Music Monday #29

Today I wanted to share some a cappella covers that I think are really good.

The Melodores - Radioactive by Imagine Dragons



Acquire - Sail by Awolnation

Cheese-curry cookies

I wanted to bake something, but we didn't have any eggs. I thought a while about what I could make and finally I settled on cheese-curry cookies. I love them and always eat way to many of them. They make for a great party snack.

Ingrediënts: (I got 1,5 baking sheet full of them)
100 gr flour
100 gr butter
Pinch of salt
2 tsp curry
100 gr rasped aged cheese
100 gr rasped Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Sift the flour in a bowl and add a little bit of salt, the curry and the cheese. Mix until everything is evenly spread. Add the butter and knead it through the rest of the mixture. First it will become crumbly, but later it will get a more dough-like consistency. Make flat rounds with a diameter of 5 cm and bake them in the oven for about 10 - 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

The Giver by Lois Lowry

Jonas' world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.

 The biggest part of the book is about establishing the society Jonas lives in. There are an incredible amount of rules and people even get punnished for simple things like leaving their homes at night or using an incorrect word. The idea of so little freedom sounds very oppresive, but Lowry does an incredible job of making the society actually sound like a nice place to live. The people seem pleasant and everything seems neatly organized. I loved reading about the society and finding out how it worked. The first half of the book or so, it seems like everything about Jonas' life is good, but later that changes. From the very beginning it is clear what kind of society it is, but somehow I too, like the adults in the book, ignored that fact.

The pace of the book is great and slowly the tension is rising, but the ending seems a bit rushed. The Giver has found a solution to the problem that no one experiences true feelings but it doesn't receive a very extensive explanation. The ending of the book was also very open and personally I found that a bit dissatisfying. Those were the only shortcomings I could find. I found it a very entertaining book with a lot of beautiful descriptions of things that Jonas experiences through memories.

A new purpose

Months ago my mom gave me an old skirt of hers which she didn't wear anymore. It lay on my fabric pile for a very long time before I finally realized what I could make of it. My mom's skirt became a vest! I'm probably not going to wear it very often, but I just like to see what I can make of old clothes.

This was what the skirt looked like:

Have you ever made clothing out of an other piece of clothing?

Inside out by Maria v. Snyder

I picked this book up at a local thrift store. I wasn't expecting much of it, but it got a pretty good rating on Goodreads, so i gave it a chance.

Keep Your Head Down.
Don't Get Noticed.
Or Else.

I'm Trella. I'm a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the lower levels, keeping Inside clean for the Uppers. I've got one friend, do my job and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels? The only neck at risk is my own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to girl to lead a revolution.

Since this is a book review, it will contain some spoilers.
I liked it a lot better than I had expected. Although the story was a little predictable I was eager to read on. The characters were all pretty likeable and well balanced, which I found good for a change. The main character Trella is pretty smart, but not a know-it-all, which often seems to be the case with main characters. She is stubborn and bold which I like about her, but she doesn't have many friends or particular interests. Because Trella doesn't have many friends the book is more about action than the interaction between different people. Trella has one friend Cogan, but during the book he gets locked up so she doens't see him very often. She meets Riley, one of the Uppers, and that is one of the very few people she genuinely likes. Riley is sweet and also stubborn and I liked him as well, although he could have been fleshed out more. Hopefully the next book will make sure of that.

The other characters is the book were all pretty flat, but considering they didn't show up that much it was acceptable. What I found a little bit confusing was that Riley said that he had never seen a Scrub before, when he met Trella, eventhough later in the book the mentions what kind of clothing scrubs working on the upper two levels wear. He couldn't have known that if he had never seen a scrub before. The fact that Doctor Lamont turned out to be Kiana, Trella's mother, I found a little predictable. I do like the fact that Trella wasn't that eager to confront her mother with that, and Snyder did a good job not letting her tell it yet, because I'm a little curious to see how that is going to play out. I'll probably get to read that in the next book. This is not a book that I will read over and over again, but I am probably going to read the sequel.


Have you read Inside out? What did you think about it?

Music Monday #28

Switchfoot - Who we are

Scones

I love scones! They are easy and quick to make and taste great with clotted cream and jam. It had been a while since I made them, but last sunday I was up for it. Thursday I made them again, because they are so tasty!

What you will need:
350 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
100 g butter
1 egg
1,5 dl butter milk (or milk)

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees C. Put the flour in a bowl and the salt. Add the butter and mash it through the flour. The consistency will be crumbly. Whip up the egg. Keep one tablespoon of the egg aside and add the rest of it to the butter milk. Pour the mixture in the bowl with the flour and butter and knead the dough. When it has a smooth consistency make small rounds of it (about 1 cm high) and put them on the baking sheet. Spread the egg over the scones. Bake them for about 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

How do you eat your scones?