Photo from UMPCPortal via Flickr

If you got an ereader for Christmas (or bought yourself one just because), you can’t miss Read an Ebook week. And if you don’t have an ereader, then you might be able to win one from some of the giveaways going on this week. Even if you don’t have an ereader, you can still read ebooks on your computer (or possible on your cell phone). More on that at the end of this post.

Read an Ebook Week is March 6-12 (that’s today until next Saturday) and it’s usually a good time to pick up some cheap or free ebooks. To start you off, you can find a list of links to publishers and authors who are supporting this week on the official site. There are lots of other sites participating, but that’s a good place to start.

Now if you don’t have an ereader, you can always download software to read ebooks on your desktop or laptop (this software also lets you read ebooks from most libraries):

• Stanza: For Mac and Windows, this program is usually used to transfer files to the iPod Touch/iPhone, but it can be used to read on a desktop.
• Calibre: For Mac, Windows, and Linux, this program is a more robust ebook viewer than Stanza. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard good things about it.
• Kindle (you don’t need a Kindle reader to read Kindle books!): If you find a Kindle book that you like, but don’t have the Kindle reader, you can download Kindle for Windows or Kindle for Mac to read on your desktop.
• Adobe Reader and Adobe Digital Editions: Most people are familiar with Adobe Reader (although if you’re on a Mac you probable prefer Preview). PDF format ebooks with Digital Rights Management restrictions usually require downloading Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) in order to read them.

So there you go: a week of free ebooks for anyone who wants them whether you have an ereader or not. Remember to return to sites daily because the freebies may change from day to day or only be available for a limited time or limited number of downloads.

Enjoy.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, (a) I don’t want to start another blog, yet, for my beading, and (b) I’ll be reviewing beading books in the near future, which involves actual doing in order to evaluate the books (much like cookbooks). So I thought I might as well post my projects. Also: because.

My format is 3″ x 3″ because I didn’t want anything too big to be discouraging or really time consuming. After digging through my supplies from the last time I was beading, I settled on an Arctic scene with a polar bear (he’s made out of hematite, which is a black stone, but I’m still calling him a polar bear) and Aurora Borealis.

It turned out okay. There are bits I’m not happy with, but that’s normal. I only knew one stitch when I did this–and at some points I was doing it wrong–so it’s not very fancy in terms of texture. I’ve since come across some new stitches in a book I’ll review soon that would work better for the Aurora Borealis part. The “moon” is a pearlized button that was kicking around my craft box and the pine trees are pale blue sequins (though it’s hard to tell that from the picture).

Anyone else learning a new skill from books this year?

The recipes came from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health and The Moosewood Cookbook (1992 edition–I’ll address the one-star reviews for the 2000 version on Amazon further down).

Mashed Cauliflower

Cauliflower is still on sale, so when I came across this recipe I figured why not. It’s out of The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health: More Than 200 New Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Delicious and Nutrient-Rich Dishes, which is also where I got the recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash, as well as Quinoa and Roasted Sweet Potato, and Tunisian Chickpea Stew. Oh yes, the forgettable Baked Fruit was from this cookbook too. Also, Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables.

Aaaaanyway.

This cauliflower recipe is supposed to have fewer carbs than mashed potatoes. It certainly doesn’t taste like mashed potatoes, but it’s easy enough to make (overcook cauliflower and mash with sauteed onions, more or less) and tasty enough to repeat.

Roasted Butternut Squash

I had to find something to do with butternut squash left over from the soup I made (I know if I stick it in the fridge I will inevitably forget about it until it goes bad). This recipe is actually part of a larger recipe for making a roasted vegetable salad, I think. This is quick and easy and the squash comes out firm rather than mushy (I hate mushy squash).

Basically, chop up a butternut squash into 1″ chunks, add a few teaspoons of olive oil and a 1/4 teaspoon of dried thyme. Mix it up, put it in a pan in a single layer and cook at 400F for 20-25 minutes.

This recipe is my default for butternut squash. Easy and tasty enough to remake. Also, it’s likely to go with whatever else we have kicking around for dinner.

Quinoa and Roasted Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes were on sale and just about anything you make with them turns out yummy. Usually I just stick them whole in the oven for about 40 minutes at 400F and then let them cool a bit before peeling off the skin (leftovers are good on pizza). I’ve done that a lot lately though, so I was looking for something else to do with them.

I found this recipe kind of bland (although, now that I haul out my cookbook, I see that I marked it as ‘good’ when I made it). It wasn’t bad, but it certainly didn’t attain the requisite “Yum, I have to make this again!” level of enjoyment. Cooking is enough work that if I’m going to bother to follow a recipe, the results better routinely hit “Yum–must make again.” I don’t need a cookbook to achieve “Meh, it’ll do.” I can accomplish that by ad-libbing on my own, thankyouverymuch.

Part of the disappointment is that the sweet potato is steamed on the stovetop rather than roasted. Roasting brings out the sweetness of sweet potato in a way that steaming doesn’t, so that was a letdown. And the leftover spinach rotting in the fridge because I hate cooking with spinach is mocking me, daily. Eh, your mileage may vary.

Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables

I have to admit: I screwed up preparing this recipe so I can’t really honestly review it as it was supposed to be baked. I love roasted root vegetables in the winter, but usually recipes call for an oil/herb mix that you coat the veggies in and then bake. This recipe has that oil/herb mix BUT it also has a glaze that you add later in the cooking. I may or may not have added everything at once.

*cough* Oops *cough*

I wasn’t trying to modify the recipe. I was just having trouble holding the cookbook open and was going more by the ingredient list than the instructions. I have made this before, but I didn’t take any notes and I don’t remember if I screwed it up the last time too (I am nothing if not a creature of bad habits).

Obviously, it wasn’t memorable the first time I made it, so I suppose that says something.

Tunisian Chickpea Stew

I’m somewhat on the fence about this recipe. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure it’s thrilling enough to offset the amount of work it is (most of which is hacking up the squash, but with chronic pain issues in the my arms, shoulders, and upper back, that’s a consideration).

I’ve had much better stews from my vegetarian slow cooker cookbook … which I’ll not link to just yet because the Amazon reviews remind me of why I cook so rarely from that book.

Baked Fruit

This is another recipe I wasn’t thrilled with. Basically it’s sliced apples in maple syrup and lemon juice baked in the oven. It’s okay, but I can’t see making it again unless we use it as a hot topping for vanilla ice cream or lemon sorbet.

Hmm, now that I look back on it, so far this cookbook isn’t particularly great as far as keeper recipes go. I was not expecting that.

The other cookbook I cooked from was The Moosewood Cookbook. I have the 1992 edition, which was the first revision of the 1977 book. Apparently there is a 2000 version that sucks (based on the one-star reviews). Keep that in mind if you decide to buy this one. The 1992 revision is lower fat than the 1977 original–I have no idea what they did to the latest version.

Marinated Chickpeas

We usually have the same salad every night, made by the other half (that’s the extent of his “cooking”). It’s your basic tomato, lettuce, celery deal. It’s nice to have, but gets a bit bland sometime so if we have extra chickpeas hanging around we toss them on top. But even that is a bit bland.

The chickpeas in this recipe are marinated with fresh ginger, raw garlic, raw onions, and oil (there’s probably salt and pepper in there too). I really like these on salad. Actually, I really like these as a snack as well. This is definitely a recipe I’ll make again: quick, easy, tasty, and versatile (dump them on rice, salad, whatever floats your boat).

Cream of Asparagus Soup

This is actually the first recipe in the book. I’m generally not a fan of cream soups. The canned ones are vile–the less said about them the better. I took a chance though since asparagus was on sale and the recipe said low-fat milk was fine for the recipe.

The soup was actually pretty good. Cooking the asparagus was a bit finicky, but I think that’s more asparagus-related than recipe-related. It’s a bit too finicky to make regularly, but definitely a good cream of asparagus soup recipe.

In case anyone is wondering, I’ve tried a lot of recipes in this cookbook and have been happy with most of them. But I have an older version than what bookstores are selling.

If you’ve cooked these recipes or from these cookbooks, what did you think? And if anyone has the 2000 version of the Moosewood Cookbook, I’d be interested in your experiences with it. Apparently it’s different enough that they call it The New Moosewood Cookbook (whereas mine is simply a revised edition of the 1977 version).

This week I had to find a use for a cheap bag of onions, cheap cauliflower, and a dessert that was under 200 calories. The recipes I ended up trying were Roasted Caramelized Balsamic Onions, Cauliflower Steak, Pineapple Sorbet, and Lemon Sorbet. Whew! I don’t normally manage this many new recipes in a week.

I was going to try to take pictures, but I didn’t manage it this week. Maybe next week. It would be nice to have pictures in my recipe binder to remind me of what a dish looks like.

Roasted Caramelized Balsamic Onions

Bags of onions were on sale for $1 so I bought first and figured out what to do with them later. I came across a recipe for roasting onions with butter, balsamic vinegar, and thyme in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics (p. 125). Why not!

I lined the pan with parchment paper (this significantly cuts down on whining from the other half who does the dishes) before putting the onions in and covering them with the butter/vinegar/thyme mixture. The recipe called for two large onions, but I only had medium and small so I put in four of those instead.

They turned out pretty tasty and got a “You can make this anytime” from the other half.

It looks like the recipe is over on Food.com, if you’re curious.

Cauliflower Steak

This is a recipe that my Mom got from Vij’s at Home: Relax, Honey: The Warmth and Ease of Indian Cooking cookbook (you can also find the same Cauliflower steak recipe over on Straight.com). I very rarely buy cauliflower because I’m not very fond of it steamed and I really don’t have any recipes for it (well, I’m sure I have recipes, somewhere in my collection of cookbooks, but I haven’t come across any that feature cauliflower yet).

Since this recipe was passed on from my Mom who had already made it, I didn’t make any changes other than cutting the salt in half (which is a default in our family since we’re not used to a lot of salt). Basically, this is a tomato masala sauce that you cook “pie-shaped” pieces of cauliflower in for about 15 minutes.

I found it a bit oily (it calls for 1/2 cup of oil but I would halve that next time) but other than that it was nice and spicy. The other half declared it the best cauliflower he has ever had, so the recipe is definitely a keeper with less salt and less oil.

One thing that I didn’t realize until I figured out the calories per serving, is that cauliflower is very high in Vitamin C (each serving, or 1/6th of a cauliflower head, is 120% of the daily Vitamin C requirement). Huh. Who knew?

Pineapple Sorbet

We’ve been eating ice cream lately since it has been on sale, but milk products do unpleasant things to my stomach so I had the brilliant idea of making sorbet (commercial sorbet around here invariably has milk products in it so buying it is out). Since pineapples were on sale, I looked for a pineapple sorbet recipe. Conveniently enough, the instruction booklet for my KitchenAid stand mixer ice cream attachment actually has one.

Pineapple Sorbet Recipe

• 1 cup cold water
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 1/2 cups chopped pineapple
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp lime or lemon juice

1. Mix water, sugar, corn syrup and salt together in a bowl until all the sugar is dissolved.
2. Finely chop 1/2 cup of pineapple and set aside.
3. Puree five cups of pineapple and lime juice in a food processor.
4. Mix sugar mixture and pureed pineapple.
5. Freeze in ice cream maker.
6. Add chopped pineapple in last few minutes of mixing or mix in after.

Tasty. Easy to make. It calls for 1/2 cup of chopped pineapple (the rest is pureed) but I found I don’t like frozen chunks of fruit in my sorbet so I think I’ll just puree it all next time. Uses about one pineapple. Apparently the same recipe can be made with peaches so I’ll have to try that this summer if we get some good ones.

Lemon Sorbet

I found this recipe online at Cuisinart after I made the pineapple sorbet and the other half was looking a titch forlorn since he hates pineapple.

Tasty, but a little tart (I may have added too much lemon juice; I did lose count). The other half didn’t like the first spoonful (too tart), but it grew on him after a few mouthfuls and he’s now happily making his way through the container.

See you next week.

Today, he was back again and has been sitting there for hours, presumably freezing his fuzzy little butt off, conducting surveillance of the street from his little bunker (he’s pretty much invisible from the street, or even from the driveway). We’re not sure how many days he’s been hanging out, quietly keeping watch, but if he sticks around much longer I’m going to have to give him a name.

Any suggestions? I’m hoping you can help me come up with something more original than “Snowball” or “Sir Hops-a-lot.”

I know snow is part of the seasonal cycle here in Canada. And I know that living in a Prairie province that we’re going to get a fair dump of it every winter. I’m okay with that. I really am. There’s even some good uses for snow. It’s not all bad. But do you think you could give the snow to someone else? Just for a little while? It’s just that we’re running out of room to put it all:

See? After five feet it gets hard to shovel it onto the snow bank.  So a little reprieve, please?

Thanks.

P.S. Snow for sale at a very good rate. Pick up only.

Despite the cheesy name, I decided to check it out since it is now a free download (it was originally published by a major publisher over 30 years ago).

If you’re doing exactly what you want for a living and have no regrets or unfulfilled dreams, then this book is NOT for you. If you have dreams, but don’t know how to make them come true, this book IS for you. If you don’t know what your dreams are, this book IS for you.

Unlike most books of this type, this book is based on the premise that we are flawed individuals and that we don’t need to turn into perfect superbeings in order to live the life that we want (good thing too, because that’s never going to happen with me). This book is for the procrastinator, the person who starts a diet on Monday and has fallen off the wagon by Wednesday (if he or she even lasts that long).

The first part of the book is focused on discovering what your dreams are. The premise is that we are told too soon as children to be practical–stop dreaming, stop being silly, stop thinking grand thoughts. Even if we are allowed to keep dreaming, most of us are not taught how to explore our interests. That’s part two of the book: how to get from dream to reality.

Everyone should check out this book and since it’s free there’s no excuse not to.

Apparently you can download The Painted Darkness by Brian James Freeman in ebook form or stream the audiobook for free. No need to even sign up for a mailing list or give any information of any kind.

I haven’t read it yet and I don’t know if there is any kind of expiry date on the file, but it appears to be DRM-free (based on being able to open it in Preview on the Mac).

Let me know what you think if you read it.

That’s where you come in.

These are the books in my review stack and I need you to help me pick which one to review next (seriously, this blog has fallen victim to my decision paralysis so pleeeease help me out here):

I also have a couple DVD sets to review:

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Thank you, you’re awesome (but you already knew that, right?).

Those who’ve ever seen my desk will wonder at its cleanliness. The rest of you will likely wonder how I can work in that mess (which I actually tidied a little bit–you don’t want to see the uncensored version).

Go check it out and I’ll see you there.