Machinery: The Case of Team Spirit by John Allison
Boom! by Thomas Richard Harry
This Book has Spiders in it by David Wong

February (6)
The Enlightenment Vision by Stuart Jordan
Tarzan the Centennial Celebration by Scott Tracy Griffin
The Adventurer’s Handbook by Mick Conefrey
Budget Travel through Space and Time by Albert Goldbarth
Not Buying It by Judith Levine
In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation by Melinda L. Pash

March (3)
It’s Even Worse than it Looks by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer
The Girl in the Flammable Skit by Aimee Bender

April (2)
Overheated by Andrew Guzman
Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

May (4)
The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

June (2)
City of Quartz by Mike Davis
Faust Eric by Terry Pratchett

July (1)
Escape Velocity by Mark Dery

August (1)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

September (1)
Alas, Poor Yorick by Ryan North

October (12)
All Your Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
The Son I Never Had by Kevin Wolf
Make me a Sandwich by Jemma Salume
Moses and Bean: School Bus Sex Ed by Matt and Jeanie Bryan
All Yesterdays by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, Darren Naishi
The Men Who Lost America by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
Skin Deep: Orientations by Kory Bing
Please Don’t Give Up (1 of 4) by Thien Pham
The Adventures of the 19XX: Rise of the Black Faun by Paul Martinez
Murder and Magic by Randall Garrett

November (3)
Too Many Magicians by Randall Garrett
Lord Darcy Investigates by Randall Garrett
The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

December (1)
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

Total: 42

If I have any reading goals for 2014 it is to complete book review books in the month I get them, to read more “classic” texts, and to finally read through J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, Francesco Colonna’s  Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and maybe, maybe Spengler’s Decline of the West.

2013 Summer Giveaway Comes to an End

I still have too many books left over                                                                           Found on Flickr

Congratulations to Patty for winning the last book in this year’s Summer Giveaway! She has a choice of:

  • Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (signed)
  • Selected Poems of Robert Frost
  • Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey
  • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
  • The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss
  • Overheated by Andrew Guzman
  • Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

Thanks to everyone who participated this year. I hope you stick around! All the prizes will go out next weekend as long as I can get to the Post Office on time and it hasn’t randomly closed for some reasons (you never know with the USPS…)

 

The Myth of Persecution, 2013 Summer Giveaway

This was a wildly exaggerated incident

Congratulations to our third winner, Felix, he’ll have his choice of book from the list below:

  • Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (signed)
  • Selected Poems of Robert Frost
  • Amphigorey Too by Edward Gorey
  • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
  • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
  • Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
  • The Myth of Persecution by Candida Moss
  • Overheated by Andrew Guzman
  • Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

The giveaway marches on! Leave a comment below and you’ll be entered to win a book of your choice from the list. Below is another short review for one of the books in the giveaway, The Myth of Persecution. This review originally appeared in the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Review.

Candida Moss’ new book, The Myth of Persecution is going to raise hackles in the small, exclusive halls of Christian history. Why? Because it attacks one of the foundational tenets of early Christianity: the persecution and martyrdom of early converts to the new religion.  Ask any Christian, Protestant, Catholic, and other and the conversation will eventually turn to the persecution of Christians, contemporary and historical, almost always accompanied by a shout out to Nero, and sometimes Diocletian.  This piece of historical trivia is always presented as a given and no one ever disputes the “fact” that before the ascension of Constantine to the Imperial crown Christians were singularly and systematically persecuted by Pagan Rome. Dr. Moss begs to differ. In this exhaustively researched yet accessible book Dr. Moss presents the thesis that this ‘persecution’ of the primitive church is a myth created by later government sanctioned, early Christian sects and used as method to impose orthodoxy, attack sectarian opponents, and bolster their own doctrinal claims. The popularity of martyr stories among the laity only fed the use of the myth and their exaggeration into the grotesque stories we have today, Dr. Moss’ book lays bare that truth and presents us with the opportunity to instead of retelling myth begin to explore the actual history of this era.

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