As food stocks started to normalize towards the middle of COVID summer, I started to take advantage and try out more new dishes. It also helped that we were FINALLY able to find yeast again!

• Chicago-style pepperoni pan pizza
• hoisin-glazed baby back ribs
• oatmeal-rasin bread
• Grilled brined zucchini with cilantro-yogurt sauce
• succotash
• vanilla icebox cookies

The Chicago-style pepperoni pan pizza was one of the first recipes I wrote down to make. However, I never seemed to have both time and pepperoni at the same time. So I finally made it. I think America’s Test Kitchen’s decision to have me precook the pepperoni to render some of the fat helped both mellow the pepperoni taste (my kids were able to eat it) and keep this from being a greasy mess.

The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had no idea how the story could continue after The Just City. It seemed to have such a finality to it. Yet Ms Jo Walton has really shone with this sequel. It finds a way to build on just about everything from the first book in a way that makes perfect sense while continuing to introduce even more ideas. Just as with the first book, it’s told through diary entries of the main characters and so it’s it’s an exploration of Platonic ideals as they interact with reality. One of our point of view characters is a child born after the events of The Just City, so we get a new perspective from someone who knows about the successes and failures of the first city.

I hadn’t upgraded anything other than the graphics card for about a decade and so my gaming computer was starting to drag a little, even on games that shouldn’t have been that demanding. It was time for an upgrade! But I hadn’t kept up all that much with computer tech since I knew we didn’t have it in the budget to be upgrading constantly. So I headed over the to the subreddit the PC Master Race (yeah, problematic name) Builds page. It seemed I could get a pretty decent build without spending too much money - especially since I already had a case and hard drives. So I posted on the subreddit just to make sure I was making the right choice. I’m glad I did, because they let me know that in June there’d be a new AMD motherboard coming out and I wasn’t in a huge hurry. So I waited and got this:

Rave Master, Vol. 01 by Hiro Mashima

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think this is the first manga I’ve read since DeathNote. I’m having a little trouble getting into this, but maybe it’s just one of those stories that starts off a little strange and then finally builds up to a plot? It does tell the story over 30-something books.
Of course, there are some gems of dialogue like this (read from right to left):

I got it as part of a Humble Bundle, so I’ve got the whole series, leaving me without any reason not to go on. So we’ll see where this goes.

Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I believe there’s only one book left in the series and it’s pretty apparent the way everything was coming together in this book. It also strongly rewarded readers who’d read the novellas. Having done so provided advanced knowledge of who Timothy was and also a better understanding and empathy with Cara and Xan. They weren’t necessary for getting this book, but they sure made it a lot more fun to read.

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Things continue to evolve in Dresden’s Chicago. By this point it’s become obvious to me that the main series (as opposed to short stories) requires the reader to read them all in order rather than just jumping in to any particular case. Like a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, each story builds upon the previous one. This one contains characters from Fool Moon playing a huge part, a deal that Dresden made in Grave Peril forcing a big part of the plot, and both women in his life only have resonance if you’ve been reading since the first book.
As far as the case, I think it proceeds on a good pace. While, as usual, I couldn’t solve it ahead of time, all the clues are there for you to trace back and see that Jim Butcher isn’t cheating. This one involves The Fae and so it’s a good thing that over the past 3 years of fantasy humble bundle books, I’ve been learning about faerie rules. They do a decent job explaining stuff, but knowing that there are Summer and Winter Sidhe Courts ahead of time allowed me to just focus on the story.
As I was recommending this book to a fellow SF fan, I realized that this book (and the series so far up to this book) is VERY male-gaze-y. It doesn’t bother me, but knowing about that (and this book was - SURPRISINGLY - written almost TWENTY years ago), does make me think twice before recommending it if the person might take that the wrong way.
Anyway, I’m definitely enjoying the series and it’s on to book 5 whenever that shows up in my To-Read list.

• bistec de palomilla
• bistec empanizado
• potaje de frijoles negros
• lechon asado

May was Cuban food month. I’d received a new cookbook of recipes from the Miami diaspora and back in Cuba. So I tried my hand at a few new recipes. Technically, I’d done the breaded steak (usually called Chicken Fried Steak in the USA) and pork shoulder Cuban style before, but this was the first time doing it with these recipes. I was very happy with all the results, although I learned a few things along the way for the next time I make these dishes.

Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book I added to my to-read list after meeting Ms. Fan at Farpoint 2019. Even though both Starswept and this one are rated 4 stars, that’s more a consequence of only have 5 stars to choose from, because I enjoyed this book more than Starswept. STaBD had two things going for it steampunk and immediate action. Taking the last one first, as I noted in my Starswept review, the early, slow chapters are key in providing a base from which to deviate in later chapters. But there’s just something so exciting about a book opening up with a bunch of warrior women fighting demons that makes you want to keep going. (By the way, I’ll admit to my unconscious bias - until specifically called out, I’d assuming our main character was a man)
So … Steampunk. I’m not the type of person who cosplays Steampunk or anything, but as a genre it always starts things at a higher level when I find myself in a Steampunk world. Ms. Fan, however, has given me something new and fun here. Most Steampunk takes place in England, The Commonwealth, and occasionally, on The Continent. But this story takes place in Victorian China. And it has demons and ghosts and stuff and my ignorance over Chinese mythology leaves me unsure how much is made up by Ms. Fan and how much is known mythology.
The story turns out to be part mystery, part unwanted arranged marriage, part Mulan, and part romance. And it works! Sure, Anlie is a bit of a Tsundere character and that can get a little tiresome, but she does eventually learn some character growth. If you like Steampunk, but are tired of the same old stuff, check this out and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Because of my age relative to the era of computer, for a good portion of my life computers were Serious Things used for work and school. They also belonged to the family and there’s no way we could have gotten away with putting stickers on them without getting in trouble. So back in 2006 when I went to Blackhat and Defcon, for the first time I saw people’s laptops covered in stickers. The EEE PC (new at the time) had a meetup session where I saw others who’d painted their machines various colors. I’d ended up with a bunch of stickers after Blackhat and Defcon, so I decorated my first-ever laptop, an Acer.