Tag Archives: nonfiction

Books and bakes #21: The Quiet Zone and butter tarts

Posted in baking, books by

The bake

It’s still summer, but fall is in the air, which means I’m about to get serious about baking again (along with making soup and drinking hot apple cider and wearing cardigans). Last week, there were a couple of days when the temperature dropped low enough to wear a light sweater while outside. And, so, I had the urge to bake something–something that didn’t even have a summer fruit in it.

I’ve made these butter tarts from Little Sweet Baker a few times, so I knew the recipe worked well. They are a real treat! I know some people have strong feelings about whether butter tarts should include raisins or nuts, but I prefer them plain. These are so simple to make. A bonus? The recipe makes enough pastry for two batches, so you can stick the leftover dough in the freezer, making it even easier to whip up a dozen of these babies the next time you have a craving.

The book

I’m just over the halfway point in The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence by Stephen Kurczy. Kurczy is a journalist who spent time in Green Bank, West Virginia–a town that limits radio frequencies that could interfere with technology used by astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory. This quiet zone has attracted people from all over who are looking to live differently, including those wanting to be off the grid and “electrosensitives,” who say technology can make them physically ill. It’s these people who Kurczy spends time with that drew me in. However, I am curious to see what the final conclusion will be. Does technology cause us more harm than it helps us? And how much can we participate in today’s society without it? (Also curious to see if I’ll decide to throw away my smartphone after I finish reading. But I doubt it.)

Advertisement

Books and bakes #14: Empire of Pain and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

Posted in baking, books by

The bake

Whenever I bake oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, it reminds me of being a kid and baking with Mom. I enjoyed making cookies almost as much as I did eating them. So it’s not really a surprise that making (and eating) them now gives me a sense of nostalgia and comfort.

This time, I used a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction (as you may have noticed, I seem to get a lot of my recipes from Sally’s website these days). I omitted the cinnamon and molasses because that’s how I prefer my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. (For the record, I do love cinnamon, but I like these cookies to be more vanilla-y. I would use cinnamon if I was making oatmeal raisin cookies for sure.) This cookies turned out really well–soft and chewy with the perfect amount of chocolate chips. But, of course, they didn’t stand a chance at topping how I remember Mom’s.

The book

I read a lot more fiction than non-fiction, but every once in a while a non-fiction book comes along that I just have to read, that calls to me more than any fiction title on my teetering TBR pile. That was the case with Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe, a book about the family behind OxyContin, the drug that created a public health crisis.

I don’t know that this book would have been on my radar if I hadn’t already read Keefe’s earlier book, Say Nothing, as that one blew me away. My boyfriend recently read (and loved) Empire of Pain, and, knowing I was also interested in it, he left his copy with me for whenever I got to it. I didn’t think I would get to it for a little while. But after starting a couple of fiction titles that just weren’t speaking to me, I picked it up. I am only about 50 pages in, but Keefe’s talent for creating an engaging narrative has me hooked.