Inspired By... Poison Fruit

Welcome to my first "Inspired By..." post!  These posts will be dedicated to anything inspired by a book I have read.  It could be a craft project, fashion, playlist, or (in this case) a recipe.

In Poison Fruit, Daisy makes some homemade hot cocoa with a little something extra for her and her friends to drink while watching the tree lighting in their town.  Well I decided to create a little hot cocoa recipe myself (without the something extra).

WARNING:  If you follow the recipe exactly the way it is written, you will be subjecting yourself to a whole lot of sugar.  More than any one person should ingest.  I believe I saw Food.com calculate it at 99% the suggested daily value in one serving.  For that reason, I suggest lowering the sugar content to 1/3 cup instead of 1/2 cup and add about 1/3 cup water to increase the servings made to 5 small servings.

The above mentioned changes have not yet been tried.  Please leave a comment below if the changes suck or if they rock.  I will test the changes this weekend and update the recipe on Food.com.

ALTERED RECIPE:

Replace 1/2 cup sugar with 1/3 cup sugar.
In addition to the milk, add 1/3 cup water in step 2.
Change the servings from 4 to 5.

So there you have it.  You can be brave and try the sugar filled original recipe or you can be extra brave and try the untested altered recipe.  Either way, feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts, tips, or recipes of your own.

Happy Reading!

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Poison Fruit

Title:  Poison Fruit
Author:  Jacqueline Carey

Here it is fellow book nerds!  My opinion post on the third and final installment of the Agent of Hel series.

Where to begin?  From the beginning of course.

[SPOILER ALERT]

This book opens up with Cody (werewolf guy) basically telling Daisy that he is falling for her but can't be with her because he has to procreate with his own kind.  (Ouch right?)  After a night of drink therapy, Jen, Daisy's bestie, drunk texts the hot ghoul (Stefan) from Daisy's phone telling him he's "hawt."  Yeah.  Enter mortified morning after realization of drunken text.  Daisy talks to Stefan in person to discuss some unrelated subject and learns that he is going out of town for a while and may ask her for a professional favor as Hel's liaison.

So just to recap.  Wolf boy - No.  Hot ghoul (outcast) - Not now.  What is a girl to do?

Distract herself with a side case of finding and capturing a Night Hag of course.  What else?  She learns that the Night Hag only feeds on people who have nightmares so she asks Sinclaire to take a walk on the dark side and whammy her with her worst nightmare.  She sleeps over at Cody's house (strictly business *wink wink*) to have her nightmare and bind the Night Hag to do her bidding.  For example, get the hell out of town.

After her major nightmare / Night Hag adventure she has a *ahem* different kind of adventure with wolf boy only to discover that he was chatting with a fellow wolfette (and possible mate).  Did I mention that Cody's clan wants Daisy (as Hel's liaison) to go to the wolf mixer?  Talk about torture.

So Stefan returns from his trip and makes true to asking for that professional favor.  What is this favor (you may ask)?  To put down a friend of Stefan's with dauda dagur (the only weapon that can kill the undead permanently).  Daisy has an inner battle but does it anyway.  She is a little freaked out by the whole thing and asks for some time to process.  So we're back to "not now" status for the hot ghoul outcast.

I could go on a play by play commentary here but I'm not going to.  Lets double-time it.

Eventually Daisy and Stefan hook up in an extremely intense way.  Seriously.  Wow.  All the while Pemkowet is under attack by the mysterious hell-spawn lawyer (remember him?) and his even more mysterious employer.  With Pemkowet under the fire of a lawsuit, Daisy gets her scooby gang together to see if they can save the judge and jury from the hell-spawn's power of persuasion.

After losing the lawsuit, the big cards are dealt and we finally see who exactly is behind the lawsuit and purchases of land - Hades' wife Persephone.  Hel, not wanting to give up her territory so easily, accepts the challenge and bids Daisy to put an army of the Eldritch kind together and get ready for war.  Oh snap!

[MY OPINIONS]

Okay so I really enjoyed this book.  I felt that it was just genius how Daisy saves everyone, Eldritch and Mundane alike, by claiming her birthright and then gives her dad (a demon) a big "F*ck you" by bargaining with God for the Outcast to have a chance to die (it makes sense if you read the book - better if you read all three) and to help end the current battle in exchange for her renouncing her birthright forever.  Apparently that's allowed since she didn't technically use the power she claimed.

For this being the last book I have to admit that I would have liked to see an Epilogue portraying a "five years later" scenario but I'll settle for what I got.  Daisy saved her community and got the guy she wanted all along.  She also gave all the Outcasts a second chance to die and earned more street cred as Hel's liaison.  That's a happy ending all around.

One thing I would have done if I was in the book and possessed the magic killing dagger was kill that sneaky lawyer before he even had a chance to persuade the judge and jury in the lawsuit case.  Then there would have been no need for Persephone to have bailed the town out of the financial mess which led to her taking legal claim over Hel's demesne. But then that would have made for a very very short book.  So on second thought - I wouldn't do anything differently.

[EXTRAS]

So I'm a person who gets easily distracted.  My mind tends to hop from one subject to another with little provocation.  My point?  I'm sure I had one.  Ah yes.  While I was looking up the word eldritch to make sure I was spelling it correctly (I didn't want to skim through the book), I found the word in the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Eldritch (adj.) - weird, eerie.(Merriam-Webster)
Possibly came from the Middle English word elfriche meaning fairyland.(Merriam-Webster, 2008)

First known use was in 1508.(Merriam-Webster)

I also found out that there are people with the last name Eldritch.  Now from what little I know about last names (also referred to as surnames), having the last name Eldritch means that, back when surnames started being used (around 1200 A.D.), the head of the family had a weird or eerie personality.  Or if the name evolved from Elfriche then it could have meant the head of the family lived in or came from a magical place (fairyland).  Of course it could have also meant that they had fairy or elf-like physical features or looked otherworldly.  In those times people believed in fairies and/or magical creatures more so than now.

This is all speculation of course.  Pure fun speculation.

[YOUR TURN]

Have you had the pleasure (or displeasure) of reading Poison Fruit?  Feel free to share your thoughts on the book in the comments section below.

Also, if you take a look to the right you will see a widget for the book club I participate in.  And by participate I mean I read one of the books (most of the time) and watch the Hangout every last Tuesday of every month (unless otherwise specified).  I have officially checked out Wolfsbane and Mistletoe from my public library but will not actually read it until I'm done with my current read - Bronze Gods by A. A. Aguirre.

[CREDITS]

Merriam-Webster. (2008, October 28). Word of the Day: Eldritch. Retrieved from Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?10.28.2008

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Definition: Eldritch. Retrieved from Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eldritch

And that, fellow readers, concludes my opinion post on Poison Fruit.



My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Happy Reading!

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