Stock Recipe

Hi,

So I had some vegetable stock sitting around from when I did a turkey last year and it was about to hit its "use by" date. It occurred to me that one container would be about 2/3rds the amount of water I put into my rice cooker when I'm making up a large batch.

So I put the rice and the stock into the pot, added another 2 cups of water, tossed in some pinto beans and about a 1/3 of the can worth of extra water and put it all into the rice cooker.

It came out really, really well. I had just enough liquid in there, not too much so it was soupy and not so little it stuck and burned. It was moist but fluffy and really tasty.

So something to spice up the rice. Hooray!

later
Tom

I'm a very sorcerous puppet

Hi,

So I just finished up Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz: Three Adventures by Garth Nix. Sir Hereward is an artillerist and mercenary for hire. Mister Fitz is a magical puppet who was once Hereward's nursemaid and now accompanies him on his adventures discretely lending his not-inconsiderable arcane skills to whatever problem is at hand.

Secretly, both work for an ancient international order...where pretty much all of the nations involved no longer exist. Their job is to rid the world of threats to inter-dimensional its existence. In short, they're god-hunters.

This book consists of three short stories highlighting the duo's adventures. There's a lot of great world-building, and action in a very compact format. It was a lot of fun to read and it was just a buck on the kindle. There's a dead-tree version coming out soon as well.

Like I say, just a pleasure to read and I certainly hope some more tales are forthcoming.

later
Tom