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Another recipe (my grandmother’s) that I keep losing.  And what do we do when we keep losing things?  We immortalize them in the blogosphere.

Without further ado:

1 box Carnation dry milk (makes 8 quarts)

Two lb box Nestle’s Quick chocolate mix (I usually use a little more than this because I don’t think it’s chocolatey enough otherwise)

1 lb box confectioner’s sugar

1 16 oz jar Coffee Mate

Mix together thoroughly; mix to taste with hot water.  (I usually end up using quite a lot.)

(Optional — add 1.5 jar Carnation Instant Chocolate Malt, if you like malt flavor.  I’ve never tried it that way.)

In The Woods shares a number of striking parallels with another book I read a few years called Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson.  In addition to both being award-winning debut novels by female writers that received enormous praise, many key aspects of the plot are quite similar:  A thirty-something relationship-challenged white male cop/p.i. who is haunted by the infamous and unsolved disappearance of a local child/children twenty-some-odd years ago in a backwater area of the UK investigates a somehow related crime in the same area.  Along the way various creepy earth-shattering revelations about and connections between both crimes are uncovered, and lots of bad coffee is drunk by various hard-boiled but slightly quirky police types.

In The Woods also reminded me of Case Histories in that it got a ton of fantastic reviews, made the NY Times bestseller list for several weeks running, and left me wondering what all the fuss was about.  Supposedly, “French’s plot twists and turns will bamboozle even the most astute reader;” maybe, if the book happens to be the first mystery/thriller/police procedural said astute reader has ever read.  I can’t blame French too much for this; the fact is that it’s pretty darn difficult to come up with a truly unique storyline in this genre, and for all that this one is dressed up as sophisticated and edgy, it was remarkably predictable.

The tone of the book also reminded me a lot of Case Histories: way overdone imagery, melodramatic characters, painfully not-so-witty banter, and the kind of deluge of pop culture references that guarantees the whole thing will feel stale ten years from now.  I couldn’t help feeling that the book would have been ten times as readable if French had just stopped trying so hard, especially with the dialogue.  For the record, it does still beat Case Histories; the characters aren’t quite so caricature-y, and there’s not as much gratuitous (and sometimes creepy) sex.

All in all, it was a decent vacation / plane ride read, and if you really really like cop mysteries that don’t try to be anything more than that, then maybe this is your book.  “Ambitious and extraordinary,” however, is in my opinion going a bit far.

Quite possibly my favorite poem of all time.

ELOVED, gaze in thine own heart,

The holy tree is growing there;

From joy the holy branches start,

And all the trembling flowers they bear.

The changing colours of its fruit

Have dowered the stars with merry light;

The surety of its hidden root

Has planted quiet in the night;

The shaking of its leafy head

Has given the waves their melody,

And made my lips and music wed,

Murmuring a wizard song for thee.

There the Loves a circle go,

The flaming circle of our days,

Gyring, spiring to and fro

In those great ignorant leafy ways;

Remembering all that shaken hair

And how the wingèd sandals dart,

Thine eyes grow full of tender care:

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

 

Gaze no more in the bitter glass

The demons, with their subtle guile,

Lift up before us when they pass,

Or only gaze a little while;

For there a fatal image grows

That the stormy night receives,

Roots half hidden under snows,

Broken boughs and blackened leaves.

For all things turn to barrenness

In the dim glass the demons hold,

The glass of outer weariness,

Made when God slept in times of old.

There, through the broken branches, go

The ravens of unresting thought;

Flying, crying, to and fro,

Cruel claw and hungry throat,

Or else they stand and sniff the wind,

And shake their ragged wings; alas!

Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:

Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

“If you think about it, we all have an image.  When we wake up in the morning, no matter who you are, it’s a very personal and intimate moment between you and the mirror.  Then you make a decision: What are you going to present to the world?  And I don’t just mean your outer presentation, I mean in here [touches chest] and in here [touches head].  So we make our choices.  But that doesn’t mean that’s all we are.”  ~Tori Amos

“For hooch has the power to inspire, to console, to make celebrations brighter, and hard times more bearable. In the words of the Roman poet Horace, drink ‘unlocks secrets, bids hopes be fulfilled, thrusts the coward onto the battle-field, takes the load from anxious hearts. The flowing bowl — whom has it not made eloquent? Whom has it not made free even amidst pinching poverty?’ ”

Gotta love the Times, you liberal rag, you.

“You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader.  You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance.” ~ Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, newly-appointed Veterans’ Affairs secretary for the Obama administration

So, today is moving day.  I have been living in my new place on 19th for about four and a half days, sans furniture, which, even so, to me feels like the lap of luxury.  A little later today all my furniture will be here, and then I really won’t know what to do with myself.  (Sleep in a bed?  My bed?  With real sheets?  Crazytown.)

I’m still actually kind of getting use to it.  What I’ve learned in the last three months is the difference between things you really need, things you kind of want, and things you’ve just gotten used to because they’ve always been there and find yourself getting unused to in a strangely short amount of time.  (Seriously, when I started unpacking all the clothes I left in storage, there were a lot of things that I honestly forgot I owned.)  It’s also taking me sometime to get used to looking for my clothes on hangars in a closet and not digging for them in a suitcase, to being able to store significant amounts of food in a kitchen & cook there & not needing to go out for most of my meals, to feeling as if I have every right to be where I am.