Friday, March 5, 2010

Hospitals, Books and St. Paddy's.

Having spent several hours in the hospital and not getting home til about 1 a.m. I am tired this morning and gotta rush because of bowling later. No real problems luckily and everything is more or less OK now. One thing, sitting in the waiting room last night, we were sitting next to someone I recognised but couldn't think who he was. Eventually I asked him, he didn't remember me, but in the end we found out we used to work for the same company, he in shipping, me as secretary for the plant manager. We spent a while discussing names we remembered. Small world. He told me one person I remembered was now living in the same town as we do, must see if I can find him and his wife.
I finished First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher the other day. That appears to be the end of the current series although there is an opening to write more stories in the same world 200 odd years into the future, I don't know if that is his intention. It has been an excellent series although I did find this last book a bit slow going in places, particularly at the beginning. However, the latter part of the book was great. I find I periodically get a bit tired of a book which keeps flitting from one character to another, especially when there are lots of characters. Some authors seem to do it better than others but occasionally books like that lose their pace. IMHOP.
From that book I went to Tanya Huff's Second Summoning (can't find the first one) which is an amusing story about Keepers who try to maintain the metaphysical balance between good and evil and the main protagonist, Claire, falls in love and then makes love but, because of who she is, the metaphysical world shakes and because of several circumstances an angel is dragged into the world by a young woman - her dad finds this nude angel in her bedroom, assumes it to be a boyfriend and because he imagines it, the angel acquires genitalia. This is the start of a very complicated existence for the poor angel (they are normally sexless, did you know?). There is also a talking cat who, as he keeps pointing out, is old and also pretty funny. I am now reading another Tanya Huff story which I will tell you about when I finish it.
Everywhere I look at the moment there are recipes for St. Patrick's Day which is celebrated with gusto in the States, and certainly given a lot of attention in Canada. If the weather stays like it is this week, all our temps are forecast to be in the plus figures this week (even +8°C), St. Paddy's day will be warm enough for all the celebrants, they have a big parade in New York City. Chicago dyes their waters green and everyone has a grand old time. It also happens to be Matt's youngest daughter's birthday as well as her husband's, Mike of Scolopax Chronicles or Mike's Wildlife Art (see links this page). Amazingly they are both the same age. It is also the anniversary of the day I got married to my first husband.
That being the case, here is one of Hershey's recipes for the occasion. Minty Irish Chocolate Cream Pie Ingredients: 9-inch pie crust, baked and cooled OR 1 extra serving-size packaged graham cracker crumb crust (9 oz.) 1-1/4 cups sugar 1/2 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa 1/3 cup cornstarch 1/4 teaspoon salt 2-3/4 cups milk 3 tablespoons butter or margarine 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1-1/2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed 18 small (1-1/2 inch) YORK Peppermint Patties, divided 6 drops green food color(optional) Directions: 1. Prepare crust, if desired. 2. Combine sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt in medium saucepan; gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to full rolling boil; boil and stir 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir in butter and vanilla. Pour into prepared crust; carefully press plastic wrap directly onto pie filling. Cool; refrigerate 6 hours or until firm. 3. Shortly before serving, remove wrappers from peppermint patties. Remove plastic wrap from pie. Cut 9 peppermint candies in half; place, cut side down, at outer edge of pie filling, forming a scalloped edge. Finely chop remaining 9 patties; fold into whipped topping with green food color, if desired. Spread peppermint topping on pie. Serve immediately. Cover; refrigerate leftover pie. 10 servings.
Have a great day

2 comments:

  1. I saw a huge banner advertising a St. Patrick's Night across the front of a pub yesterday. I thought, hell, is it that time of the year already.

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  2. Didn't know they celebrated that in Paris.

    ReplyDelete