November 29

Yesterday marked eleven years since my youngest brother, Shepard, died of cancer.  He was three and a half.

Since Ella was born, I find myself thinking about him more often. Having my own child makes me feel his loss and what it must have meant to my parents in a way I just couldn't fathom as a self-absorbed teenager. 

Now I think of Shepard, and I squeeze my baby a little tighter.

I don't think Ella looks particularly like Shepard, but I see a lot of similarities in this photo

BBC Mania

Alrighty, wise people of the Internet.

I mentioned last week that Bart and I had started watching Downton Abbey. And then many of you commented on how much YOU liked that show too.

 I love these kinds of shows (watching this one, with the Christmas tree lit, reminds me of watching Little Dorrit by the light of our (much larger) Christmas tree in Boston), and I'm pretty sure I need more of them in my life.

And since you all seem to be watching them, you should tell me what to check out after we finish Downton Abbey.

We've seen and loved North and South, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Wives and Daughters, Bleak House, and most Jane Austen adaptations.

What's next?

That New Car Smell

This morning, I told Bart that when he got to work he should ask his co-workers what they got for Thanksgiving. And when they looked confused, he should say, "What, you don't do Thanksgiving gifts? I got a car!"

One of the reasons our marriage works is because he laughs at my jokes.

And also, he really did a car this weekend.

I think it would be hard to overestimate the glee I feel about this. We've been a one car family for nearly all of our marriage (for an eight month period in Boston, we had two cars when Bart was driving out to clients all over the Boston area and I was driving 30 miles each way to work - we sold the CR-V when we moved back to Texas).

We'd discussed getting a second car when we got back to Texas, but Bart works so near our apartment that we could trade the car around as needed, and Ella was taking three naps and then two naps a day, so it wasn't like I had tons of time to be leaving anyway.

But now, the second nap is a thing of the past, and the afternoons, stuck in a little apartment, were becoming more and more wearing on me. And so we decided that, after Christmas, we would buy a second car.

Except, then, I was all ready to have a car of my own, and Bart was spending all his time looking at cars on Craigslist, going out to test drive cars at dealerships, and reading reviews of cars.

And when we found a car that we both liked (a hard thing, let me tell you) for a price we were happy with, well, we decided not to wait until January.

And frankly, I couldn't be happier.

It's a red Mazda Tribute and it has a V6 engine, which pretty much made Bart the happiest man on earth. For now, he's driving it. When we have more kids, I may take over as primary driver of that vehicle, but for now I don't care a bit what car I'm driving, as long as I have a car. 

The question is, what's going to top this NEXT Thanksgiving?

2 x 2 (by 2): Tuck Me In and In the Wild

Back when I was a librarian and not a parent, I was all "what is the DEAL with all these flappy, pop-up, pull-tab books? Don't they know they're just asking to be destroyed?" Then I had a child and I realized these books exist because kids (or at least my kid) lose their mind over these things. The flap! it flaps! Every! Single! Time!

Does that make me sound bitter? I'm not - I think it's ridiculously cute to watch a tiny toddler open the flaps on a book or pull the tabs and giggle every time.

Each page Tuck Me In! shows an animal in bed and then you flip the covers over the animal to tuck him in. It's a simple little concept with very little text and of course it was an enormous hit.

As for me, I couldn't stop marveling that the library copy wasn't torn to bits.

In the Wild was a winner in our house because it contained animals (Ella has high and exacting standards). I loved it for the gorgeous and unusual illustrations - the woodcut style is such a nice complement to the subject matter.

Each of the animals featured got a double-page spread and then a little verse or two about the animal. Some of the poems were a little cringe-worthy (an elephant is "delicate as lace"?), but others, like the brief, punchy giraffe poem were a perfect accompaniment to the images.

Quiet

Yesterday, after I finished my dinner, eaten around a table full of dear friends, I wandered into the room where the kid tables were set up for Thanksgiving and found Ella, perched on a chair, devouring some other child's leftovers.

When dinner was over for everyone, we went upstairs and played some games (Bart and I won a couple of gift cards, a coloring book with crayons for Ella, and a triple pack of gum) and then had a talent show. Bart played the guitar and sang a funny little song he'd written from the point of view of a turkey and I read aloud Duck! Rabbit!. 

We came home and put a very tired child to bed and, after an hour or so of visiting with our downstairs neighbors, finally watched the first episode of Downton Abbey (I am grateful for a husband who doesn't just tolerate but actually enjoys BBC and Masterpiece Classic shows).

My life is quiet, but, oh, it is happy. 

Crossed by Ally Condie (a very brief review)

If you're looking for an example of why people think middle books of trilogies are just filler books, Crossed is your book.

Prepare yourself for many many pages of wandering in canyons.

(Not that I'm not still looking forward to the final book).

Copy picked up at BEA

Baby Shower

Our neighbors just had a little boy a few weeks ago, and a month or so before he was born, a couple of my friends and I threw a baby shower for them.

It was the first time I've hosted one and I was delighted by how it turned out.

Because I am spend way too much time looking at blogs and Pinterest, I felt certain we needed a theme.

And this is what I learned about a theme - it doesn't make your party harder, it makes your party easier (I know, is your mind blown too?) Because once we'd decided on a theme, picking food and decorations was about one bazillion times easier.

After ten seconds online, we decided on a rain theme (baby shower? The Internet is so clever). 

We did no games because I loathe baby shower or bridal shower games and everyone just wants to visit anyway at the events I go to around here. No one seemed to mind at all that we basically just sat around talking and eating as fast as we could.

Food. Glorious food.

We tried to make all the food (with the exception of the jalapeno dip with veggies) rainy day or cloud related. So we had cloud cupcakes and cloud cookies and ridiculously good roasted tomato soap and (my contribution) Pavlovas (don't they LOOK like clouds?) with lemon curd and strawberries.

Besides the pavlovas and jalapeno dip, I also did the decorations, which was a fun little project that I forced Landen, my lovely houseguest, to help me with. I think she was happy to move out the next day.

Clouds: the only ones in Texas the whole summer.

Rainboot vases

Umbrella banner

Front door umbrella

Gifts, take-home cookies and Adam, making toast in the background

Lindsey opening gifts

Holding someone else's darling child.

The whole group - we had a nice turnout

It was so fun that we hosted another one just a couple of weeks later (um, for someone else, obviously). I'm a baby shower machine! Have a baby and I'll throw you a shower too. I need an excuse to go buy out the paper section at Michael's and spend the whole night making banners.

Gift Guide: Picture Books

You guys, I am loving putting these together. It's fun to try to find things that are just a little off the main radar (thus, you won't see Mo Willems or No David! books on this list).

Anyway, on to the picture books!

More Life-Size Zoo by Teruyuki Komiya. I've mentioned Life-Size Zoo before and I like this second one even a little better - the lion in particular is extremely impressive. Perfect for any child that loves animals (watching Ella try to wrestle this enormous book amused me for days).

Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall. A lifetime favorite about a teacher who can't control her wild class, so she dresses up as a horrible substitute teacher who scares the kids so much that they are complete angels by the time the real teacher returns (and boy are they glad to see her). There are three in this series, all just fantastic. Frankly, I love almost everything James Marshall does. 

Cowboy and Octopus by by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith.  Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith come out with such hilarious books and this is one of my favorites. In their usual style, it is as silly as can be, in just the way that many kids seem to love. When I read this aloud to my classes in Boston, the kids roared with laughter. You can't help but feel good when you get a response like that. 

A Zeal of Zebras by Woop Studios. I almost categorically dislike alphabet books, but this one, oh I make an exception for. The cover is FAR more striking than this image makes it look and each page has a fabulous illustration of a group of animals. Each letter is dedicated to the name of a group of animals (An Aurora of polar bears, for instance, or an Embarrassment of Pandas) and then gives a little well-written paragraph or two about some interesting facet of that animal, whether it is their eating habits, habitat, endangered status, or migration patterns. This book is just FUN to look at.

Chester by Melanie Watt. In the school I did my internship in, the librarian did a mock Caldecott and this one was the winner by a landslide. When I introduced it to my classes in Boston, it was equally popular. The author attempts to tell a story, but Chester, an enormous cat, keeps taking his red marker and making changes to the story that suit him. I like reading this one aloud in a very sedate voice when I'm the author and a loud, obnoxious voice when I'm the cat (and then making the author get increasingly irate and screechy as the cate gets out of control).

The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman. This story starts with a lone pencil that begins drawing a world full of people and objects. Of course, all the people and objects are grumpy, demanding that they get friends and food and, hey, it's no fun being black and white - how about some color? The pencil is very obliging, dashing about and adding to the scenery and even drawing a paintbrush to fill everything in with color. But then, when he draws an eraser to fix a few things, the eraser gets out of control and starts erasing everything! Now it's up the pencil to save the day. This book delights me every time - clever and fun and makes me want to draw (and then I remember that my artistic skills rank so low there isn't a scale).  

Free Fall by David Wiesner. I adore David Wiesner - his work is really what made me fall in love with picture books. This wordless one is a favorite of mine. As a little boy drifts to sleep, you see his dreams change from one scene to another, much of it drawn from objects in his own bedroom (his checked quilt, for instance, becomes a life-size chess board). You can just lose yourself in the amazing details of this one.

You can see other picture books I've loved and reviewed. Any suggestions to add?

Sea Change by Jeremy Page

Sea Change starts out in a beautiful meadow, with Guy and Judy and their four-year-old daughter having a little picnic. (If you've read the back cover before opening the book, you know to imagine ominous music playing over this idyllic scene).

A horse appears, looking a little off. And then it tramples the little four-year-old to death.

A happy way to start a book indeed. And if you need an extra dose of jolliness, Guy and Judy separate soon after. (Fifteen pages in and you've got the death of a child and a ruined marriage. If you cope with sadness by drinking, now is the time to break out the alcohol).

Guy gets a boat and spends the next several years sailing by day and by night writing his life as it might have been if Freya hadn't died. In his imaginary life, he and his wife are still together and the three of them are taking a road trip across the American South.

The book itself didn't really speak to me (I grow weary of boating  - at least reading about boating - quickly, it appears), but I loved thinking about how different my life could be if one small thing was changed.

What if I had lived in a different dorm at BYU (I met Bart through my roommate, Sherry, who worked with him on campus)? What if we'd had a baby right away, instead of waiting five years (I could easily have three children by now)? What if my parents hadn't moved to Las Vegas when I was a child and I'd grown up in Wisconsin? What if we'd decided to live in a different area of Austin?

I could play this game all day. I kind of love the idea of following out the thread of one or more of those options and imagining in detail what my life would look like today.

I read this book for the BlogHer Book Club and you can read other reviews and discussions at BlogHer.

I am paid for my participation in the BlogHer Book Club, but I choose which books to read and my reviews are strictly my own opinions. If I think a book is terrible, I'll say so. If I rave about a book, it's because it's one I'd give to Kayla or my mom.

Vegetarian Recipe #9: Rice and Mushroom Casserole

One of the foods I like most in this world is a cheesy rice casserole. Especially as leftovers. Preferably for breakfast.

But cheesy casseroles generally get made by dumping in a bunch of canned soups which makes me fear for my sodium levels. Also, I shiver in the face of that much trans-fat.

Heidi, from 101 Cookbooks, to the rescue (her out-of-print book Cook 1.0 is one I check out from the library every couple of months. I love it). A casserole that is cheesy and delicious and less likely to kill me!

We ate this on (the only) rainy day of the summer and the minute the calendar flipped over to October, I made it again (despite the fact that it was still 95 degrees outside).

Rice and Mushroom Casserole
(adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

Serves 6

1/2 cup uncooked brown rice
1/2 cup uncooked wild rice
1 TB olive oil
8 ounces mushrooms (brown or white) cleaned and roughly chopped
1/2 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves minced garlic
1 bunch spinach or chard, roughly chopped (if using chard, separate the stems from the leaves and chop the stems like onions)
2 eggs
1 cup crumbled queso fresco (you could use another semi-soft cheese like feta or even fresh mozzarella or goat cheese)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you're using feta, you may want to skip the salt entirely)
1/2 tsp pepper 
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese


Put both rices in a medium saucepan with 2 1/2 cups of water and a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, stir once, cover and reduce heat to low. Let cook about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Grease a baking dish (somewhere in the 9x9 range is a good size. I use an oval pan that's about 6 x 12).

In a large skillet over medium-high, heat olive oil. Add mushrooms and stir every few minutes until the mushrooms have released their liquid and are slightly brown. Add onions (and chard stems if using them) and cook for another 5 minutes or until they are translucent. Stir in the garlic, cook for 1 more minute and remove pan from heat.Add spinach or chard leaves and cook 2-4 minutes until wilted.

In a large mixing bowl whisk together the eggs, queso fresco, sour cream, salt (if you're using it) and pepper.

Add the cooked rice and the mushroom/onion mix and stir until well combined. Spread half of this mixture into prepared baking dish.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup cheddar cheese and 1/4 cup Monterey Jack cheese over the rice mixture and then pour the rest of the rice mixture on top of that.

Sprinkle with remaining cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese and finish it off with the Parmesan. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove foil and bake for another 20-30 minutes more.

Serve hot.

Gift Guide: Board Books

I love giving books as gifts, but it's also one of those things that is fraught with anxiety because, what if they already own it?! What if they hate it? What if they think books are lame gifts? (If that last one is the case, I can't help you there).

This year, I'm planning on doing a series of 5-10 books in several different categories that I would not hesitate to give as gifts. I've tried to steer clear of really obvious choices like Goodnight Moon or The Hunger Games. If you're thinking of giving a book, you're probably the kind of person who is already familiar with those titles. These books will mostly be just a little less wildly popular, but just as fantastic (I think). I'd love it if you'd share in the comments your own suggestions!

And, so, without further ado, here are six of my favorite board books, all of which I own and which Ella has given the stamp of approval (which means that they have chewed corners):

Piggies by Audrey and Don Wood. This continues to be a favorite. The illustrations of the human hands with the fat, smart, long, silly, and wee piggies doing all sorts of silly things make me laugh every time. I've never read this without noticing at least one new thing.

Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury. I love Helen Oxenbury - Ella often requests We're Going On a Bear Hunt (mainly because she loves the dog), and this is another lovely book. The text rolls right off the tongue and the babies are sweet and diverse.

Very Hairy Bear by Alice Schertle and Matt Phelan. This book has been out for a while, but the board book edition published only recently. It took me a while to get the feel for the rhythm of the text, but now I love it. The illustrations of a bear through the various seasons (catching salmon, eating blueberries, getting honey from a hive, hunkering down for hibernation) are lush and colorful. 

Calling All Animals by Matthew Porter. Bart's parents gave this to Ella for her birthday and she loved it (as she loves all things that involve animals. I love the retro feel of the illustrations and the clever text - each page shows an animal and then gives one of the names that the whole group of that animal is called (a sleuth of bears, anyone?). This book went missing for a while and when we discovered it under the seat of the car, Ella carried it around for an hour. 

Peter Rabbit Peekaboo! by Beatrix Potter. This book includes several of the most famous Beatrix Potter characters, each hiding behind a flap - Ella loves pulling the flap open to reveal the animals before I have a chance to finish reading the text on the page. There are also multiple other things to find on each page and as she gets older, I think she'll continue to like this book as a kind of I Spy.

Baby Talk by Dawn Sirett and Victoria Blackie. Ralphie gave this to Ella for her birthday, telling me that her little girl loved this book more than any other. And so does Ella. She'll open the flaps over and over again, exclaming "baby!" on each page. Each of the six flaps shows a baby and then under the flap shows a close-up of the baby with one large word underneath ("mama" or "yum-yum" for example).

Any other fantastic titles to add?

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet

I've mentioned before how much I love Melissa Sweet, and her newest book, Balloons Over Broadway, is no exception.

This book, as the title suggests, is about the man - Tony Sarg - who invented the puppets that the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade displays each year.

The parade originally started out as an employee celebration because so many of the Macy's employees were immigrants and missed their own cultural street festivals.

Tony Sarg, who made the window puppet exhibits was asked to help build the costumes and floats. Each year the parade got bigger and bigger, but when the live animals started to scare the children, Macy's asked Sarg to come up with something to replace the animals.

And thus, after some hard work, he figured out the floating balloon animals. It's fun to watch Sarg move from his original field of specialty in marionettes and puppets into something that has become so famous.

As usual, Sweet's illustrations are fabulous; I find her illustrations to be so lively, so happy, and so full of color and texture. Although I've really come to love picture books over the last four or five years, I still struggle to spend as much time enjoying the illustrations as I do the words. Melissa Sweet's books make it easy - I can't stop poring over her images.

And clearly her talents aren't only artistic. The writing is excellent - I loved her descriptions of the balloons making their way through the "canyons" of New York City. Isn't that a great way to describe downtown NYC?

I loved the extra page of information about Tony Sarg and his legacy at the end of the book (an apprentice of his made the puppet show that appears in The Sound of Music, and that apprentice's apprentice was Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets).
 
This is an obvious addition to my Thanksgiving picture book collection (actually, at this moment, it's the only book in my Thanksgiving picture book collection).


Copy sent by publisher

Burger Hopping

When we lived in Boston, Bart and I, inexplicably, went on a burger spree. After we paid off our student loans and finally were not spending nothing, we somehow got the idea to try as many different burgers as we could.

We'd kicked it off with a trip to Mr. Bartley's Burgers in Harvard Square, when Merrick and Philip came to visit.

Later on, we had weekend lunches at Five Guys,  b.good, U Burger, and, our favorite, Sullivan's, on Castle Island.

Then, when we got back to Texas, we had big plans to continue our search for the best burger. We immediately found a burger joint around the corner from us that we loved - cheap and fantastic, although, as we learned over time, not entirely consistent. Then . . . we didn't have any more burgers for a long time.

Until my parents came two weeks ago and we went to Hopdoddy where I learned that Landen's husband, Adam, is an enormous fan of burgers too.

And thus, last Saturday, when Ralphie showed up to watch Ella, the four of us headed out to eat as many burgers as we could in one evening.

We started at a little place called Moonie's and we ordered a single burger with an order of fries. Adam had brought along a knife and carefully quartered the burger, so we could all have some. It was a little more on the gourmet burger end, with a delicious, slightly-sweet bun, and very nice crispy fries. It was my favorite burger of the evening. Bart thought it didn't have enough sauce and I think it was his least favorite.

Next, a quick trip to Short Stop, which is only a drive-thru, so we picked up a cheeseburger and headed up to Mighty Fine, where we ate our Short Stop burger while we waited for the next burger. Short Stop was a really nice fast-food type burger. Lots of sauce, good flavor, and a nice size.

Mighty Fine is one that Bart has talked about for months (his team goes there for lunch reasonably often and Bart is a fan), but when the burger came, it was by far my least favorite. The patty was a little too thick, and so soft it was like eating a meat pillow. And almost no flavor at all. (The strawberry shake was delicious, though).

Landen and I were delicate little flowers who couldn't get through any more burgers, but Bart and Adam both thought they could handle one more, so we ended the night with them splitting a bacon cheeseburger at Five Guys. Bart thought Five Guys was too greasy when we went in Boston, but this time, he declared it the best burger of the night. I desperately wanted to try that burger, but I was so full I couldn't handle even one more bite. What a wimp.

Anyway, it was pretty much the most fun dinner out I can imagine. It is so different to compare burgers when you actually are eating them one after another, rather than weeks or months apart. We already have big plans to do it again with another round of burger joints. Adam thinks that next time we should send out runners and have a big burger tasting in a central location, where we can eat them all at one time (I think this is brilliant).

And, as you might imagine, we have no shortage of friends who want to join us.

Vegas

Yesterday, Ella and I flew to Las Vegas to spend a week with my family.

Bart has a really busy couple of weeks at work, so we figured we'd escape the freezing winter of Texas (oh, wait. Never mind about the freezing and winter part. I was wearing shorts while I packed and our apartment got up to 84 degrees on Sunday evening before I finally turned the AC back on) and enjoy some time with my parents and Crawford.

Ella took the world's most pathetic nap yesterday morning, which made me extremely nervous about the plane flight. And then, of course, the flight ended up being completely full (three standby passengers made it on, so there wasn't a seat anywhere), so I pretty much just wished I could teleport.

But then, she was delightful. She smiled and laughed and ate so many packs of airplane snack mix that I got through nearly 30 pages of my book while she sat on my lap rearranging pretzels and tiny crackers on the tray. I couldn't have asked for her to be better, especially considering that she'd been up for over six hours by the time we landed.

Which meant that when we arrived back at my parents' house, she went straight down for a nap that turned into bedtime (which also meant she woke up at 4:40 this morning, after twelve and a half hours of sleep).

This morning we did a little video chat with Bart (Ella tried to feed him Cheerios through the monitor). Aside from missing him, I am so happy to be here. It's nice to have the whole week stretching ahead of me with no responsibilities aside from making sure my child doesn't terrorize the cat (HE will be happy when we clear out at the end of the week).

How Did That Get in My Lunchbox? The Story of Food by Chris Butterworth, illustrated by Lucia Gaggiotti

I know, I know. The food books must come to an end.

But instead, I'll just force my children to read age-appropriate books to prepare them for the eventual mandatory reading of the food books I can't put down (I resisted the urge to make a bad pun there with "devouring" or something. You are so welcome). (Also, I would never force my child to read a book. I make no similar promises about how many dinner times they'll have to suffer through with me talking on and on about food).

How Did That Get in My Lunchbox? starts out with a lunchbox filled with a cheese sandwich, vegetables, clementines, apple juice box, and a chocolate chip cookie.

Each page then describes how an element of your lunch is produced. Bread starts with wheat being planted, cut, milled, then baked into bread and shipped to the store. Chocolate chips take a long road to be transformed from a bean. (You will notice it's a meat-free lunch - what poor children's author wants to talk about how animals are slaughtered for your ham sandwich?)

Each process hits a nice balance between detailed enough without being overwhelming. And the illustrations are bright and whimsical (even the cows look super happy to be hooked up to milking machines). 

This was just a fun book to look through and one I think kids will enjoy reading (if you don't mind that you'll probably spend the next week back-tracing every food item that appears on your table).


Copy from my local library

One Million Calories Later

My parents and my brother, Crawford, came to visit this past weekend. My dad was lecturing in Dallas and by luck, my brother had Thursday and Friday off of school.

I won't bore you with the details except the ones relating to food so that when you come to visit me, you can tell me which of these places you want to go too:

• Tejis, the best Indian food in all the land (even Crawford, who was mega dubious, loved it and talked about it all evening).
• Hopdoddy for burgers. It was as good as we'd been promised.
• Amy's Ice Cream (I mention this mainly to make Kelly jealous)
• Pita Fusion (Bart's favorite lunch place ever)
• Gourdoughs (three doughnuts versus six adults and one child. The doughnuts won). 

Ella made a good-faith effort on the Black Out Doughnut

 

I lied. I'll make you suffer through some other stuff we did too:

Ella thinks she might be a bat (@ Book People)

• Book People
• O. Henry's house
• Zilker Botanical Gardens
• Shopping at the Domain
• Nadeau (a furniture store recommended by Bethany. She was not wrong about how fun it was).
• Four million games of Dominion none of which I won. What a conspiracy. 

Not bad for a 48 hour trip, I'd say.

Also, if you come to visit, I will let Ella welcome you the same way she welcomed my family - by screaming all the way home from the airport. It was pretty much the best car ride of Crawford's life.

2 x 2 (by 2): Cat the Cat Who is That? and Disappearing Desmond

Have you noticed that invariably the book that you think is the dumbest thing on earth is the one that a child cannot stop asking for? I read Cat the Cat Who is That? through once to Ella and planned to return it immediately to the library. She, however, had different plans. She kept pulling it out of the library basket and we probably read it a dozen or more times before it was time to take it back. Someday, Mo Willems, I will stop underestimating the way children take to your books.

The illustrations are, like most of Willems' books, something you could draw yourself in five minutes. And the text? Well, you could write that in two minutes. Cat the Cat keeps meeting up with a new friend and introducing them, "It's Mouse the Mouse! Hi, Mouse the Mouse." And then there is an unexpected alien/blob/weird thing. And she has no idea who it is. (Of course they become friends. How sweet).

Clearly, despite my skepticism, it was a hit. When I read Ella the Pigeon books, her mind is going to be blown.

Disappearing Desmond is a little more advanced than Cat the Cat, but still something Ella could easily sit through (in fact, we read it twice through the first day at her request).

I've noticed that none of the books so far are too hard or long for her attention span, so when it says ages 2 through 2nd grade, I'm inclined to think that it means a 2 year old could listen to any of them and a 2nd grader could read pretty much any of them.

Desmond is painfully shy and finds places to hide no matter where he is (if Ella was a little older, I think she'd enjoy trying to spot him in each picture). And then, as so often happens in picture books, someone new arrives at school and notices him and after a while Desmond finds he likes being visible.

And then he starts noticing other kids who are hiding in plain sight too. And so the circle of life continues.

This one reminded me of Kevin Henkes' mouse books in the best way. Definitely a fun little read.

A Week of Fall Meals

One of the things I've loved about the CSA (I know, I know, you're thinking "will she ever stop talking about the stupid CSA?") is that we've eaten so many fresh meals this summer, that it's fun to get into fall (or, you know, below 90 degrees) and eat slightly heavier, warmer meals.

Hello, crockpot, is basically what I'm saying here. 

My family was here this last weekend and between that and the various Halloween festivities, I basically haven't cooked in a week, but here's what we ate the week before THAT.

Monday

• Black Bean Soup
• Biscuits
• Pluots

Tuesday

• Fig and Beet Tart
• Green Salad
• Grapes
  

Wednesday 

• Steak and Bok Choy Stir Fry over Rice (We had gone out to eat at a steakhouse for Restaurant week and I froze the leftover filet mignon and used it in this. And. . .that was very tasty. Also, I doubled the bok choy because I'm drowning in the stuff).
  
• Mango and strawberries

Thursday

• Green Calzones (I used rainbow chard and some random summer squash instead of spinach and zucchini and it was excellent. I also made my own ricotta cheese (much less impressive than it sounds - three minutes in the microwave) and used this pizza dough for the crust)
• Baked Pears with Raspberry Sauce (this is one of my favorite side dishes of all time, mainly because it's pretty much a dessert).
• Green Beans

Friday

• Zucchini Pizza 
• Carrot Puree 
• Green Salad (I roasted the tomatoes and the mushrooms in the oven beforehand and oh man, it was delicious)

Saturday

• Pork and White Beans (When we went to the steakhouse, Bart also go the most enormous pork chop I've ever seen. He ate until he was full and there was still, no kidding, two-thirds of it remaining. I chopped it up, froze it, and added it to the crockpot in the last two hours of cooking. Also, I left out the sausage because, good heavens, how much meat do you really need?)
  
• Spinach Salad (the last of the summer strawberries, goat cheese, candied almonds with poppyseed dressing)

Eaten anything great this fall?

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese

So. . .I read a lot of food books. I kicked things off a couple of years ago with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, then three of Michael Pollan's books, and Food Matters by Mark Bittman. Not to mention many many articles, blog posts, cookbooks, and snippets of books that I don't really feel like reading in their entirety.

And Make the Bread, Buy the Butter is one of my very favorites.

Kayla sent me this article, which is the introduction to the book, in June and I was so amused and intrigued that I emailed the publicist to ask for a copy (I very very rarely do this) and when it came a week or so later, I found the book to be even better than I'd expected.

The basic idea is that Reese (who runs the blog The Tipsy Baker) makes dozens and dozens of items that you generally might buy at the store and then compares the homemade version with the storebought version, based on taste, cost, and hassle.

I mean, really, food, cooking, and money? This book was written for me, I think (if Jennifer Reese pretends not to know who I am, know that she is lying. This book was clearly written with me in mind).

The other thing is that this book is so funny. I read many many parts of it outloud to Bart and found myself giggling to myself when I read it late at night.

For instance, in the chapter titled "Junk Food and Candy", she quotes Michale Pollan's advice from Food Rules about how you can eat all the junk you want as long as you are willing to make it yourself since, "chances are good it won't be every day."

"Oh, Michael Pollan," says Reese, "you underestimate me." (He underestimates me too).

Or the part where she turns up her nose at the pre-formed burgers in the freezer, telling her husband that those are how you get e. coli and also, how hard is it to just form your own dang patties?

He says it wasn't hard before he met her and started telling him about how he had to use separate knives to cut the meat and the tomatoes. I have told that story about ten times (it's funnier in the book. . . .).

Also, when you are suddenly Googling where to purchase liquid rennet so you can make your own cheese, I think it's safe to say that this book was a winner for me (fortunately, by the time I was out of the cheese chapter, I'd come to my senses and didn't order a life-time supply of cheese making supplies).

 This book also fits really well into my own food philosophies. At the end of the book, she says,

Almost everything is better when it's homemade. But not everything. Which makes me inordinately happy. Because I think it's great that you can walk into a supermarket and buy a bag of potato chips and a tub of rice pudding that are better than anything you can make at home. I wish there were more foods like that. I really don't want to spend my life standing over blazing stove, muttering about the evils of ConAgra and trans fat. It seems like a tragic waste to shape one's life around doctrinaire rejection of industrial food. Which means, I suppose, both insisting on high standards most of the time and then, sometimes, relaxing them.

That, right there? That's the way I feel about food - I care about what I eat, but I'm not going to make it the sole focus of my life or be a complete jerk over some Pringles at a barbeque. I loved this book, and I haven't stopped talking about it for months.

I'm glad it's finally out, so I can tell you about it too.

Copy sent by publisher