ABC Book Challenge K – O

 

K – No one gets killed                       The Door By The Staircase (2016) by Katherine Marsh

Fabulous YA book that Lia shared with me. I’ve always loved the stories about Baba Yaga and I quickly learned early on that she was in this book. Mary lives in a REALLY sucky orphanage and is grateful when a mysterious woman named Madame Z chooses her from all the others to take home with her. She slowly realizes that things are not quite normal, but her life is so much better that she doesn’t really look too deeply. Things get weirder and weirder until she finally realizes just who it is who adopted her. Very satisfying ending. Wish there was a sequel.

 

L – Book from a list                          The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The list was “10 Top Books To Read in Your Lifetime”. I read this book many years ago, long before the original movie was made. I found it rather depressing, not counting the death of Gatsby. The lives of the very rich seemed so empty. Without any real purpose. Sure, I’d love to have a nice house and someone else to do the cooking and cleaning, but what’s the point of just sitting around with nothing worthwhile to do other than spend, spend, spend. (However, if someone wants to give me a ton of money, I will not say no…)

 

M – Month in the title                       The October Country (1955) by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury is one of my sci-fi favorites. This collection of odd stories is remarkable in the feelings they elicit. At least from me. I always felt a great amount of melancholy when reading his works.

 

N – Your name in the title                Dot For Short (1947) by Frieda Friedman

I read this when I was in grade school, and loved it. I was later able to get this at a library sale of discarded books. Dot is much shorter than her two older sisters, and not much taller than her little brother. She hates being small and her greatest wish is to be tall and beautiful. She lives with her siblings, parents and grandmother in a small New York apartment. They have very little money, but they are rich in family love. A very sweet book.

         

 

O – Orange cover                              Siberian Gold (1927) by Theodore Acland Harper

I did a book report on this before, but I kept the book because it had a very pretty cover and I intend to use it for an altered book. I might read it once more before doing that, because it was a pretty good story. A mining engineer tries to establish a gold mine in Siberia and deals with thieves, Russians and a possible romance.

 

So Long, Salad Bar – Bye, Bye, Buffet

 

I used to LOVE salad bars and buffets. So many choices of food! So many choices of dessert! In Oroville it was Golden Corral. In Chico or Marysville it was Sizzler. Way back in my youth, Chico had a place called Fjords. That was my first experience with an all-you-can-eat type of restaurant. I’m afraid all of this is a thing of the past now.

 

I would always get some salad to quiet my conscience, then hit all the “bad” stuff. I do enjoy salad, but I like all the little extras like garbanzo beans, REAL bacon bits, olives, sunflower seeds, cottage cheese etc. I know you can have that stuff at home, but once you open that can of garbanzos, what do you do with the leftover? I don’t want an entire can of them on my salad. I don’t want an entire can of olives, either. When I was going to Chico all the time to help my parents out, my mom and I would always go to Sizzler for lunch and they had the makings for taco salad. Out of this world!

 

After the salad I would hit the chicken wings…HARD. I absolutely LOVE chicken wings. I could make an entire meal of them. There was probably other meat I would have too, but always the chicken wings first. And a baked potato with TONS of butter.

 

For dessert, there was almost always some kind of ice cream with various toppings. Brownie bites. Pudding. Golden Corral always had the best hot cobbler. If that was available I would concentrate on that instead of the other desserts.

 

As the years have gone by though, I just couldn’t justify the all-you-can-eat price, because I couldn’t do it justice anymore. If I could have, I would have liked to have a small container I could fill up for the next day.

 

One reason I loved Hula’s in Chico was that you could get as much as you possibly could in that bowl they gave you and take the leftovers home. I would pack as much meat as I could in the bowl and then add water chestnuts and tiny corn. When it was all cooked, I would top it off with pineapple. Back at the table I would ask for a plate to mix it all in with the rice they give you.

 

But that’s not something available anymore. *sigh*

 

 

2 Topics of Vital Importance

 

OK. They might not be VITALLY important, but it’s what popped into my mind this week, so I’m going with it.

 

Finessing a PB&J

Growing up, a PB&J sandwich was always made by spreading the peanut butter on one slice of bread and the jelly (usually grape, in my house) on the other slice and smashing the two together. Recall my earlier blog that talked about the way I like my sandwiches…smashed.

Marv still makes his PB&J sandwiches in this manner. Without the smashing, of course.

I do not. Since the jelly (or jam or preserves) is kept in the fridge, it’s cold and I find it hard to spread effectively. Sometimes it tears up the bread. Unacceptable. Somewhere along the line I came up with the idea of mixing the two ingredients together in a small dish until I had an evenly blended mixture. THEN I spread it on the bread. MUCH easier to my way of thinking. Marv disagrees, but then to each his own. Even if his own is wrong…

 

“Orming”

My Brit friend on FB doesn’t know the origin of the term “orm” which means to wander, stroll, etc. but uses the term when she goes on an orm around the neighborhood or to the shops. I asked her if it was always a noun or if it could be used as a verb: I went orming around the neighborhood. I went orming at Walmart. She said no, it was always a noun. You go on an orm. You do NOT go orming. Well, I’m taking liberties and using it for both. Quite often I will go orming at Walmart, not for anything specific, just going up and down the aisles to see what’s there. With the way language is always changing and new words are incorporated into the dictionaries all the time, I will make this change to suit me. So there, Carol! Want to go orming with me?