Inferno (some mild spoilers)

Hmmm, as usual I’m somewhat hesitant before giving something a bad review, so I’m going to preface this review by saying two things

(1) I don’t think there’s a single Dan Brown book I haven’t read and I have enjoyed to some degree or other most of them.

(2) I totally do not think that every book on the market has to be ‘high brow’ and there is a place for good escapist, entertaining fiction.

And now I’m going to refute those two points in the case of Inferno, Dan Brown’s latest.

Inferno is another Robert Langdon story / this time advertorial for Florence and Venice. Langdon wakes up in a hospital room with a head injury and amnesia, when he realises that he’s totally not in the country he thought he should be in and that people with guns are after him, he flees across Florence with the ‘attractive’ doctor Sienna Brooks. Cue bug point 1, why, when you wake up in a strange hospital bed and shortly afterwards are fleeing for your life, do you even have time to notice how attractive the person you’re fleeing with is? That became a regular reoccurring thought as I read Inferno, ‘they’re fleeing for their lives / on an extremely vital hunt, why are they spending even a nano second sizing up whether if they could they would?’. It was particularly annoying when every character who met Sienna thinks she’s attractive, it later becomes obvious that this is a device to highlight a change in Sienna later on in the story, but talk about pushing your point a little too far Brown.

Bug point number 2 is on a similar vein to bug point number 1, in that they’re fleeing for their lives / on a vital hunt and yet Langdon has time to lapse into frequent deep internal soliloquies about art, architecture and history. It even gets to a laughable point where several times Sienna is almost literally waving at Langdon going “helllllloooo” as it’s obvious Langdon has drifted off somewhere completely different. I did find the art, architecture and history stuff interesting; I’ve only been to Florence very briefly, I know Venice a lot better, but I feel like Brown’s just given me a good tour round but at the massive expense of pacing, this book after all is meant to be a thriller.

Bug point 3; again related to Brown pushing the point a bit too much, yes we know Langdon is claustrophobic. Brown pushed this point so much I’d have put money on there being a scene in the finale where Langdon has no choice but to go into a very enclosed space, it didn’t happen, which now makes me think that must have been a cut scene, otherwise why was Langdon overemphasising the claustrophobia?

Bug point 4; the plot twists, about two thirds of the way through the book everything changes as the real allegiances of the cast of characters becomes apparent, now I like a good plot twist as much as anyone but most of the twists in Inferno seemed incredibly forced, there was only one twist which made me go “oooh!” instead of “ugh?’.

Bug point 5 (this one not really Brown’s fault); as Langdon and crew hone in on what they were looking for, they have a clue in a video that the villain wants to release to the world, this gives Langdon an indication of the sort of place they’re looking for. The description of the place from the video really reminded me of somewhere I’d been on holiday, so whenever I imagined those scenes I couldn’t help transplant my memories of that place with the description of the place on the video. I didn’t think it was the actual place, then guess what, it did turn out to be the actual place. Made me wish I could have transplanted myself into the story and gone “You know it really looks like x” and then that would have shortened the story by a good third and it would have done everyone a favour.

Bug point 6; the science, there’s a good bit of population theory, genetics and stuff about the plague, I have a background in biology; microbiology and genetics to be precise and most of the stuff rung true (although the population stuff was on the alarmist side, in my opinion I don’t think over population could cause an extinction event for the human race but I do think it could cause the population to decrease what with increased disease due to over crowding and antibiotic resistance, resource shortages, wars over resources and increased climate change events) but what really bugged me was the scene towards the end of the book with the PCR machines. Now yes it has been a good 9 years since I last used one and the rate of progress in genetics is fast but even taking that into account, I don’t think they quite do what they did in the book yet and even if they do do what they did in the book (sorry for being vague, trying to keep spoilers to vague setting), what they discovered, so what, there is what they discovered everywhere anyway, the result didn’t mean anything (sorry that last sentence only means anything to someone who’s read the book). In fairness to Brown I think he may have been shortening the science to provide a spot of dramatic tension but still.

Bug point 8; the end of the book was incredibly preachy, Brown is obviously a bit concerned about over population and advances in genetics.

So in summary, am I going to automatically go and buy the next Dan Brown book, as I’ve done for every Brown book for years? No, Inferno has cured me of that habit.

** (out of 5)

Herb garden

Continuing with what seems to be a piece by piece reveal of my new garden (still waiting on some workmen), I finished planting up my herb garden today. I had and still do have, herbs down at the allotment, I’ve been pretty successful with growing the perennials but I should have guessed what would happen, I’m cooking a dish, I fancy adding a bit of rosemary, am I going to pop down the allotment (10 minute walk) to get some? Of course not. I need to investigate herb drying for the allotment herbs, it’s the only way I’m going to use them, harvest them in bulk, either that or transplant them back in my garden, but most of them are quite big now and I don’t really have the space, so cue my mini herb garden.

When the builders were working on my back garden they had planned just to raise the manhole cover a little and put a stone (instead of the original metal) lid on it, however as they worked the idea began to offend their artistic sensibilities a bit, so they set a rectangle of red brick around the manhole cover, laid down a membrane, filled it with gravel and went “there you go, you can put a plant pot on it”. Actually I had been planning on putting a ‘plant pot’ there anyway, I had been thinking of finding one of those old vintage sinks (which would have been around the right size), putting that on the manhole cover and hey presto, one hidden manhole cover. I’d always planned on having a herb garden there, as it’s so close to the back door. But I got my red gravelled ring instead and I had to rethink the vintage sink idea. Now I think that some people may have the idea that London is some vintage salvage yard paradise (it seems like it if you read all the magazines / watch the TV programmes), well my bit of London isn’t, however there is one place, full of beautiful furniture that looks like they need stories written about them and which I would need a house at least six times as large to even think about fitting just one piece in (those French cabinets are big) which luckily also had some garden stuff and I scored a couple of vintage French urns (one of which still literally smelled of a French farmyard, as I struggled to carry it back home). The herb garden is in one of the urns.

I started planting it up at the beginning of March; the supermarket survivor mint (which I had bought at the beginning of January and had already reached a survival record for a supermarket herb plant), oregano, thyme and I thought (trying to replicate the success of the supermarket survivor mint) I’d risk it by also planting a supermarket rosemary plant to. The supermarket rosemary didn’t make it and has since been replaced with a plant from a nearby florists which is so far doing well (my dad (a proper gardener) frowns on me buying plants from florists and supermarkets and heaven, DIY stores, but as well as a lack of salvage yard wonderlands, there is also a lack of decent garden centres round here, there is one but it’s a bit out of the way and so posh you literally feel like you can’t buy anything unless you’re titled, so I buy my plants where I can, or online, although online has it’s hazards to, as the plants always arrive exactly when you can’t get into the garden / allotment to plant them). The supermarket survivor mint is amazing, still going, it seems to have this cycle of looking like it’s died and is just a collection of thin sticks and then a week later it’s flourished back to life. I saw it do that again and again whilst it was a window sill plant indoors and again whilst outside in the herb garden, I’ve found it really appreciates being harvested pretty heavily, then it doesn’t go through the dying phase for a while. The oregano is a bloody menace, I should have remembered that from the allotment, it’s about four times the size from when I planted it, I need to expand my repertoire of dishes using oregano rapidly. The thyme is also doing well.

The new additions were bought at a local plant sale this weekend; ginger and Moroccan mints, purple basil, coriander and parsley. I have been attempting to grow basil, coriander and parsley from seed but I’m proving pretty rubbish at it, I can get it to germinate but it doesn’t get much bigger. I’m doing ok with big seed plants, I’ve grown from seed this year my courgettes, butternut squash, pumpkins and sunflowers but anything with little seeds …., I will persevere.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

I think this is the first time I’ve blogged about a book that I’ve just re-read, that’s because as I rule, I don’t re-read books (unless you count the books that the kids’ like, in which case I re-read those again and again for them). I always think there’s too many new books out there to devote time to something I’ve already read, but I had run out of Audible credits the other week and didn’t have anything to listen to (and didn’t fancy listening again to one of my growing pile of audiobooks, I’ve had an Audible account for a frighteningly long time now, 2o09 I think!), so I raided Girl Lacer’s audiobooks again and started listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Since then my Audible credits have been topped up and I have two good audiobooks waiting for me, plus a third I bought the other day whilst it was on special offer, but I haven’t listened to any of them because once I started The Philosopher’s Stone, I surprised myself (a little bit anyway), I didn’t want to stop. Now of course the Harry Potter series is one of those aforementioned books my kids’ get me to read over and over again, Girl Lacer is a true fan and is old enough to read them herself now comfortably (something she does with a regular occurrence, I’ve just asked her how many times she reckoned she’d read each book in the series and she said at least three times each, can well believe that) and now it’s Boy Lacer’s turn to discover them afresh. Not that it’s that fresh for poor Boy Lacer, whereas we had a rule when Girl Lacer was reading the books for the first time, that she wasn’t aloud to watch the particular movie until she’d read the book, of course Boy Lacer has seen at least glimpses of all the movies, but not that much seems to have sunk in, so every night when we read the books to him, we’re met with cries of “Don’t stop! It’s exciting!”, he’s lucky to have a Potter fan for a sister because Girl Lacer then goes on to read more to him after they’ve gone to bed. It’s interesting seeing the difference between reading the books to Girl Lacer and Boy Lacer for the first time, Boy Lacer is obsessed with knowing what the meanings of any long words are, so he regularly stops us asking us to explain, Girl Lacer never did that but as JK Rowling doesn’t exactly dumb down her language there must have presumably been words that Girl Lacer didn’t understand back when she was 7 but she must have let them skim over her.

But back to me ‘re-reading’ The Philosopher’s Stone, what surprised me a little was how listening to it for myself was such an unbridled pleasure, it’s been a long time since I first read the book for myself (in 2001, on a plane back from New York) and what’s great this time is reading it, after knowing how the series ends, how much of what happens in later books is set up or hinted in the first book, I am even more in awe of Rowling’s abilities at plotting and world creation. And of course, back in 2001 I wasn’t a mother, there are some bits of those books which I ‘get’ far more now that I am. To me the Harry Potter world is a world that you can sink into, as comforting as a hot bath, where the characters feel like old friends, I will be raiding Girl Lacer’s audiobook collection again, she doesn’t have all of them yet, the later books are very expensive and they’re not on Audible (if they were I’d have sacrificed my credits to get them all a long time ago) but maybe with me listening to them to, Girl Lacer will complete her collection just a little bit quicker.

***** (out of 5 – of course)

Military sandbox pants

Boy Lacer is going to be a soldier in his choir’s performance, he needed some green, khaki or camouflaged trousers, he didn’t have any, so I thought I’d make some. The pattern is from Oliver & S, the Sandbox Pants pattern (minus the back pockets as I didn’t have time) which I’ve had in my pattern collection for far too long and the fabric is from a seller on Ebay. I’ve had all week to make this and of course I left it to the last minute, it took me all yesterday afternoon to trace the pattern and cut out the fabric (tracing the pattern was a nightmare, I haven’t done any serious big sewing since moving back to our flat, I still miss our old temporary flat’s lovely large (compared to ours) table, I had to trace the pattern on our floor, even then the tracing paper was still shifting and I was making mistakes) and most of the day today to sew it. My actual craft space is in my bedroom but I deliberately moved into the living to do this, this is what I had to work with.

Space is getting to be the big hampering thing in my progress as a seamstress, being able to cut out pattern pieces accurately is crucial and I’m struggling to do that. However, having said all that, I’ve certainly been less accurate in other projects and at least my living room floor is now (thanks to the reorganisation that was part of the refurbishment) pretty much consistently clear. The actual trousers came together pretty well, watching them make trousers on The Great British Sewing Bee the other week certainly helped (these are only the second pair of trousers I’ve made).

I struggled with the waistband though, I needed to make a pair of button holes for the tie cord, this was the first time I’ve needed to make button holes since I got my new machine. Now my old machine used to be a nightmare for buttonholes, so I was very excited to get a machine that did automatic button holes, hmmm, I tried some on a piece of scrap fabric, would get half way through each button hole, then I’d get an error message, BL and the machine wouldn’t do anymore. Googling, I think BL stands for button lever and I found a couple of threads about having to pull it down but I couldn’t find anything about where exactly the button lever is and my instruction manual wasn’t exactly helpful. So if anyone knows anything about the BL error code when doing button holes using a Janome CXL301, I would love to hear from you because right now it’s putting me off making anything else with button holes (although Mr. Lacer the love says he’s going to have a look at my machine for me to). Anyway, back to the trousers, in the end I bodged the buttons holes, they don’t look great and are a bit too small but they do the job.

Oh and *slap wrist me* I should have double checked Boy Lacer’s height against the size as size 7 (he’s 7) is way too big for him. In fairness to me though, I noticed that size charts listed total height, not leg height and as total height goes, Boy Lacer is pretty average for a 7 year old, but it is all in his torso, his legs are a little on the short side, I’m not sure I could have judged the correct trouser size for him then on total height. Anyway, as long as they don’t fall down in the concert!

(Boy Lacer is now sitting next to me, questioning whether me giving his age and that he’s average size is good internet safety, I have him well trained – he’s just made me remove the name of the concert he’s in)

The Alchemyst

I’ll admit the main reason why I read The Alchemyst was because I was looking for a new series to some how tear Girl Lacer away from Harry Potter, so although I normally love reading kids’ books, I preface this review with what I normally write when I’m about to give a kids’ book a not particularly complimentary review, I am possibly too old to ‘get’ this book.

As well as trying to find new reading material for Girl Lacer, I was attracted to The Alchemyst as it had John Dee and Nicholas Flamel in it, two real life historical characters who’ve I’ve encountered in other books I’ve read over the last few years which I’ve really enjoyed. I did not particularly enjoy their appearance in The Alchemyst, I thought John Dee, the villain of the piece, was pretty two dimensional.

So what’s The Alchemyst about? The Alchemyst opens in a fight scene in a book shop in San Francisco, between the book shop owner and John Dee. Josh is working there over the summer and gets drawn into the fight. Over the road in a coffee shop is Josh’s twin sister Sophie and the book shop owner’s wife Perenelle, who rush over to the book shop when they realise something is happening. An important book gets stolen during the fight, well most of the book gets stolen and when Dee realises he doesn’t have all of the book, the bookshop owner and the children have to flee. Cue warrior maidens, sinister crows and rats, ancient goddess’ and Shadowrealms. There are a few good absorbing scenes in the book, particularly towards the end and I liked how it was set up for the rest of the series but most of the time something about the book made me almost painfully conscious about the writing and you know what they say, if you’re aware of the author’s writing, they’re not doing a great job. I think also because not only do I like stories with Dee and Flamel in but I also like stories where, as in The Alychemyst, myths and legends turn out to be true, I had a lot of my favourite stories to compare this to and it didn’t hold up well. But I think my reading background (as well as my age) is possibly making me a harsh critic, my opinion of the book is certainly not going to stop me recommending it to Girl Lacer, she may very well like it (although then again me recommending a book to Girl Lacer is normally the kiss of death).

** (out of 5)

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

I am not doing too well in my efforts to get rid of some cookbooks, I’ve only got rid of one so far and now I’ve gone and bought another cookbook, so sum change = 0. In my defence the kids owed me some Waterstones vouchers, so pah, what was I gonna do? Anyway, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook attracted me because I’d read in reviews how small Deb Perelman’s kitchen was and I thought “I’ve got a small kitchen to, this might just be the book for me!”, so I bought it. I don’t follow the Smitten Kitchen blog, although I feel I perhaps ought to now because I really liked the book.

This is what I made

Ratatouille sub

This was a semi regular attempt of ‘I’m going to get vegetables into my family even if it kills me’, the result? Boy Lacer devoured all of it (good boy), Girl Lacer picked out the bits she didn’t like (about half of it) and Mr. Lacer ate his to. Me? I really liked it but even though the ratatouille method was meant to be easier (and more small kitchen appropriate), I found it a bit of a faff and will be resorting to my normal ratatouille method next time. As for a ‘next time’, I’m not sure I would go and make ratatouille specifically for a sandwich again but it’d be a great way of using up left overs.

Toastie with emmental and red onions with green slaw

Pretty much the only thing that wasn’t burnt about the toastie was the emmental. I thought the red onions cooked in brown sugar and balsamic vinegar was a really nice idea but I felt that the cooking time was too long and I should have trusted my instinct more than the book. The burnt bread, entirely my fault. Still, it was nice and it’s tempting to do again because who doesn’t love a cheese toastie? And I love anything to do with red onions.

The green slaw was ok to but despite the claims in the book I thought it didn’t keep very well and I ended up throwing out the left overs the next day.

Apricot breakfast crumble

This was delicious, not sure it was particularly breakfasty mind you. It took a while to make as well, which resulted in Boy Lacer throwing a hissy fit, me having to make him a normal breakfast and then him having a second breakfast when this came out of the oven.

Butternut squash and caramelised onion galette

Making this felt like a Great British Bake Off moment, one where the contestant is about to go home, as the butter from the made from scratch pastry completely leaked out all over the oven. I think that the instructions to make the pastry were a bit iffy but I went along with it because I haven’t made that much pastry before, so I’m no expert, hmm should have trusted instinct again, as I later went and consulted how to make pastry in Paul Hollywood’s book and the method was pretty different. However thankfully, even with the butter all leaking out, the result was still absolutely delicious. I had been kicking myself whilst it was still in the oven, that I didn’t cheat like I normally did and bought ready made, however even with the butter leaking out, the pastry was still gorgeous and as nice as ready made pastry is, (badly made) homemade is nicer. The filling was gorgeous to (basically just cheese, butternut squash and onion) and would make a great topping to the Nigel Slater inspired tarts I usually make (with ready bought pastry). And the left overs were great cold to.

You can find a similar recipe here, interestingly the pastry recipe is different and is more how I’d expect to make pastry.

Leek fritters

(Made with a mix of the remains of my allotment leeks and shop bought ones). These were nice, particularly the creamy lemon dressing. They also freeze and defrost well.

Margherita pizza

OMG best homemade pizza ever, so simple and quick (relatively) to. I used the Rushed pizza dough method, which involves adding more yeast and letting your dough sit in a previously warmed for 5 minutes oven, I’ll admit I’m not sure the dough even raised (I think it was meant to) but still the resulting dough made the thinnest most authentic you’re ever going to get out of my kitchen, pizza base. The toppings were really simple to, which is what it should be.

The pizza above was for the kids’ tea, I just had to make it again a few days later for me and Mr. Lacer, I wasn’t convinced the pizza size above would be enough so I doubled the recipe. I consequently (for some reason) couldn’t roll the dough out as thin as before, although it was still pretty thin and doubling it for two adult was probably a bit too much. Will try it at 1 1/2 x the amount next time and there will be a next time.

Butter popcorn cookies

Oh just typing those words made me drool, these were, although a bit odd, absolutely gorgeous, they just had that perfect combination of textures, the crunch of the popcorn and the cookie itself, oh the cookie, the cookie itself was the closest I’ve ever seen to the sort of soft and chewy cookies you get at Millie’s, I will definitely be experimenting with that dough to see what other cookies I can make.

The kids, when they came home from school and I announced I’d been making popcorn cookies were all a little sceptical “Did you get that from a book mummy? Or did you just decide to put popcorn in?”, I think they were more siding on the mummy’s gone loco viewpoint. But even they liked the cookies once they tried them (sort of reluctantly).

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So, in summary I wouldn’t get rid of this book anyway, I’ve only just bought it but I wouldn’t anyway, admittedly there are a few recipes in here I’d do a little different if/when I make them again but the book is fantastic inspiration and to be honest worth the price alone for that pizza and the popcorn cookies recipe. There is still quite a lot I’d still like to make from the book, the baking sections in particular I feel I’ve only just touched the surface of. So I’d recommend this book.

Detour

Walking back from an appointment this morning, I had a choice, go by the road or through the park (about 15 minutes longer)? I followed my gut instinct and went through the park. I wasn’t planning on taking photos, I hadn’t planned to go through the park, so it’s just my camera phone again (using my favourite Hipstamatic), but still, good to grab a bit of sunshine. Here’s to the extra 15 minutes.