I chose a recipe that I had my doubts about but wanted to try anyway: tofu feta. I’ve heard plenty of positive stories but would not believe it could really taste like the real thing. And there was only one way to find out! As a newbie vegan I do sometimes miss the fresh, somewhat stingy taste of dairy, like in feta, yoghurt, sour cream and things like that.

But what am I saying… v-gan newbie??? This post marks my 1 year anniversary of going ExtraVeganza!

What started out as a 10-day pilot meant to help reduce my intake of animal products in January 2011, turned into Gnoe going totally herbivore. Although I know I’ve come quite far, it’s rather shocking to hear it’s already been a year. O_o

My biggest hurdle is still the feeling that I’m a pain in the *ss for other people, whether they are friends, family or restauranteurs. :\ But I’m healthy and it feels really good to live this way, so I’m mostly very HAPPY about the step I took! :)

As you probably know, soy products like tofu and tempeh are an important protein source for vegetarians and vegans. Except if you’re unlucky like our Weekend Cooking host Beth Fish, who is hyper-sensitive to it. I don’t know what I’d do without my daily soy cappuccino!

Faux feta

So today I’m sharing a tofu recipe: faux feta. There are many recipes around, but I used the one from Becky’s Tasty Planet. She served it to a Greek omni friend and it passed the test!

Most mock feta recipes are easy to whip up but they need a lot of waiting time. Marinating often takes a minimum of 24 hours. What actually happens during that time is that the fermenting process is (re)activated.

Ingredients

• 250 g tofu
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp white miso
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 big or 2 small garlic cloves, smashed but left whole
• dried oregano (to taste)
• crushed red pepper (to taste)

Preparation

1. Drain tofu and wrap in a clean kitchen towel or paper.
2. Place a cutting board on top and weigh that down with something heavy like a cast iron or water-filled pan, books, cans of beans, etc. Leave for ca. 30 minutes to drain out excess liquid.
3. In the meantime whisk together the rest of the ingredients for the marinade.
4. Unwrap the tofu and cut into 1 cm thick slices.
5. Put the tofu in a container with a well-closing lid, pour over the marinade and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, preferably 2-3 days.
6. Flip the container every few hours to ensure even coverage.
7. Pat the tofu pieces dry before use and crumble or cut into desired shape.

Taste test

I was pleasantly surprised with the taste and texture of this faux feta. The bite actually resembles the real thing and its sour tang is good too. You could use a little more salt (real cheese is pretty salty most of the time), but that can be easily fixed with a salad dressing as well. Still, this is no feta cheese. I guess that’s why Becky called it “feta-style marinated tofu” in her post. :)

I will probably make it again and try other recipes as well, like this one on Vegweb. Have I made you curious enough to have a go at it?

Please check out the yummy recipes my fellow blog hoppers shared!

• JannyAn’s Gado-gado (pescetarian; vegan optional) – I loooove Indonesian food!
• Chinoiseries’ Tempeh Burgers (vegan)
• Uniflame’s BBQ Tempeh Sandwich (vegetarian; vegan optional)

- – - – -

Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food-related post!

It’s been ages since I made Russian salad to bring in a bento. Why did I wait this long? It’s so yummy!

We had baked potatoes for dinner the other night so I boiled a pair extra, which I mashed with vegan mayonnaise, mustard, a little garlic, salt & pepper, paprika powder, curry and cumin. Veggies that went into the salad are gherkin, red onion, celery stalk, steamed carrot and garden peas (freezer stash) and some fresh parsley. I added a little ketchup and sliced radish on top.

The rest of this Thursday bento contains haricot verts and falafel with lemony tahini sauce, half a mini tomato, baked mushrooms, chicory salad with pecans, raisins, yellow bell pepper & aragula. Fruits for dessert: kiwi, pomegranate seeds and blueberries.

I was one happy grrl at lunch. :) Must remember to make potato salad more often!

Thanks to the use of pomegranate, this Meatless Monday bento has a taste of the Middle East. I had a big day ahead of me so I took plenty of food!

Upper tier: Ottolenghi’s kisir with pomegranate seeds and (homemade!) pomegranate melasse, cucumber and simmered kabocha pumpkin (freezer stash).

Lower tier: kiwi fruit, cukes, Greek-style salad with haricot verts, faux feta and pomegranate seeds.

On the side: breakfast muffin (freezer stash; recipe from Puur Plantaardig cookbook), and a caramel soy dessert that didn’t get eaten.

Midnight Maniac’s Meatless Mondays

Last week I promised to share my thoughts on my first read of 2012: Dromen van China by Ian Buruma, or The China Lover (‘Dreaming of China‘) as it’s originally called. This edition is translated to Dutch by Eugène Dabekaussen & Tilly Maters.

I prefer the Dutch title to the English because more than anything, The China Lover seems to be a story about feeling at home in a place that isn’t — and may not even exist. I think all book lovers can relate to that?

It’s a historical novel in three parts, all set in different time periods, revolving around Yoshiko Yamaguchi a.k.a. Ri Koran/Li Xianglan: a beautiful, Manchurian-born Japanese screen star. She is not the main character of the book, but a centerpiece in the lives of three male protagonists. These men share another love: cinema, turning The China Lover also into a story about film.

Strangely enoug the book is not really about China but about the development of Japan and the country’s positioning in the world throughout the decades of the mid 20th century.

It starts in the 1930s with Sato Daisuke, a Japanese ‘information broker’ in Manchukuo. Manchukuo was an under ‘The Last Emperor’ Pu Yi established Japanese puppet state in Manchuria — really an aggressive occupation of Chinese territory. Daisuke falls in love with China (and its women) and believes in creating an ideal state through cinema as he feels more at home here than in the ‘straightjacket’ Japan.

Yoshiko Yamaguchi is his protege: by his hand she starts working as an actress & singer. The movies in Manchukuo are mere propaganda, meant to help give Manchukuo its shape and to sway the Chinese in favour of their Japanese occupiers. Therefore Yoshiko Yamaguchi must keep her Japanese nationality top secret and pretend to be Chinese under the stage name Ri Koran, or Li Xianglan.

The second part of the novel is set in post-war Tokyo. The story is told from the perspective of an American GI, Sidney (‘Sid’) Vanoven, who falls in love with Japan. He becomes a film reviewer and befriends Yoshiki Yamaguchi in that capacity. The starlet even goes to the US where she reinvents herself as Shirley Yamaguchi.

In this part the big screen is again used for propaganda, this time by the American occupiers: to impress democratic values on the Japanese people. Feudal samurai stories are no longer allowed. But cinema is also an escape from reality; not because of glamour, but by looking at folks in similar situations. There is no need to wallow in unhappiness when you can cry freely for the misery of fictional characters.

The book closes in the 1960s-1970s with Sato Kenkichi, a soldier of the Japanese Red Army fighting the Palestinian cause, imprisoned in Beirut. Starting out as a ‘pink’ (porn) movie assistant he later gets to work for a TV show with.. Yoshiko Yamaguchi as presenter. Even after their paths take different directions, Yoshiko still travels the world bringing news of oppressed peoples and their leaders. Film is used in this section as a medium for atonement, as well as propaganda.

All three men tell their story looking back from an uncertain time in the ‘present’. That their names are similar cannot be a coincidence and it probably means that this isn’t really about them, but about the growth of Japan as a nation. It can also explain why this book is called The China Lover, after its first protagonist: Sato Daisuke. He’s the one infatuated with China, and his surname, Daisuke, can even be translated as ‘favourite’ or ‘I love it’. At first I didn’t understand why this book would be called after him but now I understand that although the separate narrators are different (showing consecutive phases in Japan’s evolution), they are also the same.

Besides, he is not the only one who loves China above all places.. that also goes for Yoshiko Yamaguchi.

Embracing The China Lover?

So, did I love The China Lover?

I had a bit of a hard time getting into the story. Buruma takes his time explaining the setting of the first part (which was needed as the history of Manchukuo was completely unknown to me), introducing many characters — some of which have more than one name.* I’m not familiar with Chinese names and places and for the first time I understood a complaint I heard several times about David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I’ve read quite some JLit and at the time I couldn’t accept that people had trouble keeping the Japanese characters and places apart… Now I can. ;)

But the most serious drawback of this section was that the narrator didn’t really sound Japanese or Asian to me.

* Just like Yoshiko Yamaguchi a.k.a. Ri Koran, Li Xianglan, Shirley Yamaguchi and a literal translation of her Chinese name that I forgot. She’s even got more names that aren’t mentioned in the book!

So ‘the China part’ was giving me most trouble. But in the following pages I also felt at times that the author wanted to include everything into the story; even Idi Amin, Ghadaffi and Yasar Arafat got covered. Isn’t that a bit too much?

About the second part of the novel I like how you know immediately there’s an American speaking by the use of a military acronym in the first sentence (GOMIP = Geen Omgang Met Inlands Personeel). This character is probably closest to the author, who’s been an American in Asia for several years. That’s probably why the narrator of this section felt much more true.

In regard to the translation I was sometimes bothered when sentences were confusingly long and would have been better constructed in a different order. It may not be a major issue, but it disturbed my ‘flow’ and increased the already present flaw that the story was at times was hard to follow because of all the information to absorb. Next time I hope Buruma takes the trouble to narrate a story in Dutch himself. ;)

Considering my interests in Asia (specifically Japan), cinema, feminism and globalism, and the fact that the book is broad and quite entertaining, it seems strange I was not swept of my feet by it. So I guess reading another novel by Ian Buruma is not high on my priority list (though his book about the Theo van Gogh assassination piques my interest). But I came to learn new things about Asian and Western history and was triggered to look up facts about Manchukuo and Yoshiko Yamaguchi, now Yoshiko Ōtaka. Did you know she’ll turn 92 in 3 weeks?! During her active years she took up politics and was a member of parliament for 18 years.

What I am really excited about is the fact that my favourite movie director, Hirokazu Kore-eda, is said to be planning a feature film about the life of this many-faced woman. Now that’s something to look forward to!

Chinese Literature

The China Lover has been in my possession since its year of publication (2008) but I never got around to it, even though I stacked it on my readathon pile several times. Thanks to Chinoiseries’ Chinese Literature Challenge I finally picked it up!

I was surprised to find that a book with this title wasn’t really about China. Only the first section of the book is set in Manchuria, or Manchukuo at the time. It is an important section of the book but as I related above, I had a little trouble getting focussed with all the unfamiliar names, places, political and historical setting. I’m still not sure whether that (small) problem lies with me, or with the author. I have learnt something about a time and place I had no knowledge of whatsoever and feel wiser now. ;)

With this review I just managed to accomplish my goal for the Chinese Literature Challenge. Next time I’ll try to aim a little higher!

Historical Fiction

That I had started 2012 with a historic novel made it easier to enter the Historical Fiction Challenge on Historical Tapestry and Eclectic Reader Challenge on Book’d Out. It is not a genre I’m much used to, and being able to cross off one daunting book from the challenge list is always a good feeling.

As I mentioned with the Chinese Literature Challenge, I have learnt some interesting facts about historical people and places. I like that very much and look forward to reading more historical fiction. Although I wasn’t convinced that the first narrator was Asian, all the characters felt true to life — and alive. I could not differentiate between truth and fiction, which seems a good thing?

Now I’ve got one more historical novel to go for the ‘Out Of My Comfort Zone’ level in the Historical Fiction Challenge, and 11 more (other genres) as an Eclectic Reader…

To Be Continued!

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, blogging about bookish things of the past week, visiting each others weblogs, and oh — reading books of course ;)

Don’t you think my first bento of 2012 has a bit of a festive look to it?

Since CSA season is over I had to made do with the last veggies in my fridge. But lunch turned out to be a feast anyway!

So what’s what?

The left tier contains a Mexican-inspired salad of 3 colours paprika, pickle, cucumber and a (vegan) chilli sauce based dressing. Next to that a nut mix of almonds & pistachios and a vegan variation of the cauliflower dip Chinoiseries shared in our New Year’s Dip Quartet, topped with a black olive.

The right tier has some bean sprout mix, simmered kabocha pumpkin (freezer stash), mini plum tomatoes — the very last tomatoes in da house, saved especially for this lunch — kiwi fruit, an orange baby bell pepper, ‘floppy Jane’ (a vegan sloppy Jane I totally messed up by misreading the recipe) and another gherkin.

Curried cauliflower dip

I’m a real cauliflower fan but due to a bad local season for this type of veg we hardly got any in our CSA. By Christmas I was really craving it so when one of my fellow members of the New Year’s Dip Quartet posted a cauliflower spread recipe… I couldn’t get it out of my head!

A large head of cauliflower was about the first thing I bought in the new year. :) We ate part of it cooked with mushroom gravy, a few florets went into a stir-fry and then I still had about 135 grams left. I told you this head was a BIG!

Now it was time to have a taste of that delicious sounding dip. Just one problem: Chinoiseries’ recipe calls for 200 grams of cauliflower! But she said we’d better use less… so I figured it would be all right. And was it?

I’ll tell you right away: I really like this spread and will certainly make it again! But it didn’t taste enough of cauliflower for my liking… More of onion and garlic :) Now I really like those too, but this is a cauliflower dip so next time I will go back to the original amount of 200 grams.

I also didn’t use all of the lemon juice and soy yoghurt the instructions called for: just 1 teaspoon of juice and 4 yoghurt. True, my spread could have been smoother. But the more liquid I added, the less veg I tasted! Now the interesting thing is: I also really liked the stage before adding these! It may even become my favourite way to make the recipe from now on?! The paste is more like a roasted cauliflower tapenade that way.

You can find the original cauliflower dip recipe in the New Year’s Dip Quartet on Always Cooking Up Something (please use soy yoghurt or faux sour cream for a vegan version). I will share my roasted tapenade below!

Roasted cauliflower tapenade

With my love for cauliflower, you can bet on me checking out several of the recipes in the Healing Foods event held on Zesty Palette this month! I hope some of the other participants will also try this roasted cauliflower tapenade?

Ingredients

• 175-200 gr cauliflower
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 1 shallot or 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1/2 tsp curry powder
• 1/4 tsp ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp ginger powder
• 1/4 tsp cumin powder
• salt & pepper
• optional: a little lemon zest or yuzu powder

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 190 °C.
2. Clean the cauliflower and cut into small florets, edible parts of the stem into small dices.
3. Pat dry and transfer to a baking dish. Note: you could line your baking dish with aluminium foil first as the original recipe tells you, but I try to keep my use of tinfoil to a minimum as its production is VERY bad for the environment. I think the only use here is that you don’t have to wash your baking tin afterwards… And we are no lazy bums, are we? ;)
4. Mix in garlic and onion with cauliflower.
5. In a bowl, mix all remaining ingredients (except optional lemon zest/yuzu powder).
6. Add the dressing to the vegetable mix, making sure all the cauliflower is covered.
7. Put into the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes. Check to see whether the cauliflower is done, a knife should easily cut through.
8. Transfer to a food processor and blend until you’ve got a pasty mixture resembling tapenade.
9. If you chose to add lemon zest or yuzu powder: this is the time. You may also add more salt & pepper to taste.
10. Let it cool.

Enjoy!

Check out What’s for Lunch Wednesday (week 85) for some other great bentos!

Midnight Maniac’s Meatless Mondays

I stated I had room for just the one more… Well, I changed my mind. ;) If I’m going to get out of my comfort zone I shouldn’t just explore different genres but also new challenges! The result: I went totally overboard and joined almost all of the ones I contemplated — and the one I had forgotten to mention in the first place. ;)

This is my admission post for three of the reading challenges. Hop to the bottom of this post for my current read.

Eclectic Reader Challenge

With its obligation to read 12 books from different categories –several of which I would never pick by myself– The Eclectic Reader Challenge on Book’d Out is quite the dare for me. And worth a try! Here’s a list of the genres.

1. Literary Fiction
2. Crime/Mystery Fiction
   On the shelf: This Body of Death (Elizabeth George)
3. Romantic Fiction
   On the shelf: Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)?
   Possibly: Verwante stemmen / An Equal Music (Vikram Seth)?
4. Historical Fiction ✔
   Read: Dromen van China / The China Lover (Ian Buruma)
5. Young Adult
   On the shelf: The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)
6. Fantasy
   On the shelf: The WeeFree Men (Terry Pratchett)
7. Science Fiction
   On the shelf: Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
8. Non Fiction
   On the shelf: Met bonzend hart; brieven aan Hella S. Haasse / ‘Letters to Hella S. Haasse‘ (Willem Nijholt; memoir)
9. Horror
   Wishlist: Out (Natsuo Kirino)
10. Thriller /Suspense
11. Classic
    On the shelf: The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins)
12. Your favourite genre

To some of these genres I already added a book but as you have learnt today: anything can change!

Historical Fiction Challenge

I don’t read many historical novels. One could possibly argue Bandoen-Bandung and Kandy from F. Springer belong to this genre, or Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front. If not, then I haven’t read any historical fiction in 2011 and we’d have to go back to mid 2010 when I read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a very enjoyable novel by David Mitchell.

High time for the Historical Fiction Challenge on Historical Tapestry! The easiest level seems to be tailor-made for me: ’Out of My Comfortzone’ = 2 books. Looks doable as I’m currently reading a historical novel by Ian Buruma: The China Lover! That leaves eleven months to find another one.

My online bookgroup the Boekgrrls have Hella Haasse’s De heren van de thee (The Tea Lords) planned for March. But that’ll be a reread for me so I may need to find something else. I recently bought Mevrouw Couperus (Mrs Couperus), a novel about the spouse of the late 19th, early 20th Century author Louis Couperus, by Sophie Zijlstra. But there are also great reports out about The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern?! :)

Nordic Challenge 2012

My sister-in-law recently moved to Denmark with her husband and kids. I’m not much familiar with Scandinavian authors yet so it’s good news that Zommie from Reading in the North decided to host another Nordic Challenge! I’d love to explore the Nordic countries in literature as well as in real life.

There seem to be no set levels so I will read at least one book, but hope to do better than that! I spotted a Danish novel on Mt. TBR: De vrouw en de aap (The Woman and the Ape) by Peter Høeg. And I may also try that new mystery writer my mother-in-law discovered, whatshisname… :)

Now don’t tell anyone because we haven’t really decided yet, but Mr Gnoe and I are considering doing a class about Scandinavian movies!

I have no idea if I’ll cope with all my challenges this year: January is halfway done and so far I still have to finish my first book! ;) But I won’t put too much weight on them. Reading should be fun, and so do challenges!

Currently reading

I just told you I still have to finish my first book of 2012: The China Lover by Ian Buruma. The author was born in the Netherlands and I’m reading the Dutch translation, Dromen van China, but was surprised to see it’d originally been written in English.

It’s a novel in three parts, all set in different time periods, having seperate main characters. Connecting these stories is Yamaguchi Yoshiko a.k.a. Ri Koran/Li Xianglan, a Manchurian born Japanese movie star. She’s never the narrator, always an admired ‘object’, but does get to have her say as she’s met in person by all three protagonists.

For me, part of the attraction of this book is that it shows how film is used (and experienced) in different ways through history.

I’ve been wanting to read it for ages (it has been gathering dust on my shelves) and I’m thankful to the Chinese Literature Challenge for finally getting me to pick it up. Even better: now I can add it to both my Historical Fiction and Eclectic Reader Challenge lists! I’m almost done reading so I’ll tell you more about it later!

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, blogging about bookish things of the past week, visiting each others weblogs, and oh — reading books of course ;)

At the end of 2011 this log helped me fill in the survey about greens we’d missed and the ones we’d rather do without. ;)

From upper left to bottom right:

• Week 51, 2011
• Week 50, 2011
• Week 49, 2011
• Week 48, 2011

Following is a large selection of the dishes that came out of it. Some special, like pumpkin tempura on New Year’s Eve, others your ‘everyday meal’.

Creamy celery soup with truffle oil and tempeh bacon on Christmas Eve

Pumpkin Tempura on New Year's Eve

Japanese Cabbage Salad on New Year's Eve

Tofu Patties on New Year's Eve

Vegetable & Mushroom Rice on New Year's Eve

Roasted tomato & red onion salad with balsamic vinegar

Pumpkin Risotto, Grilled Zucchini and Roasted Tomato Salad

Semolina-coconut pudding with apricot sauce & almonds

Roasted vegetable salad

Red cabbage salad with orange and pistachios

Leek soup & toast with green olive spread

Raddicchio salad with walnuts, oyster musrooms and garlic croutons

Creamy carrot soup, parsnip patties, coleslaw and spicy tofu with garlic sauce

Bean & paprika stew

Coleslaw, Spinach, Veggie Pattie & Stuffed Paprika with Morrocan Couscous

Spicy Oven-roasted Kale (recipe posted)

Sunchoke casserole, baked pear salad, rice and tempeh satay

Cabbage Salad with Lime Vegenaise dressing

Rösti rounds, vegan hamburger, onion rings, poached pears and spinach

Spicy falafel & hot tomato sauce, Brussels sprouts and nutty rice mix

Mediterrenean Carrot Spread (recipe posted)

This second Sunday Salon of 2012 is about the year’s reading challenges. I’ve subscribed to some — and am still thinking about others. That’s okay, as I don’t like to be straightjacketed too soon. ;) The challenges of 2011 will get their own collective wrap-up post.

2012 reading challenges (so far)

I’ll be certainly doing the following challenges this year.

Chinese Literature Challenge (hosted by Chinoiseries)

I’m not sure whether this really counts as a 2012 challenge because it started in February ’11 and ends later this month (January 23rd). But I’m reading for the challenge as we speak (The China Lover by Ian Buruma, in Dutch) so why exclude it from my list?

What’s in a Name Challenge #5 (at Beth Fish reads)

My fourth time participating in this fun challenge. Speaking about random choices… See what’s it all about in my admittance post!

Murakami Reading Challenge 2012 (continued by In Spring it is the Dawn)

I was glad to learn tanabata decided to continue the Murakami Reading Challenge into 2012! There are a still a few books by the author that I haven’t got around to (and as you know I mean to read all of them) so why not herd with the others? Setting the goal low this time at 3 books (level Sheep Man).

Japanese Literature Challenge #6 (starting in June this year, hosted by Dolce Bellezza)

I always join the Japanese Literature Challenge and 2012 will be no different. If Bellezza decides to host it again that is… Let’s wait and see! Requirements are low: I’ll just need to read one book. That’s good as I do want to read some JLit again this year. But it can’t be as much as last year or I’ll fail at my wish to explore new reading areas.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese Literary Challenge #5 still continues until the end of this month!

Now I quickly need to find the time to update my challenge page and sidebar!

Reading challenges I’m considering

Although I like reading challenges because of the ‘random’ way they help me pick books of my shelf, I can’t handle too many of them. I just don’t read as much as others (under 40 books a year), nor review as much. And I get stressed easily. ;) I’d say about 5 is doable — but still a challenge. :) With the ones I already commited to that leaves room for er… one more. :\

So I’m looking for a challenge that doesn’t prescribe too many books (gotta leave some room for ‘free’ choices) and where reviewing is not compulsory. Also, I mostly want to choose unread books that I already own or can borrow.

Having that said, I decided I’d like to get out of my comfort zone more. I’ll embrace any challenge helping me do that!

So here are the ones that appeal to me.

Foodies Read 2 (from Joyfully Retired)

I participated in the first Foodies Reading Challenge. How could I not?

Pro: how can I not join this challenge again? I’m a reading foodie!

Contra: I didn’t manage to write about some of my books last year (wrap-up post coming) and reviewing is sorta mandatory. Then again, I post about food anyway and want to share some thoughts on cookbooks. It’s a must!

Eclectic Reader Challenge (on Book’d Out)

Pro: 12 different genres to read from; some comfortable but most of them are not. ;)

Contra: 12 books (for one challenge only) is about 1/3 of what I read a year! And reviewing is obligatory. Of course overlapping with other challenges/readalongs is possible and I could revert to mini reviews. That some of the genres, like YA and fantasy, REALLY don’t attract me — well, that’s what I was asking for, right? I may be pleasantly surprised… and might actually have some fitting titles on my shelf!

South Asian challenge (hosted by S.Krishna)

Pro: I’ve read plenty of Japanese literature and some Chinese and Indonesia related, but how about that other part of Asia? I think I’m only familiar with the work of Nadeem Aslam — one of my favourite authors!!! That’s a recommendation to try more from the area, right?

Contra: I don’t think I own any books that fit this challenge. :( *Mutters “out of my reading nook, new explorations…”*

Historical Fiction Challenge (set at Historical Tapestry)

Pro: the lowest level (2 books) is called ‘Out of My Comfort Zone’. ;) Every once in a while I read an historical fiction novel, but not every year and certainly not multiple books. One of my choices could overlap with the Eclectic Reader Challenge.

Contra: how much of a challenge is this really?

Are you doing some of the above? Are you maybe hosting an interesting challenge? I welcome any suggestions you may have!

I’ve called my yearly overview of books “The Pile of Books I Kicked Over..” once before, but this time the title fits even better. In 2011 I devoured a total of 38 books, which is nine more than I read in 2010!

Now how is that for a first post and Sunday Salon in 2012?

Of course I pledged to tackle eleven more books this year for the Books on the Nightstand +11 in ’11 Challenge, which would have brought my total up to the nice round number of 40. Well, there you have it: my first #FAIL. ;)

Looking over my list, it is not easy to pick an instant favourite. Although I liked most of the books I read, there aren’t many outstanding works worth mentioning. Although I gave three of them the max of 5 stars in Goodreads, concerning one I have a hard time remembering about what it was exactly…

Interlude: here I corrected myself thanks to the marvellous, but strict Dr Kermode who will not allow the word order of “what it was about.” A grammar lesson learnt in 2011. ;)

So, did I accept quantity over quality? No Ma’m, I did not. I could’ve easily picked two short novellas from my shelf when the end of 2011 was nigh. Like Murakami’s Sleep, for instance, T.S. Elliot’s Cats or Joost Zwagerman’s Duel. But just as I promised when I joined the BOTNS challenge, I did not bend my reading preferences according to book size.

Now quit digressing! Here are the books I read in 2011 in reversed chronological order. Other thoughts and statistics will follow later on.

Nina, the Grande Dame who came to live with us this year, checking out our bookshelves

Books read in 2011

• Kandy: een terugtocht (‘Kandy: a retreat‘), F. Springer
• Vernon God Little, DBC Pierre
• XY, Sandro Veronesi (Boekgrrls December read)
• De duif en De erfenis van Maître Mussard, Patrick Süskind
• Bandoeng-Bandung, F.Springer
• Van het westelijk front geen nieuws (Im Westen nichts Neues / All Quiet on the Western Front), E.M. Remarque (November Boekgrrls read)
• Season of the Rainbirds, Nadeem Aslam
• Tinkers, Paul Harding
• 1q84 (Boek een, twee & drie), Haruki Murakami (JLit Book Group November/December)
• Modelvliegen, Marcel Möring
• Thousand Cranes, Yasunari Kawabata (JLit Book Group August)
• The Help, Kathryn Stockett (Boekgrrls August read)
• Underground, Haruki Murakami
• Dagboek van een Geisha (Memoirs of a Geisha), Arthur Golden
• Witte oleander (White Oleander), Janet Fitch (bx copy)
• Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson
• The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe (JLit Book Group June)
• Zeitoun, Dave Eggers (Boekgrrls June read; nonfiction)
• Verraad, verleiding en verzoening: de rol van eten in speelfilms, Louise O. Fresco & Helen Westerik (nonfiction)
• Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster
• The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, Jonathan Coe (Boekgrrls May read)
• Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America (a Food Memoir), Linda Furiya (nonfiction)
• Crime School, Carol O’Connell
• All She Was Worth, Miyuki Miyabe (Bookcrossing book ring)
• Vegan Family Meals: Real Food for Everyone, Ann Gentry (cookbook; Netgalley e-book)
• 2666, Roberto Bolaño (readalong)
• La Dolce Vegan! Vegan Livin’ Made Easy, Sarah Kramer (cookbook)
• In the Miso Soup, Ryu Murakami (JLit Book Group February)
• Pinball, 1973, Haruki Murakami
• Ik haal je op, ik neem je mee (Ti prendo e ti porto via / I’ll Steal You Away), Niccolò Ammaniti (Boekgrrls February read)
• Geketende democratie: Japan achter de schermen (‘Democracy in chains: behind the scenes of Japan‘), Hans van der Lugt (nonfiction)
• Sneeuwland (Yukiguni / Snowland), Yasunari Kawabata
• Blacklands, Belinda Bauer (Boekgrrls Januari read)
• Poelie de Verschrikkelijke (‘Poelie the Terrible‘), Frans Pointl
• Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki Murakami
• Kalme chaos (Caos Calmo), Sandro Veronesi (Boekgrrls December 2010 read)

Quite the list eh? And I also reread the beautiful short story Het geluid van een stoomfluit midden in de nacht (Yonaka no kiteki ni tsuite / ‘A Steam Whistle in the Middle of the Night‘) by Haruki Murakami.

Thoughts

The book(s) I enjoyed the most this year was Haruki Murakami’s 1q84 trilogy. Readers from the Japanese and English speaking hemispheres may wonder why I keep using a lower case ‘q’ (kyu) when referring to the author’s latest work, since it’s originally written as 1Q84. Well, the Dutch translators decided to use a small ‘q’, resembling the number ’9′ much better!

Volumes 1,2 and 3 together are over 1350 pages thick but I read all three of them in just two weeks. Enough proof of how much I liked it. :) It’s a typical late Murakami of which story you should know nothing beforehand.

Reading 1q84 I regularly had to think back to a work of non-fiction I read earlier this year: Underground, about the Tokyo gas attack. It’s amazing how delicate Murakami treats the subject, showing more about himself as a person than I ever saw, heard or read in interviews or previous books.

A further special mention goes to another Japanese novel: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. A strange story calling up an eerie atmosphere; bordering on a grim fairy tale. The images easily reappear before my mind’s eye so I have no problems recalling what this classic is about. Oops, preposition at the end of my sentence again, apologies to Dr Kermode! ;)

So it’s all Japanese favourites this year. Figures. ;) One of my intentions for 2012 is to read a little more OUT of my comfort zone. Another post will out-lay the rest of my reading plans for this year. *whispers* I haven’t really figured them out yet myself!

Luckily I also very much liked some non-JLit books like Sandro Veronesi’s XY (thought-provoking), Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (compelling), Belinda Bauer’s Blacklands (thrilling) and Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun (shocking).

The biggest bone to tackle this year was 2666 BY FAR. It’s supposed to be a contemporary classic and comes highly recommended by one of my favourite authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, but it could not charm me. I struggled all the way through to the end and I’m proud to say that I was at least able to finish it! 898 pages of small characters, in English. Gah.

2011 Book charts

As always I’d love to share some pie charts. About the gender of authors read, the ratio of fiction to non-fiction (to faction, which is null ;), where I got my copies from, peer-pressure (!) and the language area from which authors originate.

Gender of authors read

Hm, I’m not completely satisfied with the ratio of female authors to male among the books I read this year.. Needless to say it should be more of a fifty-fifty situation!

Fiction to non-fiction

The fiction / non-fiction chart doesn’t show much difference from previous years: I obviously prefer to read fiction — especially now that I’m having ‘concentration issues’. O_o

The Pile

I haven’t looked at the origin of my books before, but as I seem to have read a lot of books being passed on by other Boekgrrls, I thought I’d analyse that data this year. ;)

Peer-pressure

Oh how I love my peer-pressure. Buddyreads, group reads, readalongs & readathons, challenges, book rings… You name it — been there, seen it, done that. ;) Of course I should also have put in this graph the books I read without any relation to others… Next time, I promise.

Language areas

Now I did not read all of these books in their original language, it’s just a vague chart dividing my books into language areas. Most books that are written in English I read in their original language. The same goes for Dutch books. :) The rest I’ve read in translation to either Dutch or English. Maybe next year I’ll try my hand at some German..?
Note: of course Chilean and Pakistani are nationalities, not languages, but you get the idea.

So, did you surpass and/or surprise yourself with the books you’ve read?
Any favourites you’d like to share?
Did you read any of mine?

The recipe that I’d like to share is a super easy, vegan dip that I’ve made several times now and is always a hit with vegetarians, flexitarians and omnivores alike: Mediterranean carrot spread.

I dedicate this post to Uniflame who seems to be at a loss with all the carrots among her CSA vegetables. ;)

Mediterranean Carrot Dip

Ingredients

• 250 grams carrots, cleaned and cut into small pieces
• 2 tbsp good quality olive oil (extra virgin)
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (or vinegar)
• 1 small garlic clove (or half a big one)
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• cayenne pepper / harissa / sambal
• salt & pepper
• optional: salty black olives

Also handy: a (hand) blender

Preparation

1. Thoroughly cook the carrots on either your stove (about 20 minutes) or in microwave (4 minutes on 700 Wt). Drain.
2. Blend (or mash) together carrots, olive oil, lemon juice (or vinegar), cumin and garlic.
3. Add harissa (cayenne/sambal) and salt ‘n peppa to taste.
4. Let it completely cool down.
5. Serve as a side dish or mezze, with Turkish pide bread, Italian ciappe, melba toast, veggies or whatever. It’s nice -but not necessary at all- to garnish this dip with salty black olives.

If you’ve got a few minutes left before you need to get ready for your s-mashing End of Year Party: grab some carrots and throw together this nice snack!

This spread can easily be made a day in advance but after 48 hours it gets too watery. Not that you’ll have any leftovers for that long! ;)

Now I highly recommend you hop over to the other participants’ recipes (links above)! :)

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!

Check out other food-related posts at Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!

Also submitted to Kookgrrl’s December theme: Food to share,

& Zesty Palette’s New ‘U’ Event.