Reading Goal updated

I think goals should have a bit of a challenge to them. Reading 10 000 pages was easier than I expected, and it seems kind of silly to have a year's reading goal met by April. So I am upping the count. 20 000 seems to be really easy; 25 000 is hard but still seems doable but I actually want a challenge so I am going for 30 000 pages.

At 12 691 pages, I am currently just a little over 1/3 the way there which seems just right.

Here are the latest additions to the list:

33. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin, finished 21 May 2012, 753 pages
32. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin, finished 09 May 2012, 1177 pages

There is only one more book to go in the Land of Ice and Fire series (well, only one more PUBLISHED one. There is at least one more in the wings.). I rather liked the fourth book although I admit that at first I was really annoyed because he doesn't feature any of my favorite characters in this book. However, there are multiple storylines and all are interrelated to a certain degree. Seemingly minor characters are more fully developed, which probably means that I will spend a lot of time crying reading the next book as there are now MORE characters to care about that will die. Although, "dead" doesn't always mean "dead" in these stories.

kitchen serendipity

I like hard cooked eggs as a snack and I store them in the egg carton. To easily tell the difference between raw and cooked, I add some food dye to the cool-down water. I don't aim for anything fancy, just enough of a color to be able to tell which is which at a glance.

Awhile back, I bought some black food coloring to color some caramels (the plan was to make liquorice caramels but I never got around to it. Go ahead and mock me, but I LOVE liquorice caramels.) And today I decided to use the black food coloring.

To the cooling water, I added a glug of vinegar and a squirt of food coloring and let the eggs sit for about a minute or so. I don't think this food coloring was meant to have acid added to it because the dye broke but it resulted in some amazing effects. Some of the eggs have a patina-green color, some look like bronze but the coolest ones look like bronze with blue-green patina. Here is a crappy cell phone photo:

Take that, Martha Stewart!

Reading Goal Met!

Updates to the reading list:

31. The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka, finished 06 May 2012, 129 pages

30. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin, finished 04 May 2012, 883 pages

29. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin, finished 29 April 2012, 799 pages

28. "Weiland, or the Transformation" from American Gothic Tales, ed. Joyce Carol Oates, finished 08 April. 9 pages

Current page total is 10 008! Yay me.