I Need to go to the Library More

1) Bold those you have read.

2) Put an asterisk next to those you started but didn't finish.

3) Italicize those you intend to read (or have started and intend to finish).

4) Red the books you LOVE

5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

* * * * *

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible *

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger *

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marque

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Blogs I Love

I was so excited when I received an award earlier this week, and now I would like to pass it on to a couple of the blogs that I like to check in with:

Jon and MacDuff in Boston -- this blog is always an interesting read. I love both Jon and MacDuff's sense of humor and perspective on what they write about.

She's Becoming DoughMessTic--a good sense of humor, wonderful recipes and pictures that make me want to cook everything on the blog!

Soup Challenge Number One: Red Lentil Soup

I have been eating a lot of canned soups lately because they are low in calories and very filling, but I've been thinking-I really need to make some homemade soups and freeze them for quick use later. And so it begins: my personal soup challenge. I will make my own homemade soups, portion them and freeze them for future consumption. How can I go wrong? A little work here and there, a quick trip to the freezer, and presto: instant good for me food when I need it.

I don't know if this is anything anyone would be interested in doing....if so, let me know and I will structure it as a monthly or bi-monthly blogging challenge. I hope to make soups and continue to blog about my adventures.
Red Lentil Soup
Adapted from Today's Diet and Nutrition September/October 2008
Serves 4

3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 Tablespoon cumin, ground
2 carrots, peeled and grated
1 cup red lentils
4 cups water or vegetable stock
2 red onion, finely sliced

Put 1 Tablespoon of olive oil into a large saucepan and add the onion, ginger, and cumin. Cook over a medium heat until the onion is soft and transparent. Add the carrot, lentils and stock. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce to simmer. Cook for 30 minutes, or until the lentils have completely disintegrated.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add the red onions. Cook until the onions are caramelized. Cool, cover or refrigerate to reheat and serve later. Top with a spoonful of caramelized onions.

Note: Any lentils can be substituted for red lentils.

Calories: 312

Spicy Malted Hot Cocoa Mix

The Tuesdays with Dorie Recipe for this last Tuesday, Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops, called for Malted Milk Powder. I bought a jar especially for the recipe, but found myself looking at the remaining portion and wondering what on earth I was going to do with it. In the past, I've mixed it with ice cream to make an old-fashioned malt, but I'm trying to get away from eating a lot of treats like ice cream (especially with the weekly dessert delights of Tuesday with Dorie). Alas, what to do.....

I was saved by a recipe I found on mix, mix...stir, stir. The author of this blog found herself in the same quandry...and solved the problem by creating a hot chocolate delight.
Here is her recipe:

Spicy Malted Hot Cocoa Mix

1/2 cup malted milk powder
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons ancho chile powder
1-1/2 teaspoons allspice
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Combine all the ingredients together and mix well. Store in an airtight container. To make a spicy hot beverage, heat one cup of milk and whisk in 3 Tablespoons of Spicy Malted Hot Cocoa Mix. Relax and enjoy.

I did not add the ancho chile powder and cayenne pepper. Instead I added 1/2 teaspoon of regular chile pepper. I found that it added a nice heat to the hot chocolate. I also found when I made this that it was a little rich with just the 1 cup of milk, so I think the next time I make it I will try doubling the milk portion, or back off a little on the mix. It was delicious though.

I have lots of mix to play with :)

An Award!!!!

I am so excited! Someone has given me an award! Sherry Trifle was kind enough to include me in her list of blogs to receive an award. Thank you!

I am looking forward to passing this along to some of my favorite blogs...hopefully when I get back from work today :)

Tuesdays with Dorie Post Number 12: Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

Well, I almost missed the Tuesday posting, but here I am at the very last minute getting my two cents in on this week's recipe. It was chosen by Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart, and the recipe is posted at her blog if you would like to see what goes into these wonderful cookies!
Let me break the cookie experience down into simple terms: chocolate, whoppers, chocolate, simple, delicious, wonderful. These cookies were wonderful warm out of the oven, and wonderful cooled. The dough was cake like and puffy, and the whoppers made for a nice chewiness. There is not a bad cookie recipe in the book! I am looking forward to eating what few cookies that remain with a nice hot cup of coffee and a good book. Hurray for chocolate! Hurray for whoppers! Hurray for cookies!

Mug 'O Pumpkin Creme

I no longer need to go to the coffee house to enjoy a creamy, rich, delicious beverage... and this one is low in calories too! How terrific is that! The recipe comes from "Hungry Girl", and I only made one change-- instead of using a no-calorie sweetener, I used a teaspoon of sugar. Enjoy!

8 ounces light vanilla soymilk
2 Tablespoons canned pumpkin
1/4 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon sugar

Combine all ingredients in a pot. Stir well with a whisk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Once the mixture begins to froth, continue to boil for a minute. Remove from heat and pour into a mug. Allow to cool slightly, and enjoy!