Food And Lit: Venezuela

I’ve been hit or miss with the Food And Lit challenge this year on Litsy. I’ve been keeping up with the lit part, but not doing so well with the food. Just haven’t been cooking as much in general. I did make arepas this month though, so I wanted to share.

I followed this recipe. I was intimidated, but it was actually really easy. I made the dough and shaped the arepas in the morning, and then cooked them just before dinner. My kids loved them! The vegetarians ate them with a mix of black beans and sweet potatoes, and the meat eaters ate them with boneless ribs. We all had corn on the cob, and avocados and lime wedges for toppings. I had the leftovers for breakfast with a bit of butter and syrup. I will be making more in the future!

For the lit portion of this challenge I read Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse by William Neuman. This recent history of Venezuela once again made me realize how little I know about what‘s going on in the world. Thank goodness for books and reading challenges.

Next month we’re reading and eating from Spain!

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Food And Lit: Cooking and Reading From Argentina

Empanadas and salad

Last month on Litsy we cooked and ate from Argentina. I didn’t cook as much as usual last month, but did get a chance to try air frying some empanadas. They weren’t as good as at a restaurant, but they were still good. The kids liked them.

The real star of the month was the YA novel Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez. My daughter’s love of soccer has me reading anything I can about it, and I really liked this story about a young woman in Argentina trying to break free of her family’s expectations.

Next month we head to Greece!

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Food And Lit: Pakistan

August’s Food And Lit country was Pakistan. There were a ton of books I wanted to read (and will get to some day.) Finally I settled on Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal on audiobook. It’s a modern Pride and Prejudice set in Pakistan. I thought the restraints and rules of Pakistani society really worked in a comparison to Jane Austen’s time. The narrator was great too!

For food I had a little bit of trouble, but luckily Unmarriageable helped me out- the family loved tomato rice, so I made that. I had never spent so much time making rice, but it was oh so worth it. Delicious. I happily ate leftovers all week long.

This month we’re on to Guatemala. Yum!

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Cooking Ethiopian Food At Home

This month’s #FoodAndLit theme was Ethiopia. Before this month I had eaten Ethiopian food exactly once in my life, and didn’t really know a thing about it. I was really grateful that my library had a copy of Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions From The Horn of Africa by Yomanis Gebreyesus. This book is a beautiful education in the subject of food and traditions in Ethiopia. The pictures are gorgeous and the recipes all look delicious. I made chicken with tej sauce. The chicken was coated in the berbere spice seasoning, and I loved the heat. I also made Ethiopian Honey Bread that I saw posted on Litsy. That was amazing with coffee at breakfast.

While I was cooking all this I listened to the glorious audiobook Cutting For Stone. This was an amazing book that I’ll read again.

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The Saga of my TBR

My main bookish goal from 2017 was to reduce the size of my TBR list from 363 to 300. It looked like I was going to do it too. I read a lot of books this year, and weeded out the books from my TBR that I figured were never going to get read. Then I really started using the Litsy app, and discovered a search function on my library's website that showed which books were getting a lot of holds. A few 2018 book challenges, and going through my bookshelves and finding a stack of books I own, but have never read...

Today I forced myself to do a year end accounting, and tallied up all of the books I had on my to read list on Litsy, and on my holds list at the library, and added them in to my LibraryThing TBR. 

I'm up to 427 books on my TBR.

So, I very enthusiastically failed my reading goal this year. The good news is I have 427 books to choose from in 2018. My goal remains the same as in 2017- get my TBR back under 300 books.

My new toy

In early December someone broke the window in my car and stole my work bag. They got my library book, some dirty tupperware, and unfortunately, my phone and wallet. They caused me many, many problems. (I can deal with financial issues, but I had to go to the library and tell them I lost a book! Besmirching my good name at the library is not cool.)

The only good part about all this is that I got a new phone with room for apps! I finally got to join Litsy! I'm Bookwormjillk over there if you're on too. I loved Instagram when I joined it earlier this year, but this may have it beat.

What other book related apps do you like?