Michael Symon's 5 in 5 For Every Season

Michael has done it again!  This is his second 5 in 5 cookbook.  This one is 5 in 5 for every season, stressing the importance of cooking with what is in season in your part of the country.  The book is bright and beautiful with lots of color and his smiling face on the cover!  What else does an aspiring home cook need?!
It is well arranged with an easy to see contents page showing a section for each season, and one for holidays.  That is a bonus.  It is a nice size, easy to hold in your hand to read and the print size makes it easy to work from in the kitchen when you may be glancing at the recipe from a foot or two away at the counter.
The premise here is for the home cook to be able to make a good meal with five fresh ingredients that cook in about five minutes.  I will say here, the five minute part is five minutes of heat.  You still have prep to do before cooking; but he has made that as easy as can be also.
Michael includes a pantry section which outlines the items you need to keep on stock to help facilitate the five minute cook time.  He includes all things needed with complete lists for oils and vinegars, spices and seasonings, canned, bottled and boxed and  basics.  If you stock your pantry from his list, you will be well on your way to cooking every one of the 165 recipes in this book, in five!
I made four of the recipes to preview.  I chose the Fall and Winter seasons (basically the season we are in) and one from the Holiday section.  The first meal I made was Sirloin Steak with Onions.  Oh my, the onions were to die for!  These are not your basic steakhouse onions.  He caramelizes them with a mixture of vinegar, honey and brown sugar that takes the humble red onion to a new level.  The meal is completed with arugula on the side, dressed with a whisk of olive oil and lemon.  I tried the Autumn Panzanella, which is also known as Tuscan bread salad.  This was a mix of Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced fresh Brussels sprouts with cubes of baguette and chopped walnuts all tossed in a blend of vinegar, Dijon mustard and olive oil.  Delicious!  The Walnut Spread is a blend of toasted walnuts with roasted red peppers, lemon juice, honey and crushed red pepper flakes. You add that into your food processor and give it a whirl.  Turn it into a dish and sprinkle with some crumbled feta, put any cracker you want on the side and set it out.  Good stuff!   This was from the Holiday section.  I also made Spicy Beef Tacos.  This calls for a blend of seasonings in place of the store bought "taco seasoning."  Made with chipotle powder, cayenne, paprika and cumin seeds, it was spicy and satisfying.  The heat in this one sneaks up on you, so beware.
I love this book.  I will be making many more (if not all) of the recipes included here.  Michael's book reflects the whole food, clean living cooking style we are hearing a lot about lately.  Making the recipes in this book will give you a good start toward converting your kitchen (and diet?!) to a whole food kitchen.
I highly recommend you run right out and buy this!  It is a great book from a great chef.  I give 5 in 5 For Every Season five stars!  He is an Iron Chef, after all!
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books,  in exchange for an honest review. These words are my opinion.
Thanks for reading!
Jeri~

On This Foundation

This is the third and last installment of The Restoration Chronicles, by Lynn Austin.  This story is about Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.  Beginning with the petition by Nehemiah to King Artaxerxes to return to his homeland and supervise the rebuilding of the walls (Nehemiah 2:5).  God is mighty and he moves Artaxerxes to grant Nehemiah's petition.  The story moves forward from there with the king even writing letters to the kings of the region, to let Nehemiah get all the wood he needs from the forest in the region to rebuild.
Ms. Austin fills in the small details of daily routine and gives life to the characters as Nehemiah sets out to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls.  As Nehemiah approaches Jerusalem, you feel his elation at seeing his city, but also his disappointment at the sight of it laying in ruin.  "...Jerusalem, city of his ancestors, lay below him.  His breath caught at the wonder of it--and also at the desolation of it.  Piles of rubble and burnt stones lay scattered everywhere."  
This novel, based on Biblical events, draws a compelling picture of the opposition that Nehemiah and his workers are up against when Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem get wind of it; they set out to stop the construction.  The author gives an excellent depiction of God's work in favor of Nehemiah and the faithful when they are able to stop the attacks and finish the rebuilding.
This is a well written book and a fitting end to the series.  Lynn Austin is a bestselling author and and eight-time Christy award winner for her historical novels.  Her books have sold more than one million copies worldwide.  The first two installments in this series are Return to Me and Keepers of the Covenant.   These books take the reader from the beginning of the return of the Jews from exile, to the finish of rebuilding Jerusalem.  I read the second installment but not the first.  I plan to read it and I recommend that you read the series.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher, Bethany House, in exchange for an honest review.  These words are my opinion.

Thanks so much for being here!

Jeri~

Murder at the Courthouse

A.H. Gabhart pens a new story in the Hidden Springs Mysteries series.  The story begins with a dead man propped up on the courthouse steps, first thing in the morning before there is any stirring in the little town of Hidden Springs, Ky.  The body is found by Miss Willadean Dearmon as she approaches the courthouse to make her daily round of the offices there to make sure her duly elected officials are at work and using her tax dollars wisely.  She passes by thinking the dead man is drunk and rude, not speaking to her.  No clue on her part that he is dead.  A drunk on the courthouse steps is her first complaint of the day.  You can imagine what happens when she insists that the Sheriff go out there and do something about that!
As the story unfolds, they determine he has been shot in the back and begin to conjecture about who could have caused his death.  As the Sheriff works to identify the man and find the perpetrator, a mystery begins to unravel.  Of course I will not tell you who "dunnit."  I am no spoiler.  As you read you will see several characters that could have done the murder.  The disappearance of a prominent member of the community makes it look like that person may have committed the act, as well as others who seem to behave suspiciously.  It does have a surprise ending, because you may not suspect who the killer is and the unwanted strings that tie these people together.
This novel is well written.  That is because the words flow from page to page and the story is interesting.  It makes it easy to read.  The grammar and sentence structure add to the quality of the work.  It's all good.  It is a light read and as I have said in the past, a light read is sometimes exactly what you need to relax with.  This could be considered a cozy mystery but it has too much depth and enough character development to take it out of that genre. I enjoyed it and recommend you give it a shot!  Get that?  Give it a shot?  Anyway, I give Murder at the Courthouse five stars!
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher, Revell, in exchange for an honest review.  These words are my opinion.
Thanks so much for being here!  See you soon!

Jeri~

The Memory Weaver

This newest fiction release from Jane Kirkpatrick is based on the life of missionaries Henry and Eliza Spalding.  They served the Nez Perce Indians in the Pacific Northwest.  More accurately, it is based on their oldest child Eliza's (named for her mother) life after the Whitman Massacre in 1847. The Whitmans were fellow missionaries at a mission farther west.   Eliza was witness to the massacre as a child and dealt with those memories much of her adult life.  She happened to be at the Whitman mission when it occurred.  She was taken hostage and as the only survivor who spoke the Nez Perce language, she was made to serve as interpreter between the indians and the missionaries.  The attacking tribe was Cayuse but spoke the Nez Perce language.
The memories Eliza has are not all accurate, only the way she remembers them and much of her life after that was influenced by those memories.  She grows into a strong independent young woman but struggles with her husband's desire to take his cattle to range in the area close to where the massacre happened.
From the back cover:
 "Haunted by memories and hounded by struggle, Eliza longs to know how her mother dealt with the trauma of their ordeal.  As she searches the pages of her mother's diary, Eliza is stunned to find that her own recollections tell only part of the story."

This is a well written novel with good dialogue and picturesque descriptions of the Pacific Northwest.  I appreciated the care taken to ensure the grammer and sentence structure were accurate.  It is told in the first person by Eliza with every few chapters being interspersed with pages from her mother's diary.  It took me a few chapters to understand that all the diary writings are from Eliza's mother, with the bulk of the story being Eliza's telling of her life.  Mother and daughter both named Eliza required a little more attention than I normally give. That's not a bad thing, though.
This is my first time to read a Jane Kirkpatrick novel.  I was impressed with the talent and skill that is evident in her writing.  It is difficult to write about history, making it a novel and still keeping the accuracy of the events, while fictionalizing some of the daily life and characteristics.  Mrs. Kirkpatrick does a good job with that.  I recommend The Memory Weaver  and give it five stars.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Revell for the purpose of an honest, unbiased review.  These words are my opinion.
Thanks so much for being here!

Jeri~

The Martian by Andy Weir

Wow!  White knuckle reading for sure.  But, it did take a while for me to get to that place.  It begins with the reader being made aware that astronaut Mark Whatney has been left behind on Mars by his crew.  They think he is dead. A hellacious storm is headed their way and the crew makes haste to get from the HAB to

 the MAV to abort mission and head back to their space station home, the Hermes.  On the running (as much as you can in a spacesuit) trek to the MAV "flying wreckage slammed Watney carrying him off into the wind."  This detail comes halfway through the book, which is ok.
The author starts this story with Astronaut Watney regaining consciousness and realizing that he has been left behind by his crew.  Not their fault.  Truly an accident.
Andy Weir tells the story of Mark surviving alone on Mars, in the MAV and HAB utilizing everything he can find.  I do mean everything.  He tells it with humor that gave me a laugh-out-loud frequently.  The protagonist is an extremely resourceful and intelligent individual.  He is an astronaut, after all.  His calling is botany with mechanical engineering thrown in.
This book is well written, grammatically correct and sentence structure is good.  I did find it a little dry during the time that Watney was into a daily routine doing all things he knew he needed to do to survive.  I read through that and it picked up when he established communication with earth.  It was pretty exciting from that point on.
I know this has been made into a movie, with Matt Damon playing the part of  Watney and I could see Matt as the character of Mark Watney from the first page.  My copy is the newly released movie tie-in version so it may not read exactly as the original-not sure about that.
This is a debut novel from Mr.Weir that was first published in 2011.  The movie tie-in version which I read just came out and the movie is due soon.  It is a good book, and I recommend you get a copy and check it out.  I give The Martian four stars.  I received a complimentary paperback copy of this book from Blogging for Books, in exchange for an honest review.  These words are my opinion.
Thanks so much for being here!
Jeri~

Rare Earth

Let me begin by telling you this book was a 2013 Christy Award winner for "Best Suspense Novel".  In this story of suffering refugees which is really so much more than that, Marc Royce is thrown into a Kenyan refugee camp as a last minute hire for the United Nations, sent to replace the man who had trained extensively for this assignment.   He was to audit the organization that was providing relief and support to the refugees.  Davis Bunn wrote this about the greed for power and money that displaces people and nations.
Marc is pulled into the suffering and cannot help but look beyond that suffering to begin to put together odd pieces of a puzzle that do not fit the picture he sees.  Thus he finds the machinations of Lodestone, the relief organization that he is to audit.  He gets to know the Kenyans that are being evacuated and in time, gains their trust and respect.  They begin to tell him about how they are being evacuated because a volcano is erupting nearby.  Whole villages are being moved; a culture and way of life are being destroyed.  Wrapped up in all of this is the Christian/Islamic/Judeo conflict in that part of the world.
I was unfamiliar with rare earth minerals until I read this story.  In fact, I had never heard of them before this.  I researched the topic and found that they are real and they are used  in our cell phones and computers, tablets, smartphones;  all of that.  These minerals are only found in a few places in the world.  That fact, of course, makes for much competition in the rare earth market, worldwide.  They are irreplaceable to the technology industry.  China has the monopoly on the rare earth market and the world buys from them.  I had no clue, quite honestly.  The United States buys these minerals from China.
The author writes with such honesty and conviction that it brings the story to life.  He draws the characters realistically with their fears, secrets, all the humanity that is in us.  Davis Bunn writes Christian fiction and I appreciated the fact that God was a big part of the story and His working was evident.  When I am able to read a novel in which the author has included the faith of the main characters, and God's hand in the solution, that is a good book.  And yet, the realistic horror of war and the violence that takes place give the book authenticity. Mr. Bunn has other Marc Royce novels which I intend to read.  His writing reminds us that God truly is everywhere, even when He seems most distant.
 I highly recommend Rare Earth and give it five stars.  I pulled this book from my TBR stack to read and review for you.  It is the 2nd in a series of three.  Lion of Babylon is the first in the series; Strait of Hormuz is the last.  I will be reading both of these.
You can read more about Davis Bunn books and the Marc Royce series at Davis Bunn / Rare Earth.  
Read more about rare earth minerals at Rare Earth Minerals.  You may be amazed.

Thanks so much for being here!

~Jeri

The English Girl by Daniel Silva

Once again, I started in the middle of a series!  This is the second book in Mr. Silva's Gabriel Allon series.  First came The English Assassin, published in 2002.  The English Girl was released in 2013.  This year the third book was published on June 30.  It hit the NYT best-seller list on July 19. You have probably seen it advertised.  If you are a fan, you may have already read it!  Gabriel is an art restorer who also is a spy, who also is an Israeli.  He is the good guy.

I was drawn in from about the first page.  It is an excellent example of an international spy novel, with murder thrown in.  Madeline Hart is the English girl and the story weaves around her kidnapping but more intriguingly the reason for that kidnapping.  She is snatched up while on holiday in Corsica with friends.  Gabriel is called in to find and rescue her and has seven days to complete the mission and bring her home alive, or the kidnapper will kill her.  There is so much more going on here, which makes this novel a hard one to put down.  What I love is when I am surprised by what happens and whom I didn't suspect was involved in those happenings.  That was this book.  Madeline is an up and coming young member of the UK political scene.  The kidnapping reveals Russian collusion with Britain and much more that I will not go into. I would end up telling you the whole story.  It is hard for me to tell you about a book I have read without telling you the whole thing!  I have procured a copy of The English Assassin, the first in this series and will be reading The English Spy also, which is the just published third book.  

Daniel Silva has been called a "master spy novelist" and I agree.  He has published 18 thriller and espionage novels.  I read The Rembrandt Affair a few years ago and it was an excellent read as well.  I think I will probably start reading through most all of his novels.  

I highly recommend The English Girl. It is a curl up and read type of novel.  Or, this time of year, a book to sit with under a shady tree and sip a large iced tea!

I give The English Girl five stars!  I took this book from my collection of TBR's.  

You can read more about Daniel Silva and his writing at Daniel Silva

Thanks for being here!

Jeri~