Mailbox Labor Day

I went on a little holiday weekend excursion to Second Glance Books, where I can always find books on my list and have a nice chat with Rachelle, my favorite book seller. As always, she sent me a way with a nice stack of books for Mailbox Monday, hosted this month by the prolific Bermuda Onion:



The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers (because I started the Lord Peter Wimsey series and now want to read them all).



Spies by Michael Frayn (because I read about it in Nick Hornby's Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and it sounds great).



Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (because I am working on her bibliography).



Felicia's Journey by William Trevor (because it won the Costa Book of the Year award in 1994).



Seek My Face by John Updike (because he's a favorite).



Bech at Bay by John Updike (because Updike is a favorite and I have the other two in this trilogy already, Bech and Bech is Back).



Then and Now by Somerset Maugham (because I'm on a Mauagham jag, having just finished The Razor's Edge and working my way through the short stories).



The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks (which I got at my neighbors' garage sale because I really enjoyed his newest book, A Week in December).

Happy Labor Day!

Cookbook Library: James Beard's American Cookery

James Beard's American Cookery is my go to cookbook for just about everything.  Well, that's probably a toss up with The Joy of Cooking.  But I usually go to JBAC first and turn to TJOC if Beard doesn't have the recipe or I want a simplified version.

My husband brought this cookbook into our home (ours has a different cover). I don't know how I got along without it. It is now an essential part of my cookbook library.

Today, I used his recipe for roasting a pork shoulder roast. I usually just stick one in a very low oven (225) in a covered casserole and cook it for hours, until the meat falls apart. That's a great way to go to get a huge pile of shredded pork for soup, chile, tacos, b-b-c pork sandwiches, whatever.

But I wanted to try something new. Beard says to cook the shoulder (or "picnic" roast) the same way he suggests for a leg of pork roast, which is to rub it with salt, pepper, sage, and garlic; put it in an uncovered roasting pan, fat side up; cook it at 300 for 25 minutes per pound, or until 160 degrees inside, without basting; turn up the temperature to 400 for the last 20 or 30 minutes, basting often, to crisp up the fat; then let it set a while. It is messy to carve because of the bone, but tasty.

We'll see. It's in the oven now. It smells very good. It will make a nice dinner tonight and maybe we will make sandwiches tomorrow for a Labor Day picnic.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Food Lover's Guide to Portland

"I moved to Portland in 2002 with a small amount of money and a big appetite."

-- Food Lover's Guide to Portland by Liz Crain.

I interviewed Liz, here, before I got my copy of the book. I am very excited to read it and discovery some foodie secrets about my city.

Opening Sentence of the Day: The Fortress of Solitude

Like a match struck in a darkened room:

Two white girls in flannel nightgowns and red vinyl skates with white laces, tracing tentative circles on a cracked blue slate sidewalk at seven o'clock on an evening in July.

-- The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem.

I like that opening sentence, even though it isn't a complete sentence so, technically, should fall into the pet peeve category. It has enough words to count as an exception to my usual rule against opening a book with a phrase.

I loved Lethem's National Book Critics Circle award winner, Motherless Brooklyn.

This one is much different. It's a coming-of-age novel set in Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's a real trip.

Maybe I'll tweet about it later. Ha! What am I going to do with this Twitter account, anyway? Who else uses Twitter? What do you use it for?

HOPPING

I am hoping to get some hopping in today, although I expect it will be this weekend before I get to it. For one thing, I am still trying to find a blogger blog with a Twitter retween button so I can figure out how to add it to mine.

The question this week is: Do you judge a book by its cover?

I can't say that I do, unless it's a fancy coffee table book or something. I like a nifty, eye-catching cover, like the Lethem book above, but I usually buy a book because it is on one of my many lists, not because I notice the cover. Since most of the books I buy are older, and often out-of-print, I take what I can find.

Although, I admit that I have a weakness for book with the Golden Gate Bridge on the cover, like this one that I bought and have no idea what it is about: