Avocado Fries

• Avocados
• Salt
• Flour
• Eggs
• Panko crumbs
• Canola oil
• Parmesan (optional)

Slice avocados into wedges. Salt lightly.

Lay out shallow bowls of salted flour, beaten egg, and panko crumbs.

Heat canola oil to a depth of about halfway up the side of an avocado wedge; maybe a little deeper. I went for about medium high heat on our electric stove and it worked well.

Dip wedges first in flour, then in egg, then in panko. I find this works best if you use forks rather than your fingers, because fingers always seem to smudge and pull away the coating more. Just use a different fork for each layer of coating, dropping the avocado wedge into the next bowl in the series.

Fry the wedges for 30-60 seconds on a side until golden brown, and drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with parmesan if desired. Eat right away.

Fantastic alone, or with a sweet chili sauce; I imagine thousand island dressing would also be a good choice.

Then there’s the incredibly simple, frugal, and healthy eggplant soup we made off-the-cuff the other day. Here are some rough directions for folks who don’t mind winging it a bit. The amounts are rough because, frankly, they just don’t need to be precise. This recipe has a lot of tolerance for variation.

Eggplant-Chickpea Soup

• Olive or canola oil
• One eggplant, chopped
• Red curry spice mix or paste (for the exact mix we used, go to Auntie Arwen’s and search for “red curry”)
• 2 to 3 cups stock (chicken, turkey, beef, or vegetable)
• 1 to 2 cups water
• One can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
• Salt to taste

I heated up about a tablespoon of oil, then dropped the chopped eggplant in, and added about a teaspoon or so of the spice mix. I sauteed this until the eggplant was nicely coated with spices, then added the stock, water, and chickpeas (I used homemade turkey stock). I brought it to a boil, lidded it (with a crack left open), lowered it to a simmer, and simmered for about an hour and a half, until everything was soft and falling apart (add more water if too much boils off). Adjust seasoning to taste. You could blend it at this point, but it’s also great as-is.

If you use a curry paste instead of a dry mix, you’ll probably want to heat a little stock, blend some paste with that until smooth, then add the eggplant and go from there (leaving out the oil).

• Use entirely all-natural ingredients
• Replicate the original experience pretty closely
• Try to keep it relatively light
• Stick to ingredients that most people should be able to find

Strawberries & Cream Bars

Plan for about an hour of cooling or chilling time after each layer, plus a couple of extra hours after the final layer. You can, of course, make the first layer or two one night, then the final layer the next day. And this sits just fine overnight.

Crust

• 2 cups crushed pretzels (one 8 oz bag of thin crunchy pretzel sticks, pulverized with a rolling pin or in a food processor)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix crushed pretzels with sugar, and then with melted butter. Press out lightly onto the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch pan with a spatula or the back of a spoon. Bake for six minutes. Cool.

When you press this out (and when you take it out of the oven) you’ll be tempted to think there isn’t enough butter in it and it won’t hold together. Fret not. If you add the next layer gently so it doesn’t stir things up too much, it’ll stabilize things so that the crust holds together perfectly.

Cream Cheese Layer

• two 8 oz packages cream cheese, softened at room temperature
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 cups whole milk
• 2 envelopes (.25 oz each) unflavored gelatin

Blend the softened cream cheese with the sugar and vanilla on the low speed of an electric mixer until thoroughly mixed. Yes, you’re essentially making cream cheese frosting in this step, but try not to eat it!

Sprinkle the gelatin on top of the water and allow to bloom while you heat the milk to scalding hot. Add the hot milk to the water and stir until the gelatin is dissolved.

Gradually add the hot milk and gelatin mixture to the cream cheese mixture, blending first on the low speed of your electric mixer until well-mixed and liquid, then at medium-high speed. Once it’s all added, blend for another three minutes. Mixture should be smooth and foamy.

Pour gently onto the cooled crust and place in the refrigerator until set. Yes, some of the pretzel bits will get stirred up into the milk layer no matter how careful you are. It’ll all be okay. Trust me (muahaha).

Strawberry Layer

• one 1 lb package fresh strawberries, washed and chopped (or a package of frozen strawberries, thawed and drained)
• 4 cups all-natural 100% juice fruit punch (total)
• 2 envelopes (.25 oz each) unflavored gelatin

Scatter the chopped strawberries on top of the cream cheese layer.

Sprinkle the envelopes of gelatin onto one cup of the fruit punch. Allow to bloom while you bring the remaining three cups to a boil. Add the hot juice to the cold, whisking until the gelatin is fully dissolved. Put into the refrigerator, checking and stirring every 15-20 minutes, until fully cooled.

Pour gently over the strawberries. Cover, put the whole thing in the refrigerator (it’s going to be heavy and sloshing, so be careful), and chill until fully set. Optionally, if you wait until the gelatin mixture has reached a soft-set stage where it’s mounding slightly when spooned, that would probably make it easier to get the whole thing into the fridge without spilling anything.

Sorry the following slideshow is flash-based, but at least there are pics:

If you can’t see flash, here’s an imgur album instead.

Potential variations:

Instead of using my gelatin-stabilized cream cheese layer, do something more like the original. Only instead of using cool whip, use sweetened whipped cream.

Experiment with different juices and fruits.

Try a graham cracker crust.

Creamsicle Cloud Pudding

• 2 cups orange juice, total
• 3 teaspoons unflavored gelatin (a little more than a .25 oz packet)
• a pint of all natural orange sherbet (such as GaGa’s Orange Sherbetter)
• 1/3 cup half-and-half
• one drained can of mandarin orange slices (optional)

Pour 1/2 cup of the orange juice into a medium bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin overtop and allow it to bloom while you bring the remaining 1 1/2 cups of juice to a boil (microwaving works fine). Pour the boiling juice into the bowl and whisk until the gelatin is dissolved.

Add the pint of sherbet and whisk until the entire pint has melted into the juice. By then the mixture should be cooled off nicely. Add the half-and-half at this point and NOT earlier (adding it before the sherbet will cause it to curdle). Pour the mixture into serving dishes and top each with a few slices of mandarin orange, if using. Allow to set for at least two hours in the refrigerator.

This will be a soft-set dessert, so don’t try to un-mold it! You want it to have a soft, creamy texture, not a solid one.

Blue Moon Pudding

(serves 4, or 2 hungry people)

• one envelope (.25 oz) unflavored gelatin
• 1 3/4 cups (total) unsweetened blueberry juice
• 2 T sugar
• A few ice cubes
• 8 oz sweetened yogurt (vanilla, honey, maple, etc.)
• fresh blueberries

Pour 1/4 cup cold blueberry juice into a medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle the envelope of gelatin on top and let it bloom for a couple of minutes while you bring 1 cup of the blueberry juice to a boil.

Add the sugar* and then the boiling juice to the gelatin and stir until both sugar and gelatin are dissolved. Add the remaining 1/2 cup cold juice, and two or three ice cubes, and stir. Cover and put in the refrigerator.

Check and stir every 15-20 minutes until the mixture just starts to set and smoothly coats the back of a spoon; various factors can cause this amount of time to vary quite a bit.

Add the yogurt to the gelatin mixture. Beat on the medium speed of a hand mixer for two minutes, or until well-mixed and a bit frothy. Refrigerate again, checking every 10-15 minutes, until partially set—it should mound slightly when spooned.

Spoon into serving dishes, alternating in layers with fresh fruit. Refrigerate another half hour or until set. Note that this won’t set hard—it remains a soft-set pudding, which is what gives it such a silky texture. So don’t try to turn it into a molded dessert (unless you want to mess around with adding extra gelatin).

If you’d like, add a small bit of whipped cream on top before serving.

*I recommend the sugar because natural, unsweetened blueberry juice needs a small amount of extra punch to bring it up to dessert level, in my opinion. However, since different juices, brands, etc. vary so much, I recommend you taste your juice and vary the amount of sugar accordingly. If it’s particularly sweet, ditch the extra sugar altogether. If it’s a dark, bitter juice like acai, or a sour one like lemon, add more.

Variations

You can create an almost infinite variety of these desserts by playing with different juices, fruits, and yogurts. Feel free to mix-and-match—for instance, you might prefer to use blueberry juice with fresh raspberries. I believe pineapple juice is one of only a few that isn’t supposed to work with gelatin in this manner, but most juices will. Of course you can also use artificial juice drinks, but I figure, why go to the trouble to start with unflavored gelatin in that case—you might as well get pre-packaged Jell-o. The use of gelatin plus juice lets you create a less sweet, less artificial dessert.

I made the pudding this way because I was trying to fix a summer fruit & gelatin dessert that didn’t use heavy cream or whipped topping—I wanted it to be light. That said, I’d imagine it would work quite well to fold whipped cream or whipped topping in before adding the fresh fruit to make a pie filling or Bavarian cream type dessert. You could also make layered parfaits where you layered pudding, fruit, whipped cream or topping, and repeat.

Cheesy Roasted Potato Packets

Serves 4. You might want to make these right on a cookie sheet or other such surface so you can slide them easily in and out of the oven.

• Fingerling potatoes, baby potatoes, or sliced potatoes: 2 lb (If using sliced whole potatoes, use one large potato per packet)
• Herbed olive oil, 2 T*
• Broth or stock, vegetable or chicken, 1/2 cup
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Grated cheddar to taste (roughly 1/2 cup)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Get out four large squares of aluminum foil.

Put a half pound of washed potatoes or potato slices or chunks on each foil square and bring up the sides to form a cup.

Drizzle 1/2 T herbed olive oil (*or a little olive oil with fresh herbs of your choice) over the potatoes in each packet. Pour 2 T broth into each packet and season with salt and pepper. Draw the foil squares closed over the potatoes. Roast the packets for 60 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

Open packets, empty each into a bowl or onto a plate, and grate cheddar overtop to suit individual tastes—I recommend trying a couple tablespoons per serving. Be sure to add the cheese while the potatoes are still quite hot so it melts well.

…Per Person

In case you want to scale this up or down, here are the amounts per packet. You should also be able to do this recipe in one baking dish covered with a lid or foil.

• Fingerling potatoes, baby potatoes, or sliced potatoes: 1/2 lb
• Herbed olive oil, 1/2 T*
• Broth or stock, vegetable or chicken, 2 T
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Grated cheddar to taste (about 2 T)

By the way, this recipe assembly-lines really well.

Next time I want to try this with chunks of sweet potato, cinnamon, brown sugar, salt, and butter.

There were puddings, but we already had a dessert made for this week (the stunning, tastes-decadent-but-it-isn’t, Snowy Pudding—that pretty photo of pudding in a mug with raspberries on top is mine). Heck, that’s why I had the leftover yolks in the first place! I could make a custard, but same problem. I finally spotted something that was at least only sorta dessert—a drink, rather eggnog-like. There were just a few problems with it, however. Whoops, the sweetened condensed milk had expired (we don’t use it that often). I could tell straight off by looking at the recipe that it would be WAY too sweet for me. And it had a horridly large amount of rum—even the other reviews of the recipe complained that’s all they could taste. So, taking pretty much only the basic concept, I made my own recipe that I call:

Summer Cream de Menthe

This is a cooling summer version of eggnog. Or, it makes a nice hot-weather substitute for hot chocolate. Use a little mint flavor syrup instead of liqueur for a kid-friendly version. I kept this light for summer; for a richer version, add an extra egg yolk and use all half-and-half instead of hnh and milk.

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 5 egg yolks
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup Creme de Menthe liqueur

Add water and sugar to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Boil for three minutes. Measure out 1 cup of hot simple sugar syrup; save the rest to sweeten other drinks.

In a large bowl, beat egg yolks on high speed of electric mixer until thicker and a little lighter in color. Very gradually add the 1 cup hot sugar syrup while continuing to beat. Be careful not to go too quickly and scramble the yolks.

Slowly beat in the half-and-half and then the milk, followed by the liqueur. Chill and serve.

1/4 cup Creme de Menthe is sufficient for a nice mint flavor if your drinkers don’t really want to taste the alcohol. Amount can easily be adjusted to individual drinkers’ taste. While I chose mint as a nice cooling summer flavor, another liqueur could be substituted. I’m thinking of trying Kahlua next time, or perhaps a banana liqueur or butterscotch schnapps.

Another thought: leave the liqueur out of the basic recipe, and then people can mix-and-match their own drinks with whatever liqueur or flavor syrup they want, in whatever amount they want.

We have the most awesome local Whole Foods Market. I won’t go into the breakfast bar with everything from French Toast (with real maple syrup!) to egg sandwiches. I won’t tell you about the wonderful coffee bar. I won’t discuss the looooooong butcher’s counter with everything from bison to filet mignon to the in-house sausage.

No, today it’s all about cheese. And oh, what cheese. There’s both a refrigerated display of the more common items, and a long case of the more unusual things. They make their own in-house fresh mozzarella, and it’s some of the best mozzarella I’ve ever had. The chevre they carry is the best cheese I’ve ever had in scrambled eggs. But today, I have to rave about the way they form some of their mozzarella into miniature cheese balls and marinate them in olive oil and herbs. Of course you can eat them on crackers, toss them on top of pizza or pasta, and so on, but here is:

The Easiest Salad Ever

• Grape or cherry tomatoes
• Marinated mozzarella balls

Rinse the tomatoes well. Drain the tomatoes, and the cheese. Halve everything and toss it together in whatever proportion you like (I try to go heavy on the tomato). Season to taste with a little extra salt.

Travels and stores well, and people will think you put lots of effort into it.

Once you’ve used up the mozzarella balls, save the herbed olive oil in a small container in the fridge. Since it has dairy in it and fresh herbs you won’t want to store it for a long duration, but you can get a little time out of it. Toss potato slices or whole fingerling potatoes in it before roasting (then try other veggies… I might try some other root vegetables such as carrots and parsnips). Drizzle it into a pan before you saute just about any sort of savory dish that requires a little oil. Use it to oil the pan before making scrambled or fried eggs. Whatever you do, don’t waste it—it’s an ingredient unto itself!

I also discovered the recipe site (and iPad app) Big Oven this Spring. Good stuff—tons of recipes, and plenty of feedback on them, so you have some idea which ones actually worked out well for users. And there tend to be lots of different recipes for the same items, so you can pick the one that suits your tastes best.

Which brings us to the Anytime Granola Bars. Go ahead—click through and drool. The recipe has directions for making these as either soft or crunchy granola bars; they make AMAZING crunchy ones, as well as granola cereal. You can see that the ingredients are more on the healthy side than many granola bars, but they don’t taste it at all. The bars are a bit sweet, but not nearly as candy-like as storebought. I made a few minor changes to the ingredients from the original recipe, and some ideas for variations follow.

• 2 cups Rolled Oats
• 1/4 cup Brown sugar
• 1/2 cup Wheat germ
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1 cup Whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 t salt
• 3/4 cup Raisins (preferably golden raisins or currants)
• 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup Honey
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1 T Vanilla

Mix dry ingredients together. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Press into parchment-lined jelly roll pan or sheet pan with sides. Cut, bake until edges start turning golden (and the bars smell awesome!), cut again. When cool, store in airtight container.

Tip: measure the oil and honey in the same measuring cup, and measure the oil first. That way, the honey slides right out with no mess, no fuss.

I misread the recipe when I first made this and baked these at 375 F, which is high. They only took about 15 minutes and were dead-on perfect. I’m still going to try doing them at the suggested temp from the recipe next time, and of course time will depend somewhat on how thin you press them. The suggestion to cut the bars before baking was absolutely fantastic and really helped.

If the mix seems too dry, try adding a very small amount of extra oil at a time (my first batch was a bit crumbly, although thanks to the egg the bars stuck together much better than I expected).

I’m looking forward to substituting shelled sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds for part of the raisins, or just adding them in. Also I plan to try finely chopped nuts of various types. Dried, sweetened cranberries should make an awesome alternative to raisins. Same with dried blueberries, and maybe even dried pineapple, although I might want to cut the sugar a little when using that, and I’d probably do half dried pineapple and half finely chopped macadamia nuts. Also I think it would be interesting to substitute ground, toasted flaxseed for some of the wheatgerm. I want to discover the differences that melted coconut oil or butter would make in place of the oil, just as an experiment. I also want to see what maple syrup or agave nectar would do instead of honey—which will definitely require some experimentation, since the consistencies are different.

By the way, the almond honey from The Bee Folks is PERFECT for this application. I found it a bit overwhelming in flavor for tea or similar tasks, but it adds just the right note to granola bars!

Variation One: Double-Ginger Hazelnut Bars

• 2 cups Rolled Oats
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Wheat germ
• 1/4 cup flax meal (ground flax seed, toasted or untoasted)
• 1 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 t ground Ginger
• 1 cup Whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped
• 1/3 cup blanched hazelnuts, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup Agave nectar
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1 T Vanilla

Variation Two: Cranberry Sunflower Bars

At first bite you’ll think you left part of the sugar out of the recipe. Then the various flavors will magically blend together, and the taste becomes PERFECT.

• 2 cups Rolled Oats
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/8 cup (6 T) Wheat germ
• 2 T flax meal (ground flax seed, toasted or untoasted)
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1 cup Whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 cup sweetened dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup roasted, salted (shelled) sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup Vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1 T Vanilla

In site news, Rene and I have been crankin’ out the reviews now that we’re starting to feel better. Her latest fantasy review is of S. Andrew Swann’s Dragons and Dwarves, her most recent paranormal romance review is of So Still the Night by Kim Lenox, her latest review of a contemporary romance explores Love is a Four-Legged Word, and her most recent historical romance review is of Lauren Willig’s The Seduction of the Crimson Rose.

For my own reviews, I’ve covered books as diverse as Walter Greatshell’s Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, J.R. Ward’s An Unforgettable Lady, Leslie Parrish’s latest rom suspense Cold Sight, Nora Roberts’s upcoming The Search, and Shiloh Walker’s Broken, as well as cookbooks such as Chocolate Cakes and Whoopie Pies.

Enjoy!

What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?

First of all, here’s what not to do: Don’t add pink. Don’t add sparkles. Don’t add unicorns and rainbows and relationship drama. For some reason lots of companies and people seem to think that this is all girls and women want in a game. That’s what one group of women and girls wants, and let’s face it, EVE isn’t trying to appeal to them. If it were, it would be Barbie in Space, not EVE. So don’t go there—the kind of women you want to attract would just be insulted.

I don’t pretend to speak for all women, obviously. But what kept me from starting up the game for a long time was the singular focus of all the advertising material I saw. From what I could tell, the game was just about ship combat, nothing else. There are women who enjoy that, absolutely, but a wider variety of gameplay options appeals to a wider variety of people. It was only when my husband pointed out the industrial, trade, and mission aspects of the game that I agreed to take a look. Find ways to advertise those more openly. Also, widely link to creative things like Future Proof, which is so gorgeous it rendered me speechless—if you want to convert a woman in your life to playing the game, show her something absorbing & inspiring like that.

I think there are a lot more women who’d game if they found ways to do it in short installments, without needing to put in hours and hours at a time. That way they could work it in around kids, making dinner, work, classes, etc. Part of this requires having a bit more structure and help in place when starting out. The advisory tutorials are an excellent start, but they aren’t enough. My advisory agents tried to send me through .4 space right after the initial tutorials—if this had been my first character, I might have gone along with that, gotten pod-killed, and decided I hated the game. The harder you make it to figure out how to survive the game, the more solid time the players have to put in right from the start, and the less likely someone with limited spare time is to stick around.

Right now the game moves fairly abruptly from safe to pod-killing—hanging around jumpgates from .5 space to .4 in order to gank folks coming through seems rather popular. On top of that, there are plenty of missions while you’re hanging out in high-sec space that send you into low-sec, forcing you to pass through these gauntlets. If you don’t really know what you’re doing, you can end up hitting these spots fairly early on and losing your shirt. Again, frustrating, and folks who value their scarce free time might bounce.

Finally, just treat us like regular gamers when you run across us in-game. Nothing squicks most women faster than having a bunch of random guys online fawning all over them or treating them like aliens. Last time someone invited me into their corp they said it would be great to “have a mother figure to keep [them] in line,” and I couldn’t cross that corp off my list of possibles fast enough.

So, my suggestions boil down to this: Advertise the greater variety of gameplay options beyond just combat so you’ll hook a wider variety of people. Transition a little more gradually from high-sec safety to low-sec danger. Include more automatic help to steer new players toward good starting areas with the facilities, agents, and resources they’ll need. (Those last two suggestions are part of making it possible for players to play for short periods of time more easily, which could easily be a topic in its own right, as the third link in the list at the end of this article shows.) And stop treating us like some sort of monolithic alien race that simultaneously attracts and horrifies you. Most of this reads more like a list of suggestions meant to widen the appeal of EVE across both genders, but there’s a reason for that—male and female gamers aren’t as different as you think.

Oh yeah, and family or couples’ rates for accounts wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Here are a few links to other blog posts in the banter:

• Women Who Want EVE
• Blog Banter: The Ladies
• EVE Online Can Appeal to Women by Adding Casual Content
• The Female of the Species
• Is There Something Special About Women?

Latte Tapioca

• 2 cups half-and-half
• 3 Tbsp small pearl tapioca
• 2 1/2 Tbsp agave nectar, or 3 Tbsp sugar
• pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup concentrated cold-brewed coffee*
• dash of cinnamon (probably not more than 1/2 tsp)

*Basically, soak a larger-than-usual amount of ground coffee in cold water overnight, then drain through a coffee filter. Or, you could probably increase the whole milk to 1 cup and use 1 to 2 tsp instant coffee crystals.

In a heavy saucepan, whisk together all ingredients. Place over medium to medium-high heat and bring just to a boil. Simmer, whisking constantly, for about 20 minutes, or until the tapioca pearls are softened and the mixture has thickened somewhat.

Remove from heat, pour into a bowl, and allow to cool for a bit at room temperature. You could also place the bowl in an ice-water bath, stirring occasionally, if you’re in a hurry. Refrigerate until chilled. You can press plastic wrap lightly down onto the surface to keep a skin from forming, or you can just remove the skin (or eat it—it tastes great, it just isn’t entirely pretty if you’re serving this to guests).

I have four books that I’ve read and plan to review over the next week, and have two books immediately lined up to read next, plus three cookbooks to review. Then there’s the medical saga to tell, and roughly three years’ worth of productivity to catch up on. I apologize if you’ve been trying to reach me by email and haven’t gotten a reply—it’s going to take me a while to get to everything.

Back soon—really this time!