A Thousand Ships served with Greek Lemon Rice, chicken and a greek salad

 A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes and served with Greek Lemon Rice, Chicken and a greek salad. Oh this was sooooo good!  I listened to this on audio and the author reads it.  She is perfect! 

 

I read Song of Achilles earlier this year and Circe last year.  Having read those two, I knew many of the stories of the Trojan war and the heroes  within that war.  This telling is from the women.  Each chapter is a bit of her story and scene through her eyes.    We get Hecabe, Priam's widow, and Cassandra and Helen and even the Goddesses who started the war.  I think my favorite is Penelope's parts.  She is reading the letters she wrote to Odysseus as she waits for his return.  We hear of all of his adventures through her eyes and she calls him out for his arrogance and pride and puts him in his place.  And yet, she yearns for the return of her husband.  So many stories!   The stories are not told chronological so be prepared that it does jump around as a collection of stories and not a novel.    I really loved this one.  In fact I went out and bought her other book on Women in Greek Myths- Pandora's Jar.   

I highly recommend this one and I highly recommend it on audio.  I would be really interested in this has the same impact if you have read Song of Achilles and Circe first.  These just feel like the perfect trio.   I kind of want to listen to it again!  

I was going to do Chicken kabobs and Greek rice but i don't own a grill and it feels like kabobs should be grilled.  Ended up just doing a nice lemon paprika chicken in the oven put it on top of the Greek rice.

 

I had some tomatoes and cucumbers, added some feta cheese and topped it with a little tzatziki sauce.   delicious.    For the Greek rice, 

olive oil in a pan.  add 1/2 an onion minced and some garlic.  I did 3 cloves because i like it garlicky!  

add in 2 cups of rice and stir until the onions are clear. Add  4 cups of chicken broth.  The recipe called for greek seasoning and i wasn't really sure what that was.  I did some dried oregano, dried thyme, some garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley and salt.  

Also bought a bottle of Greek wine to enjoy! 

The Ten Thousand Doors of January served with Jelly Donuts

 The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow served with Jelly Donuts.  

Well that was fun!  I kind of picked this book because I loved the cover so much AND I read A Spindle Splintered by this author last year and really liked it.   This one is about a young girl in the early 1900's named January.  She lives with her guardian, Mr Locke , while her father is off hunting artifacts for him.  She is sad and lonely and finds a door that takes her to a new world.  But, once she is back, she is locked away in the Locke mansion.   Without giving too much away, she gets a book that tells her the story of her parents and more doors! Turns out there are doors everywhere and they are being closed up for good!    There are several villain's here and a couple of heroes.  There is a chase and a little bit of love and some big action! 

What I liked, I really liked January ,Jane, Samuel and Bad.  They made a great team and I was rooting for them.  I enjoyed the story within the story.  The whole thing is super inventive and captured my attention.  I read this pretty quickly because once i got into it, I had to know what would happen! 

I did get confused more than once.  I don't read a lot of fantasy so a few times i was like... Ummmm what is happening here?  While the story within the story was great, it also added to some of the confusion. 

Really fun read and a solid ⭐⭐⭐⭐.  

I made Jelly filled Donuts for this one.  2 reasons, when you bite into a filled donut there is that surprise for what's inside similarly to when January goes through the doors. The other reason I made there is for the prompt on Bookstagram for a contest called "Donut judge a Book".  I can win some fun kitchen stuff.  
I used a recipe I found on Pinterest that i'm attaching here.  It was a bit of work because these are yeast donuts so we must wait for the rise!  I added some edible glitter and they were delicious!  

https://natashaskitchen.com/baked-donuts/

The Giver of Stars served with Pinto Beans and Cornbread

 The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes served with Pinto Beans and Cornbread.   

This was for my book group discussion planned for April.  It is set in Kentucky and focuses on the Packhorse librarians.  This was a program started by Eleanor Roosevelt during the depression to help get books into the hands of the less fortunate.    The main character is Alice who is English and marries a Kentucky man who is vacationing in Europe.  She is hoping to escape her confined English life but gets more than she bargained for.  Once in Kentucky, she isn't finding married life with Bennet to be what she expected.  She signs up to be a packhorse librarian and there we meet Margery who is a tough broad who runs the librarians.   Together with a group of other women, they ride the back trails of Kentucky delivering books.  There is a love story, a murder mystery and plenty of family drama.  

Here is what I liked, the whole Kentucky packhorse Librarian thing is super interesting.  Love any story about books and the power of reading.  I felt like the author did a nice job of setting the surroundings.  I liked the story of the women's friendship and overall really liked the women. 

It was a bit slow for me in the first half.   I just felt like it dragged a tiny bit.  And it all felt a bit predictable with the lame husband and mean father in law.    

Glad I read it and would recommend it.  ⭐⭐⭐ 1/2  

Last year I read the Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek and enjoyed it.  There was such a controversy on line around the fact that the books came out in a close time period and were focused on the same topic.   I think they were both different enough that it is all good.  I mean we have 100's of WW2 books and no one loses their mind that they came out around the same time.   No controversy for me.  Both were good and glad i read both though I am kind of glad I separated them by a year! 

I knew pretty quickly that I had to make Pinto Beans and Cornbread for this story.  They mention cornbread multiple times in the book.  My folks grew up in the deep mountains of West Virginia and pinto beans and cornbread were a staple on their tables.   My mom fixed it every couple of weeks when i was a kid.  Probably wasn't my favorite meal back then but now I think back on that with such comfort!

For years i didn't eat it but about 10 years back I made my own version minus the giant slab of fat in the beans.  I added onions and garlic and a little tiny bit of red peppers just to give it a kick. Mom's cornbread was NOT sweet cornbread.   When I moved to the west coast, I found that most of the cornbread was on the sweeter side.   

I made a giant pot for this book and ate it all!    Delicious!   

Violin Conspiracy served with Peach Pie

 The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb served with Peach Pie 

Ray McMillian inherits his great grandfather's violin and  with that violin become a musical sensation!  It turns out the old violin is actually a Stradivarius, one of the rarest and move valuable instruments there is.  It is valued at 10 million.   That opens up all kind of problems for Ray.  In the very beginning of the book, the violin is stolen and held for ransom.  From there we go backwards and learn about how Ray came to get the violin, his rough family history, his exposure to racist actions and the claims being made against his instrument.   His family is pretty awful.  His mom has never understood or appreciated his musical talent.  Once the violin is valuable, the family wants him to sell it and split the money.  When he refuses it causes a fracture in the family.  There is also the family that was the slave owners of his great grandfather who claim it is their violin and was stolen.  The story starts at the present day, flips back to Ray's childhood and then works its way back to present day and the mystery of who stole the violin. 

Here is what I liked about the book, I have never given any thought to the racism that exist in the classical music arena.  I mean it makes sense.  Classical music is typically thought of as rich white people music.  Here is the young black musician who is showing up at event with this amazing violin and he isn't always treated well.  Some of the things that happen to him are so shocking that i can't even believe it could be true.  At first I thought the author was just exaggerating the issue but then i listened to an interview with him and he shared that the events were based on real life issues he has had.  I can't even believe this type of crap happens!  I'm obviously living in my own little bubble so it's good for me to have my mind expanded!   I also loved Ray's mentor Janice and the support she gives him.  I loved Grandma Nora and the love she gives him.  And Ray himself, he manages to not let the racism and in fighting with his family make him bitter.  He continues to strive to be the best in his field and even tries to mend the family bonds.  

Probably my only disappointment was that it's not much of a mystery.  I would call it more of a family drama/ coming of age story and not a mystery.  I mean half of the book is about the background.  I also thought I knew who did it and i'm typically not good at that kind of thing.  

I listened to it on audio.  I had heard that there was music between chapters.  THere was but it was so small that I wish I had read it instead.  I just didn't love the narrator and I think I would have enjoyed the print version more.  Still, it's a ⭐⭐⭐⭐ read and one I would recommend. 

I wanted to make Peach Pie because it felt like something Grandma Nora would have made for Ray.  I don't typically make pie crust but buy the premade.  I decided to do kind of a hybrid pie/cobbler and just do the crust on the top.  (I think that probably is a cobbler but who knows)   I cut a violin shape on the top of the crust and added some music notes.  It look better before cooking.  After, you can't hardly see it!  

For the Pie,  I used frozen peaches.  Because I only had one bag, I used a smaller casserole dish and made a mini pie.   

Bag of frozen peaches (approx 3 cups of peach slices) 

1/4 cup flour 

1/2 Tablespoon of CornStarch 

1/2 cup of white sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 

1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg and salt 

2 Tablespoons of butter. 

Mix all together except the butter.  Put into the casserole dish.  Slice up the butter into thin slices and put across the top of the mixture.   I used a store bought crust.  I rolled it out and trimmed it to fit over the top.  I brushed it wit 1 egg white and sprinkled it with turbinado sugar.  Baked in 350 oven for about 40 minutes.  Watch the crust so it doesn't burn.  I had to use my pie cover to prevent it getting too dark.  You want it toasty brown and bubbly.    Enjoy!