Easy and Yummy Cookbooks and Recipe Books

What do I do when I'm depressed/upset/nervous/frantic? When I can, I bake. I figured, after seeing the damage to my car (and calling up my insurance company and the police), that it was time to bake, so I made up a batch of rye muffins. The picture is awful and blurry, but you get the idea.

The recipe I used is from Muffin Recipes: Veggie-Fruit-Nut by Darlene Funkhouser. I got it at an arts and crafts sale, and I absolutely love it. Even I, who am less than wonderful in the kitchen, can make delicious things using this cookbook. What's even better, considering my apparently accident-prone nature and my tiny little paychecks, is that most of these muffins are really cheap to make. In order to try out a new recipe I, at most, have to buy one or two new ingredients. For instance, to make these rye muffins, I had to buy some rye flour and caraway seeds. Since I plan on making more than just one batch, the cost really isn't so bad.

So far, I've made sausage muffins, sausage and cheese muffins, and french toast muffins (they taste like donuts). They've all turned out wonderfully. I hope to make chocolate muffins sometime this week.

If I were more knowledgeable about recipe books and cookbooks, I'd make some kind of book list for them. However, at this point all I can do is list the ones that I've been able to get the most use out of:

• Muffin Recipes: Veggie-Fruit-Nut (ISBN 978-1-57166-167-8) - As I've already said, I love this book. I don't imagine I'll be trying out all the recipes (Blueberry Pineapple? Ick.), but this book is still more than worth the $6.00 I spent on it.
• Clueless in the Kitchen: A Cookbook for Teens by Evelyn Raab - My very first regularly-used cookbook. This book gave me the courage to try new things in the kitchen. Actually, it gave me the courage to even just use the kitchen, since it works off of the assumption that the reader knows nothing about preparing food. I've only failed with a couple of the recipes. The quiche recipe alone makes me love this book - I just wish it had been possible to get a hardcover copy.
• Jell-O/Cool Whip Recipe Cards - Don't laugh, I know this shouldn't really count. Most of the "recipes" basically involve adding Cool Whip to Jell-O pudding, with maybe a few things added (like hot fudge chocolate) to increase the yumminess. I don't really care - with my limited skills, anything that doesn't involve buying something completely prepared from the store counts as cooking/baking/etc. So far, the Chocolate Dream Pudding Pie has been a hit at all the parties I've taken it to.
  

Memory Wiping for Fun and Profit

Do you like books/movies/TV shows/whatever where characters purposely erase or alter the memories of other characters? These characters usually have some sort of reason for doing what they do - maybe they're good people who only want to remove others' painful memories, maybe they're bad people who've done bad things and don't want to leave witnesses who remember them, or maybe they're somewhere in between.

This is by no means an exhaustive list (if you have your own suggestions, by all means, mention them in a comment). I had fun doing my previous list based on a topic, so I decided to do another one. Enjoy!

Anime/Manga:

• Ghost in the Shell (anime movie); Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (anime movie); Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (anime TV series); Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig (anime TV series) - In the future, almost everyone has been cyberized, which, unfortunately, leaves them vulnerable to brain-hacking. The first Ghost in the Shell movie makes chilling use of this particular drawback of cyberization, and it comes up in other related works. The list of links I've given is not a comprehensive list of all the various Ghost in the Shell titles - for instance, there's also a manga (which is what all this anime stuff is based on) and another movie. Check out Anime News Network for more info.
• Fruits Basket (anime TV series); Fruits Basket (manga) by Natsuki Takaya - One character in this series, Hatori, can use hypnosis to alter/remove memories. He does this to protect his cursed family's secret.
• Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (anime TV series) - Lelouch, the main character of this series, acquires the power of Geass, which allows him to make anyone obey his orders. Lelouch begins living a double life as both an ordinary student and Zero, the mysterious masked leader of a rebellion to free the Japanese people from Brittanian tyrants.
• Bleach (anime TV series); Bleach (manga) by Tite Kubo - Soul Reapers are beings who protect the spirits of the dead and the world of the living from Hollows. As part of their job, Soul Reapers occasionally have to wipe/alter humans' memories.

Live Action (Movies, TV shows):

• Heroes (live action TV series) - A bunch of people around the world suddenly have the ability to use various sorts of superpowers. Behind the scenes, one man, who happens to be the father of a girl with superpowers, looks into this phenomenon, captures people with superpowers, and has a mysterious Haitian man wipe people's memories.
• Men in Black (live action movie) - The Men in Black are real, and they work behind the scenes to keep the rest of humanity from realizing that aliens are definitely among us. As part of their jobs, the Men in Black often wipe/alter people's memories.
  
• Eureka (live action TV series) - In the small town of Eureka, just about everyone's a genius, which makes new sheriff Jack Carter seem a bit like the village idiot at times. On the bright side, his common sense is often just what Eureka needs. In one particular episode, a character uses a powerful invention to wipe people's memories and make himself look more brilliant than he really is.

Books:

• The Queen's Bastard (book) by C. E. Murphy - In this fantasy set in something like Elizabethan Europe, Belinda is the illegitimate child of Queen Lorraine. When she is older, she becomes a spy and assassin for the Queen and secretly learns how to use her magical abilities, which allow her to make herself invisible and affect others' minds. Belinda tests her ability on her maid and a man she knows and later wipes both people's memories of what she made them do.
  
• Undead and Unwed (book) by MaryJanice Davidson - Betsy Taylor, fan of shoes and shopping, is an unlikely Vampire Queen, but that is what she unexpectedly becomes. In this book, she doesn't have much of a handle on her vampiric abilities. Later on in the series, this becomes a problem, as she accidentally makes a cop her slave. Betsy's consort fixes things by wiping the man's memory, which eventually leads to even more problems.
• Guilty Pleasures (book) by Laurell K. Hamilton - In this alternate history, Anita Blake is a former vampire hunter turned vampire executioner when vampires are legally declared people in the United States. One of the powers many vampires have is the ability to erase humans' memories in order to protect themselves.
• Artemis Fowl (book) by Eoin Colfer - Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a criminal mastermind, whose latest scheme involves getting gold from fairies. Of course, the fairies have plenty of magic and technology on their side, so they're not giving in easily. One of the abilities fairies have is mesmer, which allows them to erase and/or alter humans' memories.

Anime/Manga Featuring Books, Libraries, and/or Librarians

I'm going to try something new - instead of a post based on one particular book/movie/TV show, I'm going to try writing a subject-themed post. Since the post will mostly be composed for read-alike and watch-alike suggestions, if I do those suggestions like I normally would, the post would take forever to write. Therefore, instead of giving a little summary for each suggestion, I'm just going to write a bit about why that particular book/movie/TV show was included in the list. If you want to know more about it, either see if it's been mentioned in my blog before, or click on the link and read the Amazon, Anime News Network, or IMDb page for more info.

For my very first post of this sort (and maybe my last, if I don't like how it goes), I'm listing anime and manga in which books, libraries, and/or librarians play a part.

• Whisper of the Heart (anime movie) - Who is Seiji Amasawa, and how has he managed to read every book in the library before Shizuku? The answer to this question has serious implications for Shizuku's romantic future and the library's circulation statistics.
• Read or Die (anime OVA) - No list of this sort would be complete without this anime. Yomiko Readman, the main character, is so in love with books that she has developed a magical affinity for paper. As a secret operative for the British Library, she uses her skill to try to retrieve valuable stolen books.
  
• R.O.D. the TV (anime TV series) - Three young women with the ability to manipulate paper become bodyguards for the Japanese author Nenene Sumiregawa, whose long-lost friend happens to be Yomiko Readman. Yup, this series is related to Read or Die. There's also a couple manga related to these two titles.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (manga) by Hiromu Arakawa; Fullmetal Alchemist (anime TV series); Fullmetal Alchemist: The Movie (anime movie) - Two brothers lose their mother at an early age and try to use alchemy, with disastrous results, to bring her back. Their interest in alchemy means they can often be found (in the manga or anime) with their noses in books. In fact, when Edward, the older brother, becomes a State Alchemist, the two get access to the National Library, with its extensive collection of books on alchemy.
• Tactics (anime TV series) - The main character, Kantaro, is a scholarly author who specializes in Japanese folklore. He's forever in the midst of writing a book. In addition, his editor, Reiko, is so in love with reading that an entire episode is devoted to this favorite hobby of hers.
• Fruits Basket (anime TV series); Fruits Basket (manga) by Natsuki Takaya - At one point, Tohru, one of the main characters, is at her school's library and has just checked out a few books with her friends in mind, when she gets some upsetting news.
• Fushigi Yuugi: Mysterious Play (manga) by Yuu Watase; Fushigi Yuugi: Mysterious Play (anime TV series) - Two middle school students, Miaka and her best friend, visit the National Library, only to get sucked into the book The Universe of the Four Gods. Miaka has it relatively good. Her friend does not. Things only get more complicated from there.
• Negima! (manga) by Ken Akamatsu; Negima! (anime TV series) - There are apparently lots of other versions - I'm not going to list them all, but Anime News Network does. Anyway, this series includes a couple members of Mahora Academy's Library Exploration Club, as well as a character named Albireo Imma, who is registered as a librarian at the Mahora Library Island. By the way, unless you want to risk dying, it's never a good idea to wander around the Mahora Library Island without a knowledgeable guide.
• Chobits (manga) by CLAMP; Chobits (anime TV series) - Hideki, a poor prep school student, lucks out when he finds a persocom (a computer that looks like a person). He names her Chi. Throughout the series, Chi reads some very deep picture books, which delve into the nature of persocom-human relationships.
• Gravitation (manga) by Maki Murakami; Gravitation (anime TV series) - Shuichi's not a reader, but he can at least recognize when someone's talking about the books written by his lover, super-popular, super-sexy, and super-cold Eiri Yuki.
• Descendants of Darkness (manga) by Yoko Matsushita; Descendants of Darkness (anime TV series) - Even after death, someone's got to do paperwork and catch criminals. While Tsuzuki and his new partner are off doing what they can, the Gushoushin brothers, bird-like twin God librarians, try to provide everybody in the division with the information they need. This series is often also referred to by its Japanese title, Yami no Matsuei.
• The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross (manga) by Arina Tanemura - As a young girl, Haine fell in love with the boy (Shizumasa) who authored the children's book that was her first and last present from her father. Now a student at the elite Imperial Academy, Haine must figure out how to deal with Shizumasa (who seems to hate her), as well as her own feelings for him.