Reading and Eating
Hello and welcome to Wednesday’s Reads and Eats! I had some good ones this week. Let’s start with this book… I REALLY enjoyed it. As a matter of fact I enjoyed it so much I stayed up way past my bedtime reading it (come on! If you’re at the last 50 pages of a murder mystery, you can’t put it down.) This is the same guy who wrote Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone, which I also enjoyed- but I liked this one more. It’s a murder mystery set ON A TRAIN! What’s not to love? Just like the last one, the plot got a little convoluted- but it all made sense, and followed the “fair play” rules of the classic whodunit. Since I’m making “Reading and Eating” a weekly feature, and I don’t usually get through more than one book a week, I’ve decided to include any blog posts or articles I especially enjoyed. I always like Marc and Angel, but somehow this article, “10 Daily Habits that Often Waste 90 Percent of our Time” particularly hit home. So many quotes seemed like they were speaking directly to me: Patience is not about waiting, it’s the ability to maintain a positive outlook while working hard for what you believe in. Effort is never wasted, even when it leads to disappointing results. (Wait! Were Marc and Angel at my race last month? Have they been spying on me???) The “10 Daily Habits” to avoid include: Change Nothing and Expect Different Results, Keep Waiting for the Right Time (“we forget that paths were made by walking, not waiting”) and Refuse to Accept Necessary Risks. This article is definitely worth a read. Okay, FOOD! Well, it was a lackluster week of eating. EXCEPT FOR SUNDAY! To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day I made Irish Soda Bread and Vegan Irish Stew, both from Nora Cooks. You know how bread is so addictive, and once you start eating it, it’s hard to stop? Well, I’m convinced that if the only bread in the entire world were Irish Soda Bread, we wouldn’t have that problem. I always want to make it on St. Patrick’s Day, and then I remember that we don’t really like it. You wouldn’t want to eat it plain, that’s for sure. It was a good tool for sopping up the stew though: Especially since I messed up the recipe. At the end you’re supposed to add a slurry of cornstarch and water- well yes, that would have been good! Except that I forgot to do that. I was wondering why the stew was so… soupy. I also forgot to add parsley. I used seitan instead of the Gardein product that Nora recommended, and in spite of all the ways I tried to ruin it, it still tasted good. There was a bottle of Guinness in the stew, and my husband drank one for the occasion, but I skipped it because I knew I would be having a drink the next two nights (more on that coming up later this week!). I know, so boring- but I knew I wouldn’t feel good if I drank three nights in a row. Did you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? What are you reading now? Header photo by Richard Bell on Unsplash