I have been generally preoccupied and distracted the last couple of weeks and have therefore been remiss in keeping track of what has been going on.
Several books were completed and therefore moved from the "current reading" list to the "books read" list on the sidebar:
What to Eat was interesting and informative. It nicely compiled and sorted out a wealth of information that is often confusing without delving into a bunch of polemics. I found that it helped me clarify my thoughts on some things, and made me think about the way I shop and what I eat or don’t eat in a new way. In that sense the book was well worth the time spent reading it and I will save it on the shelf for reference.
I read these two books one right after the other on the exercise bicycle. They moved quickly as Stephen King is a good storyteller and even when far-fetched, his writing moves the reader right along. It is difficult not to get wrapped up the story.
That said, I liked Wolves of the Calla better than Song of Susannah, and I am wondering if the general quality of the series is slipping in these later volumes. Wolves of the Calla was interesting and entertaining but I think left too many things unexplained, I finished it thinking something was missing.
Song of Susannah was more difficult for me. It seemed increasingly far-fetched and not particularly cohesive either. Things might get better in the next book, the last in the series. I don’t have that book yet and they did not have it at my local Barnes and Noble last week. It has been added to my Amazon wishlist where it will wait until I make the next dump from wish-list to cart.
Franz Listzt and His World was removed from the current reading list and left hanging in the crowded netherworld that is my "to be read" pile on the guest bed. I started it in August in the passion of the Bard Music Festival and it has languished since. It seemed best to just admit that I am not reading it and do not feel like reading it right now, so that I could move onto something else.
Two more books were added to the reading list: 
The Tortilla Curtain will be started at the gym later today.
Defending Science has been sitting on my bedside table for quite some times now and I have been meaning to get to it but never quite managed to pick it up. I started it last night and it looks quite interesting. More to come.
I am also still working my way through The World is Flat, slowly but surely. The first time I read it I plowed through it, reading about the first 2/3 of the book in two sittings (round trip flight to California) but then it got set aside for about six months before I finished it. I never quite connected the first part of the book to the ending portions in my mind. This time I am progressing much more slowly but everything is getting tied together in my head quite well.
This past weekend also saw a return to cooking efforts, or at least culinary explorations beyond just plain sustenance cooking and eating. Pictured is a bottle of mead I purchased at my local liquor store last week. It was the only mead in stock so I am not sure how it compares to other meads. In fact it is the first bottle of mead I have ever tasted.
I bought it to make the duck breast recipe by Jean Georges Vongerichten in the November 2006 Food & Wine . Dinner turned out fabulously. I served extra frisee salad with the duck breasts on the side so it became a kind of main-course salad supper. This worked out well because we had last minute tickets up to Bard for the American Symphony Orchestra that evening and we were a little rushed.
The recipe was a little fiddly, but then considering I was cooking and then rushing up to the master bedroom between tasks at the stove to dress in my evening’s ensemble and apply makeup, between mad dashes back to the kitchen, where I would don the giant apron and gloves and tend to the duck (duck breasts can be messy), I really can’t complain. And it did turn out well despite the chaos. We were able to sit down to a lovely dinner, dressed for the evening, and sashay out to our concert on time. No time for pictures though. Even though I had to leave the kitchen clean-up until my midnight return it was worth the effort; Cinderella came back to her hearth but the evening was fabulous.
But what to do with the rest of the mead? Since the farmer’s market has been filled with cabbages and root vegetables, parsnips, big thick carrots, winter squashes and so forth, my mind has turned to winter foods. A large cabbage inspired me to make corned beef and cabbage with some thick carrots, parsnips, and baby yukon gold potatoes cooked in the broth.
I really didn’t cook the cabbage with the corned beef, and I was probably inspired more by a "New England Boiled dinner" than by the more traditional "corned beef and cabbage" friends have served me. In the past I have thrown beer into the braising liquid for the corned beef but I can’t do that now. Even though there are supposed to be some very good gluten-free beers on the market, and the nearest Whole Foods, in White Plains, supposedly carries them, they have never been in stock when I have been in the store. But I thought the mead would work well and indeed it did.
Because I knew yesterday would be a busy day with work and contractors I cooked the corned beef in the slow cooker, layering the potatoes, corned beef, and carrots in the pot and the pouring in the mead mixed with some homemade stock, mustard, brown sugar, and cloves. Then it just did it’s thing all day. I cooked the cabbage at the last minute using some of the broth from the corned beef.
A little bit of heaven.
It looks like mead will become a staple in our pantry.