The Farm by Joanne Ramos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This novel proved deeper and more substantive and realistic than I anticipated — and that was a good thing. Read “The Farm” if you’re up for a zinger of a critical commentary on capitalism entitlement, racism, bias, motherhood, and more.
The premise: Jane is a Filipino with an infant scraping by out of an over-housed Queens dorm, nannying to an uber-rich family when things go south and she needs work. Her connected auntie, Ate, connects Jane with a compelling opportunity: pass several rounds of tests and screenings to be a surrogate to the ultra-rich. The downside: Jane will have to leave her infant with Ate during the 10 months away. The upside: It’s just 10 months at a posh pastoral retreat where she’ll live with other sheltered surrogates who spend their days doing yoga, eating healthy foods, taking forest strolls… What’s not to love?
Plenty, as you can imagine. On reading the preview, I imagined this book could be dystopian, or a creepy thriller. It’s neither. Rather, it imagines an enhanced version of the surrogacy world that’s taken a turn for the worse, where women’s bodies are commoditized based on race and education, where personal liberties are sacrificed and purchased by wealthy clients.
An interesting book – full of humor, but not always funny; very serious, but satirical, and not completely literary.
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Recipe: Bacon Onion Rings!
Our family’s Zoom-based cooking competition’s featured ingredient this week: sweet onions! My dad is something of an onion freak (understatement) and selected the ingredient. I LOVE onions. I put them in all kinds of things — sweet, yellow, white, raw, cooked, sautéed, caramelized, you name it. With the challenge being to cook a sweet onion dish, I pondered, Googled, and landed on this: bacon onion rings!
These are literally doubled up concentric rings of onion wrapped tightly with thick-cut slabs of bacon. Tossed with brown sugar and a few seasonings, secured with toothpicks to ensure prettiness and served plain or with any assortment of dips, you will LOVE these. The onion turns out juicy, the bacon is sweet and chewy, and your house will smell DIVINE.
My partner is used to yummy food but even he was impressed. After trying it, he said, “This food may end up being how I die.” So there!
Also, I did try making these on a rack, versus right on the pan. Nope. Not as good. You want to do these right on the pan. It will help with them getting that syrupy sweet build-up and glistening caramelization. Yum!
The family put forth some truly impressive sweet onion dishes but this won the day — because, bacon.
Bacon-Wrapped Onion Rings
Ingredients:
- About 8 pieces of thick-cut bacon1 large Walla Walla sweet onion (WW is preferred, though other sweet onions will work)
- About a half-cup of brown sugar
- Onion powder
- Garlic powder
- Black or cayenne pepper
- Salt*
Makes about 5-6 onion rings
Directions:
- Bring bacon out of fridge about a half hour before cooking so it is more pliable.
- Line a large baking sheet with foil, spray with cooking oil.
- Slice the bulb and root ends off the onion, then turn it on its side and slice into 1/2 inch thick rings.
- For your onion ring, use two concentric rings — just one on its own won’t hold up to the long cooking time. I liked the medium-sized rings the best. The smallest are too small to thread the bacon around, and the largest will definitely use two pieces of bacon, so this is a data- and calorie-driven decision!
- Holding the two rings together, begin wrapping one piece of bacon around the ring. Stretch and pull as you go to maximize bacon use. You may need an additional 1/2 or a full piece of bacon to complete this.
- Use a long double-pointed toothpick to secure the bacon in place. This isn’t totally necessary but it will help your bacon maintain its prettiness.
- Once you’ve wrapped your rings…
- Scoop your brown sugar into a shallow dish or pie pan; sprinkle with the onion and garlic powder, pepper and salt, and mixed up with a fork.
- One at a time, press your rings into the brown sugar mix, both sides. Use your fingertips to rub the mixture around the surfaces of your rings.
- Put the rings on your baking sheet, place in oven, and set oven to 350 degress.
- Note: you do NOT preheat the oven. Letting the food come to heat with the oven helps the bacon warm and maintain its shape and meld together.
- After 30 minutes, remove pan and gently and carefully flip your rings.
- You may want to use two spatulas to hold them together as you flip. The toothpicks can also really help here because they won’t be hot! Another vote for toothpicks!
- After 30 more minutes, remove the rings, let them cool.
- Plate and sprinkle with minced parsley and serve!
- We like them with a yogurt-based blue cheese dip, but it would be good with Sriracha mayo, ranch, or any number of dippers!
Happy cooking!
Book review: “The Last Flight”
The Last Flight by Julie Clark
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This twisty and addictive novel follows the lives of two women who desperately want to start over — and get the chance, when upon meeting at a New York airport on the flip side of security, agree to swap boarding passes and IDs and possessions, and continue on with the other’s itinerary.
From there, the novel both backtracks and treads forward: to what led Eva to this point of wanting to vanish, and what Claire does when given the chance.
Eva, we learn, was an aspiring chemist and student who got bogged down and trapped in illegal drug production and sales.
Claire is semi-famous, the wife of a soon-to-be-senator from a Kennedy-like clan, an untouchable philanthropist and statesman who ruthlessly beats Claire around in his spare time.
The novel tells the story of Eva’s harrowing unravelling and reckoning culminating in the airport meeting with Claire; and the desperate story of Claire’s own struggle to survive as she makes sense of Eva’s world she’s stumbled into and tries to stay hidden from her husband’s powerful gaze.
Super suspenseful, great characters, strong women, captivating writing! This will be a winner with anyone who loves the unreliable narrator trope.
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Book review: “The Heir Affair”
The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This delightful, wrenching, hilarious book is literary anglophile crack, and I adored every moment I spent burning through it the past few nights.
Background: This is the sequel to “The Royal We,” a fav published several years ago that is basically a fictionalized story of Wills and Kate, i.e. the darlings of the UK royal family. Read no further if you don’t want that novel spoiled…. In “The Royal We,” the Prince of Wales is Nick, a sincere, handsome, and fun-loving young royal enrolled at Oxford, and Rebecca — or Bex — is the tomboyish and refreshingly cute American who ends up rooming with one of his toft Oxford besties. Their meet-cute moment and her proximity to his inner circle results in friendship, then romance, a proposal, and ultimately marriage. It isn’t without it’s major bumps and breakups, including an unfortunate turn when Bex makes out with Nick’s red-headed rougish younger prince brother Freddie (ahem, Harry, anyone?). The first novel ends with the pair wedded, but with much to sort through.
This sequel, several years in the waiting, opens a few months after said marriage. A devious journalist friend has spitefully published amplified details of the alleged fling between Bex and Freddie, the nation is in a tizzy, and Bex and Nick and trying to figure out how to sort through it. This is the launch pad for a novel that covers the first few years of this duo’s marriage that is realistic in its ups and downs and challenges, and is all the more colorful for his romantic royal British backdrop and a chaotic crew of beloved secondary characters who keep the pages a’turning. Is Bex’ basically innocent fling with Freddie really in the past? What power plays will brittle Queen Eleanor pull next? Just what secrets was Eleanor’s now-deceased royal sister Princess Georgianna keeping in her Kensington apartments? What will villainous journalist Clive pull next? And don’t count out fun storylines from Bex’ spirited twin sister Lacey, and other favs like Lady Bollocks, baker Gaz and his lovely wife Cilla.
I loved this sequel! Hope fans of “The Royal We” enjoy it as much as I did, and I hope we haven’t seen the last of Bex and Nick.
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Book review: “The Vanishing Half”
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Brit Bennett’s second and newest novel is a stunning story — beautifully written, at turns tragic and frustrating, mesmerizing from beginning to end as it deals deftly with issues of race, bigotry, identity, loyalty and betrayal.
Desiree and Stella are twins growing up in an unincorporated Louisiana community known for an oddity: unilaterally, it’s black residents are all of a lighter black skin-tone. At a young age, after the girls have witnessed the brutal slaying of their father by a white mob, it’s the quieter, stoic Stella who realizes she could pass as white. It’s the one thing she never says aloud to her sister, her twin, as they share all their secrets and truths. At age 16, they run away together to New Orleans, and it’s from there that their lives take two very different paths: Stella disappears, leaving only a note, and goes on to live her life as a white woman; Desiree ultimately falls in love and has a daughter but, fleeing the abusive marriage, returns to their hometown.
This is where the story really begins: how did these choices made as young women impact not only their own lives, but the lives of others? What tragedies and traumas of their own pasts fuel their futures? The book spans decades and has some incredibly drawn characters; one standout is Reese, a black transexual who shares the themes of running away from home and cutting off family ties to start anew, but is different in his forthright embracing of his true self. It stands in stark contrast to Stella, whom the reader will see lives in constant paranoia at her unimaginably large lie being revealed.
My favorite book of 2020 so far.
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Recipe: Taco Time!
Who doesn’t love tacos? This versatile dish can be served morning to midnight, hard or soft, with proteins ranging from fish to chicken to beef, with fillings that will help clean out a fridge. What’s not to love?
This particular recipe is flavorful, elegant, and simple. You’ll enjoy bright darts of lime, bold undercurrents of savory heat, and that rich dark chicken meat that adds a luscious layer of taste. You could top it with sour cream, hot sauces, cabbage slaw, raw onion, black olives, Mexican white cheese or cheddar, avocado — it’s one of those great recipes to throw down when you’re about to do a grocery run and need to make space. Here’s how we did it:
Ingredients:
- 1.5 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 3 tablespoons honey
- Chipotle peppers in adobe sauce (canned)
- A teaspoon of garlic powder
- A half teaspoon of cumin
- Salt
- A lime
- A can of black beans, drained and rinsed
- And for the pickled red onions: 1 red onion, 1.5 cups of cider vinegar, a few spoonfuls of sugar and a dash of salt
Materials needed:
- An Instant Pot
- A big mason jar (for pickling the onions)
- A small saucepan (for boiling the stuff to make the pickled onions)
Directions for pickling onions:
So easy! We hear “pickling” and we imagine Ma Ingalls spending hours on the prairie. Lies! Here’s how easy it is:
- Slice 1/2-1 red onion thinly, put in heat-safe container
- Bring 1.5 cups apple cider vinegar to a boil
- Add the sugar and dash of salt to vinegar and whisk to blend
- Pour over onions
- And done!
You can serve immediately or keep in the fridge in a well-sealed container for a couple weeks. Happy pickling!
Taco recipe:
- In Instant Pot, combine broth, honey, chopped up chipotles* and some adobe juice, and spices.
- About the chipotle: it’s hard to say how many to use, because heat tolerance and pepper levels vary. I pulled out one full pepper plus a bunch of bits and pieces and finely diced them and it was tasty!
- Add chicken thighs. Turn over a couple times to coat.
- Seal pot; set on high pressure for 13 minutes. Let natural release for 5, then release pressure.
- Remove chicken and use forks to shred it apart. It will be SO TENDER — thank you Instant Pot! This shouldn’t be hard at all.
- Meanwhile, put your IP on the sauté setting and let the mixture cook down.
- Return chicken to pot; add black beans and squeeze half your lime in, add a dash of salt. After it cooks for a minute, taste; you may want to add more lime or salt. Let simmer a minute or two more until beans are heated through and softened.
And that’s it! Serve with warm tortillas (for a bonus, see my previous blog entry on making tortillas from scratch – so worth it!). Toppings include your amazing pickled onions, a cabbage slaw, rough-chopped fresh cilantro, sour cream avocado or guacamole, and more!
PRO TIP on guacamole, especially for my fellow Alaskans; getting great avocados up here can be such a chore. Buy the individual Costco hummus servings and freeze them — either the smashed avocado or guacamole. Take them out of the freezer the night before, and they’ll be ready to go! Calorie-controlled, and guaranteed quality.
Book review: “The Heart of Betrayal”
The Heart of Betrayal by Mary E. Pearson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Mary E. Pearson is so efficient with these novels; they are by no means short and yet she gets literary and narrative work done at every turn, developing characters, describing landscapes, and painting an incredibly vibrant, violent, and volatile world. In this second chapter, tough heroine Lia is captive in Venda, scraping at every turn for survival, even as multiple forces tug and push around her.
I am always spare of my reviews in sequels and trilogies so not to spoil surprising details; I will say this is a fully satisfying bridge novel in a three-parter. In book 1, Lia — the “First Daughter” of her kingdom, fled with her BFF and attendant Pauline to a picturesque harbor town where she met two men, Kaden and Rafe. Turns out they were both looking for her too. One was her would-be and now-abandoned husband, the other an assassin assigned to take her out for the good of a third, more barbarous land.
In this novel, Lia finds herself in said barbarous land, captive, grasping for a foothold, power, and survival, all while balancing the interests of three dynamic and potentially dangerous men, and struggling to understand a deeper undercurrent of magical foresight and knowledge rooted in an almost-banished mythology of their world. We learn new things, the characters develop, there are shocking surprises and satisfying moments, and I am super excited to read book 3!
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Book review: “The Kiss of Deception”
The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book had a slightly slow start, but it was a barreling downhill ride from there, and it’s always so great to discover an already-published trilogy, versus having to wait for the next books to come. I definitely will be starting book 2 tomorrow!
The premise: Lia is a First Daughter and princess of her realm, but on her wedding day to a mysterious prince she’s never met, she flees with her bestie Pauline for a faraway seaside port town, where they take up the lifestyle of industrious barmaids.
Two men track her and arrive simultaneously: the prince she was supposed to marry, who isn’t sure exactly why he’s tailing her, except that he’s spurned by her abandonment; and an assassin, charged with murdering her.
What ensues? Secrets, lies, love triangles, stand-offs, magic, mythology, and a berry picking adventure! In all sincerity, it’s great. A fast and imaginative fantasy tale with great characters and an incredible central heroine who is, at different turns, vulnerable, spiky, strong, flawed, and lovely.
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Book review: “The Worst Best Man”
The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The premise: driven wedding planner Lina has mostly recovered from being left at the alter three years earlier by her then-boyfriend Andrew, the news delivered to her the morning of the would-be wedding by Andrew’s brother Max. Now Lina learns she is a finalist for a coveted job as wedding coordinator for an elite property management company — she has five weeks to work with a PR professional on the right pitch, and sell her socks off in hope of scoring the job. The catch? When the hotelier CEO takes her to meet said PR men, she finds herself face to face with Andrew and Max. Lina panics and feigns not knowing them, the men play along, and this set up lays the foundation for a quick literary rom com where Lina must pair up with Max, whom she’s blamed all this time for Andrew’s change of heart years earlier. You can probably guess where this is going — two good-looking, passionate people, working under high stress, in close quarters… what could go wrong? Or… right? This was an enjoyable book though admittedly I wished I was reading it by a pool or on a beach, as it has that kind of fun and playful vibe. I really liked the character of Lina, who is strong, motivated, and very likable. I rooted for her happiness for sure.
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Book review: “The Wives”
The Wives by Tarryn Fisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Thursday is married to Seth, and so are two other women. One, “Tuesday,” is the first wife, and then, after “Thursday,” there’s “Monday.” The wives have never and will never meet: that’s Seth’s condition, and they all accept it, because he’s apparently so handsome, dazzling, and amazing that they’re all willing to give up two-thirds of a life with him for that precious third. But Thursday is struggling with jealousy; she constantly thinks about the other women, playing the role of subservient, sexy, abiding, and only mildly curious, but in reality, desperate to know more. So when Seth slips up and leaves a folded receipt in his pocket with the name and an address of a woman, Thursday embarks on her own secret mission to find out more.
A twisty, slinky novel, I devoured it in two days and might have pulled an all-nighter to finish it in one if not for it being on weeknights. Highly recommend!
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