Alex and Luke and Lucy

Have you heard of Alex and Luke?
I can't say that I have before today, but it seems they have a bit of a following on the social medias, especially Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. They have a plan...

"Restless with our current positions in our respective lives, we set out to see what would happen if we used the power of social media to enable an exploration of North America. Without a route or any preconceived idea of what we will see and do, we are calling on the communities behind the most popular social media websites to act as our compass (pointing us where to go) and our guidebook (telling us what to see).

Equipped with a small car and a trunk load of equipment, our goal is to travel through every state, province and territory while documenting and sharing the experience through web videos and other internet content available at our website, alexandluke.com."

Quite cool...

But what is very, very cool is that they recently visited one of my very favorite NJ attractions, my beloved Lucy the Elephant. And they make a little music video about it! Ok, I didn't say it was good music.

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Bandit Tuesday...Belly

"Come on, scratch my belly...come on, you know you want to. It is such a cute, soft little belly...come on!!"

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Musing Monday...The Tarnished Silver Screen?

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about movies based on books…

What happens when you see a movie based on a book/story, especially one you’ve not read? Do you feel the need to track it down and read it?

Awww...the classic book vs. movie question.
Ok, let's be honest here folks. The book is always better than the movie.

Now, I admit I may be wrong. I thought and I thought (for a minute or two) and I could not come up with a case where the movie was better than the book, but if you have a suggestion, please, speak up.

Books can just contain so, so much more than a movie. Descriptions of setting, exploration of characters, emotions, motivations, thoughts can all be present in a book, but because of the very limits of time, are often only hinted at in the movie.
Now don't get me wrong. I love movies and will go to see movie based on a book, but if I have read the book, I admit I do it with a bit of fear. The recent case of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a perfect example. Loved the book, could not think the movie would ever live up to the book. And while the movie was quite good and I enjoyed it, honestly, it was no contest with the book.

Now, what if I see a movie based on a book, a book I have not read. Do I then want to read it? Yes, I have done that in the past. It is my preferred order, movie then book. The other way is often going to lead to disappointment in my experience. But if you love a movie, the book will only add more to the story in the vast majority of cases. I do not have the best imagination and sometimes, I like being able to picture things in the movie as I read the book. You can take the best of the movie, the visual material about the setting and the characters, and add that to the interior information the book supplies and that is a good thing.

Of course, then there is the all too common situation where the movie folks change things, very important things, from the book. I admit it, that drives me crazy. Move the setting from Iceland to a tropical jungle. Cast the scary hag as a beautiful, big name actress....That sort of thing is just totally unacceptable and makes me want to scream.
Unless you are in a scary horror movie, they don't really seem to encourage screaming in a movie theater.

Do you have a favorite movie/book combination? Maybe a great, beloved book that you found by seeing the movie first.
Or do you have one where you thought the movie was actually better than the book? That I would really like to hear about!

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As is true every Monday, Musing Monday is hosted by Rebecca at Just One More Page.... Be sure to head over there and check out some of the other answers to this weeks question.

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Weekend Cooking...Red Velvet Cupcakes

While I do bake from time to time, by no means do I consider myself a baker. Baking is too much like high school chemistry to be totally enjoyable for me. Red Velvet cake is the perfect example. It was the niece's birthday and the birthday girl wanted red velvet cupcakes, so red velvet cupcakes there would be. Off I went in search of a recipe. And then there arose the whole issue of Dutched vs. natural cocoa. I read recipe after recipe, extolling the virtue of each and the use of baking power vs. baking soda as a leavening agent, depending on which sort of cocoa you used. From the Joy of Baking.com...

"Dutch-Processed or Alkalized Unsweetened Cocoa Powder is treated with an alkali to neutralize its acids. Because it is neutral and does not react with baking soda, it must be used in recipes calling for baking powder, unless there are other acidic ingredients in sufficient quantities used. It has a reddish-brown color, mild flavor, and is easy to dissolve in liquids. Its delicate flavor makes it ideal in baked goods like European cakes and pastries where its subtle flavor complements other ingredients. 

Natural Unsweetened Cocoa Powder tastes very bitter and gives a deep chocolate flavor to baked goods. Its intense flavor makes it well suited for use in brownies, cookies and some chocolate cakes. When natural cocoa (an acid) is used in recipes calling for baking soda (an alkali), it creates a leavening action that causes the batter to rise when placed in the oven."

Well, it seems most red velvet recipe call for the use of Dutched cocoa...but I could not find any, without buying it online, and I left it too late for that. Natural cocoa it would be. But which leavening was I suppose to use? It was all so confusing! Finally, I happened upon this recipe, from the Pinch My Salt website. It seemed to cover all the bases, with both baking powder and soda, buttermilk and vinegar. I present it here, with a few changes of my own based on some other recipes I read around the WWW.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

• 2 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 oz. red food coloring  or 1 tsp gel food coloring
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. almond extract
• 1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with  cupcake papers.
2. Sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt into a  medium bowl; set aside. In a small bowl, mix food coloring and cocoa powder to form a thin paste without lumps; set aside.
3. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer or stand mixer, beat butter  and sugar together until light and fluffy, about three minutes.  Beat in  eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla and the red cocoa paste,  scraping down the bowl with a spatula as you go. Add one third of the  flour mixture to the butter mixture, beat well, then beat in half of the  buttermilk. Beat in another third of flour mixture, then second half of  buttermilk. End with the last third of the flour mixture, beat until  well combined, making sure to scrape down the bowl with a spatula.
4. In a small bowl, mix vinegar and baking soda. It will fizz! Cool! Add the vinegar mixture to the cake batter and stir well to combine. Using an ice cream scoop or a scant 1/4 cup measure, fill cupcake cups with cake batter. They should be 1/2 to 2/3 filled. Place muffin tins on the middle rack of a preheated 350 degree oven. Bake for approximately 20-22 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Cupcakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Be careful not to overbake.
5. Cool the cupcakes in the tins on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove and allow to cool completely before frosting with cream cheese icing.

Cream Cheese Icing

• 16 oz. cream cheese (2 packages), softened
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (one stick), softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups powdered sugar

I applied the frosting using a piping bag with a star tip and added a few red sprinkles for a more festive look.

They were delicious if I do say so myself. A glass of cold milk, a cupcake, made by a fond aunt...perfection!

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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a review of "She-Rain" [34]

She-Rain: A Story of Hope by Michael Cogdill
(Morgan-James, ISBN 978-160037-702-0)
Growing up in the mountains of North Carolina in the 1920's is a hard life, even harder if your father is drug addicted and abusive and your family is quite literally dirt poor. Frank Locke Jr. hates the man for whom he is named, hates him so much that at many times he dreams of killing him. Especially the times his father, in a drug induced rage, becomes violent. It seems, if it weren't for the assistance of his grandparents, his beloved Granny and Pap, who live on a nearby farm scratching out their own living from the mountains, he and his mother would never have survived.
But he is not the only one in these mountains living a tragic life. In school as a young boy, he meets the woman who will be love of his life, Mary Lizbeth, who has her own even more difficult story to live.

As the years go on, Frank becomes a young man and, with his grandparents having died, he is the only support and sole defender of his mother. When a terrible act of violence occurs, hoping the blame will be cast on him and to protect those he loves, Frank flees from his home, leaving behind his mother and the beautiful Lizbeth. But the mountains into which he runs, while beautiful, are hard and dangerous and Frank soon finds himself in deadly danger, only to be saved by another woman, the mysterious Sophia. Brilliant and lovely, she lives in a world of books and music and education, but hidden from the world. As she starts to share this with Frank, he finds himself in the midst of a world he never really knew existed. He also finds himself in the middle of a mystery that is decades old and an injustice that goes back far longer.
Young Frank is torn between two worlds, between two women it might seem at first, but in realty, hr is part of something that will tie these people together for their entire lives.

She-Rains is a wonderful story, almost a magical story, and this book paints some wonderful characters in a wild and fantastic setting of the mountains of North Carolina. That's the good news.
But it is also a book that I found painfully slow to read.
The story is told by Frank, looking back on his life and written in the dialect of a mountain boy from the South. That I could have adjusted to. But the rest of the prose, beyond the dialogue, is also written in a very distinctive style. Much of it is very beautiful, poetic even, as you can see from this small quote about how his grandmother described these she-rains for which the book is named...

"In the rise of crickets and peep frogs, Granny spread out her mountain mystic view of things again, and the whole wagon treated it as sacred for a moment. She'd often speak of how a scrap of fog tears from a rain cloud. Floats on the waves of blur ridge as if a wisp off a bride. Granny and others call it she-rains, I suppose for its womanly drape, white as a wedding gown. Common legend, though Granny took the vision further. Said she-rain was like us all- little scraps torn off into the world, given to the wind, and meant to find a paradise. As she saw things, no scrap of this life is made for the trash. Even the most ragged are fit to beautify somewhere. Fit for some quilting into the finery of creation."

Beautiful, yes...but with some 350 pages of prose like this, it sadly becomes too much, overwhelming the story. It is so dense, it becomes rather tiring, never allowing this reader at least to really become lost in the story. And this is a story intriguing enough to deserve to be lost in. Can you have too many beautiful words? Yes.

But battle on I did...I don't think it has ever taken me longer to read a book, a few pages at a time...because I had to see how the story worked out, how it all ended. And a wonderful ending it was. I just wish the journey had been a bit easier, a bit more flowing down a lovely, cool stream and a little less climbing a mountain, that while impressive, plum wore me out.

My thanks to Caitlin at FSB Associates for my copy of this book

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Wordless Wednesday...The Cloisters, NYC

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"The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in Northern Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there. "

...as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner...Bandit!

"Yes, this is a baby's highchair, but she isn't using it, so why can't I?"

Musing Monday...What Would Betty White Say?

Wow, is it just me, or are these weeks just zipping by, faster and faster? It seems no sooner do I answer one MM post and find a charming picture of the world's cutest doggie for Bandit Tuesday, that Monday is here again. So lets check out this Monday's question, as always from the the cyber desk of Just One More Page.

Do you have to carve out time in your day for reading (due to work and other obligations), or does your reading just happen naturally?

I find that the time that I have available to read  is often based on the book I am reading at the moment.
If I love a book, if it is one of those rare and wonderful books that grabs you to such a degree that you hate to leave the delightful world it creates to return to the 'real' world and the sometime dull obligations of real life...I find a great deal of time. If it is a book that is just ok or one that I am not loving but feel an obligation to read...oddly enough I often do not find enough free time to get much read.

Yes, a great book can have an actually effect on the Nature of Time, creating more hours in the day and mondo amounts of uncommitted time. It is a fact!

Well, not really. The day is still 24 hours. I still need to go to work. I need to make something for dinner.
But adjustments can be made. That laundry will wait until I find out what happens to our hero. So what if the grass gets a little taller out in the front yard? I need to ferret out who the murderer is. Do I really need to go to the supermarket...or discover if 'happily ever after' is possible and justice will prevail. Really, which is more important? I am sure I can chip something out of the freezer that is still edible. Freeze burn, sneezer burn!

Now, a few qualifications. I do not have a spouse or little children pulling at my apron strings, crying in hunger. I don't even have a pet, although we all know that in his heart, Bandit is really mine. No one will chastise me if I never got to the post office to mail that package or forgot to call the plumber...except that little voice in my head. But that voice can be easily silenced by a really good book.
I also have a job that enables me to read from time to time. When I work weekends, especially when I work through the long, dark nights, there is some free time to read a page or two...or a hundred.

So, you may wonder, as I do, why I don't get more read than I actually do. I should be reading a half dozen books a week, instead of my average one or two.
Distractions! Evil, time wasting distractions.
And I am easily distracted.
The Evil Boob Tube, otherwise known as TV.
The lure of The World Wide Web, the internet.

This is where Betty White comes in. Did you see her on Saturday Night Live this week? No, I didn't, but I saw the clip from her opening monologue this past week, where she thanks her Facebook fans for getting her on the show and then admits she did not know what Facebook was before this happen. So, she checked it out and then said it seemed like a tremendous waste of time. While I am not a big fan of these social networks...maybe because I am not a very social person...I do find it very easy to waste time online or staring at a flickering screen. "I will just watch one more episode of the "Deadliest Catch" marathon..I must know who catches the most crab this season!" or "Let me just read a few more things on my Google Reader...I have a few hundred unread." Before you know it, the day is gone, and very little reading done.

But then, that book was not that great.
When it is, when the book is wonderful and captures my imagination, my unread Google Reader reaches into the stratosphere, Tivoed shows go unwatched and the grass gets as high as an elephants eye.
But a great book is worth it.

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Weekend Cooking...Two For One Couscous

As you may know, tomorrow, here in the USA, we celebrate Mother's Day. Now, many folks may be taking their mothers out to dinner, but we in the Caite Clan are having a BBQ. Well, it is a BBQ in that the grill will be used, if to a small degree. There will be chicken, Roasted Potato Salad, Spinach & Feta Pinwheels  and Bacon, Cheddar & Chive Pinwheels and Super Secret Brownies.
I will be working and miss the festivities, but still I am contributing several items to the feast. Individual Sticky Puddings will be available. A Bacon and Onion Dip. I am supplying Hot Italian and Pepper/Onion sausages that will be grilled and served with peppers and onions on delicious Italian rolls. And my final contribution will be a Couscous Salad.

Why the Two For One title? Well, this recipe, is originally from a Giada recipe for Scampi with Couscous, where, served hot,  it becomes a base for a nice shrimp dish. Delicious...

But I thought, what if I just took the couscous, made with it's very flavorful broth, added some veggies and served it cold or at room temperature. Also, since I was not serving it with the shrimp scampi, I replace the clam juice in Giada's recipe with chicken stock.
So there is the Two. Serve it hot, or add some veggies and make into a salad.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
  
• 1 (15 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes in their juice
• 1 (8ounce) bottle clam juice or 8 ounces of stock
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups plain couscous
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
  

Directions

In a large pot, heat 1/4 cup olive oil. When almost smoking, add onion, carrot and 2 cloves smashed garlic and saute until vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes. Add the canned tomatoes and their juice, clam juice, white wine and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer on medium heat for 10 minutes, uncovered. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly. Carefully pour tomato mixture in the bowl of a food processor or blender and puree.  You want to end up with a broth. Check for seasoning.

Return broth to the pot. Add 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add 2 cups couscous. Cover pot and remove from heat. Let rest for 10 minutes, allowing the couscous to absorb all the

liquid. Fluff with a fork and season with salt and pepper.

While it was still warm, I add some veggies, that I marinated first in a little Roasted Red Pepper and Garlic Vinaigrette (from a bottle, thank you) for an hour or so... 

• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes,
• 1 peeled and sliced cucumber,
• 1 bunch sliced scallions
• 1 very finely diced carrot
• 1/2 cup diced roasted red peppers
• some chopped flat leaf parsley

or whatever vegetables you fancy. You are limited only by your imagination and what you like.

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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a review of "Blood Lies" [33]

Blood Lies by Daniel Kalla
(Forge, ISBN 978-0-7653-1832-9)

Drug and alcohol addiction have had a huge effect in the life of Dr. Ben Dafoe. Not his own addiction. No, he is only addicted to riding his very expensive bicycles way too fast and in way too dangerous places. But his father was an alcoholic, his identical twin brother Aaron was a drug addict who disappeared two years ago and is believed dead due to the huge amount of his blood found in his abandoned car. And then there is his former fiance, Emily. It was her inability to kick the drugs for good that caused their breakup and now it seems it may have been the cause of her death.

Beside his job as an emergency room physician, from time to time, he has been called upon by the Seattle Police as a crime scene consultant. But this time, when he is called to a crime scene, he finds the body of the woman he once loved, horribly killed in her home and found with the dead body of another man. A man who turns out to be a drug dealer. Stupidly, it would seem, Benn decides not to admit his connection to the murdered woman, or the fact that just weeks ago, he had met her with the murdered man. Of course, they will find out shortly, as they always do and that does not paint Dr. Ben in the best light. As shocking as the bloody scene was to Ben, it is even more unbelievable when a swipe of blood on the wall of the crime scene turns out to be his. Is it possible that his twin brother is not dead and that the blood is Aaron's? When police seem about ready to arrest him, he flees the county to Vancouver to follow up a possible lead on his brother and attempt to clear his own name. Or is it possible Ben is being framed...if so, why and most of all how? Yes, it seems that blood can lie.

As readers know, I am always in search of the perfect mystery/thriller...and no, this is not it for me. The fatal flaw in my mind was one line...just one line...that allowed me to figure out the conclusion. More than that, it was if someone had plastered a Big Red Arrow on the killer's forehead with that line. Now, while I read a good number of mysteries, I am not that clever, so that is not a great sign. When something is said, when something appears, that apparently serves no other purpose, a light always goes on in my head. Is it unfair to judge a book by one "mistake"? Maybe, but it was that big of an issue for me.

That being said, otherwise it was a pretty good, entertaining book. The medical stuff and forensics are interesting, perhaps because it seems the author himself is a physician. It's pretty well written and the plot moves along quickly. Happily, unlike many mysteries, at least those where the main characters are not cops, in this book the police do not turn out to be idiots. And Ben and several of the secondary characters are likable enough and I always enjoy books set in the Pacific Northwest.

So, bottom line, a good, middle of the pack book, entertaining if not outstanding.

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a review of "The Cold Room" [32]

The Cold Room- A Taylor Jackson Novel by J.T.Ellison
(Mira Books, ISBN 978-0-7783-2714-1

They call him The Conductor. The name may sound classy, but there is nothing classy about the serial killer stalking Nashville, kidnapping and killing young women. He locks them in a glass box in his basement, starves them to death and then...how to say this...has his way with them. Yes, after he kills them. Necrosadism is the official term for it.
Then, just to tie it up all neatly, he stages the body to recreate a work of art and leaves music playing in the background. Which is where he gets the name The Conductor.

Taylor Jackson is still reeling from her demotion and the shakeup that has taken place in the Nashville Police Department, a storyline you will need to go back and read about in the previous book in this series. But is weird as things are at work, and they are weird, the job is the job and she and her fiance FBI profiler, Dr. John Baldwin, are hot on the trail of the killer. In fact, Baldwin is stuck by many similarities between these murders and a serial killer he has been assisting the Italian and English police pursue. Which explains why the copper from the New Scotland Yard drops in to lend a hand. Is it a copy cat, has he moved to the US...or is something even odder going on?

Sadly, I did not like this book as much as I hoped.
First, I do like a bit of suspense in my 'mysteries', something almost totally lacking from this book. No, this is a thriller more than any sort of mystery. We know the killer, his name, his job, how he kills, why he kills...all in the first few pages. Granted, the murders are a bit more complicated than it appears at first, but the twist is hardly a huge surprise.

Second, there are a bit too many smoldering looks going around for my taste. Not to mention that one of the sources of said smoldering looks, the handsome New Scotland Yard detective James "Memphis" Highsmythe, is actually quite creepy. If that was the intent, the author was successful, but if we are to consider him as an actual romantic possibility for our heroine, it was totally unbelievable.

If you have a great interest in police procedurals, you may love this book, since that is really the emphasis of the story. And some of the characters are quite interesting. If you have read the previous three books in the series, which I have not, no doubt you will be more vested in them than I was. This is a book in a series that really cries out to be read in order. There are a number of references to incidents in past books that the reader will really not understand, not to mention the whole Pretender thread, which we can not appreciate not having read the first three books.

A well written book, based on a good idea, with some good characters, but one whose approach to a very creepy and fascinating crime did not really live up to my hopes.  

 

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I received this book from Library Thing Early Reviewers.

My ER drought of over a year and a half is over! 

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Wordless Wednesday- Saxman Native Village, Ketchikan, Alaska

Beaver Clan House

Cape Fox Dance Group

Many generations...

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...as always, for more Wordless Wednesday, check these out.

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Bandit ...Great Furry Hunter!

I am a great hunter, having captured this very dangerous sock and dragged it back to my throne atop the couch to subdue it!

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Ok, this sock does not seem that dangerous....

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Musing Monday...In Search of a Pirate Map.

I am feeling lazy today, even more than usual, which is why I am Musing my Monday so late in the day. But let's check out this week's question at Just One More Page..

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about the used books.

Do you frequent second hand book stores? Have you ever bought a book home only to find anything interesting within their pages?

I am very lucky there are no good used book stores around here. Yes, lucky, because my overabundance of unread books is bad enough as it is. Between ARCs and library books and books I have bought, I am really not in the market for more books. But...it is so hard to pass up a bargain and I am not really good with temptation. The niece and I have gone a few time to an Amish market some distance from home. A number of Amish vendors and some other stores as well. I love the great spice and bulk candy store...the meat market...all the sausages. Fresh eggs and produce and surprising nice crabcakes. But she actually had to drag me away from the used book store. It is cruel to allow things like that in public. 

But even with no good used book stores nearby, I do find ways to purchase a number of used books. The library is one source of my downfall. I have mentioned it before, but as you get off the elevator and go into the adult floor of our local branch, they have tables and bookshelves loaded with used books for sale. I mean 50 cents...how can you say no? I go to pick up one books and come home with three. Or four..
And then there is the wonderful Amazon marketplace. When a book is $4 with shipping for many, many books, it is a lot easier to click "purchase" than on a full priced new book.

But never, never have I found anything in any of these books. Not a note, a bookmark or a photograph. No money, lottery ticket or pirate map. Maybe these vendors online and the folks at the library are checking them first, but I have never seen as much as a slip of paper in one of them.

Rather disappointing, but as someone else answering this question said (sorry, but I forget who) the only thing I have found in these books are some good stories. Some great characters, beautiful ideas and hours and hours of entertainment and after all, that is the most important thing, isn't it?

Weekend Cooking...Real Life Food

Now we all know that fast food and prepared food, a euphemism for those delightful bags and boxes and frozen packages from the supermarket, is neither the best thing for us, nor the best thing to eat. But I also imagine that, like myself, on occasion you partake of one or the other. It's fast, it's easy..but can it ever be good?

Well, often it is not, but sometimes it can be and I recently happened upon an entertaining and rather informative web site that helps us separate the wheat from the chafe, Food in Real Life. The site judges the 'food' on two criteria. First, they give a rating, on a scale of 1 to 5, on the appearance of the ready to eat food vs. the picture on the box or in the advertisement. Then second, they give a rating based on the taste.
If you have ever removed one of these 'meals' from your microwave and realized it did not quite look like the box, you will soon see, looking at this site, that you are not the only one. But you will might be pleasantly surprised that sometimes, just sometimes, you can buy something that both looks good and actually is tasty.

As an example, from their Hall of Shame here is one with maybe the lowest rating on the site...

this interesting looking Cheesy Chicken and Rice. Not only did it only get a 1 out of 5 on appearance, but it received a 0 on taste.

"Taste: Even worse than it looks. I was able to stomach four bites before I threw the rest out; because of the way that the cheese sauce gums up the rice and traps the chicken and vegetables in a web of disgusting cheeserice, the entire dish tastes and feels the same - like crap. 0 out of 5"

On the other hand, sometimes they happen upon some that they think are really good.

Not only did it get a 5 out of 5 for appearance, but it also tasted quite nice, they thought...

"Taste:Sweet and spicy sauce; good amount of vegetables; not greasy at all. Better than a lot of Chinese takeout, even. My one complaint is that the servings are a bit small for the price." 4.5 out of 5"

An amusing, entertaining, food related site, and one that might actually keep us from making a totally inedible purchase!

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This is my contribution this to this week's Weekend Cooking.
"Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend."
Be sure to check out the other entries this week. As always, hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

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