Stairs 1, Karen 0

The other day I finished Cracks in my Foundation by Marian Keyes while at the emergency room at St Vincent's. Why the emergency room, you ask? Well, I'm not quite certain myself. One moment I was hauling my work bag, my lunch, a bag of books, and myself down the stairs, and the next, I was slowly going head over heels, and landed on my back. I still don't know what happened. Although I managed to get myself back upstairs with some assistance from the cabdriver who lives downstairs. I dumped all nonessential items, made sure I had some reading material. He then took me to the hospital.

Note: When whacked on the head, it's hard to fill out those forms at the hospital. I'll be creating a little business card thing that contains all that information I needed for that form so the next time I have it handy.

I'm very glad I grabbed the book, because the tv in the room was too loud, so I turned it off (by the way, I didn't have to wait for my room -- filled out that form and got whisked away in a wheelchair). Anyway, I'm fine. I'll probably have a headache for the next 6 weeks or so since I got hit, or hit my head on something on the way down. (It looked like someone had placed a Grade A XX large egg under the skin on my forehead.) And I have some amazing technicolor bruises. And the one shoulder that didn't hurt was given a tetanus shot, so it's sore, too.

What you don't see in the movies, though, is that when someone has a black eye in real life, it usually is accompanied by some major swelling. My eyelids are so swollen I feel like I'm squinting. And my left eye looks like someone took red and purple eyeshadow and smeared it all around. But it's difficult to see because the swollen eyelids kind of hide the bright colors.

As for the book, I enjoyed it. She had some good points about travel. The essays on shopping got a bit tiring after a while, though. And the short stories weren't as engaging as I think her books are.

The Conspiracy Club

I picked this book up (The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman) because I've enjoyed Kellerman's Alex Delaware series set in Los Angeles. For some reason, I thought that this book was also part of that series, but obviously I didn't read the back of the book very carefully.

This one is set in a decent sized city somewhere near the plains and also near a lake. It features a psychologist in a hospital who is trying to figure out who killed his girlfriend.

A decent pool-side read, or airplane book.

Hard Rain

I'm finally back into a reading groove, and am slowly but surely making my way through my latest pile of library books. The latest one is Hard Rain by Barry Eisler. It's an action/adventure/mystery/thriller set in Tokyo featuring a half Japanese/half American named John Rain.

One of the reasons I'd picked this one up was because I'd seen it on a list of books set in Japan. I haven't been to most of the places detailed in the book because I tend not to go to night clubs and what not, but I recognized the names of neighborhoods and could picture them in my mind, like Harujuku and Akihabara, or the Asakusa temple area. I always enjoy being able to picture in my mind as I'm reading the setting for a book.

I did enjoy the book -- it was a great book for a weekend read.

Reading...

I found the local Jacksonville library branch a week ago. This particular one reminds me a bit of the Riverside library branch on Magnolia Ave. It's an older style building with windows that let lots of light in. This Jax branch doesn't have tons of stuff, but there's plenty of fiction and other stuff to keep me busy for a while. Plus, I can request books from other branches and pick them up at my local library.

In the meantime, I did pick up a half dozen or so books to read. One of them was yet another Dick Francis (Whip Hand). I've read pretty much every single Dick Francis book my Mom has before I moved out to Jacksonville. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to tell by reading the back of the book or the first couple of pages whether or not I'd read this particular one before or not. Turns out I had read it, but I couldn't remember the plot at all. I think I've read so many now that they're all blending together in my memory.

Pasta Sausage Sauce...

This is what we've been calling this recipe from Simply Recipes (Fettuccini with Creamy Tomato Italian Sausage Sauce). I've made it several times now, but with whatever pasta I have on hand and with regular Italian sausage (Publix brand), no hot or spicy (the recipe calls for half regular, half spicy Italian sausage). It's been a huge hit every time, and we highly recommend it. I actually prefer mine without parmesan cheese on top (I know, something must be wrong, me not wanting cheese!), but C prefers his with parmesan.

Anyway, we highly recommend this one.

Jacksonville Jaguar

Out and about town are these jaguars, similar to the oranges of Riverside. Each is painted differently. This particular cat hangs out in Neptune Beach.

Puerto Rican Dinner

A couple of weeks ago (way back in November), along with some friends, we decided to try the Puerto Rican menu out of a recent Gourmet magazine. These are the results, and they were quite tasty. Unfortunately, my poor food photo taking skills don't show off the results to their best advantage.

First was a pineapple, mint, and rum concoction that was very, very tasty. This would go down very nicely on a lovely summer day, particularly while sitting outside on the veranda enjoying the afternoon breeze.

Then there was schrimp escabeche. I really liked this dish. The shrimp were cooked prior to mixing with the other ingredients, so it wasn't a ceviche where the fish and shellfish are cooked in an acidic liquid, but the taste was similar.

Avocado salad with a lemon dressing, with bibb and romaine lettuce. Since I'm not a big fan of avocado, I picked around it. The dressing was light and tasty.

Calabaza (baked pumpkin). This was done with butternut squash, rather than the traditional Caribbean pumpkin.

This is the rice and peas dish that I made. I started with a sofrito made of cilantro, onions, and peppers which was pureed in the blender. Then added the rice and sauteed all of that together. Then added pigeon peas. It was a bit of work, and I thought that there wasn't enough water in the recipe, but I followed the instructions exactly and the dish came out perfect.

The main course was roasted pork. Yummy. I didn't care too much for the skin, which apparently, in some places, people fight over. Maybe because it needed to go back in the oven to crisp up a bit. The piece I had was a bit chewy. But the pork was excellent. And was cooked with garlic under the skin. And the leftover pork mixed with the rice and peas was absolutely delicious. So delicious in fact, that I plan on making the rice and peas and the pork again. I'd even go so far as to say that next time with the leftovers, I might toss them in a corn or flour tortilla and eat them that way.

For dessert, there was a coconut rum cake. I'm not sure if there was coconut in the cake or just in the frosting. The cake was good. It was so good apparently, that I never even got to have any of the leftovers. Not shown in a photo is the tropical fruit that was also there. The menu called for a guanabana sherbet, but because none of us had an ice cream maker nor do the stores carry guanabana (aka soursop) sherbet, we made do with mango sherbet and vanilla ice cream. The tropical fruit was mango and papaya with pomegranate seeds sprinkled throughout.

For beverages, we had a Spanish tempranillo, a white Spanish wine, and an Argentinean malbec. Unfortunately, I have no more details of those, although I wish I did because they were very tasty and went well with the food.

For our next cooking adventure, we're heading to Vietnam. Hopefully my food photo taking skills will have improved by then so I can do the food justice.

Advertising Manager Needed...

Unfortunately this picture is a bit blurry (I was trying to take this quickly from across the street on my way to work). This is the sign outside the local gentlemen's club, and it reads: "Hot Beer, Cold Women, Home Away from Home!"

Gator Sighting

On Sunday, we saw a gator in the river. He was pretty big, and moving quite quickly upriver. Unfortunately, I didn't move fast enough to get a picture. But he was just a few feet from the side of the river, just beyond the trees.

View From a Hotel Room Window - Miami, FL - October 2007