Once Upon a Bookshelf

The Doll’s House is the second collection of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics. This collection starts with a story taking place back in the day about a woman who fell in love with the Dream Lord. Because of their love, her people are annihilated and she throws herself off a mountaintop.

It soon moves to the present, where two of Morpheus’s younger siblings Desire and Despair plot to ensnare their brother using the most recent dream vortex – a girl who has the ability to tear down the walls of peoples dreams, and this ability could very much threaten The Dreaming.

Meanwhile, Morpheus is still rebuilding his domain from when he was prisoner in the past collection. He finds that four of the residents in The Dreaming are gone, and must find them before they harm the living.

Okay, yeah, I totally enjoyed this one more than the first. Loved the story of the whole collection, but especially the prologue at the beginning - the folk-tale like story that tells of the woman and the Dream Lord falling in love. Love folk stories, and the fact that this focuses around Morpheus makes it a lot more fun.

I also loved the side story of Morpheus asking his sister to give a random person in a pub eternal life, so that he has a friend to meet with once a century – it gave more depth to his character. Also, at one point in that story, he totally looked like the Clockwork Men from Doctor Who. Awesome.

So yeah, totally loved this and am definitely looking forward to reading the rest!

Happy Canada Day! In honour of today, I was planning on sharing a Canadian recipe, but couldn’t really think of one that appeals to me – I shared Butter tarts last week, I don’t like poutine, I don’t have a recipe for nanaimo bars, and I couldn’t think of anything else. But then I got to thinking about how Canada Day sort of signifies the beginning of summer. And we all know that there’s nothing better than summer food, and especially barbecues. YUM! And my favourite part of any barbecue are all of the awesome salads that are usually available.

This particular salad is one that my family has been making for years and years. Again, it’s from one of the Best of Bridge books - this time it’s the Grand Slam book (the black one).

Ingredients
2 heads romaine lettuce (washed and torn into bite-sized pieces)
3/4 to 1 cup pecan halves - toasted
2 oranges - peeled and sliced
1/4 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp salt
1/2 small red onion - chopped
1 tsp dry mustard
2 Tbsp water

Directions
Place lettuce, oranges and pecans in salad bowl. Combine vinegar, oil, sugar, salt, onion, mustard and water in blender. Blend until well mixed. Make ahead and refrigerate until ready to toss salad.

Notes from Courtney
We usually cut the recipe in half, and it still makes A LOT of salad. We also substitute a can of mandarin orange slices (drained) for the 2 oranges. The recipe makes a lot of dressing, so if you don’t use it all on the salad, it can be kept in the refrigerator for quite a while to be used again later. Oh, and because some red onions are QUITE strong, it may be a good idea to put less onion in the dressing first, blend it all together, taste it and add more onion if it’s not too strong.

Do you have a recipe you’d like to share us for Midweek Morsels? Stop by Kristina’s Favorites and leave your link!

I love the concept of time travel. Especially when it’s done well (which it isn’t always, especially when it doesn’t go into some potential implications of traveling into the past – would you be changing history, or would you just be doing what’s already been done?). This is most probably part of the reason I love Doctor Who so much.

All of the book I’ve listed today have something to do with time travel – whether in the traditionally popular sense, or not.

1. Orion. Written by Ben Bova. Originally Published 1984. In each part of this book, Orion is sent to an era of time previous to the one he was just in. In fact, the whole series deals with different times in history (or our future, depending on the book). In this particular book in the series, Orion starts in present time and eventually ends up sent back to the beginning of the human race, with a few other stops along the way.
2. The Time Machine. Written by H.G. Wells. Originally Published 1895. The time traveller in this book travels to the future to see what becomes of the human race – to see some very disturbing results of our class systems.
3. Many Waters. Written by Madeleine L’Engle. Originally Published 1986. This is the one book in the Time Quartet that centres around Sandy and Dennis, the Murray twins. They inadvertently transport themselves back to Biblical times (think Noah’s ark and that huge massive flood).
4. Both Sides of Time. Written by Caroline B. Cooney. Originally Published 1995. I loved this book growing up. Annie travels 100 years into the past through the Stratton Mansion, where she meets and falls in love with one of the mansion’s residents.
5. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. Written by Laurie Viera Rigler. Originally Published 2007. A modern-day woman finds herself back in Jane Austen’s times.
6. A Christmas Carol. Written by Charles Dickens. Originally Published 1843. Scrooge has run-ins with both the Ghost of Christmas Past and Ghost of Christmas Present, allowing him to see moments from his past, and potential moments from his future.
7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Written by J.K. Rowling. Originally Published 1999. Hermione Granger has the use of a Time Turner to attend classes for their third year at Hogwarts – at the end of the year, Harry and Hermione use the Time Turner to rescue Sirius Black and Buckbeak.
8. Runaways: Dead End Kids. Written by Joss Whedon. Collection Originally Published 2008. A group of superhero kids find a device made by their parents, and it transports them back to 1907.
9. Beauty. Written by Sheri S. Tepper. Originally Published 1991. A retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale (with appearances of Cinderella and Snow White) that brings Beauty into contact with time travelers, and brings her to a crazy dystopian future.
10. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Written by Douglas Adams. Originally Published 1980. Our group of travelers head to the future to eat in a restaurant that allows them to see the universe end.

What time traveling stories do you like?

Katherine’s family is struggling to make ends meet, so when her uncle the Mad Duke writes her mother with a proposal, it’s something they can’t turn down – if Katherine goes to stay with the Mad Duke in town to learn to become a swordsman, he will drop all of the lawsuits he has against them and pay all of their debts.

Soon Katherine is thrown into lessons to learn to become a swordsman, and finds that town is NOT how she always expected it. Not only is she not getting a season, and is not allowed to own any dresses, but people she would like to be friends with will not associate with her due to the Mad Duke. Amidst her lessons, she soon becomes good friends with her uncle’s steward and the two start to get into adventures of their own, which includes surreptitiously tracking a nobleman through the streets, hiding in a brothel, and greatly offending one of the Mad Duke’s greatest enemies. Of course, the Mad Duke’s enemy does not take well to this offense and is determined to get back at them.

Okay, wow, I so need to read more of Kushner’s books. This was such awesome fun; a complete rollicking Regency adventure! Eep. Loved every second of it; in fact was intrigued right from the first paragraph:

No one sends for a niece they’ve never seen before just to annoy her family and ruin her life. That, at least, is what I thought. This was before I had ever been to the city. I had never been in a duel, or held a sword myself. I had never kissed anyone, or had anyone try to kill me, or worn a velvet cloak. I had certainly never met my uncle the Mad Duke. Once I met him, much was explained.

For some reason, it reminded me very strongly of Kristen Britain’s Green Rider, which happens to be one of my favourite fantasy novels. It’s not the setting, and it’s not the plot, but there is something of the same spirit through them both. If you enjoyed one, I have no doubt you would enjoy the other as well.

The characters were, for the most part, fabulous. Artemisia Fitz-Levi got on my nerves quite a bit, but Katherine and Marcus were a lot of fun, and there were just SO MANY colourful minor characters, from Master Venturus (who first taught Katherine sword fighting), to the Mad Duke, to his numerous friends. Oh, so much fun!

The Bottom Line: Loved loved loved this book! I should’ve read it much sooner, and now I need to read Kushner’s other books. Will definitely be keeping this on my shelf, and will be returning to it whenever I need a story where the heroine is kicking butt in a stereotypical male’s role. Yay fun!

It’s a day late, but I was out all yesterday…

Mmmm, the butter tart. Was there anything more delicious EVER? If you’re not Canadian, if you haven’t visited Canada, or don’t know people who are Canadians who are obsessed with butter tarts, then you have no idea what I’m talking about. Butter tarts are delicious, and they taste like … well, the closest thing I can think of is that it is kind of like pecan pie without the pecans in it.

I had a MAJOR craving for homemade butter tarts this week, so called up my mother for the recipe that she used to use when I was growing up. It’s from the red Best of Bridge book… I believe it’s the first in the series of the books. Fabulous series of cookbooks, by the bye.

Ingredients
1 cup white sugar
1 cup seedless raisons
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup butter
4 Tbsp cream or half & half
1/2 cup broken walnuts (optional)
1 dozen tart shells (not those sissy mini ones!)

Directions
Beat eggs. Combine with remaining ingredeints except nuts. Boil at medium heat for 3 minutes. Add nuts. Fill unbaked (and thawed) tart shells. Bake for 15 mins at 375F.

Notes from Courtney
Omnomnomnom! Delicious! Love butter tarts so much. I didn’t expect this recipe to be nearly as easy as it was. The only real note I have is to make sure that you watch the oven - I left them in there for a minute or two too long, and the tops were a little bit browner than I would’ve liked them.

Do you have a recipe you want to share with us? Stop on by Kristina’s Favorites and leave your link for Midweek Morsels.