Orange Cranberry Walnut Bread

This is one of my favorite Christmas recipes to make as a gift because it doesn't taste like anything else people get at Christmas time.  It's not fudgey, cinnamon-y, gingerbread-y, peppermint-y.  Yet the cranberries still make it seasonal.  And honestly y'all, once you get all the orange zest and cranberries together, the taste ends up something like a high end version of Fruit Loops.  Not even joking.  I love it :)  It's also very easy to freeze so people can store it away while they are up to their ears in goodies, and bring it back out a month or so later to enjoy.  It's a great little bread, versatile enough for breakfast, snacks, or dessert.

Orange Cranberry Walnut Bread (this recipe is for a 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan, but I've done lots of variations on it too.  In fact, if you use smaller pans you can get two loaves out of this one batch)

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar (I add a little extra, just for fun)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 c melted butter

1 tsp Vanilla

1 1/2 tsp orange rind zest

1 cup orange juice (use the real stuff, like Simply Orange with lots of pulp)

1 egg

1 1/2 fresh chopped cranberries

1 1/2  golden raisins

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.  Stir in butter, vanilla, zest, and orange juice.  Add egg, mix until just combined.  Add cranberries, mix gently again.  Add raisins, mix.  Add walnuts, mix.  Lightly grease pan, then coat inside of pan in sugar (it helps keep the bread from sticking and gives a fun little zing of taste).  Pour batter into pan, pop in oven.  Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes. 

(You can sub extra cranberries in for raisins)

Chopping cranberries is a PAIN y'all.  I mean it.  Don't try and do it on a cutting board.  You'll wind up with cranberries all over your kitchen, b/c they're rolly little things (I speak from experience).   In fact, I wouldn't advise trying this recipe unless you have either a food processor or one of those Oxo Chopper things.  Thats what I use, and its a lifesaver!

Books that Rocked My World in 2011

A co-worker asked us to come up with a list of books published in 2011 that we really enjoyed.  I actually came up with two lists: Books that Rocked my World and Books That Kept Me Up At Night in 2011!  I thought you reading friends of mine might like to see the lists.

Books that rocked my world in 2011:

Divergent by Veronica Roth (Teen)

Thrilling urban dystopian fiction debut from exciting young author. A “Hunger Games” read-a-like that reads fresh.

One choice can transform you. Pass initiation. Do not fail! Thrilling urban dystopian fiction debut from exciting young author. In sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior's world, society is divided into five factions. On her Choosing Day, Beatrice renames herself Tris, rejects her family's group, and chooses another faction. After surviving a brutal initiation, Tris finds romance with a super-hot boy, but also discovers unrest and growing conflict in their seemingly "perfect society." To survive and save those they love, they must use their strengths to uncover the truths about their identities, their families, and the order of their society itself.

The Breath of God: A Novel of Suspense by Jeffery Small

A murder at the Taj Mahal. A kidnapping in a sacred city. A desperate chase through a cliffside monastery. All in the pursuit of a legend that could link the world’s great religious faiths. Definitely not the best written book of 2011, but it caught my interest and the idea is intriguing.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (Teen)

  

Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick (Teen)

An electromagnetic pulse flashes across the sky, destroying every electronic device, wiping out every computerized system, and killing billions.

Alex hiked into the woods to say good-bye to her dead parents and her personal demons. Now desperate to find out what happened after the pulse crushes her to the ground, Alex meets up with Tom—a young soldier—and Ellie, a girl whose grandfather was killed by the EMP. And oh yeah…there are zombies.

All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin (Teen)

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame.

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel by Deborah E. Harkness (Adult)

In a sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches became the "it" book of early 2011, bringing Deborah Harkness into the spotlight and galvanizing fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and the descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont. Harkness has created a universe to rival those of Anne Rice, Diana Gabaldon, and Elizabeth Kostova, and she adds a scholar's depth to this riveting story of magic and suspense.

Graveminder by Melissa Marr (Adult)

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn't a funeral that Maylene didn't attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions.  Especially once the dead begin to walk. 

Wither (The Chemical Garden Trilogy) by Lauren DeStefano (Teen)

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (Teen)

Mara Dyer doesn't believe life can get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. It can.  She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed. There is.  She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love. She's wrong.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (Teen)

From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray comes the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.

Teen beauty queens. A Lost-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to emall. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count.

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler (Teen)

It's 1996, and less than half of all American high school students have ever used the Internet. Emma just got her first computer and an America Online CD-ROM. Josh is her best friend.  They power up and log on--and discover themselves on Facebook, fifteen years in the future.

Books that kept me up at night in 2011:

(This is unusual, as it takes a lot to scare me.  But these books managed it!)

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Teen)

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. And the photos are creepy.  Really really creepy.

Don't Breathe a Word: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon (Adult)

On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.  This novel takes place 15 years in the future with the family members still trying to solve the mystery with very disturbing results.

Anna Dressed in Blood  by Kendare Blake (Teen)

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay. 

This book reads like a terrifying episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Warning: several of the descriptions get very gory.

Texas Gothic by Rosemary Clement-Moore (Teen)

Amy Goodnight's family is far from normal. She comes from a line of witches, but tries her best to stay far outside the family business. Her summer gig? Ranch-sitting for her aunt with her wacky but beautiful sister. Only the Goodnight Ranch is even less normal than it normally is. Bodies are being discovered, a ghost is on the prowl, and everywhere she turns, the hot neighbor cowboy is in her face.  Reads like a modern Nancy Drew, with magic, in Texas. 

The Name of the Star (Shades of London) by Maureen Johnson (Teen)

The day Louisiana teenager Rory Deveaux arrives in London marks a memorable occasion. For Rory, it's the start of a new life at a London boarding school. But for many, this will be remembered as the day a series of brutal murders broke out across the city, gruesome crimes mimicking the horrific Jack the Ripper events of more than a century ago.