Yep. She has.
Jane has posted. :)
by CJ | Dec 28, 2015 | Journal | 47 comments
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Books
- spoiler potential: caution: book questions.
- Bibliography
- Alliance-Union Guidebook
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Foreigner Guidebook.
- Gene Wars Universe: Spoiler Alert
- The Map Room
- Book Discussion: all books: spoiler alert in effect…
- Fantasy books: Spoiler alert.
- About the Foreigner series: Spoiler alerts
- Foreigner Series: Spoiler Alerts: Page 2
- WHO’S WHO in Foreigner
Archives
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
I’m glad she got to have some fun with the moon bed, after all that messy problem-solving with the plumbing and before tomorrow’s hard work on your new floor. I hope tbe flooring goes swiftly and according to plan, so it’s ready when you come out of surgery. Best wishes for the succes of your second operation!
I just hopped over to Jane’s site but the most recent post I could find was a blog lamenting the ability of potatoes to clog your sink… And the specific, “photos” category of postings is last dated in March.
Oh, alas, the potatoes one is the current disaster post. She hasn’t got pix of the very pretty Chinese bed up yet. It stalled out because yrs truly had an allergy to the paint being used, poor Jane—she had to take it to the basement to cure.But we will get it finished.
I’m telling ya! If it’s not one thing, it’s something else! Never a dull moment chez vous, or so it seems. I’m continually wishing for some smooth sailing for you guys.
I am so jonesing for more Foreigner action. The trick is going to be timing the ramp up to the new book with the rereading of the series so as to arrive at the end of the books I have right when the new book drops, and the transition is smooth into the new one.
Last year I read the entire Foreigner series starting 28 Feb and finishing two days before the new book dropped. Visitor is due on 6 April. This year I will probably start with Explorer or Defender rather than the whole series.
Well, (a deep and wet subject, as an English teacher of mine used to say), the Great Christmas Sewage Backup Debacle of 2015 ended yesterday with a $1000 plumber visit. $350 of that is for a new toilet, but still! Now to clean up the floors where the spillage is slowly drying. I shall have to move the laundry machines and figure out what to do about the wall-to-wall in my bathroom. It’s also sn*wing and raining ice here in southern New Hampshire.
Tommie, I was always told that “a well was a deep subject for a shallow mind…” I’m not implying anything by that comment. LOL
Oh, gl-uggggh. Fans. Lotsa fans.
If she were a great author, as is our hostess, she’d have lots of fans!
Huh?
Oh! Never mind.
okay, Paul….no more eggnog for a while…… 😉
Pish and tosh! What about the 25 5Gal carboys, 3 3Gal, and couple of 1Gal, of wine we have settling in my buddy Jim’s garage. It’s about 40-45% Pinot Noir (Pommard and Dijon 115 clones), ditto Riesling, a bit of Concord, Niagara, etc.
Bottling the Riesling might start in April or May, the reds not until August or September. But we’ve got about the same amount from our 2014 vintage.
So I’m quite lactose intolerant, so what? 😉
Since my brewing friend did not make any cyser this year, it fell to me to fill in the gap. I made Krupnik, a spiced honeyed vodka traditional in Poland and surrounding areas for Christmas Eve libations. It is quite potent, however, and you do not want open flame around while you make it.
On the non-booze, holiday food production, I just made several Stollen (Austrian/German holiday dried-fruit, yeast breads) today. Technically I’m a bit late with them, but when we are not visiting the Austrian side of my family in Northern Vermont at Christmas (which we aren’t this year), we tend to share them with friends on New Year’s. As my spouse and I aren’t very fond of the traditional Marzipan filling, I made them with experimental cinnamon smear filling (tasty, a bit overwhelming of the rest of the stollen spicing but my spouse adores cinnamon).
Stollen are such a big, Christmas food for Austrians and neighboring ethnicities that, whenever Germanic, family friends arrive at my Austrian’s step-mother’s place this time of year, they immediately present her with a hostess gift of a Stollen, to which she reciprocates with a Stollen for them. Tracking who ultimately ends up with which Stollen would be quite interesting. My spouse and I refer to this as the “hostage exchange” and frequently call Stollens “hostages.”
Slices of Stollen are delicious toasted for breakfast in the morning.
Try poppy seed filling. I believe that is also quite traditional.
Further to the Stollen debate. Commercial mincemeat would work too. When I cheat and use the stuff in a jar I cut it with a couple of chopped apples.
Traditional dark fruitcake has been the butt of similar jokes, the thought being that there is only one fruitcake, it just keeps getting regifted and recycled. For this reason I quit making them, until discussion with extended family revealed an unexpected vein of nostalgia for the family fruitcake. So this season I made 4 loaf-sized ones and people got them as presents. They seem to have been well received, but that could be due to the full-immersion baptism with whatever was in the booze cupboard. Amaretto, apricot brandy and cheap rum can make a true believer out of many a fruitcake hater.
I and the New England side of my family adore fruitcake! My spouse, then fiancé, hated it until persuading me to substitute dried fruit for the currently “traditional,” but evil, glow-in-the-dark, candied “fruit.” We then went on to make our own wedding fruitcake with a melange of dried fruit.
Wedding cake and other festival cakes used to be fruitcake: see older editions of Fannie Farmer’s Boston School of Cooking cookbook. I now make this fruit cake about every other year, as it ages superbly but makes large amounts. It is at its peak between year one and two. Why, it occured to us, is there a custom of eating a piece of your wedding cake on your year one anniversary? Because, when it is fruit cake, it tastes even better then! I have never added alcohol (other than 1/4 cup brandy to the batter) but simply wrap it up in several layers of plastic and aluminum foil and store it in a dark, semi-cool place.
A couple years ago, my cousin (finally) got married and asked me to make a gluten free version of this fruit cake for their wedding cake (his mother has celiac’s and several others in the family like to avoid gluten). Because my fruitcake recipe has morphed into one with about 8 pounds of dried fruit to 1 pound of flour which —when mixed with the molasses, pound of butter and dozen eggs— basically becomes a binder for said fruit, substituting a gluten-free flour mix worked fine!
I adore fruit cake. Like your fruit cake ours was mostly dried fruit, some flour, lots of butter & eggs and had to be made in September or October to cure in the brandy.
Almost 40 years ago an Australian friend of my mother gave us her recipe for “boiled fruit cake”, which is not a kind of cake that’s customary in Holland; it’s been a favorite when we make it ever since. She made it with half raisins and half currants, and put a thick layer of frosting on it. We do without the frosting, and use other dried fruit instead of currants; dried apricots and maybe a bit of dried apple slices with the raisins work very well. This makes the cake lighter, both in color and taste; though cutting up the bigger dried fruit into sultana-sized pieces is extra work.
It doesn’t contain alcohol, but a lot of brown sugar and golden syrup (or half honey/half molasses instead of the golden syrup if that is unavailable), but because of the fresher fruit taste of tge apricot and apple it doesn’t taste too terribly sweet.
It’s made with about a kilogram of dried fruit IIRC (any kind you like, in a pinch even chopped tutti-frutti & raisins works), and makes one moist and solid cake. If someone wants the recipe I can post it.
My mother made boiled fruit cake as an every-day cake at least once a month. The Christmas Cake, however, was a production and was only made once a year.
Ah, yes, boiled “puddings!” I haven’t made a boiled pudding in a fair while but should (I love making old-fashioned, traditional recipes that aren’t finicky but take a long while to cook). Plum pudding, or “Christmas pudding” as it is known in the UK and associated environs, is very rich (its fat is suet) but tasty! Perhaps next year I shall make some… but go dig out my British cookbooks soon for a more everyday and less rich fruited variety first.
My family serves its plum pudding with dollops of “Hard Sauce,” basically finely-ground, confectioners sugar creamed with butter and some brandy or rum and then chilled until it turns, well, hard. My family is very fond of Hard Sauce and sometimes tries to persuade me to make some for the fruit cake too.
It’s not the cake that is boiled, it’s the dried fruit with the sugar and syrup and water and butter, to let the fruit soften and absorb the liquid, before mixing in the egg and flour as binder. The cake is baked in the oven in the usual way; so I don’t think it counts as a boiled pudding or christmas plum cake.
We don’t have sewage problems right now in the house and hopefully we won’t. Last night, however, as the snow and sleet Tommie mentions above started, the town came out to open up a manhole at the foot of our street and peer into it. They did it again this morning directly in front of our house, stood in the rain and peered some more and then left. Something is plugged somewhere is my guess.
Tommie, what town do you live in? I grew up in Durham, NH and my Mom now lives in Barrington.
Nashua…
Ah, yes, Southern NH but not Seacoast. I’ve got family in Windham too.
Good luck with the bathroom but I’m afraid the carpeting is likely history.
‘Tis the season to fix plumbing/ Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-EEUGHHH!
I’ve had my share of plumbing disasters(overflowing toilets upstairs in August that leaked water on two bathrooms and two bedrooms, a repeatedly clogged sewer line that had the toilets backing up on almost a weekly basis throughout my first year here). I hope I’m done with them for a while. Hope you are, too, CJ. Like Paul said, Tommie, fans. Lotsa fans. Newspaper also helps soak up the water. I agree. The carpet is and should be history after what got into it. I suppose you could get a carpet cleaning service to clean it, but ugh — they couldn’t get it clean enough to suit this person who tends to go barefoot. . . Bleeeaaach!
Oh, I like to start my Foreigner rereads from the beginning and savor the whole sweeping saga. Total immersion, picking up all the threads, getting all the balls into the air again. I think before I start that, though, I’m going to do a reread of C.S. Harris’ Sebastian St. Cyr books. Regency murder mysteries. Yowsa! She’s got a new one coming out in March. There’s only 10 of them, 11 with the new one.
On a tangential note, have you heard from Lynn recently? She hasn’t updated her blog in a year; I know she posts rarely, but one hopes all is well with her.
We do talk to her regularly. She’s been busy with family things, but is ok and still with us in spirit.
Is it some corollary of Murphy’s Law that plumbing problems have to happen when there is horrible weather happening?
On a happier note the warm winter has meant that the well is filling now instead of spring after the ground has thawed. Small joys!
I always regard a new Foreigner book as a birthday present! It’s close enough!
As I understand it: bad weather, holiday weekends, or when you have company.
I just read an article that California has 136% of normal snowpack in the Sierras. ‘Course, they need still more and for several years, but I’m sure TPTB are happy about having this.
Being wall-to-wall, installed over concrete, and the spousal unit’s idea, the carpet will have to stay. Lots of towel dancing, exhaust fans and a dehumidifier; sprinkle with washing soda, scrub it in and vacuum it out once carpet is dry; spray with whit vinegar and let dry after that. The odor and any infectious matter should be taken care of after that, and the carpet has been very ugly for ten years now.
Is this a message from higher powers that life is about dealing with sh… uh, manure?
My entirely-too-tart reply to the spousal unit’s insistence on W2W in the bathroom would be “Fine! I’ll let you clean it the next time the potty explodes, then!” How might he feel about replacing the carpet with linoleum or vinyl tile, and using throw rugs on the spots he doesn’t want to feel tile underfoot? The rugs can at least be laundered.
I was always intrigued by the “radiant heating” I’d see on “This Old House”, at least for the bathroom floors. The only thing it would need would be a separate boiler to heat the water to run through the tubing. My underlayment in the basement is exposed, so installing it would not entail tearing up the vinyl flooring – but I don’t like that flooring…I’d rather ceramic tile, but then I would worry about it being too slippery….
You can now do spot area —rather than full floor • electric wire radiant heating laid under tile (or I presume in cement). My excapist reading magazine is Fine HomeBuilding, which had an article on the “new” product a couple years ago. While we are in the process of redoing our tiny, unheated bathroom, the one thing which doesn’t need to be replaced (and which I like) is the tile floor.
Joe, You can have ceramic tile that is neither shiny nor any more slippery than the vinyl flooring suitable for a laundry room. As I understand it even saltillo tile will work with the present generation of radiant heating, which does not require a boiler. We have a form of forced water heating with a boiler. The heated water “radiators”stand only about six inches off the floor and do an admirable job in keeping the house cozy without a humongous heating bill. If I could completely do away with the boiler by using solar water heating I’d do that in a heartbeat though.
During The Great Reno I got my old bathroom vinyl tile replaced with electric radiant heated floor (a nuheat mat is the actual product) and ceramic tile. The bathroom is in the centre of the apartment and was previously unheated, except by a lot of lightbulbs around the mirror. I never had real tile because I thought it would be cold. Electric radiant heat needs no tubing or boilers and is as toasty on the toes as it needs to be. I have been quite happy with it.
After 10 years of use in a bathroom, I maybe that carpet would be due for replacement soon anyway, especially if it’s been ugly from the start!
My parents have wall to wall carpet in their bathroom too. As the bathroom is such a small room, they got one bedroom sized remainder, and cut it in two, which meant that for the price of one bargain remainder bit of carpet they got two carpets for the bathroom: one bit was used for about 10 years till it got too dirty and worn, then they threw that one out and replaced it with the other half, which had been kept rolled up in the attic. At that point they added washable small rugs in front of the bath and the toilet, so this next bit would keep clean easier and last longer. Done that way it needn’t be too costly, and with the washable area rugs it’s not too bad to keep clean, if your spouse really hates the idea of the vinyl flooring. Area rugs on carpet don’t tend to slip either, which gives less chance of slipping than with a rug on a smooth floor.
Twenty years; it’s only been ugly for ten.
Toilet snakes are wonderful! I had a few days of clog ages ago and tried assorted ideas before buying one. A regular snake did not work. Later my plumber called it something akin to a toy snake. Never had a toliet overflow.
O x I clean is wonderful. Is a carpet remnant replacement an option? I remember taking some sort of flooring up and used it as a template for a vinyl remnant over 20 years ago.
Spellchecker is a pain!
Are they now? Guess it depends on one’s sense of wonderment.
http://www.kbear.fm/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/toilet-snake.jpg
Sorry, knew it happens rather often and couldn’t resist. 😉
Looks like a nice sized copperhead? Down home, we get water moccasins. It pays to look before you sit!
Reticulated Python, I think.
“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”
http://www.homedepot.com/p/TrafficMASTER-Ceramica-12-in-x-24-in-Coastal-Grey-Resilient-Vinyl-Tile-Flooring-30-sq-ft-case-24716C/202191244
THis stuff goes on very easily, ‘floats’, meaning no cement, just quarter round on the edges. And cuts with scissors. Comes with tape stripping that fastens piece to piece. And resists water. That’s what we did. It would withstand a flood and clean pretty thoroughly.
I see that it comes in a variety of colors, too. I’l be giving that a good think!
CJ – if you have friends with floor furnaces down in our neck of the woods in Oklahoma we now have the name of about the only repairman that handles floor furnaces. He believes he’s the only one left in the area, lives in Sapulpa, and used to work for Zink making the damn things. My mother-in-laws house’s furnaces quit and we needed at least one of them working. We froze our fannies off while he worked on the things.