Simple Pleasures & Small Vices: Books/Music/Food/Drink

Volume Discounts

I am off to the Green Valley Book Fair this week! It's a discount book outlet on a farm located just a short drive from Staunton and offering half a million books at ridiculous prices. Open just a couple of weeks at a time, a few times a year it is a joyful destination for bibliophiles, many of whom travel many more miles than I do to walk the aisles of this 25,000 sq.ft. complex.

Last trip, I got a couple of boxes of books: hardcover coffee table tomes and funky little paperbacks, fact and fiction, biography and business... A couple of my favorite finds include:

Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, which I picked up for Mom, then decided, heck, for two bucks, I think I'd like to read that too! And in which I discovered a description of Fontina cheese so savory that I sought it out and now demand nothing less on my paninis.

The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, which I read with great amusement, absorbing some little known (and fairly useless) facts along the way, and then forwarded to my oldest friend in the world, with whom I used to spend Saturdays at the library when we were 8 years old.

Cassata Cake

I think this actually could go under the OMG heading because it is Heaven! And this comes from me who rarely eats or is even tempted by desserts.

Having a late lunch at Paolo's in Reston one day after a meeting, I politely endured the young waiter's presentation of the dessert tray: chocolate blah blah, creme brulee yada yada, tiramisu mucky muck, and cassata cake... made with ricotta cheese, pistachios, orange peel, and topped with marzipan.

What? I love those ingredients! What did you call that cake? And it comes with a pistachio glaze?
Yeah: OMG! Bring me a slice.
And two forks because I may enjoy it but will never get through it by myself.
But hubby and I did manage to conquer it.
And now I know what to order at Paolo's for lunch: a sensible salad and a slice of cassata cake!

I've done a bit of research, and it seems to be quite a personal thing, with all sorts of variations of the recipe, some layered, some sweet, and so on... I'll have to try some others but this version will likely remain the favorite: rich, dense, and just a little sweet --and worth every calorie!