Christmas is right around the corner and even though I read Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching I’m going to write about the much more pressing matter of what goodies to bake. Normally I bake a lot of old favorites and a few new recipes each year. This year I’m sticking to the tried and true, with five cookies and candies.

First up is the easiest, fastest and most productive recipe. Peanut clusters. All you need is one package each chocolate and vanilla flavored Almond Bark and one package semi-sweet chocolate chips. Melt together in a large double-boiler and add two cans of Planters Spanish Peanuts. Do not buy generic, bulk or off-brand peanuts. They taste like smooshy rubber. After everything is mixed together spoon out on wax paper as fast as you can. Small spoonfuls are best since they make bite-size candies but you will need acres of wax paper because this makes somewhere around five pounds of candy.

Next on the list is another super-easy one. Also be forewarned that a double batch is in order because it will go fast. Peanut Butter Fudge mmm… Mix together 3/4 cup chunky peanut butter, 1/2 light corn syrup, 1/2 cup softened butter, one teaspoon vanilla and 4 cups powdered sugar. Press into lightly buttered 8×8 pan.

I’ll post cookies tomorrow or Friday…

Wow. Thirteen more books and 22 more days. Sounds good except I still have The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Dr Zhivago…not exactly short, easy ones.

Now I’m going to do something I never do. Or never used to do. A meme. Six random things about me. Thanks Kayla…

1. Like Kayla, I learned to type on an old typewriter. A manual typewriter. So, when on a keyboard I’m fairly freakishly fast. error rate tends to be low the more dis-engaged my mind is. If I’m transcribing something, it approaches zero.

2. I loathe and despise bananas. Weird, smelly food that should be left to the monkeys…except that my children, husband and sister-who-lives-with-us love them. We go through about ten a week and try as I might, I cannot manage to have Jared or Quinn do all the cutting up and dispensing. Blech.

3. I like chocolate ice cream in my root beer floats.

4.  I have never tried pumpkin pie. It has freaked me out since I was very small. Orange and mushy must equal gross. I still do not try it even though not doing so violates my deeply held personal philosophy of trying everything once. I’ve eaten snails for goodness sake but I can’t hack orange pie.

5. I’m singing along to Bon Jovi’s “It’s my life” right now (Thank you Pandora) and Alex is cracking up. I never sing in daily life and rarely listen to the radio unless I’m in the car (even more rare!). I sing at church on Sunday and I’ve even had voice lessons but I have no capacity to remember to remember tunes or lyrics, artists or song titles, much less key and pitch. I never sang lullabies to my babies. Bad Mandi.

6. I don’t have a high school diploma.

I’d expected more book recommendations on my post a couple days back. Now is the time people to suggest that book you think I should read. I think everyone is well aware of where not to go (The Shack, the Twilight series…) but I really am open to some suggestions. Just so you know it’s ok to go non-highbrow, I will be reading the last three books of the Harry Potter series…

I finished Narayan’s Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi and read The Financial Expert yesterday. Both were great. Now, when I counted my list out at the beginning of the year Mr Sampath was counted as two because I misread the hyphen as a comma. I don’t feel bad though, Rabbit Angstrom, Joan Didion and Kahlil Gibran were collectively under-counted by, like 14.

Narayan has a couple of interesting stylistic quirks. He will often shift forward several years chronologically, right in the middle of a chapter and without giving any overt textual clues. This is slightly disorienting but I haven’t found it off-putting. He also sets all of his books in the town of Malgudi, leaving one curious how much of the cultural detail is merely local. However it also makes it possible to absorb more in fewer words since he doesn’t have to re-orient your geography. Narayan is very short on explanations. He uses Indian-English words without defining them (yay for Wikipedia!) and assumes the reader’s familiarity with Indian custom and religion. I like being treated like I’m smart, even if it leaves me reaching for the dictionary. I have one, so no worries.

I know, I slacked off on blogposts over the weekend. I didn’t slack off altogether but the blog definitely took a back seat.

I only read 3/4 of what I should have but hey, busy with kids, Christmas and church should count for something right?

I’ve promised this recipe to two friends so I better get it out there. This came out of a Gourmet magazine from last year.

Saute in large skillet together 2 tablespoons butter, one tablespoon olive oil and 3 chopped cloves of garlic. After about 2 or three minutes on medium add a cup and a half of coarse bread crumbs and stir together to cook for about 5 minutes. Remove to a bowl. Meanwhile cook one pound of thin spaghetti (whole wheat is the best) in boiling, lightly salted water. After it is cooked al dente (firm but tender), drain reserving one cup of the water. Then heat 1/4 cup olive oil in skillet just until it shimmers (only a minute or so) and add two teaspoons each chopped, fresh sage, rosemary and thyme. Cook for about 2 minutes then add drained pasta, the cup of water and 1 cup chopped fresh parsley. Serve and top with breadcrumbs.

This is a great vegetarian dish or it can be made meaty with the addition of some shredded cooked chicken. The fresh herbs are only 2 bucks each at Winco (for you Boiseans) and the package will last a week or more. You can use the leftovers for other things as these herbs are great just about anywhere. My leftover herbs ended up in a pizza crust and a stirfry. Jared was a huge fan of this dish and it made the house smell great too.

On the reading front, I started the Collected Stories of Kafka and a trilogy of novels by R.K Narayan. Kafka is disorienting and, well, Kafkaesque. Narayan is just great and fascinating.

And it is snowing outside. The boys are going to have a fun, wet, messy day!

I finally finished Gibran. How did this guy ever get big? Oh yeah…the Sixties happened. I’m so glad I’m done. On to Kafka…

So, some of the books I’d like to read in 2009.

I’m dying to get to my new P.G. Wodehouses: Joy in the Morning, Thank You Jeeves, Carry On Jeeves and Much Obliged Jeeves and I want to buy so many more! Speaking of Wodehouse, we’ve taught Alex to say “Oh Geez!” but are claiming that he’s actually saying “Oh Jeeves!”…as in “Oh Jeeves! Please come fix this mess I’ve made.” Fun, what?

I’ve ordered two books from Persephone Press, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Little Boy Lost and also want to order several more including: How To Run Your Home Without Help, “a guide for the newly servantless housewife” and The Priory, a novel by Dorthy Whipple. My book club will be reading one Persephone book a month next year.

And then I have about a million books at home that I want to read. Since we closed the bookstore down I selected most of my favorites from the collection and kept them. I have Heritage Press editions of many classic titles that I’ve never read. Like: The Chronicle of the Cid, Typee by Melville, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Tristram Shandy and many others. I have a few Folio Society editions of fun and fascinating books like, 1066 and All That, Joseph and Frances Gies’ Life in a Medieval City/Castle/Village, Steven Runciman’s trilogy on the crusades: The Kingdom of Jeruselam, The First Crusade & The Kingdom of Acre. I need to read The Helmskringla; I have in three volumes as part of a fifteen volume, leather-bound set (these were mine before the store closed). I want to finish The Woman in White which was suspended Jan 1st. I want to read some of the books on Medieval Drama that have been stacking up around here. I want to read The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. I have an early edition of C.S. Lewis’ The Allegory of Love just waiting for me!

And I have bunches of books crying out for a re-reading. For the first time ever, I skipped my annual reading of Lewis’ Space Trilogy and The Chronicles of Narnia. I really miss him! And I want this to be the year I break out of my prose rut and start seriously consuming some poetry.

I need a shorter list since I’ll hopefully be starting Grad School in the fall, writing my own book, working on a second website and started an online apologetics journal. I’ll also plan on a bit more flexibility but want a more narrowly focused list since this year’s was surprisingly all over the map. Now is the time to weigh in. I’ll take suggestions on everything from list size, to topics covered, to specific book, so fire away with your opinions.

Yesterday was a tiring and stressful day. Alex had to go to the doctor’s office to get his eyes checked out. He’s been having one cross in a bit and we got worried and made an appointment. Turns out we were right to do so. He has Estropic Strabismus with resultant Amblyopia. His particular case indicates glasses and if they are ineffective, surgery. Now that is not a fun word to hear in reference to your child! Both he and Luc were little angels in the doctor’s office. Two and a half hours and only in the last five minutes did Luc get a little fussy. They played together, were nice to the other kids and were generally adorable. It was still exhausting though, because adorable or not, they are so energetic! Luc ran down the hall about 500 times and I chased him 500 times. He giggled uncontrollably and I managed to be patient even on time number 500. I’m proud of myself for that, but I did break down when we got home. Crying for my poor baby, my tired self and our hungry bellies. Jared ordered in pizza right away and a hot bath helped make it all better…also a bit of old scotch around 10.

So that was my day. Tomorrow, look for my list of books for 2009. Exciting stuff.

From If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler:

“Following this visual track, you have forced your way through the shp past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,

the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,

the Books Dealing With Something  You’re Working On At The Moment,

the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,

the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,

the Books You Need To Go With other Books On Your Shelves,

the BooksThat Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago, Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the BOoks You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals to You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them int New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you)…”

Good book no?

I haven’t finished it yet but still, trust me when I say: “go out and buy a copy of Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler. It is fabulous. Calvino is playful, complex and intriguing. In the pages of the novel, you meet yourself, a middle-aged Reader. A man, of course, though you may also find yourself to be a young woman named Lucinda in the middle of an international consipiracy, foiled by a faulty publishing house and delightled by endless first chapters. Throw out Joyce. This is what postmodernism should be.

Ahem.

On a less adulistic note, we decorated the house last night for Christmas (minus the tree which we won’t get until Saturday) and it is lovely to see Christmas on it’s way. We have a small purchased Advent calender, a bowlful of candy, cable-car ornaments from San Francisco, lights and our Christmas stockings. The Christmas stockings are kind of amazing. My grandmother knit them and they are huge! They are as big as your leg if you weighed 300 pounds. Tall and fat they hold a lot of loot. My family’s one enduring tradition was to fill our stockings with fun, useful and jokey gifts. Oranges, beef jerky, new socks, pens, bullets, you name it. My grandmother got her needles out after I got married and made stockings for my new family so we can carry on the fun. Unfortunately I think funds are a little too tight this year to stuff them with anything but love…

Speaking of traditions my mother-in-law alerted me to some of the things they did when Jared was little. They used to put small Christmas trees in the kids’ rooms and they could decorate them however they wanted and with their own ornaments. They also used to put Christmas lights in their rooms and Jared said it was fun to have the “nightlight” reminding them of the approaching presents. I think we’ll use these but save them for when the boys are a bit older. Luc would still try to eat the tree so next year at the earliest.

I’m a bit tired and not really ready for the week to start. The weekend went by too fast…

What do you do with a girl who only read sixty pages yesterday? Force her to read more Kahlil Gibran today, I guess.

We worked on winterizing our yard yesterday. Mostly just picking up the damp leaves and putting the patio furniture away but since the POD is now gone (all the books were picked up on Friday) you can actually see most of our driveway/patio/backyard and the change seems quite dramatic.

We have never decorated the outside of our house for Christmas. No time, money or inclination but I’m wondering if that is too Grinchy of us. We certainly like celebrating Christmas. I mean Advent is the anticipation of the birth of the Savior of the World, which is no small potatoes in our lives and I think the neighbors should hear about it. Ought we to whip out some glowing plastic Santas or giant inflatable snowmen (just kidding)?Or ought we to just leave the shutters open so the inside can be seen from out?