Review: MorningStar Farms, Or, How I Faked My Family Out

MorningStar Farms, those green boxes in the "Vegetarian" section of the Frozen Foods aisle at the grocery store. Every so often, when I'm feeling healthy and resolution-y, I'll toss a box in my cart. I'm all for Meatless Mondays (or, for several gray weeks in late winter, Fridays of Abstention for my Catholic faith...) but have to temper that with the realities of my family's busy schedule - dual working parents, kids with extracurriculars 4 days out of the school week that start at 5:30 and run til anywhere from 6:45 to 8:00... I need the "holy grail" of fast, healthy, and kids-will-eat-it, and all too often have to content myself with 2 out of 3. I pride myself on not zipping through the drive thru more than once a month.

It being January, and I'm still feeling resolution-y, I've decided to up my game and change up our meatless meals.

Dinner the First: "Chicken" Parm Sandwiches

I substituted MorningStar Farms Italian Herb Chik Patties for brand name chicken patties to make some quick sandwiches "Parmagiana". They have 64% less fat, and zero cholesterol, with soy protein the main ingredient. Baked in the oven, the breading crisped up nicely. With a few minutes left, I took them out and spread some pizza sauce on top, then laid on sliced provolone. Popped them back in the oven to melt the cheese, and voila - dinner! Baby carrots on the side completed this very healthy dinner. I couldn't tell the difference (although pizza sauce, Italian herbs, and cheese all probably played a part in that). The texture was just right, not rubbery or anything like you might worry with a "fake" chicken product. My husband, younger child, and I all gave them a resounding thumbs up!

Child #1 needed hers done in the microwave for speed -she was the one whose afterschool activity I was rushing around for. (She also wanted ketchup rather than the pizza sauce, and she didn't want the bun. WHY are eldest children the picky ones??)  A minute on HI, with another 10 seconds to melt the cheese, and her food was ready. Her verdict was a bit more lukewarm than the rest of the family: it was "ok", and she "prefers the regular chicken patties", but she still ate it all.

Dinner the second: Veggieballs and Spaghetti
This time I swapped MorningStar Farms Veggie Meatballs in our spaghetti dinner. The texture was juicy and meaty. Again, once smothered in marinara sauce, absolutely no taste difference I could detect. They would be equally good on a "meat"ball sub sandwich, or in a Swedish-style sauce.  Picky Child (see above) immediately called me out on the difference, of course.

Dinner the third: Burgers
The final substitution was the burger.  MorningStar Farms has many different varieties to choose from, some what I'll call "traditional" meatless burgers that don't try to "be" a hamburger - think Veggie Patties, or Black Bean Burgers. I instead opted for the Grillers Prime Burgers, which claim to be "[s]avory and smoky...full of prime steakhouse flavor." I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the burgers did indeed have a fresh-off-the-charcoal-grill flavor.  They weren't as juicy as fresh-made patties, so I don't think they will be a permanent substitution in my household, but I would definitely take them over frozen beef patties. And even straight out of the freezer they were done in about 10 minutes.... I'm never so pressed for time I can't spare 10 minutes in order to avoid the fat and salt of a fast food drive thru.

So, all in all, my family tolerated my experimentation, and for the most part gave thumbs up to all the dinners. Hopefully I'll keep to my eating-healthier resolution, with a little help from MorningStar Farms!


Disclaimer: I received coupons, including for free MorningStar Farms products, from BzzAgent though my participation in a BzzCampaign.

January 2013 books

Life of Pi, Yann Martel - Wow. I haven't seen the movie yet, I wanted to read the book first. The book is a quick read, the kind you don't want to put down. The story is fascinating, and I can only imagine how it translated on the big screen. It also made me think a lot about the nature of people, and the nature of religion.  But it can still be enjoyed on a lighter level without the philosophical musings.  I did not expect the ending, and I love when a book surprises me like that. (not going to spoil it!)

The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon - Outlander #5, part of my ongoing reread in advance of #8 coming out later this year. Previously this had been my least favorite in the series.  I enjoyed it much better the second time around. Still, it took me longer than usual to read it....nearly the full month! Perhaps it was because I was paying closer attention to the material.  Having read the later books, I think I was also relating things in this one that occurred later on.  The American Revolution is coming (more clearly to those with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight!).

A book a week

Give or take, that is. I read 52 books in 2012. I didn't set any kind of goal, but I'm going to say I'm pretty impressed with myself, especially given my love of 800-plus page doorstops. :)   There were some duds, including 1 non-finisher, that didn't live up to the anticipation I had for them.  But there were many new tales from old favorite authors, and new things learned.

I had great fun participating in a reading-club like BzzCampaign for The Dark Monk, and coming up with creative ways to blog it. I've already got the 3rd book in that series pre-ordered for my Kindle early in 2013.  I hope that BzzAgent has more of these!

Already planned for 2013 are a new Edward Rutherfurd (Paris, this time!), and MOBY (Written in My Own Heart's Blood; aka Outlander #8 from Diana Gabaldon) near the end of the year (which means making sure I finish my re-reads of The Fiery Cross, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and An Echo in the Bone on schedule). Adding to my teetering TBR pile, a local independent bookseller has unfortunately had to close its doors. Their 40% off Everything Must Go SALE was...um... productive for me. :)

Books: December

No Talking, Andrew Clements: This is a book that my 3rd grader brought home from the library to read together. They had read it together in class, and she wanted to share it with me. It is set in an elementary school, and the 5th grade class, known since they arrived as kindergartners as "the unsushables" to the teachers, one day at lunch stops talking. The whole class! It turns out to be a contest, between the girls and boys, to see who can talk the least in 2 days. They agree on some ground rules (you can answer a teacher, but you can only say 3 words; it isn't a silence contest, so noises are ok) first. The teachers are surprised, and then confused, and then frustrated at what they perceive as insolence, rudeness, and defiance. Only the Language Arts teacher is fascinated. He realizes that there is a method to the madness, some underlying rules, and experiments and plays with it: he has the kids create a story together, three words at a time; he has two of them debate (soda is good/soda is bad) again in 3 word bites; he lets them pass notes all class, and just observes the interactions.  Being a children's book, there are lessons learned all around by the end of the story, and my daughter and I both really enjoyed the story.

A Wayside Tavern, Norah Lofts - The tale of a single location, over 1600 years. That particular location is a tavern/inn located at a crossroads in southern England. Visited in turn by Roman legion, Angles and Saxons, Viking raiders, a petty chieftain, monks, King Henry's reformers, Victorians, and more, it is the story of England as experienced by the common man, far from the cities, the rich landowners, and power. The inn passed down in a single family for that entire time.

Season to Taste - How I Lost My Sense of Smell and Found Myself, Molly Birnbaum - see separate post

Lest Darkness Fall,  L. Sprague de Camp- very early historical fiction/sci-fi alternative history. Written in 1939 and released on Kindle. A man stumbles on the street in Mussolini's Rome and winds up in the Western Roman Empire at the time of Justinian's rule in the East.  With a convenient stroke of luck, our protagonist is a scholar, a speaker of classical Latin and well-versed in writings that have survived from the time, knowledgeable of the shifty political climate among the "barbarian" tribes now ruling and vying to rule Rome. His goal, once he finds himself irrevocably in the past? To prevent the Dark Ages from happening (hence the "Darkness" of the title). So in short order he invents (well, "imports" from his faraway homeland of America of which none have heard but all accept): 'Arabic' numerals, double-entry bookkeeping, printing press, paper, newspapers and many other magical and mysterious things. I had two quibbles with the story. First, I felt dumped into the middle of the narrative - I felt like maybe they missed the first chapter when they converted the Kindle edition, or something. Second, and this is a familiar, common quibble... the story ended. But what happened next??!? Was he successful? Or did history "correct itself"? What of the great inventors and thinkers of the future, now born centuries "too late"? What of his comment about a campaign that will need to shortly occur, to stamp out a scourge that will arise in the deserts of Arabia a few decades hence? This Kindle edition also contained a few short stories inspired by this tale, looking at others who may have made similar journeys in time (a Roman lady, thrown back to a local hilltop in 751 BC and a squabbling pair of brothers; time travelers from 4 centuries in the protagonist's future which greatly enhanced this one.

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, David Quammen - The subtitle sums it up pretty well.  "Bird flu", SARS, HIV, Ebola, shall I keep going? Nasty, killer diseases, with no cure. And something in common.... they all are viruses previously content to infect animals, which jumped over to us. (forgive my anthropomorphisizing, the viruses are neither content nor not-content with anything, and they did not "jump" to us with purpose) They spilled. A virus got into a human, and found itself able to replicate, so it did. Then it got itself passed to another, and another.  I didn't mention half of the diseases that are discussed in this fascinating account. The author closes by reminding us that his intent was not to scare, to paralyze us into terror of every cough, every sneeze, every bat that flies overhead (it is creepy how many of these viruses are traceable back to bats). Instead, forewarned is forearmed, because each individual that alters their behavior just a little gets magnified, and we can have a big effect together in preventing the next pandemic. (translation, please cough into your sleeve, you aren't a hero for coming in to work when you should be home in bed with some chicken soup, and maybe skip the tour of the bat cave.)

Trail of Fire, Diana Gabaldon - Four "short stories", or as she describes them "bulges" set within the larger Outlander narrative. "Bulges" meaning like a snake that has eaten a nice fat rat, so it bulges in the middle, expanding on a character's back story, or what's going on "offstage" while our main characters are elsewhere, or just some "missing time" that is passed over in the books. Be forewarned, these short stories are short-for-her, not actually short. :)  Two I have read before, as part of anthologies - anthologies that I bought mostly because of the inclusion of these stories! (Warriors; and Songs of Love and Death; both edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois) A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows explains what happened to Roger's parents in WWII; The Custom of the Army is an adventure of Lord John Grey's in Canada during the French-and-Indian War.  The other two are new to me, one from an anthology I skipped (not being interested in the overall theme) and one that is not yet published. Lord John and the Plague of Zombies brings us to Jamaica before Claire and Jamie arrive there in Voyager to find him governor of the Island. The Space Between visits Ian's brother and Marsali's sister, plus some of Claire and Jamie's friends from their days in Paris before the Rising. I love Ms. Gabaldon's books, characters, stories, and just generally Outlander. This collection is a nice treat as I and all her fans await "Written in My Own Heart's Blood" in 2013! (watch for me to re-read The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and An Echo in the Bone to prepare!)

Since I only just finished Trail of Fire on 12/30, and there is no way I'm going to get to finish another book before midnight, I'm going to post this now... Happy New Year!

Review: Season to Taste, by Molly Birnbaum

I got this book a while back on my Kindle, but it slid off the first page, and like the email that scrolls off your view when you open Outlook, I had forgotten about it.

It is a memoir of a young woman, who starts off sounding a bit spoiled and with a sense of entitlement upon her graduation from college. "I've just spent 4 years getting a degree in art history at an Ivy League college, but I like to cook, so I think I'll become a chef. I'll just go into this restaurant and they'll give me a job cooking there!" She gets to wash dishes, and buckets of mushrooms and greens, and stand and watch and learn.  She is happy.

Until she pops in her iPod earbuds, heads off for a jog, and steps off the curb into the path of a car.

She sustains horrible injuries, a mangled leg, broken pelvis, concussion.  And one more: her olfactory nerve is apparently shorn off as it passed through the cribriform plate toward her olfactory bulb. In that instant, although she does not realize it for weeks as she recovers from the other injuries, she becomes an anosmic. 

She has lost her sense of smell. She is devastated, because not only is the world flat and barren to her, food no longer has taste. How can she cook when she cannot taste? What will she now do with her life?

Once she brings herself to enter a kitchen again, she finds that she can bake. If you follow the recipe, add exactly this much A to that much B, bake it for this long, you will have a cake, or bread, or a pie. It doesn't take the skill that a soup, a roast, or anything else that you "cook" does. And she begins to research anosmia,  visiting clinics and speaking with patients, to learn how people deal with this condition, and whether it can ever be cured.  Slowly a few scents begin to come back to her, and she then changes her focus to trying to bring back more, to re-train her nose.

This is a subject that is at once completely alien, and yet as familiar as, well, as the nose on my face. You see, I'm an anosmic too. But the difference is that I didn't lose my sense of smell. Because "to lose" presupposes that it once was "had". 

I've been this way my whole life. I first became aware that I couldn't smell when I was about 3. My mom had taken me to a children's museum and among the exhibits was a library card catalog that had been made into a "wall of senses". There were things to feel and guess what they were, or shake and guess by the sound, or smell and guess. I told her I didn't know - but really, I didn't smell anything. Never smelled bread baking, never smelled chicken roasting, never smelled one of those air fresheners with the gel stuff inside when shoved under my nose.... I thought I was stupid - that I couldn't learn to smell. When you're 3, that's the kind of thing you think.

I have been evaluated in one of the clinics she visited, by one of the doctors she spoke with. That's how I found out that 1) yes I had been this way my whole life (it wasn't acquired) and 2) I didn't have any olfactory bulbs so I never would. 

Yes, I can taste just fine. Food doesn't taste blank, and it definitely tastes more than salty/sweet/sour/bitter. This is another indication that I've always been this way - plastic, adaptive brain and all.  But it is probably different from how people who can smell taste. I never felt deprived, never felt I was missing anything, until one evening when we had dinner with friends and they brought out a bottle of limoncello they had brought back from their honeymoon in Italy. Everyone exclaimed over how lemony it was. Except me. It could have been a shot of Absolut vodka I drank, for all the "lemony-ness" I tasted. It wasn't even sour. 

I feel for her, truly I do - I don't take the attitude that I'm fine so you should be too. If I suddenly became blind or deaf, I don't know what I would do.  But it's the difference between being born blind or deaf, and losing your sight or hearing later on. I get along just fine, and about 99.5% of the time it doesn't bother me one bit. But I don't get a smelling-nose dog, and when I have to tell people about it they usually respond with "Really? You can't smell ANYTHING?". Would you ask a blind person "Really? You can't see ANYTHING?" 

I wouldn't want to get my sense of smell, if there were some way of fixing it. Especially after reading how it was experienced by the author. And she knew what it was like before, and what things smelled like. But it was a little confusing, as she tried to place a smell, and was assaulted with a New York street and the myriad individual scents it carried. Assault is right. I think it would drive me mad. I wouldn't be able to get away from it! 

How easy is this?? (Review: Purdue Oven Ready)

I was recently offered a BzzCampaign for Purdue OVEN READY products. I've seen them in the grocery store, right there below the boneless skinless chicken breasts (thin-sliced or regular) that I'm usually picking up, but never thought about them further. Thanks to the coupons I received through BzzAgent, I got to try these out.  Need I say more than the title?

How easy is it? Open. Heat. Serve. It's seriously THAT easy!

Open the package and take out the chicken in the baking bag. It's already seasoned for you.  Place it in a baking pan, breast-side up. 400 degrees for 90-115 minutes - check that it's not just golden brown, but cooked to 180 degrees in the breast.

Take it out and let it rest for 10 minutes or so to let the juices re-distribute in the meat. (Slice it right away and they'll all pour out, making a mass of your cutting board AND leaving you with dry chicken.) While the chicken is resting, carefully pour off the juices that have collected in the bag and whisk them with flour over low heat to make some gravy. Then slice up the meat, give your kids the drumsticks, and serve dinner!

This is one moist and juicy bird.  And I kind of lied - I TRIED to give my kids the drumsticks, but while I was trying to steady them and cut them off, the bone just came out in my hand. How's that for tender?

Disclaimer: As noted above, I received the coupons to try this product free, to try and review, from BzzAgent.

Books: November

Around the World in 72 Days, Nellie Bly - My daughter read an excerpt of a biography of Nellie Bly in her Language Arts class. "Mom, do you know who Nellie Bly was?" Hmmm.... there's a teensy-weensy bell ringing, I feel like I've heard the name before, but I couldn't tell you if she was real, or a fictional character (this is before she pointed out it was a biography), and why I would have heard of her.  She was a journalist in the late 1800's, who, inspired by Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, decided to actually do it - in 5 days fewer. Her experience was published in dispatches she sent back - I guess the 1800's version of "live blogging". :) After she returned, she wrote a book about her experience, and that's what I read. It was fascinating, all the ocean crossings on ships, trains across continents. You had to bring your own deck chair - and if someone else took it, "too bad for you". Culturally, it was the height of the Victorian Empire - and the visits through India, Hong Kong, Japan 20 years after it was "opened" to the West through contemporary eyes was really interesting.

Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy, John Julius Norwich - Well the subtitle is pretty clear. It's not an in depth discussion of everything during every pope's reign (some just get name-checked, especially the ones who didn't last very long), but it certainly gives an eye-opening presentation of the rough times that were had by many. Not just this heresy and those barbarians at the gates of Rome and getting thrown to lions in Rome's arenas, but when popes and emperors clashed, when popes were kidnapped, and, oh yeah, leading battle armies and giving their bastard sons cardinals' hats.  For a while the papacy even seemed irrelevant, which seems strange to me. 

A World of Curiosities, John Oldale - Perfect to put in your bathroom, to pick up and read a random snippet or 2. (So of course I just read it through cover to cover!) This book has chapters on each country giving random facts. Historical, cultural, geographical. It also teaches "Hello" and "Goodbye" for each, and for those granted more than 1 page, "Please" and "Thank You".  I was only slightly annoyed that Tuvalu did not have it's own chapter, but was lumped with several other "Pacific Islands". :)

Rose: My Life in Service to Lady Astor, Rosina Harrison - Another book lent by my mom, and another teeny bit of Downton Abbey-esque fix (just a little more than a month to go until Season 3 starts!!). This book is as old as me - DON'T go look that up! - and is the autobiography of a Yorkshire woman who went into service at the close of WWI. She eventually worked her way up to being taken on as lady's maid to Lady Astor, serving her until the latter's death in 1965.  The '20's and '30's, the opulent parties, royalty, traveling the world with trunks of clothes galore.... It's an amazingly intimate portrait, told with true affecction.

Edited to add a book left out:
The Map of Lost Memories, Kim Fay - Think a female Indiana Jones, in Southeast Asia, without the Nazis (but with Communism in fashion).  That's enough of the plot to give you the sense if you want to read this or not. A decent first outing for this author in fiction. The various characters may (or may not) be linked by a scheming controller, and they are probably playing and being played by each other. In the jungle, pre-air conditioning, where the air is extremely humid, and it's hot, and you get sweaty. That got described variously a few times a chapter. That get annoying to me.

Now reading: A Wayside Tavern, Norah Lofts

Desperately waiting for: A Trail of Fire by Diana Gabaldon, shipping from Amazon UK via a carrier that doesn't offer tracking.  And it was supposed to be here a week ago. :(