Brownies

So Thanksgiving break gave me some time to bake finally horray!
I wanted brownies and cookies so I started the quest for my personal brownie perfection recipe.
This time I used smitten kitchens recipe which she took from Cooks Illustrated
http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/10/and-then-i-went-shoe-shopping/
However I decided to mess with it. As much butter as chocolate? That is a sin. I left out 1/2 a stick of butter so I *only* used 1 whole stick. To keep the wet/dry ratio in check I threw in some chocolate chips, of course I didn't measure it. I used Godiva bittersweet chocolate by the way.
I also had problems with the sugar. We only had raw sugar. So it is bigger crystals than could stir in. Fortunately they melted while baking so of course it is still sweet. Also I left out 1/4 of a cup of the sugar so it was down to 2 cups of sugar in the end.
Other issue is that I am not sure I baked them enough? They supposedly take only 30-35 minutes so after 45 minutes I just pulled them out, the toothpick test wasn't working for me

Overall they are fudgy and yummy but I will continue hunting. I did like using cake flour, probably because we only have whole wheat flour (ew in brownies), but I like to think that it contributed to it being fluffy.

Why agnotistic?

I enjoy people questioning my belief system, because I forces me to develop a strong enough answer to convince them and myself in turn of why I do feel this way.

How can each of our eyes be different and still work? I know there is a scientific explanation. But how did this all start?

But I can't except any religion that has been so infiltrated by mans ideas.

Books

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and make those you have read bold.
2) Star (*) the ones you LOVE.

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-not the whole thing
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- Lets see just- Romeo and Juliet, Othello and Macbeth
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 Hitch Hiker’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 Berniere
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 – I couldn’t finish it
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 ***My favorite book
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tart
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

More books I want to read

1. Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gatsby is better known, but Tender is written so beautifully that you have to read it if you haven’t. It’s poetry in prose.
2. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, by James Joyce. A great introduction to this unmatched of modern writers, Portrait is notable for the development of its language as the narrator’s skill with language improves.
3. Ulysses, by James Joyce. An absolute masterpiece. Joyce puts the entire scale of human drama and English literature within the span of 24 hours, plotted within one square mile, told through the lives of ordinary people. Also see Joyce’s outstanding book of short stories, Dubliners.
4. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut. I just can’t get enough of Vonnegut, and I was devastated that he died last year. Until then, he held the title of my absolute favorite living writer. And Cat’s Cradle is my favorite of all his books. I think Vonnegut is in my granfalloon.
5. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut. Anything by Vonnegut is excellent reading, but this is one of his best, and is considered a classic. A more humorous and raging commentary against war has rarely been written. Also see Bluebeard, Slapstick, Welcome to the Monkey House, Breakfast of Champions, among others, if you like the two listed here.
6. Neuromancer, by William Gibson. Perhaps my favorite sci-fi writer of all time, Gibson is gritty, dreamy, and ultra-cool all at the same time. Neuromancer was his first, and is the start of the Span trilogy. Oh, btw, Gibson, if you happen by the remotest chance to read this blog, drop me a line! I’m a ridiculously huge fan.
7. All Tomorrow’s Parties, by William Gibson. This tale of the near future features a Zen-like assassin, among other cool characters, who is one of my favorites in Gibson lore. ATP is the third in the Bridge trilogy.
8. Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson. With this book, Gibson starts a new series, set in the present day. In fact, it’s so much like his futuristic sci-fi that it’s eerie. Gibson has a unique way of looking at our world. I named my youngest daughter (Noelle Cayce, now 2 years old) after the main character of this book, Cayce Pollard, who is in turn a tribute to Edgar Cayce.
9. Slow Man, by J.M. Coetzee. One of the greatest living writers of the English language, you could pick up any of his titles (Disgrace would be my other recommendation) and get an excellent book. Slow Man plays with the boundaries of fiction.
10. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. The best of the detective novelists, Chandler took the genre to new heights that generations of writers have tried to reach. He’s the best, and his writing is just as relevant today as it was when it was written.
11. Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem. If you like Chandler and similar tough detective novels, you’ll love Lethem’s brilliant take on the genre. An excellent story featuring a protagonist with Tourette Syndrome, a killer giant and a Zen crime syndicate.
12. Gun, with Occasional Music, by Jonathan Lethem. Another excellent detective novel, this one combines the genre with sci-fi. Features talking kangaroos working for the mob and other cool stuff.
13. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It’s hard to describe Ishiguro’s writing, except that he really plays with whether the narrator of a story is objective or not. He plays with traditional plot devices and uses the reader’s curiosity of the unfolding story drive the book forward. Never Let Me Go might technically be sci-fi, as it seems to be set in the future, but really there’s not much sci-fi about it.
14. When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Ostensibly a detective novel, it leaves you wondering about a lot of things, including what others really think of the narrator.
15. Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. This guy is such an imaginative writer. Very different from most of the fiction you’ll read, anything can happen in a Murakami book.
16. Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, a must-read if you haven’t yet. Hostages and hostage takers trapped by seige, and some surprising things unfold.
17. Run, by Ann Patchett. I just love her writing. This is a moving story full of magic. Also see Patchett’s excellent The Magician’s Assistant
18. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, by Douglas Adams. The best comedy books ever, you’ll laugh out loud at every book. Adams is simply brilliant.
19. The Discworld Series, by Terry Pratchett. Starts with The Color of Magic, but there are well over 20 in the series now. You can just jump in and read any of them, and they’re all pretty much incredible. Second-funniest writer, after Adams.
20. The Stand, by Stephen King. Anything by Stephen King will be a good read, but The Stand is my favorite and if you’re going to just read one book by him, read this one. A master storyteller.
21. High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby. Made into an excellent movie by John Cusack (who I also love), High Fidelity is as much about music as it is about relationships. Just a cool book.
22. About a Boy, by Nick Hornby. Better than the movie, which was pretty decent. The main characters — a do-nothing rich shallow bachelor and a son of a depressed and suicidal mom — are transformed by each other. Also see Hornby’s excellent How to Be Good.
23. Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen. I didn’t think I’d like this book, as it’s a historical book about circuses. But it’s a compelling story, and the well-researched facts really bring the story and characters alive.
24. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera. A classic, and a great read. Set in Czechoslovakia in the late 60s, it explores the insignificance of our actions and existence, in beautiful language.
25. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. One of the greatest novels of all time, Anna is a tragic heroine brought down by her desire to live and be loved, while Levin is a wonderful character looking for a satisfactory answer to the only important question to Tolstoy: that of death. Incredibly interwoven stories presided over by a roving omniscient narrator.
26. Crime and Punishment, and The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky. These two classics are fascinating for their explorations of the human psyche under extreme conditions. An existentialist before his time, Dostoyevsky is a powerful writer.
27. The Broker, by John Grisham. I simply devour Grisham stories. He’s such a good storyteller that you can’t put down his books. I’ve read and enjoyed all of his books but the Broker is one of my favorites. Also see The Runaway Jury and The Testament.
28. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. A classic from when I was an adolescent, Catcher withstands multiple readings over the years. The main character is just someone you root for, who you want to be friends with. Also see Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.
29. Aztec, by Gary Jennings. Amazing historical fiction, so detailed and thoroughly researched and fascinating. You won’t believe this book, or any of its sequels. Also see his wonderful story of Marco Polo — so rich in detail: Journeyer
30. Creation, by Gore Vidal. Another master of historical fiction, Vidal follows a fictional Persion diplomat who meets major philosophers of the time, from Socrates to Zoroaster and Buddha and Lao Tsu and Confucius. Also see Lincoln, another example of Vidal’s best historical fiction, and the best insight into Lincoln you’ll ever find.
31. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Another one I enjoyed as an adolescent, it’s a gripping story set in a small southern town with memorable characters. You’ve probably read it already — but it’s worth another visit.
32. Shibumi, by Trevanian. Not exactly a classic, but a hidden treasure of the spy genre. Compelling story with a main character you’ll wish you could be, especially if you’re a guy.
33. Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. Absolutely hilarious and brilliant social commentary in the guise of a memoir. OK, this isn’t exactly a novel, but the stories are so exaggerated as to be almost fictional, so I included it. Also read his others, including Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.
34. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck. A monumental classic by a master, explores the plight of the poor who are exploited by modern corporations in an epic tale of struggling sharecroppers.
35. Deep Blue Good-by, by John D. MacDonald. The first of the incredible Travis McGee series, I actually highly recommend all of them. McGee is a hard-nosed “salvage expert” — actually a private eye who lives on a boat (called The Busted Flush) and is one of the most memorable detective characters since Sherlock Holmes.
36. Watership Down, by Richard Adams. Yet another book I read repeatedly as a teen-ager. I don’t know why I love this story about rabbits so much, but you just find yourself moved by the characters and rooted in the story (so to speak) as they struggle to overcome tyranny.
37. Lolita, by Vladamir Nobokov. This controversial book will test your moral boundaries, and at the same time push the boundaries of the language. Unmatchable in many ways.
38. Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. He’s better known for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but for some reason I loved this book more, and I think it’s the better book. It’s a masterpiece, really, with intricately interwoven narratives (which can be a bit confusing) telling the story of a hard-nosed logging family in Oregon. A must read.
39. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon. A touching story about a 15-year-old autistic boy who is very intelligent, who uses his dedicated detective skills to solve more mysteries than he set out to solve.
40. The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. At first, I didn’t like this book much, as the author seems to dislike and make fun of the main characters. But the deeper you go into the novel, the more you begin to understand and sympathize with the characters. And beyond an intricately woven tale, it’s also an interesting critique of modern consumerism society.
41. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. A beautiful love story, told with a unique twist of time travel.
42. Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier. I couldn’t put this book down. The movie disappointed, but you’ll fall in love with these characters.
43. Noble House, by James Clavell. Incredibly intriguing historical fiction, in this case set in Hong Kong. Extremely compelling stories. Clavell has a whole series of can’t-put-down books set in Asia, including Tai-Pan and Shogun, among others
44. Don Quixote, by Cervantes. Another of the greatest novels of all time, the tales of Quixote and the amazing Sancho Panza will delight you with their humor and wit. Much of Western literature is indebted to this book, and Cervantes is the only writer who comes close to standing with Shakespeare.