Books Archives - Page 6 of 7

Cooking With TechyDad: Love Of Cookie Dough

June 19, 2012 TechyDad Books, Cooking, Dessert, Photos

Cookie dough has a special place in our hearts. We all love eating cookies and have been known to sneak the occasional cookie dough nibble. Of course, any food safety expert could tell you that this is a no-no. Cookie dough invariably contains eggs and eating eggs without cooking them is basically putting a giant welcome mat in front of your insides for salmonella to enter. So the lure of the cookie dough is always tempered by the knowledge that one heavenly bite now could lead to days of pain and suffering later.

Enter The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook: Cookies, Cakes, Candies, and More by Lindsay Landis (aka LoveAndOliveOil). Now, I haven’t actually read this book (yet), so don’t consider this a review. However, Lindsay has released a few of her recipes via her blog and other blogs that were giving away copies of her book. I tried the Cookie Dough S’mores recipe. Minus the S’mores part. So just cookie dough. Delicious, salmonella-risk-free cookie dough!

First you gather your ingredients:

That’s milk, brown sugar, white sugar, butter, salt, vanilla, and flour. First, you put the butter (at room temperature) and the sugars in a bowl together. Use an electric mixer to combine them. NOTE: I forgot the brown sugar at this point, I realized my mistake after the next step and added it then. Fortunately, the recipe seems very flexible to minor mistakes.

Once the butter and sugars are creamed, add in the milk and vanilla and mix that in. Next, add the flour and salt and mix this together.

Now for the final ingredient. For those of you keeping track, you’ll notice that I’ve used all of the ingredients. However, I left out one very important secret ingredient.

Mini-chocolate chips!

Add these to your batter and stir to combine.

At this point, you could use this cookie dough in any of a dozen different ways. Or, if you are like my family, you can channel your inner Cookie Monster, shout "Cooooookie dough!" and devour it! (Om nom nom nom nom.)

Want some? Here’s a spoonful.

What’s that? You can’t eat cookie dough through a computer screen? Oh well, more for me!

We will definitely be purchasing Lindsay’s book at which time I will prepare so many cookie dough recipes that even my kids will be sick of cookie dough! (Ok, let’s be honest, they’ll never get sick of cookie dough!)

A Bloggess Book Pre-Review

June 11, 2012 TechyDad Books, Review

On Saturday, a package arrived from Amazon. There were a few items in it that I knew of (some crafting supplies), but B was very secretive of one of them. She told the boys to give me my early Father’s Day present: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess.

Now, this isn’t a book review. For this to be a book review, I would have had to have read the whole book. No, I’ve only finished 3 of the book’s 33 chapters. (And, no, I’m not counting the Introduction or Epilogue in either of those because they don’t count. They’re no real chapters just like Pluto’s not a real planet. And, yes, I realize that this parenthetical is way too long.)

At one time, I would have locked myself in a room with the book, shut out the world, and finished it in a day. Maybe two. However, nowadays, I can’t do this for various reasons. Kids tend to get cranky when Dad’s been reading a book for hours instead of feeding them. They get really cranky when Dad chooses reading a book over attending their birthday party. (As do relatives visiting from out-of-town.)

So this is not a full book review. Instead, consider it a book pre-review. I’ve read enough to form an initial opinion. And that opinion is: I’m hooked.

You might know that I’ve been through some stressful times recently. I’ve come to rely on video games for stress relief. Jenny’s book has now been added to my stress relief quiver. Nothing cures stress like laughing and a few minutes with Jenny’s book had me giggling like Anderson Cooper.

Normally, I don’t giggle as high-pitched as Anderson does, but Jenny’s hilarious stories totally triggered fits of giggles in me. After a mere five minutes of reading, I felt my stress melt away and I began joking with everyone. I felt in a better mood than I had felt in some time. Jenny’s book is filled with funny stories of her experiences growing up. Experiences that made my own life look downright boring. From what I’ve read of it, I’d definitely recommend Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson.

Aloha Friday: Which eBook Should I Get?

October 7, 2011 TechyDad Aloha Friday, Books, Reading, Technology

Last week, I found out that I won a Kindle. Not only a Kindle, but I was getting a free eBook (up to a $25 value). This put me in a quandary. I used to be a voracious reader. I’d go into the library, get out a dozen books and read them before they were due back.

In recent years, though, I haven’t done much reading like this. Nowadays, I still consume tons of information, but I get it from blogs, online articles, web comics, Wikipedia, and the like instead of a series of big, thick books.

So what book should I get?

One of the first ideas to pop into my mind was a cookbook. One of the first to spring to mind was The Happy Herbivore Cookbook. However, the Kindle version of this book costs a mere $4.49. It seems like a waste to use an “up to a $25 value” offer on a book that costs under five bucks. I also looked at 1,000 Vegan Recipes or 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes. These were closer to the price point, but I decided that I have a ton of cookbooks already.

Next, I stumbled on The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking. As a physics geek, I loved A Brief History of Time, so perhaps I’d enjoy this. Then again, maybe I’d be better off with a science fiction story such as Earth Abides by George Stewart.

My final option, which many people have recommended to B, was The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins. This is supposed to be a really good series and being able to pick up all three books for the Kindle in one purchase seems nice.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: What book would you recommend that I get? Feel free to either pick one of the ones listed above or a completely different book.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #108

Teaching Kids Science With A Rhyming Bang

September 20, 2011 TechyDad Books, Science

I love science. NHL does too. So when I heard about James Lu Dunbar and his The Universe Verse series, I just had to check out his work. I’ve heard it compared to a mixture of Carl Sagan and Dr. Seuss. This is a very apt comparison.

I read the first of the series, Bang!, to NHL and JSL. The book starts out before the Big Bang. They describe the tiny speck that the Universe began as and then the tremendous explosion of the Big Bang. The book covers energy cooling into matter, the formation of the basic forces (such as gravity) that dictate how matter behaves. It goes on to describe the first atoms, how they gathered together into stars and finally how some of those stars became supernovas.

All along the way, the narration rhymes in a manner that would make the Cat in the Hat proud minus made up words. All of the weird looking words here are actually scientific terms and are used validly. This is a book that could be used by high school physics students. It really takes difficult to understand terms and simplifies them without losing any of the wonder of it all.

Of course, considering the weighty subject matter, reading this to a 4 year old and an 8 year old was a risky proposition. JSL was a bit bored by it, but I didn’t really think he’d enjoy it. Honestly, the only reason he listened in was because NHL and I were reading it and he didn’t want to be left out.

NHL, my science geek-in-training, loved it. He definitely didn’t understood all of the physics that was described, but I really didn’t think he would. What he did understand, though, was that this was an extremely entertaining story of how the Universe was formed.

The second book in the series is called “It’s Alive!” After a quick rehash of how the Universe was formed, condensed to a mere 3 pages, the book discusses planet formation, the beginnings of life, Evolution, biology, DNA, the food chain and more. Unlike the first book, this one is in full color. (Bang! was in black and white.)

I initially planned on reading this to NHL, but changed my mind. My concern wasn’t about him not liking the book, but for brief references to sex. Mind you, these are done within the context of evolution and genes combining. There is absolutely titillating about the presentation. Still, the word was there and I didn’t want my 8 year old asking questions I wasn’t ready to answer just yet. Here’s the panel in question. I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you’d show this to a third grader.

There’s still one book that hasn’t been released yet. After reading the first two, I eagerly await James’ final book of the trilogy. Reading his blog, it appears that this will cover (in part), agriculture and civilization forming. If the quality of the third book is as good as the first two, this will be one set that every classroom should have.

The two currently released books in the Universe Verse series can be purchased for $12.95 for the first book and $15.95 for the second. You can also e-mail him and he’ll send you the PDFs for free. These will definitely be eBooks that I’ll keep and go over with NHL and JSL as they get older. I’ll even re-read them myself just for the pure fun of it.

Disclaimer: I received the first two books for free as PDFs, however, as mentioned above, anyone can do this. No review was required and all opinions expressed above are my own.

Review: Wookie The Chew – The House at Chew Corner

August 2, 2011 TechyDad Books, Geeky Pursuits, NHL, Star Wars, Winnie the Pooh

I’ve long admired the work of James Hance. He has a knack for taking classic fictional characters like Kermit the Frog, Darth Vader and He-Man and either crossing them with other fictional characters/situations or just displaying them differently. (You can order prints of all of those images from James’ website.) Wookie the Chew – The House at Chew Corner is no exception.

The story is a mash-up of two of my personal favorites: Star Wars and Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh combines with Chewbacca to become Wookie the Chew. Christopher Robin and Han Solo become Chrisolo Robin. Piglet merges with R2D2 to become Droidlet.

The story unfolds as Wookie the Chew, having obviously inherited his appetite from Pooh, embarks on a mission to get something to eat. Except, instead of honey, he’s looking for bobaberries. (Tip: Don’t eat the cloneberries. They all taste the same.) Along the way there’s a hive of bees-crossed-with-tie-fighters, a balloon-crossed-with-the-Millennium-Falcon and a giant-tree-combined-with-the-Death-Star.

I’ll admit that the book wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Having seen James Hance’s fabulous art, I thought it would be a picture book with few words. Instead, it is mostly words with enough sketched artwork to see the story through. While I was initially disappointed, that feeling changed upon reading the story to NHL.

At every turn there’s a saying or setting or character that calls back to both Star Wars and Winnie the Pooh. The story was great and left us wanting more. Indeed, Hance is working on a follow-up book titled “When We Were Very Jedi.” Once the book is ready for ordering, you can bet I’ll be ordering a bunch.

In fact, the only downside to this book is the shipping cost. The book itself is a steal at $5. However, shipping costs $10! The solution? Get a bunch of family, friends and co-workers to order with you. Shipping rises to $15 if you order 5 or more books, but it still winds up being cheaper per-book. Place one order for five books and the cost per book (price + shipping) drops to $8. Plus, each book comes signed by the author. (Custom dedications are available as well.)

I’ll close with a few photos of the book and of NHL reading it.

Disclaimer: I didn’t receive anything in compensation to review Wookie the Chew. I purchased the book with my own money and liked it so much that I thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

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