Bookworm Wednesday

I almost forgot that today was Wednesday, but with a few hours left I am here to get my bookworm on.

This week's review is actually a trilogy which includes

The Forest of hands and teeth

The Dead-Tossed Waves

and

The Dark and Hollow Places

by Carrie Ryan

While the books are meant as a trilogy they don't actually have the same main character, though they are interconnected.  The first book is The forrest of hands and teeth.  In an undefined future after some sort of zombie apocalypse, Mary lives in a tiny village that is hyper religious and surrounded by a fence that keeps them "safe" from zombies.  Mary's mother was from "outside" and she always told her daughter of the sea.  When a zombie attack goes terribly wrong the village ends up in a lot of trouble and Mary and a few of her friends flee into the forest in hopes of finding safety.

The next book, The Dead-Tossed Waves, moves many years further into the future and stars Gabry, who lives in a well protected city by the sea.  In a moment of teenage weakness, she follows some friends and her crush over the wall into a zombie infested park and of course terror ensues.  While Gabry escapes her friends find trouble with the town's officials and are banished to military duties outside the town.  Gabry decides to search for her crush and spends time travel back towards the village from the first book and then in search of the Dark city, which offers possible 'safety'.

The last book, The Dark and Hollow Places, takes place in the Dark city, and stars Annah.  Annah is alone, her brother having left with the military and she fights to survive.  In the third book characters from the other books begin to meet and storylines conclude, well as much as anything can conclude in such a world.

My personal opinion is that the first two books are amazing.  By far the The Forest of Hands and Teeth is my favourite. Mary has such a longing, that Ryan writes in such a striking manner that you really feel her urge to seek out something, anything that has meaning, even in the face of overwhelming odds her spirit carries her forward.  The Dead-Tossed waves has a completely different feel, where Mary was adventurous, Gabry is cautious.  Gabry has no wants, no desires outside the safe life she has always known.  Her fear is palpable but she is no less brave than Mary.  As for Annah in The Dark and Hollow places, which was my least favourite of the series, she is strength personified.  Her hopes and fears take a back seat to the simple act of surviving and when she discovers things outside of survival it is both sweet and fragile.  

Small complaints, yes this is written for teens, but the love triangles are slightly forced and sometimes take away from the movement of the story and also seem a little cheesy.  

I love me some zombies.  and Ryan doesn't try to event the wheel here, her zombies are traditional and scary, and secondary to her characters who are the main focus.  They are scary and satisfying but should not deter those who are not horror fans from picking up these books.  While the last book doesn't have the same emotional impact as the first two.  All in all I highly recommend the series.

Day 30

And so we have arrived.  Day 30 of the 30 day vegan challenge.  It some ways I feel like it has gone by super quick and in other ways I feel like it has been forever. 

For breakfast today I ate an apple.  I ate an apple because it snowed last night and that meant I had to rush around to clear the car off and I didn't have time to make anything else for breakfast.

For lunch I had an Amy's burrito and some cabbage salad.

For dinner I decided that I needed to end with a grand finale.  While at work I decided I would make the acorn squash empanadas.  Upon my arrival home I realized that I didn't have any cornmeal.  This didn't prove too much of a problem, I just made a regular kind of dough.  Being the lazy kind of cooker I am, I also didn't bother getting out the recipe and just threw a bunch of stuff in the frying pan.  Acorn squash (I baked ahead of time) onions, zucchini, mushrooms, yellow peppers and some garlic.

I decided not to make individual empanadas and went with this cool braided loaf that I saw on pinterest (my new obsession)  Now the person who posted it used it to make a pizza but I thought it would work just as well for this so I rolled out the dough and cut the sides into strips

I filled the middle part with my frying pan concoction and then folded the strips over

Finished braiding and then rubbed the top with a little oil and garlic

Now the smarter thing would have been to roll the dough out and then put in ON the cookie sheet, fill and braid.  I however did not think of this and had to move this lovely loaf over to a cookie sheet.  I managed with it only falling slightly apart.  I then baked it at 350 until it was baked,  I believe this was probably like 30 to 40 minutes.  I made some cucumber and yellow pepper salad with pesto dressing.  and voila dinner!

Conclusion.  Good.  It was kind of like a meatless meat pie.  This however is far too much.  I think I ate half.  The salad was yummy as well.  Len liked it as well, though he doused his with ketchup.

Day 28 & 29

Hello everyone, I am sure you missed me very much yesterday.  I was away on a work related course, but also I had the great pleasure of staying with my friends Peter and Aaron and their super adorable puggle Elton.  So here is a quick recap of the last two vegan days.

Monday breakfast I had an english muffin with peanut butter and bananas
Lunch I had vegetable soup and leftover stir fry in a wrap. 
Dinner.  Well I didn't exactly eat dinner, I left after work to drive to Toronto, in Orangeville I realized I was too hungry, so I ate a small french fry from McDonalds (tasty but hardly healthy). 
My GPS stopped working, I took the wrong exit, I had a weird detour, and when I arrived on Peter's street I found out the number in my cell phone was outdated.  luckily Peter's mother's phone number has been the same forever, and after a quick call back home, I got a hold of Peter and all was good. 
I then ate some chips and salsa, watched some Gigolos and went to sleep.

Tuesday morning Peter and I headed out to the Eaton centre and there, at their very fancy food court we had some crepes at Crepes Delicious. 

This was my breakfast.  It is called the black and white, and it is a crepe filled with bananas and hazelnut spread.  The restaurant didn't lie, this crepe WAS delicious, though I totally could not finish it.

Here is Peter about to dig in to his tutti frutti, which was bananas, strawberries and hazelnut spread.

Then we got our shop on, and within ten minutes I found exactly what I was looking for. 
Kill some more time

Then ate lunch at Extreme Pita

Veggie pita... tasty but hardly extreme. 

I ate dinner at C5 which is the restaurant at the ROM.  This is a very fancy restaurant with an amazing view of the city.  It was however very meaty.  The hors d'oeurves were meat sticks and fois gras (so gross) but also sunchokes, which though I am slightly unsure what they are, were super tasty.  Then we had a small salad, with apples and bitter greens (ok) Then I got risotto, since everyone else was having lamb and beef.  The risotto was fine but kind of boring.  Lastly and probably the saddest was dessert, I got sherbert balls.  These were super gross, they tasted fermented or something.  He told me they were apple and pear, though one was green and one was brown, and both were gross.  Everyone else had lovely Chocolate mouse cake with caramelized white chocolate (I don't know what that is but I am pretty sure I want it in my mouth).  Despite its appealing nature, I stuck with it and didn't cave, even thought the vegan dessert was gross.

Now I didn't feel comfortable whipping out my camera at this really fancy restaurant so I don't have any pictures to share.

Christmas cheer

I love Christmas.  There is something about how festive it is that just makes me so very happy.  I love the decorations, the songs, and even the hustle of a over crowded mall.  I love the snow (though we don't have snow right now)  I love getting together with family and friends, I love the food, and the traditions.  It is cliche to say it is my favourite time of the year, but it is also true.  (Though I have to say that Canada day is a very close second)

Tonight I decided to decorate the tree, well one of the trees, since this year we have decided to have two, since I mostly live downstairs and previously the tree has always been upstairs I wanted two so I could enjoy it more.  So since there was going to be two trees and I didn't want to just split the decorations, but I didn't want to spend a lot on new stuff either, so I made some decorations and raided the dollar store.  We have gone with a blue and silver theme, and I got a pretty star for the top, I always thought stars made more sense then angels. 

It does not seem to matter how nicely you put Christmas lights away they always seem to come out of the box a tangled mess.  I had bought new LED fancy ball lights, that didn't work, so I returned them and bought myself a cute sweater.  Good for me, bad for the tree.  However we got enough blue ones working to make a sparkling tree.  I will attack the upstair's tree sometime soon and eagerly await everything that this season has to bring.

Day 27

This morning I had the great pleasure of sleeping in, and by sleeping in I mean really sleeping in, it was almost 11 when I finally rolled out of bed.  Thanks Len for taking the dog out so he wouldn't bother me. 

So for breakfast I finished off the Sunrise cereal. 

Lunch, well I sort of snacked as the day went by.  grapes here, nuts and dates there, and some chips with this really great garlic dip we bought at pumpkinfest in Port Elgin.  (the dip is from cinnamon hill farms) 

Dinner, I made an Amy's burrito, normally I buy the black beans and cheese, but since cheese was out I bought the vegan rice and beans version.  Then I cooked up some more beans (well I needed to finish them from the other day) and then made a little veggie stir fry, and voila dinner !

Conclusion. Yummy.  Though I would have to have to say I prefer the burrito with cheese, it has a better texture, this burrito was quite tasty.  Now Len had a slightly different version of burrito and his was a little spicy, though he likes spice so it was a good thing he got that one.  Veggies and beans were also yummy.

For dessert I made some banana ice cream and cut a very slim slice of the 'cheesecake'

Conclusion.  Yummy, Having a very small piece was a much better idea and the ice cream was a very good addition.  The banana flavour went really well with the peanut butter chocolate. 

Day 26

Good morning.

Wonderful Saturday morning meant I got to sleep in.  Then in an odd series of events, I went out to run errands and didn't eat any breakfast.  So when I came home I had some waffles, mostly because I stopped by the farmer's market and picked up some maple syrup, so I felt the need to use it.

Lunch was more like a snack cause I had breakfast so late, I ate bunch of grapes.

For dinner, my friend Cathy came to visit and so we went out to Kelsey's.  I had their seven vegetable fettucini with pesto and a house salad.  I am going to say that it was good but not great.  I liked that the broccoli was cooked properly and not mushy, but there was a lot of onions, and not too much sauce.  Cathy totally ate cheesy dip and cheesy bacon covered pasta, poor little piggies. 

For dessert we came home to have my homemade Chocolate peanut butter 'cheesecake'.  I made a graham cracker/oreo crumb pie crust, and filled it with Toffutti cream cheese, peanut butter and chocolate chips.  Baked for forty minutes.  and voila dessert

Conclusion.  way too crazy sweet!  It was like a seven layer sugar mess.  The cake itself tasted like cookie dough, which is good, but pretty much only for bite, after that you begin to worry about cavities and diabetes.  Cathy and I managed almost half our pieces, Len ate all of his, but I am pretty sure he would eat a sugar cube. 

Cathy and Len 'enjoying' a little sugar rush, at least we won't have to worry that Cathy will fall asleep on her ride home.  Notice that heavenly aura around Len's cake.

Day 25

Ran out of the house this morning with no time to make breakfast so I grabbed an apple.  better than nothing I guess.

Lunch I had baked beans, and a toasted tomato sandwich.

Dinner, after 25 days of making our vegan dinners tonight I am tired have a headache and still this stupid little cough.  So Len is making me dinner which is sweet.  He is making some Tofurky pizza, which I haven't had yet but my conclusion prediction is tasty.