I’m playing around with some new themes for lifeofreilley.com, so it probably won’t be up or working correctly for the next few days.

Sarah Waters

This book held so much promise: a 20th century ghost story taking place in the old, run-down Hundreds Hall, a mansion in England where the eccentric Ayers family lives. The plot was thick with unanswered questions, strange events, and even a bit of a love story. Unfortunately, it just didn’t come together in the end the way I’d hoped. Waters left almost the entire ghost story open-ended, providing no real “reason” for all of the strange occurrences that happen at Hundreds Hall. I was definitely disappointed in the ending and was left an unresolved feeling.

The 2009 CSA season is drawing to a close and, as usual, I had lots and lots of vegetables hanging out in my refrigerator. One of the easiest ways to use up 10 lbs. of turnips, carrots, beets, squash, onions, and garlic? Vegetable broth. I started with this recipe and added in all of the other vegetables I had. I think I reduced the broth too much and it had a really strong flavor, so I watered it down a bit. It’ll be perfect for risottos and sauces throughout the winter. I made a double batch and ended up with about 17 cups of broth and a much cleaner refrigerator!

Stieg Larsson

I haven’t posted in a bit, but I’ve been reading a lot. I just finished both of these books and really, really enjoyed them. I realized after I read The Girl who Played with Fire that it was kind of the sequel to Dragon Tattoo. I would recommend reading them in the correct order. While the books really tell separate stories, The Girl Who Played with Fire refers to a lot of events that happen in Dragon Tattoo.

The main characters in both books are financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and socially introverted computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. Their paths cross in unusual ways, but ultimately lead them to work together in both books to hunt down everything from serial killers to sex slave trade bosses. I was so caught up in both of these books and I’m looking forward to the release of the third book in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

While a lot of farms around here have been hit with blight and tomato crops have been wiped out completely, we are still getting a good amount of beautiful heirloom tomatoes.  It’s the months of flavorless, cardboard-tasting tomatoes that make one truly appreciate the delicious and sweet taste of fresh summer tomatoes.  We got lots of heirloom tomatoes this week and we’ve been enjoying tomato salads nearly every night.  We also made a super-easy tomato and peach salad, which I found in this list of 101 Simple Salads by Mark Bittman (see #2).  The best thing about this list is the unique flavor combinations made from simple ingredient lists (like shredded carrots and blueberries, for example).

Now that we’re really into summer, we’re getting lots of carrots, beans, squash, cucumbers and even some tomatoes.  One of our favorite dishes is risotto.  Nearly any vegetable can be thrown into a risotto and we made a carrot and beet risotto, topped with some Parmesan cheese.  I picked up some quail eggs at our local farmers market this past weekend and made a zucchini frittata.  For the last two weeks, one of the nice surprises we’ve been getting are peaches.  We chopped them up and made a delicious peach and tomato salsa.

Kathryn Stockett

I’ve been severely delinquent on posting updates about what I’m reading and watching these days.  I probably have a backlog of about six or seven books that I’ve read and haven’t written about, and I doubt I’ll actually end up posting about all of them.  I did want to post about this book, though, because it’s one of the better books I’ve read over the past year.  I listened to this book and the narration was fantastic.  The book takes place in segregated Mississippi in the early 60′s and is told from three different points of view.  “The help” refers to the black women that were employed by white families to run a household, which included everything from polishing the silver to raising the children. Stockett tells the story of a white woman who begins to document the lives of the black women who are “the help” and the bittersweet lives they lead.

We tried some really great recipes this week.  This Seven-Vegetable Couscous, is a perfect CSA recipe for this time of year.  Nearly all of the vegetables required for the recipe are in season here.  My aunt made a delicious roasted potato recipe for us when we were visiting them in State College: New Potatoes with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette.  It’s easy and we’ve made it twice in the last week.  The first time we made it, we threw in some purple beans we picked at the farm, although we were slightly disappointed to learn that they turn green when cooked, looking just like regular old green beans.

Herbs are pretty much unlimited right now, so I’ve been picking some every week.  I was left with a bunch of mint, so we made mojitos!

Even though I’ve slacked a bit in posting about our CSA, we’ve actually been keeping up pretty well with the food we’ve been getting each week.  The only food we struggle with are turnips.  We’re drowning in turnips.  I’m not a huge fan of the taste, and I need to do some research on creative ways to use them.  I did find a fantastic recipe for using up leafy greens: Swiss Chard Gratin.  It’s a gratin, and has a good amount of cream and butter, so it’s not the healthiest.  Still, we used up every single one of our greens in it.  Even the greens from the turnips and beets, which usually just go into the compost pile.

Week two of our CSA brought more of the same leafy greens.  We weren’t too creative this week, as we just sauteed up a bunch of the greens and put them on a pizza.  And while that may sound somewhat healthy, we ended up using a Paula Deen recipe for the sauce.  I did try one new recipe, Caramelized Tofu.  It was delicious.  Even Jack got in on the CSA action this week.  I made him some mashed potatoes with spinach.