Sunday Salon: Cookies, Grading, and a Giveaway!

I’ve been kind of absentee this past week, and it’s only going to continue for the next week or so. After that, though, the semester will be over, and I can spend the rest of the year worrying about nothing other than my dissertation research. :)

This week has been an almost continuous stream of student meetings, grading, and Christmas cookie making, with little enough time for reading. I’ve gotten through some of my audiobook while I baked, but other than that, it’s been pretty sparse. So far, I’ve made Baklava, Brigadeiro, White Chocolate Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Cookies, Chocolate Marshmallow Logs (known in my family as Stained-Glass Cookies), Peppermint Bark, Cornflake Wreaths, Sour-Cream Sugar Cookies, Gingerbread, and a new recipe for me which I am henceforth dubbing Chocolate Crackle Cookies. (The name in the cookbook is Kris Kringle’s Chocolate Krinkles, which is way too twee to be able to say out loud.) I have ingredients and recipes for several more types I would have liked to try, but even with giving them away at every opportunity, I am still surrounded by a sea of cookies that I don’t really want to eat (I much prefer baking to eating), as well as being shy on free time to make more.

I posted the recipe for Brigadeiro last year, but I’ll let you guys vote on which recipe you want this year, and I’ll post it next week.

_______________________________________

Now that I’ve got everyone good and hungry, it seems like a perfect time to announce my latest giveaway: Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust, & Forbidden Fruit by Adam Schell. I read and reviewed this book earlier this fall, and really enjoyed it! (Read my full review.) Adam was kind enough to send me a lovely signed copy of the book, so I am spreading the love and giving away my ARC.

It’s historical fiction set in rural Tuscany at the time when the tomato was just reaching Europe’s shores. It’s a love story between Davido, a Jewish tomato farmer (so, it’s marginally seasonally appropriate… Happy Hanukkah!), and Mari, a Catholic girl whose cruel and greedy stepfather has seized control of her family’s olive groves. To quote from my own review: “The prose perfectly matches the story it’s telling: earthy and bawdy and joyous and full of the flavors of the Tuscan countryside. It manages to be simultaneously operatic in prose and Shakespearean (and rhyming!) in dialogue, while never taking itself entirely seriously, and the result is lyrical and lovely and so charmed by its own cleverness that I couldn’t help but smile almost constantly as I was reading – at the words as well as the story.”

It’s a good fit for anyone who liked Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, historical fiction fans, foodie fiction fans, or anyone for whom the winter is making them feel the kind of blah that can only be remedied by a good dose of Tuscan sunshine and tomatoes fresh off the vine.

To enter, just mention in a comment below that you’d like me to put your name in the drawing, and tell me your favorite way to eat tomatoes. Open worldwide; I’ll draw the winner next Sunday.

Advertisement