Books: Tamora Pierce

This morning I finished Wolfspeaker by Tamora Pierce. This is the second in The Immortals series. Book one was called Wild Magic and I read it in January.

These are considered young adult books, but I like them very much. They have good characterization and the escapism is very uplifting. Plus, good wins in the end.

It is always nice to get away from life for a while.

I have the next in the series to read, too. It is called Emperor Mage. I made the purchase to take with me to Williamsburg, but never got around to reading anything other than "Healing heartburn in 30 days." Which of course was not joyous escapism.

For inexplicable reasons, I did not receive The Roanoke Times today. I can't remember the last time I did without a Sunday paper. But maybe that is not a bad thing as instead of reading the paper, I finished reading Wolfspeaker.

I heard from my aunt today. She tells me my uncle, her brother, is angry with me because I wrote a column about the way the retirement home dealt with my grandmother back in September. The first draft of that column came from a blog entry, here. A few drafts later, it became a column.

A number of people have commented on the column. I think the devaluation of the elderly must have touched a nerve.

My uncle seems to be upset because of something he read in the column that isn't there. People do that a lot.

He will just have to get over it.

I've written a couple of articles today. I have one more to do but I want to work on my novel a while, so I think I will leave the article for tomorrow. I should have something to do on a Monday, anyway.

Yesterday I fixed gluten-free meatloaf. Meatloaf generally has bread, crackers or oatmeal mixed in it.

I substituted a cup of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Hot Cereal for the bread. It was quite tasty and I was very happy about that. I have wheat and oat allergies that flares up from time to time, now being one of those times. The last time I made meatloaf I used oats and had a runny nose for a week.

I don't make meatloaf all that often, and I have never made it the same way twice. But it is one of my favorite dishes to cook. Maybe because I can be creative with it. It's hard to spoil meatloaf, however you fix it. I have a base recipe I use and then whatever I have handy gets tossed in.

Learning to cook remains on my to-do list. I can cook, but I can't cook, if you know what I mean. This year I have tried to fix at least one different food I've never cooked before at least one time a month.

Tomorrow I will be fixing winter squash. The recipe calls for butter and brown sugar, so how bad can it be?