Food processor!

The day has come. After many months of coveting and pining and then considering and researching, I am now the proud owner of a food processor.

The first recipe I made with it was "Yeasted Coffee Cake" from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It was kind of a bread/cake hybrid, which required cutting butter into flour - something that I hate doing by hand.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished article. It turned out looking nice, with a streusel topping, but I actually didn't like the end result that much. I think I wanted it to be more cakey than bready, especially with that kind of topping - but I think that's just how the recipe is.

I do have a picture of the quiche - which you've all already seen. I made the crust for that using the food processor. And that turned out really nicely. I've also made pesto, an apple pie, pizza dough and bagels all using the processor.

Next up will be some kind of recipe that requires a lot of slicing - I haven't used the discs yet. But I do love it - it's great!

My first quiche.

Bacon, onion and mushroom.

Pancakes!

When Team Vallentine decided to celebrate Pancake Day, we immediately had an issue about whose pancakes we would make. In the UK, traditional Shrove Tuesday pancakes are basically like crepes, and are only served with sugar and lemon. I, on the other hand was hoping to use this opportunity for a full breakfast for dinner.

We debated.

Then the true American spirit won out.

We'd have both.

Mark made his (a Delia Smith recipe - I guess you could call her the UK's Julia Child) and I made mine (Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything), and I of course included bacon and scrambled eggs on the side. We were a true International House of Pancakes.

It was yummy! I don't know why we were so late to this party, but now we've arrived, I think we're going to stick around... I'm already looking forward to next year!

(Third to blog! Phew.)

(P.S. I posted this from my phone, since that's what I used to take most of the pictures - but for some reason I can't change the order, even from my laptop, so they're not in the best order. Need to work on how to do this better from the phone...)

Is that Spring I see?

I looked out today to find that although there is no hint of Spring anywhere, some crocuses that I planted last autumn have decided it's time to make an appearance.

A couple of other bulbs are also starting to poke their heads out. I can't remember what I planted where so it will be a nice surprise to see what comes up!

Christmas 2010.

I now feel the full force of familial blog-guilt, since Julie and Jenny seem to have both posted about Christmas within the last 30 minutes. Even Muffin Monster is posting at a far more rapid rate than I ever have done.

So here are just a handful of Christmas shots from Team Vallentine, to ward off the nagging and niggling...

It was, in fact, a white Christmas:

One of our two Christmas trees, finally with popcorn strings:

Here I am demonstrating how the socks I had just received perfectly matched one of the layers I was wearing:

Mark:

Monsternapped!

I was hoping my next blog post was going to be catching up with photographs but something terrible has happened. Muffin Monster, everyone's favorite LBM, has been monsternapped!

We last saw him this morning, not long after his latest blog post. He went out to try out his new woolly santa hat in the snow and to get a newspaper. He never came back. A couple of hours later, we received this picture:

At first we thought he might have stopped by a friend's winter fire to warm up, but soon after we received this threatening message:

"Your little monster's getting hot."

No other messages or ransom demands, but we await instructions from the monsternappers. In the meantime hope that somehow, MM is able to send us a message.

Well, that's another year gone, then.

So, yesterday, the winner of the Man Booker prize 2010 was announced.

Meh.

This year, at least I don't disagree strongly. I'm mostly just satisfied that C didn't win, despite the worrying signs in the run-up to the announcement.

But on a personal front, I did end up reading all of the books on the shortlist before the announcement (finishing C two or three hours before it - having struggled with boredom to finally get to the end). Of the others on the long list, I read four out of the seven.

So, in other words, overall I read 10 out of the 13 longlisted books, in two months. Not too bad - one off of my record, of 11 out of 13 in 2007.

Looking at another person's record of their own Booker reading accomplishments, I think I probably will start compiling a single list - either here or elsewhere, just so I can remember down the line. I'd have a hard time coming up with just two words to describe my thoughts about each, though. I think the degree in literature snuffed out any ability I might have had to do that kind of thing.

And reading the Salon article about the Booker prize, in relation to the two main American literary prizes, I'm glad I "follow" the Booker. But at the same time, I think probably no one over here would agree with her feelings that the Booker rewards merit more than any other prize. It gets a lot of flack over here.

I do wonder about trying to read all of the National Book Award fiction finalists one year. Or maybe I should do something different from the Booker and read all the nonfiction finalists. Except those tend to be loooooong - so not sure I could do that many pages in a month.

Hmm.

Maybe next year.