Yes, that’s right, two book reviews in a row: The Vermont Cheese Book by Ellen Ecker Ogden is today’s delectable offering. I highly recommend that you check it out if you, like me, love cheeses. Although it’s intended as a celebration of Vermont’s artisanal and farmstead cheese offerings in particular, it can teach you a great deal about cheese appreciation and making in general.

In honor of that, here’s a rough recipe courtesy of last night’s dinner:

Chicken Fingers with Eggplant-Tomato Sauce and Feta Cheese

• Chicken breasts (boneless, skinless)
• Buttermilk
• Equal parts corn meal and all-purpose flour
• A spice mix of your choice (I prefer a quality curry-based mix), at a rate of 1 1/2 teaspoons for each cup of flour/cornmeal mix you use
• High-temperature-friendly oil plus a tablespoon of butter
• One medium-to-large eggplant, skinned and diced
• A tablespoon or two of olive oil
• Two cans (undrained) diced tomatoes flavored with garlic and olive oil
• One shot of dark rum
• 1/2 cup finely chopped macadamia nuts
• Crumbled feta to taste

Chicken fingers: Cut as many chicken breasts as you feel like into strips of roughly equal thickness. Heat a large pan over medium heat; once it’s hot, heat a very thin layer of oil with a tablespoon of butter added to it until the butter is melted and foaming. In a wide bowl, mix the corn meal, flour, and spice mix.

Dip strips of chicken into the buttermilk and then into the seasoned flour mixture, placing them directly into the pan from there. Once one side is thoroughly cooked and browned, turn and cook until cooked through. Repeat, adding more oil to the pan between batches and adjusting the heat up or down as necessary, until all the chicken fingers are cooked.

Sauce: It’s best to have one person cook the chicken while another cooks the sauce; otherwise, cook the sauce first and reheat when ready. Heat a second pan; add olive oil and heat through. Add the eggplant and cook until it begins to brown and soften. Add the two cans of diced tomatoes (including liquid), shot of dark rum, and finely chopped macadamias. Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened—you should be able to draw your spoon through the sauce and see the bottom of the pan without the liquid immediately filling the empty space. Remove from heat.

Serve: Put a large spoonful of sauce on a plate, add a couple of chicken fingers, and top with crumbled feta cheese to taste.

I had the idea for the above recipe last night when I was trying to figure out how to incorporate both the chicken breasts we’d gotten on sale this week and one of the cheeses we’d picked up as a result of our review-book-inspired cheese experimentation. The first thing I realized was that I wanted some sort of coated pan-fried chicken to top with the cheese. We happened to have some buttermilk left over from some sort of baking, and Alton Brown has previously recommended it for use before dredging when coating things because of its wonderful thick, clingy texture, so that was an easy choice. I like the crispiness cornmeal lends, so mixing that into the flour was another easy choice. My husband tells me these are the best chicken fingers he’s ever had and I don’t think he was just trying to butter me up, so they definitely came out well.

As for the sauce, it started out as a way to use the eggplant we happened to pick up this weekend, and I love eggplant with tomato, so that explains the canned tomato. From there I set my husband loose on it, meaning the rum and macadamia were his inspired additions. This resulted in a semi-sweetened sauce with a delicious dark undertone that I can’t quite describe. The dish just wouldn’t have been the same without it, and honestly it was my favorite part of the whole thing. I also gave my husband the task of picking which of the many cheeses we bought this weekend to try overtop. I don’t know that I would have picked feta, so I’m glad I left that task to him—it turned out to complement the whole thing perfectly.

Healthy Food
Doesn’t have to suck

I’m fascinated by the combination of chocolate and chili. I first experienced it for myself when I reviewed Michael Turback’s Hot Chocolate. He included several highly unusual recipes, some of which involved hot spices, and I felt it wouldn’t be a fair review of the book if I didn’t try at least one of them (even though I was somewhat… dubious, let’s say). The combination of chili and chocolate was surprising and unusual, but more than that, it was absolutely addictive. One of the theories behind this is that the capsaicin in the chili creates an endorphin rush, which combines with the usual good feelings created by chocolate’s own pleasurable chemicals in a wonderful manner. Well whatever it is, I love it—and it’s definitely catching on!

Next I may have to make some chocolate chili bites (found from Chocolate Chipped, my new favorite source of chocolate decadence)—they sound absolutely delightful. Or I could try some Mayan Chocolate Cupcakes (also found on Chocolate Chipped)—more complex perhaps, but stunning and oh-so-tempting!

There’s a reason coffee and chocolate go together so often, and it’s related to the above, in a manner. Coffee, like chocolate, is an incredibly complex phenomenon and swirl of flavor components that can lend itself to either savory or sweet concoctions. Of course, I bring it up today because I’ve finally reviewed my next book—The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Coffee & Tea. I loved the book for the level of detail, but as a CIG book it left one or two things to be desired.

Up next: I’m reading The Vermont Cheese Book for review, and am about 2/3 done. YUM! Speaking of ingredients that can be used in both savory and sweet manners…

Journaling is an interesting practice—one that, like free-writing, I didn’t understand the value of for a very long time. It seemed self-indulgent, and primarily I thought of it like a child’s diary, or perhaps at most like a scrapbook or travelogue. Now I understand that there is much more to it, and although I don’t do it regularly (unless you count blogging, which as it’s done in public is really only a sort of truncated form of journaling), I’ve done it sporadically when I’ve needed it.

Journaling provides a handful of very specific benefits. It allows you to free-write with respect to your life and the events that happen within it, allowing you to apply the benefits of free-writing (coming up with unlikely ideas; making connections you wouldn’t otherwise; entertaining thoughts you’d normally dismiss out-of-hand) to your daily life. It also provides the following specific benefits, found in a post in Steve Pavlina’s personal development blog:

Journaling allows you to break free of sequential thinking and examine your thoughts from a bird’s-eye view. When you record your sequential thoughts in a tangible medium, you can then go back and review those thoughts from a third-person perspective. While you’re recording the thoughts, you’re in first-person mode. But when you’re reading them, you can remain dissociated instead of associated. This dissociative view, when combined with what you’ve already learned from the associative view, will bring you much closer to seeing the truth of your situation.

…

Here are 3 other powerful benefits of journaling:

• Solve tricky problems. Some problems are very difficult to solve when you’re stuck in an associative, first-person viewpoint. Only when you record the situation and then re-examine it from a third-person perspective does the solution become clear. Sometimes the solution is so obvious that you’re shocked you didn’t see it sooner.
• Gain clarity. A great time to turn to your journal is when you’re just not clear about what to do. Should you quit your job to start your own business? Should you marry your current romantic partner? Are you on the right track financially? It’s amazing how much clearer things become when you explore them in writing.
• Verify your progress. It’s wonderful to go back and re-read journal entries from years ago and see how much real progress has been made. When you’re frustrated that your life doesn’t seem to be working out as you’d like, go back and read something you wrote five years ago — it will totally change your perspective. This helps you in the present moment too by reminding you that you are in fact growing and changing, even when it feels like you’re standing still.

So, journaling allows you to gain a perspective on your life that you simply can’t get when you’re standing smack-dab in the swirling currents of it. Think of it like standing in the waters along a beach and looking at a satellite photograph of the entire ocean, allowing you to see your location and place in a given region or even the entire thing.

Journaling has additional benefits for writers and other creatives. You can jot down all those ideas and thoughts that you’d lose otherwise, then come back later and mine them for inspiration. You can paste articles, scraps of paper, photographs in that might inspire you later. You can take notes from books or articles that have taught you something. You can explore writing or creativity exercises within the pages of your journal.

Journaling is also a way of holding precious our memories. You can write about the little, amazing things your husband or wife does for you, so when you’re annoyed with them you can be reminded of how special they really are. You can write about the feelings a particular view or event inspired in you. Later you can take a step back, read about past events, and see the traces of patterns in your actions that weren’t evident from up close—like being able to trace the flow of those ocean currents over time.

Journaling can be difficult and frightening. It requires at least a little dedication, the ability to set aside a few minutes every day to write a paragraph or two or, if needed, much more than that. (This is where I tend to fall down.) It requires coping with the fear that someone might read what you’ve said someday, although these days computer journaling programs with password-protection make that a little less of a worry. It requires facing yourself—even those parts of yourself that you don’t like—and learning from them. It requires nothing more than a cheap notebook or pad of paper and a pen, but it can be as fancy as you like, involving leather-bound journals and expensive pens or feature-laden software. The important thing is that you find a method that works for you.

I think it’s worth finding that method, because there’s so much you can learn about yourself from journaling.

Write with grace

I’ve been wanting to post about the D&D 3.5 skill system ever since I posted about its use in the Sorcerer class. It’s probably a mistake to try to post about it at 5:30 am after discovering that Medrol dose packs now give me near-total insomnia (I’ve been lying in bed for 8 hours petting the cats, pretty much), but hey, at least that gives me a convenient excuse should I say anything idiotic! So, you know, go easy, okay?

There are a couple of things about the skill system that bug me. For one, it seems overly (and unnecessarily) complex. It seems as though the designers are using multiple different means to try to compensate for things that they see as unbalancing, when it might have been easier (and more effective, since it would be easier to evaluate the results) to use one means.

Basically, there are two ways of limiting how far a class’s skill points can go: by designating class vs. cross-class skills (you spend skill points for C skills on a 1-for-1 basis, and cc on a 2-for-1), and by limiting the number of skill points a class starts with and acquires at each level. The skill system in 3.5 was used as a substitute for many of the specialized class abilities that used to exist in much older versions of D&D (for example, the old table of thief abilities), and it seems as though the designers have tried to write it up such that this is all it can do, in terms of what people are likely to have the points to buy. Yet at the same time they’ve put in a bunch of interesting skills that can lend great flavor to a game—yet that most people will feel they can’t buy, because their skill points have been strictly calculated to copy the old class abilities.

The other thing I have a problem with is the use of the Intelligence modifier as a determining factor in handing out all skill points. Why on earth would Int determine how good a fighter can be at jumping and swimming, or how good a burglar can be at moving silently and hiding in shadows? It just doesn’t track at all.

The following ideas come with the caveat that I’m no game designer; I’ve written for roleplaying games, sure, but usually not system stuff. This mostly came out of a chat with my husband about the skill system and what we’d probably do with it given the chance. We haven’t gone so far as to write it up, play with it, and test it out, although I admit I’m tempted and we might do so at some point. Anyway, there were a couple of ideas we had as starting points:

1. Bare-bones simplify it. Give all classes the same number of starting and leveling skill points, and use the designation of C and cc skills as the sole means of shaping how they might be spent.

2. Make it more class- and ability-appropriate. For example, say that every time a character levels, they can spend two skill points (or other appropriate number) any way they choose, and then use their charisma modifier as skill points that can be spent on Cha-based skills, Dex modifier as skill points that can be spent on Dex-based skills, and so forth on down the line (obviously negative modifiers wouldn’t apply—they’d be rounded to zero). That way each character ends up with more skill points to spend in areas that are appropriate to how he designed his character from the ground up, starting with his ability scores. Again, you could still use the designation of C and cc skills to shape how far these points could go.

The first option is the easiest, and if you like a simple game perhaps the best. It’s also the easiest to test for balance. The latter I think has more appeal for the D&D milieu, because it allows your character design and abilities to have some effect on your skills.

I seem to recall that one of the not-quite-main rulebooks (DM’s guide II maybe?) says in detailing how to create prestige classes, in fact, that certain classes simply should get fewer skill points because they don’t need them. I think that’s the wrong way to approach it. There are a ton of interesting skills available that NO class “needs,” and if you design the classes to only be able to buy what they need, then no one will take them. Instead, I think some of those skills could make fantastic ways to customize and individualize your character, if the skill system were given some minor tweaks to allow it more readily.

“I’m not misunderstood.
I’m just chaotic evil!”

I know my doctor isn’t perfect, as I’ve mentioned before; he’s just been convenient (he takes walk-ins). I’ve been planning to look for a new doctor, and now I pretty much have to.

I went to his clinic yesterday with this allergic reaction—swollen eyes, slightly elevated blood pressure, all the fun stuff. That’s when I discovered that he’s changed his practice to something that I expect he considers semi-retirement. He only takes walk-ins now, and apparently he’s made deals with employers in the area such that he does the physicals and drug-testing for employment screenings.

There are signs up all over the office saying that they don’t take people back to the exam rooms in the order they arrive because they triage folks for who needs to go back first—this is something I understand and can live with. Certainly if I came in bleeding all over the floor I’d want to be seen before the person with the sore throat, and if I was the one with the sore throat, I’d also agree that the guy bleeding all over the floor should go first. However, over the time I waited to see the doctor, it became apparent what the triage priority was. Anyone who came in for an employment-screening physical had first priority. Anyone with an actual medical condition had last priority.

I waited for, literally, four and a half hours while folks (most of whom arrived after I did) went in and out getting their physicals at $90 a head, paid for out-of-pocket, because of course the clinic will make more money off of that than it will off of my insurance-subsidized visit. (And I’m not the only one who came for a medical reason who had to wait that long.) After 6 pm I finally went out and told the receptionist that my blood sugar was getting low enough that I would have to leave soon one way or the other, and miraculously he suddenly had time for me.

Money should not come before health. I understand that there are cases where that isn’t practical, but in this case it seems a simple case of the doctor deciding that the only thing he cares about is maximizing the money he makes. I wish the clinic had at least had the guts to say, “we’re shifting our priorities, and you should really look for a new doctor,” rather than lying about it. The receptionist was giving an estimate of an hour and a half wait to folks coming in the door, and that’s about what the folks with physicals had to wait. The difference between that and four and a half hours is ridiculous.

I was going to try to say something interesting (I just typed allergy instead of interesting… Freud would be proud) today, but instead here I am, doped up on Benadryl, having slept for about 12 hours while doped up on Benadryl, and waiting to go to the doctor’s. Just the week for my allergist to be on vacation. The last time I had a reaction this bad I ended up visiting the emergency room on a Sunday. Nothing like taking your Benadryl before bedtime figuring it might at least keep things from getting worse, and hopefully make things better, only to have your eyes go from somewhat itchy, scratchy, and puffy before bed to downright swollen up, stinging, and burning in the morning.

I’m more than a little burned out on going through the endless rounds of trying to figure out what I might be reacting to, eliminating everything possible from exposure until the reaction goes down. The hard part is sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s a topical reaction from what’s internal, and I’ve been known to develop sensitivities to things I’ve been exposed to for years without a problem. So—the new shampoo I switched to after reacting to the last one? Unlikely, since my scalp doesn’t itch. The strawberries or raspberries I’ve been eating a lot of the last few weeks? Likely, since I can get sensitized to fruit. The new sunscreen I used recently? Normally I’d say likely since I’ve reacted to sunscreen in the past, but a reaction wouldn’t wait several weeks to set in, an I’d expect a rash on my arms, too. So, very unlikely.

Tomato? Possible; I’ve had a lot of tomato with eggy breakfasts lately in addition to my morning V8. It seems odd that it would have taken this long to show, so I’ll put it behind strawberry and raspberry in possibility, but it’s likely enough that I might want to cut it from my diet just in case. Avocado? Maybe; I’ve had a lot of it with breakfasts as well lately, but again, it seems to have taken a while. I’ll put it just behind tomato for likelihood.

Then that leaves all the random “who knows” things. Maybe I’ve gotten sensitized to coffee. Perhaps its the cats’ new litter—we ended up with a scented (ick) version because the store didn’t have unscented, but that would be more likely to kick off asthma, not swelling. Oh, wait—there’s the lip balm I switched to a month or two ago; better stop using that for now.

Urgh. I hate Benadryl when I have to take it during the daytime. I can feel my brain getting all woozy.

So for the moment, unless the doc tells me it looks topical rather than internal, I’ll cut strawberry, raspberry, and perhaps tomato from my diet and see if it gets better. If so, I’ll try at least reintroducing tomato since it’s such a staple ingredient, so it would be nice to find out I’m not reacting to it. It’ll take quite likely another week before I know if it’s working, though, even if the doc gives me some heavy-duty meds.

Party line is, if there’s facial swelling, call 911. I’m weird in that facial swelling for me doesn’t mean I’m having an anaphylactic (potentially fatal) reaction; that’s just my normal reaction to almost anything. So it’s a waste for me to do that.

I think I’ve hit the rambling part of the Benadryl dose, so time for me to sign off.

We picked up a roughly 2lb package of ground beef this week, and both my husband and I independently decided it was time to make meatballs, which we haven’t done in forever. I was too lazy to look up a recipe, so last night I made with the improvisational cooking. I’ll have to make this recipe over again so I can measure things and put up an actual recipe, but in case you feel comfortable with loose amounts, here are the guidelines:

Ingredients:

• 2lb or so of ground beef
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon horseradish
• A liberal dash of chili oil—tabasco or other hot sauce should work as well
• A liberal dash each of white pepper, black pepper, and Italian seasoning—if I were forced to guess at an amount, I would say 1/4 to 1/2 t each
• 3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons corn meal
• 2 tablespoons old-fashioned rolled oats

Instructions

Mix everything well with your hands (mixing with your hands is a good way to keep everything from becoming overly-squished together, which tends to lead to hard meatball-pucks). Form into meatballs no more than one inch in diameter.

Heat a large pan to the point where a few drops of water dripped into it skitter across the surface and immediately evaporate. Add a small drizzle of grapeseed, canola, or other high-temperature-friendly oil to the pan, wait a moment for it to heat up, and start adding meatballs until you run out of room in the pan.

Brown the meatballs on one side, turn over to brown the other side, and add a small amount of hot water to the pan (just a couple of tablespoons). Lid the pan and cook for eight minutes; split one of the largest meatballs to make sure they’re done and remove to a plate with paper towels on it. By now there should be plenty of liquid in the pan for any remaining batches; remove excess if necessary and repeat until done.

These were very flavorful and had a wonderful crispy “crust” to them. I came up with the idea of using cornmeal and oats because we didn’t have any bread crumbs on hand and I was too lazy to manufacture them. My first thought was to use cornmeal for the kind of crispy texture I thought it might create, but I was concerned that the fine texture would encourage hard meatballs; hence the addition of oats as well to soften them up a bit. I like the results so much that I think I’ll do it this way from now on. We ended up eating these with a homemade tomato sauce (a simple mix of some canned garlic-flavored tomatoes and cannelini beans) and whole wheat pasta; the flavor of the meatballs stood up quite well to those other flavorful components.

The sorcerer class in D&D 3.5 is fairly interesting. Unlike wizards, sorcerers get fewer spells on the whole, but they don’t have to decide at the beginning of the day which ones to memorize—they choose at the time of casting. Instead of basing their abilities on intelligence (unlike wizards, they don’t rely on book-study), they base them on charisma (because they rely on force of personality). Often a sorcerer’s selection of spells tends to match her personality.

I prefer playing a sorcerer to playing a wizard, despite the loss of versatility. I hate bookkeeping when I play a game. I don’t want to keep track of how much it will cost to inscribe each spell, how many pages I have left in my spellbook, whether I have the right spellbook on me, and so on. I don’t want to keep track of which spells I’ve memorized each day, and have the success of an adventure (or my own helpfulness in it) hinge on whether I’ve chosen the right spell to memorize without any advance warning as to what might be useful. I know it’s the sort of thing that’s perfect for some folks, but it just isn’t my cup of tea. I adore the intuitive approach that sorcerers use.

That said, I’ve noticed one thing about the sorcerer class that seems a tad broken to me: the skill point system. Sorcerers are charisma-based, so that’s likely to be your high stat. The class description says of the sorcerer, “he makes an excellent spy or diplomat for an adventuring group,” which implies abilities such as Gather Information, Diplomacy, and so on. Yet the construction of the class makes it virtually impossible to actually create the kind of character they imply.

Sorcerers get the same number of skill points that wizards do—(2 + Int modifier) x 4 at first level, and 2 + Int modifier thereafter, despite the fact that, unlike wizards, they’re unlikely to have a high Intelligence. They have fewer class skills than wizards do, which means fewer skills that they can buy on a one-for-one point basis, meaning those skill points won’t go very far unless they want to buy up a very limited set of skills. Finally, only one of those class skills is actually charisma-based—Bluff—which means it would cost so much to buy up those skills that are supposedly so appropriate to the sorcerer that you might as well not even bother.

It’s as though the designer used the wizard as a numerical template for the sorcerer, and then forgot to finish adjusting it as necessary to account for the actual class differences.

My DM solved this by turning three abilities he felt were appropriate to the class description into class skills for the sorcerer: Diplomacy, Gather Information, and Sense Motive. This has worked out quite well; I still have to spend my points very carefully, but I can create the kind of character that the class description implies and that I’d been hoping to create.

I do have to add that if you really want to play around with the whole “spells match your character’s personality” thing, it does help to have some books on hand other than the main player’s handbook, and to have a DM who doesn’t mind your picking spells from odd books. It can be tough to find enough spells of a given level that fit together—although there’s no reason you can’t also toss in a few utility spells that your character would find useful.

“Of course I have 100 feet of rope.
Doesn’t everyone?”

There are certain advantages to having the cable TV “On Demand” service that lets me watch a movie whenever I like, save it for 24 hours, rewind, pause, and so on as I choose. Even when I’m doing the pay-per-view version of that, it’s generally worth it—a much better deal than the movie theater, certainly, unless you’re seeing something that really requires a big screen due to effects.

The service has a selection of free movies, which invariably suck worse than anything out in the theaters this summer, because these are the movies that didn’t even make it to theaters. Then, if you subscribe to any premium channels, it allows you to watch a selection of movies from those channels for free as well. Most of those suck too, but there’s usually one or two worth watching. We subscribe to some of the premium channels not so much for the channels themselves as the ability to watch a bunch of movies from them for free whenever we want, which mostly translates to my watching them when my husband’s on a business trip.

Under those circumstances, you’d think it wouldn’t be too hard for me to find a movie I want to watch. After all, at those times I’m usually in the mood for a fairly mindless thriller. Sadly, even I can’t watch most of the dreck they show, and I’m infamous for being able to enjoy movies other folks deride as horrid.

There was the giant-mutated-escaped-spiders movie with the dialogue so bad I stopped watching after two minutes. I think I felt my brain leaching out through my ears during those two minutes. Then there was the cannibals-in-the-desert movie that I watched for about 30-45 minutes out of pure train-wreck fascination—and then even that wasn’t enough to keep me watching.

Finally today I found exactly what I needed. This is the ideal formula: it’s a fairly standard, low-key monster-type movie, but it has a halfway-decent director and writer(s) (they probably have some skill and/or talent but haven’t worked their way up in the business yet). It also has a collection of actors that includes some reliable low- or mid-level talent as well as one or two future stars who just haven’t had their hits yet. So the writing doesn’t kill you, the effects don’t make you snicker, and the acting doesn’t make you wince. Or at least if you’re me they don’t; I don’t promise anything if you have some sort of refined taste in movies.

In this case I think the title was “The Cave.” Think, crack diving team explores a miles-long underwater tunnel in the Carpathians, only to discover monsters down there. Like I said—standard plot. Only this has Lena Headey in it (of “300″ fame), who rocks as an actress, and a couple of other folks I actually recognized from various TV and movie spots (”Pitch Black,” “Invasion,” “Lost”). The plot was fairly reliable but interesting, and there was plenty of tension.

Oh, and if you, too, ever find yourself looking through the swath of free movies in the premium channel On Demand section, I highly recommend checking out the Starz selection first. Apparently they’re less stingy about putting some not-too-horrid movies in the free section. I almost always end up watching something from their selection, no matter which channel I check first; now I just look there first.

“Ring of Loot Attraction”
Mugs, mousepads, shirts, more

It seems it isn’t one foot Selene is having troubles with—it’s all four. I’m now wondering if she’s allergic to her pine litter (it’s the one thing I can think of that would routinely contact all of her feet and nothing else), so we’re going to try a new litter; the vet recommended the “Yesterday’s News” variety. The vet gave us some stuff to put on her paws, too, which should help the reaction.

I have a once-again-growing stack of books to read and review, which is good since I’ve been mowing through the things of late. I’m currently reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Coffee & Tea, and I have two yummy-looking books from Countryman Press as well: The Vermont Cheese Book and A World of Dumplings. (The latter is a cookbook.) Naturally I have plenty of other books to review, given time. I’ve added a bunch of James Rollins’s books to my Amazon wishlist, since I quite enjoyed his Black Order, and several people have graciously given me recommendations of further similar books to read.

I’m also still spending a couple of hours a day searching out links to the site and asking to have them updated; even with Google’s excellent web developer tool that gives me a straight-out listing of pages with links, it’s taking forever. I had no idea there were that many sites with links to us.

At any rate, time to go post on the Errant Epiphanies before I get back to link updating and review book-reading. Have a great weekend!