Rosemary Baked Potato Soup

3 cups milk
1 can condensed cream of potato soup
2 cups frozen hash browns
1 TBS olive oil
1 1/2 TSP Tones Rosemary Garlic Seasoning.
some shredded cheese
some bacon crumbles

Mix milk, soup and hash browns in large sauce pan. Bring to a boil on high heat, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in pan and add Rosemary seasoning. Saute. Then add to soup mix.

Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Top with cheese and bacon.

We also used a skillet to cook chicken breast sprinkled with Tone’s Rosemary Garlic Seasoning and Lawry’s Perfect Blend Seasoning and Rub for Chicken and Poultry. Served with peas and bread and butter.

Enchilada Bake

Well, it doesn’t look pretty, but it was good.

Intensity by Dean Koontz

Genre: Fiction, Realistic, Thriller
Pages: 436
Duration: Listened to, a few days, Summer 2007

Description:
Goodness, I can’t find a good summary anywhere. I typically like to cheat in the summary section, because they are so tedious. Well here it goes…..nope….I’ll just copy the back of the book.

Past midnight, Chyna Sherpherd, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend’s family. Instincts proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed “homicidal adventurer,” Vess lives only to satify all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with intensity. Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.

Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first her sole aim is to get out alive–until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess’s next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl….as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.

Review: Ooo…..now you want to read it, right? I picked this one up for our trip to Oregon, was looking for something all three of us (me, my husband and my father-in-law) could enjoy. Well, we didn’t listen to it on the trip and good thing too. Most of the story takes place in Oregon, and driving on the roads in Northern Cali., so I think we would have been pretty freaked out to read it on the trip.

I lump a lot of fiction into the “trashy” category and that’s where I’d put this one. I guess trashy might be the wrong word……maybe very formulaic. Anyway, Dean Koontz fits into that category and because it’s horror/thriller, I never thought I’d like him much, but just like Stephen King, I’ve come around. Now, I’ve only read one Stephen King book and loved it…..and this is only my second Koontz book, and the first one was much better……ummm….the Face, but I like them all the same.

The book keeps you interested and you want to keep listening (haha), there were times I just had to listen to find out what happens, I knew what was going to happen, but I still had to listen. It’s just that type of book. I also love the way he contrast good and bad people.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Genre: Fiction, Realistic
Pages: 432
Duration: A few weeks, Summer 2007

Description: From Publishers Weekly
Edwards’s assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father’s disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter’s handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul’s twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David’s deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters’ lives, and Phoebe’s absence corrodes her birth family’s core over the course of the next 25 years. David’s undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents’ icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well.

 

Review: I had the urge to keep reading this book, but in the end I wasn’t satisfied. The overall tone is dark and I felt like I could skip whole portions of the book and not really miss anything. The life of the doctor and his family is just plain boring. The only part of the book I enjoyed reading really was about the Nurse and the daughter. I wouldn’t really suggest this book for anyone to read.

Monster by Sanyika Shakur

Genre: Non-fiction, gang life
Pages: 400
Duration: I’ve forgotten, a few weeks.

Description: From Library Journal:
“Monster” Kody, today known as Sanyika Sakur, spent 16 years as a “gangbanger” in South Central Los Angeles. His account begins at age 11, when he was inducted into the ranks of the Crips, and ends (hundreds of bodies later) with Scott serving a seven-year prison term for beating a crack dealer. Throughout, he successfully conveys a sense of the siege mentality that prevails every minute of every day, due to the daily barrage of gang-on-gang violence. Names of derivative Crip gangs (e.g., Rollin’ Sixties, Hoovers, Grape Street Watts Crips) and gang members (e.g., Li’l Hunchy, Tray Ball, Huckabuck) flit across the pages in a confusing manner, but Scott pushes the narrative forward with scarcely a glance backward, and, ultimately, names and incidents are not important. Unfortunately, Scott was in prison during the violence that followed last year’s Rodney King incident and thus sheds little light on the peace treaty forged between the Bloods and Crips. Although unrepentant, Scott today is dedicated to ending gang violence. Recommended for most collections.
- Mark Annichiarico, “Library Journal”

Review: I love this book. It gave me a new perspective into gang life. Thing I see everyday, but never realized what they meant. It’s been awhile since I’ve read this, so my memory isn’t great. But I would read it again and even have my father-in-law reading it. It’s written in such a way that makes it easy to read and get in to.