peacefulreader

My latest summer reads

They’ve been less than thrilling but I like having them off my to-read list. I like making check marks on my lists be they real or imagined. I’ve had three books on my reading pile and now they are finished.

Reached by Allie Condie (2012); This is the third and final installment in the Matched trilogy. The first one was interesting with an unusual look at a future ordered society. The second one was about pushing the limits outside of said ordered society. Reached was an insider’s look at rebellion and how it felt a lot like trading in one list of rules for other nicer rules. The Rising is what everyone’s been waiting for to bring about major change but when it happens we quickly see that no matter who you follow or who is in charge there will be rules and problems. I do enjoy the triangle between Cassia, Ky, and Xander. I thought the most important lesson from Reached was follow your own pilot…

Ashfall by Mike Mullins (2011); I heard a buzz about this book when it was first published. I ordered it from Amazon and then let it sit on my pile. I picked it up again when I knew we were headed to Yellowstone for a summer trip. I had forgotten that part of the buzz I’d heard was that the setting is Iowa and specifically my town, Cedar Falls. Even though the writing was aimed more at middle/high school I enjoyed Alex’s adventure after the super Volcano erupts and leaves the Midwest covered in ash. I plan to read the second in the series sometime soon. I planned to take this copy to my nephew, Jasper, as he is a big reader and I think he would like the thrill and adventure of it. I can’t bring it to him now though as I’ve lost the book somewhere in my house. Really. I’ve cleaned several times now and it is just missing!

If I have a wicked stepmother, Where’s my prince? by Melissa Kantor (2005); I’ve had this book on my desk at Highland for a few years. The cover is adorable and I love a good fairy tale. This one is a light but good read with of course many comparisons to Cinderella. Lucy Norton’s mother died when she was little and her life has revolved around hanging out with her dad in San Francisco. He remarries (Mara) and they move to the other side of the country (New York) her world is turned upside down and her father isn’t there for her at all. He stays for most of the week back in CA to finish up some big court case leaving Lucy to fend for herself at a new school with a new family. The plot seems a bit farfetched but it works with the idea that magic is in the air and I’m happy that the conclusion pushes Lucy in a new direction. She also reasons with her father about his absence and it is positive to see her state her opinion to her father and Mara.

And now we are off on our own summer adventure to Yellowstone. Our summer art camp is done and we are ready to relax. I’ve packed clothes, bug spray, and food boxes. I have margarita and rhubarb cocktail ingredients and my cowboy boots (no I did not pay THAT price for them). I hope to post photos along the way.

Weekend Cooking; Cooking for a crowd

{Yellowstone}

Now that summer vacation if finally here the weekends and the weeks begin to run gloriously together except that last week I’ve been assisting my husband with his Arts Camp. My husband (I have my bragging hat on) is a pretty talented director and he does an amazing job of connecting with children of all ages. This art camp is in its seventh year and it is a lot of fun. Kids are paired up according to age and rotate through 4 different classes of art, music, drama and dance. We feed all 70 + kids a snack, my job, half way through their time together. It is a two-week camp and as soon as we finish up next week we are headed out to Yellowstone and Big Sky, MT for a family gathering.

I’ve been working hard mentally trying to think of easy meals I can put together while there. I volunteered to cook the first night and planned to make Katie Workman’s enchiladas I’ve made about 100 times this past year because they are easy and my kids love them. I’ve made them for friends and family and church but not for my brothers, wives, and children so I thought it would be the perfect recipe until I talked to my mother yesterday. After our chat I’m not going to make that recipe but am going to turn it into tacos with all ingredients out on the table so everyone can make their own. I’m also going to serve these margaritas that I love and hopefully my family will also. If they don’t; more for me I guess!

The margarita recipe:

12 oz can frozen limeade
12 ounces of tequila
12 ounces of water
8 ounces of triple sec (2/3 can)
1 can domestic beer
Ice and Limes as desired

Use the frozen limeade can to measure
ingredients. Mix well in a gallon pitcher. If you would like to
blend them; don’t add the water and blend. Either way serve in a small
glass, with limes and salt. Perfect.

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I’m going to bring the ingredients to make sushi. Groovy Girl and I have been making these easy rolls for lunch and we love them. All you need are one package of nori, sushi rice, a packet or can of wild caught Alaskan Salmon, a couple of thinly sliced carrots, maybe a few sprigs of parsley or leaves of spinach will work and you can roll up a healthy lunch. Beats a PB and J for sure.

It’s hard to believe when we return from our trip it will be July already and my short summer respite will be more than half over. My new school district starts school mid-August.

Stay cool and out of the rain.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Kale, Oh so much Kale

{source}

Last week when I had dinner with my mother we did another vegetable exchange. She’d understood from my last post that I wanted more rhubarb. I don’t know what gave her that idea?? Luckily she can read so she transferred over a large bag of rhubarb as well as a garbage-sized bag of kale, and smaller bags of spinach, basil, and several dozen eggs! It is worth the 40 minute drive I tell you.

Kale is very high in beta carotene, Vitamin K, Vitamin C and calcium. A lot like spinach even though it is closer to the cabbage family. I love both of these green leafy plants but can only have them in small doses. The Vitamin K interacts with the blood thinner I am required to take forever. Because I had 4 large bundles (and I gave two away to my friend Patty for juicing purposes) I had to find some way to preserve mine.

Did you know you can freeze kale? Yes, yes you can. How perfect to freeze medium-sized bags of these and then whip them out in the middle of winter to create a yummy soup or a smoothie. Whatever your heart desires! I froze two bundles and made pesto out of the other two. Kale and I are friends again. I’m going to try the same with spinach.

Julie A. Martens shares her tips on freezing kale in this helpful HGTV article. She sounds very smart and garden-happy. I found this kale pesto recipe here at Bon Appetite. It was easy to through together and tasted good. I made two batches and we ate one last night with gluten-free pasta and the rest I’m going to use for a book club recipe. Book club meets at my house on Monday. I should be cleaning ALL weekend long to get my house in shape but I’m not. I’m racing off to Indiana to help my friend Barb out at her bakery for Strawberry Madness.

Post Note: I just finished reading Ashfall by Mike Mullins (good not fantastic) which kale plays a part in so if you want to survive a terrible disaster in the future learn to eat your kale or better yet plant some in your backyard.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekend cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Salt Sugar Fat

Those are definitely three ingredients you use in cooking but I want to discuss the book by Michael Moss. I listen to this book back and forth from school on my phone. I often make faces in my car as I listen and I’m sure that I crack up my fellow drivers. The information in the book really disgusts me. I generally think that food has been ravaged more recently but the book relays how long this “manufacturing” of food has been going on.

I’ve heard all the big hitter names, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Post, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever, and Cargill have all been mentioned and I’m only half finished with the book. Let me preface this with I know they are just trying to make money because they are a company but my answer back is do they have to make money on the backs of others (that would be us the guinea pigs). How much is too much money for CEOs and this goes for many businesses today.

I’m amazed at how all these food companies play with our food, adding more sugar, salt, and fat to appeal and pull us to buy their products repeatedly. It comes down to manufacturing the tastes that our body has adapted to crave because they’ve made you crave it. (crazy, yes) I’ve long been a consumer of a more organic and homegrown options and I don’t buy much processed food. My kids have long been taught how advertising works and to avoid believing even the most ordinary claims. They even know that the word “natural” does not really mean that anymore AT ALL.

But there is so much more to tell and it has a lot to do with psychology and how how our brain and our tastebuds work together. Food manufactured to taste like food. Makes you wonder why we don’t just let it be food. You know the fresh stuff that grows out of the ground and that we raise on farms. All in the name of progress; so women could work and get a meal on the table fast. The biggie food companies hired chemists to turn food into fast food. Jell-O, pudding, TV dinners, boxed mashed potatoes, anything that could be created anew and made quick. Progress.

I wish I knew how we could turn this back because we definitely have a problem with obesity in this country. Right about the time video games and other techno toys pulled kids to the sofa or bean bag chairs and grabbing quick and easy food from the kitchen to fuel their play they stopped playing outside and burning those calories.

My mom was a pretty healthy cook and we ate mostly homemade and homegrown. Going to McDonald’s was a huge treat and it did not happen very often. We had Kool-aid and popsicles in the summer time but we didn’t live on the stuff. Our evenings were spent playing kick-the-can, football, baseball, or other running around games. My mom even kicked us outside in the wintertime to “blow the stink” off us.

It’s a good book and I’m going to finish it as I begin my summer cleaning. I think we foodies have to band together to work toward change in this area.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts and recipes unlike this one which is really just a infomercial about the hazards of processed food. Stay tuned for fresh spring pesto, freezing leafy green veggies, and the rabbit that ate my garden.

Rhubarb, glorious rhubarb

{my cover}

My mom stocked me up with an armful of rhubarb. I can’t seem to get a plant to grow in my yard which is unfortunate because I love the stuff. Did you know it is a vegetable by the way? Yep.

Yesterday I washed and chopped up about 6 cups of the reddish stalks and made 3 containers of rhubarb sauce and used the last 2 cups to make a rhubarb ice tea. I then used the iced tea to create a delicious cocktail after googling basil and rhubarb together.

Both the tea recipe and the sauce recipe are pulled from a lovely little book I pulled from a shelf in a gas station and while I don’t usually buy my books from such convenience stores this one was too good to pass up. The Joy of Rhubarb; the versatile summer delight by Theresa Millang (Adventure Publishing) is packed full of wonderful recipes.

{New and improved cover}

Rhubarb Sauce

(A versatile
sauce…good over ice cream or chicken)

1 1/2 cups
granulated sugar

1 T water

1 T finely
shredded orange peel

6 cups fresh
rhubarb slices 1/4-in thick

1 tsp pure
vanilla extract

Mix sugar, water
and orange peel in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Add rhubarb and
stir. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring often, until rhubarb is
tender and mixture is thickened, about 8 minutes. Stir in vanilla.
Cool. Spoon into glass jars; cover and refrigerate for no more than
1 week, or place in plastic containers and freeze.

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I used a mixture of stevia and organic sugar as I’m experimenting with stevia. I let mine simmer for more than 8 minutes as I want it to be mush. I generally use mine as a jam but since I’m trying to be more gluten-free I plan to stir a teaspoonful into my greek yogurt for breakfast. I saved one container out to use and stashed the other two in the freezer to use later. I tried a few spoonfuls and the stevia held up just fine.

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Rhubarb Ice Tea

For flavor variation, add a
cinnamon stick when cooking, and stir in fresh lemon juice when serving.

8 stalks rhubarb, cut into 3-inch
pieces

8 cups water

1/3 cup sugar

Bring rhubarb and water to a boil
in a large saucepan. Reduce heat; simmer
1 hour. Strain; discard the pulp. Stir sugar into the hot liquid until
dissolved. Cool. Serve over ice. Garnish with mint, Lavender sprigs, or lemon
slices. Makes 6 servings.

Again I used stevia and the flavor was great. I poured it over ice and made this rhubarb basil cocktail from Elizabeth at The Kitchn. It was refreshing and perfect for a hot summer day. I took several photos of my rhubarb cooking but have to resort to using her beautiful picture as my husband left the house with our camera this morning. Probably for the best as my picture couldn’t do it justice. Yum!

{The Kitchn}

(Note to mom: I need more rhubarb)

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

New Beginnings

{Kaylee and Greg}

I’ve learned to love the phrase “When one door closes another will open” even though it has taken on new meaning for me as I’ve grown older. I used to think the door was closed on you and I now see it that sometimes you can be the one to close the door.

We’ve had a few recent and exciting changes in our family. My stepdaughter Kaylee recently graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio and we made the trek across three states to attend this monumental event. My in-laws and my brother- and sister-in-law with their young daughter, Sophie made the trip as well. They came from the opposite direction to meet us. We not only celebrated Kaylee’s graduation all weekend but also honored Allen, my father-in-law with a family dinner, a craft-beer tasting and many unique cards for his 80th birthday.

As Kaylee closes the door on her last four years of school she is open to new possibilities of where ever her talents will take her. She is spending the summer in Bar Harbor, MA, working at a local brewery with a group of young people. Over the graduation weekend I watched her explain her choices and stand by her idea that she was seeking adventures that would lead to writing opportunities and not just taking a post-college job. She is an excellent writer and my husband and I feel her stories are strong enough that she will sooner rather than later be paid to write creatively. I look forward to watching her develop even more as a writer as she immerses herself in unique experiences.

And I need to find a way to get to Bar Harbor for a visit. I’ve never been to Maine and I’ve heard it is absolutely one of our prettiest states.

As for myself I’ve recently been hired by a new school district to take the place of their retiring teacher-librarian. I’m very excited about this new opportunity but also scared and thinking “what was I thinking…” Even interviewing was a challenge for me but I made it through. It will be frightening to get to know a new staff. I’m comfortable with the staff at Highland and know the expectations of students, staff, and administration. Getting to know a new place of work, student’s names, reading ranges, and likes will be a big hurdle. I did want to push myself professionally though and to do that I had to close the door on the known.

{Groovy Girl and friends after talent show performance success}

Groovy Girl faces her own doors as she graduated out of her beloved elementary school and is now a 7th grade student at one of our local junior high schools. She is excited for the adventure right now but I know once we hit August her anxiety will build until she walks through those new doors and finds she is capable. Luckily my new elementary is just across the parking lot from her school so we’ll be able to give each other strength as we open the doors on that first morning and the second and the third.

Lots happening in this neck of the woods…
How about you? What new challenges are you tackling over the next few months?

Weekend Cooking; Juicing

{Rise and Shine Juice}

For the last few months I’ve kickstarted my day with hot water and lemon. It is refreshing and a great way to cleanse the body before you eat breakfast. My inspiration was an article I read in my Yoga Journal magazine. I plan to keep this habit up even as the temperature starts to heat up (anytime soon would be great!) and recently I was reminded of an old routine I once had.

My friend Patty started juicing recently and she practically glows at work! She shared some of her morning juice with me last week and I liked it. She and I share food recommendations back and forth as we chat at school because we both try to eat healthy. Her juice was so yummy I decided to dust off my Juiceman Jr. this morning and whip up some morning time juice.

I could not locate the exact recipe Patty shared with me from the Just on Juice website but a quick web search gave me this recipe at Giada De Laurentis’s Food Network page for what I thought were close ingredients.

Rise and Shine Juice

Ingredients:

5-6 ounces baby spinach leaves, rinsed
2 apples, cored and halved
2 medium carrots, scrubbed and halved
2 celery sticks
1/2 large lemon
One 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled
Ice

Directions:

Pass the spinach, apples, carrots, celery, lemon juice and ginger through a juice maker, according to the manufacturer’s directions. Pour the juice into 2 ice-filled glasses and serve.

It tasted great and it was more orange than green. My husband tried it and said it was far better than he though it would be. Groovy Girl surprised me and backed away as if I were her worst nightmare. Suffice it to say she won’t be borrowing the juicer for awhile.

I used to juice and then I quit because I felt bad for all that pulp (fiber from the veggies) I dumped into the compost bin. It seemed like a lot of work for one beverage-a delicious and healthy one but still isn’t it better to actually eat your veggies I concluded. Plus I had a toddler roaming at my heels and it was hard to keep up. The glow my friend Patty has developed is appealing though.

While I drank my orange glassful of juice and after she’d backed up from me Groovy Girl said “Now look you’ve had all those veggies and it isn’t even lunchtime!” So wise that little one.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme even though there was absolutely no cooking done for this post. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

What I'm reading…the number might amaze you.

How many books do you read at one time? Usually I prefer just one but often I have more than one going at a time depending on circumstances. For most of the year I’ve been able to balance my student book club books with a few that I’ve already read so I can discuss without the need to read.

I did have to read most of the Gregor series with my boy’s group and I’ve read most of Christopher Paul Curtis with another group and we are reading The Mighty Miss Malone right now. It is an amazing and intellectually stimulating book for all of us. I’m so happy Curtis turned to writing as he is a talented story teller. If you haven’t read his new historical fiction about The Great Depression you should. Next up for this group is Shannon Hale’s The Princess Academy, one of my favorite girl power books. Luckily I’ve already read it 3X’s so I can just re-skim and ask good questions. I blogged about my boy’s group in my weekend cooking post and I did make the cranberry oatmeal cookies, they were tasty but flat. Sadly two of the boys were missing from our meeting today. Suspended over a fight they had with EACH OTHER. This is the horrible hard part of where I teach. I think I reach them and then things like this pop up. My soul cries almost every day for the kids I work with at school.

Onward.

Monthly I have my own adult book club to keep up with and we are reading Anthony Mara’s lengthy novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. I downloaded this to my Kindle as the price was right and I am interested but it is not a quick read. I have to kick it up a notch though as we meet next week. Maybe I should look for the Cliff Notes on this one.

I also started something easy the other night as my Kindle needed a charge. The Lying Game by Sara Shepard has been on my to-read pile for awhile and I picked it up and read three pages. I will finish but those 3 pages were all I needed to fall asleep. No reflection on the rest of the book I hope.

I also started The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin about a week ago to help me get in the mood for Spring cleaning and reorganizing my house and my thoughts. I am anxious to get back to it but it will have to wait until the book club book is done.

While I was upstairs reading (Daughter of Winter by Pat Lowry Collins) to Groovy Girl I realized I am “reading” another book on my phone through Audible as I drive back and forth to work; Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. It has me so hooked that I listen to it as I make dinner. I’m only on the fourth chapter and yet still quite disgusted how the food industry works. I am someone who cooks almost all meals from scratch and still I shake my head at the mystery of it. How can people go to work every day to purposely make people sick. Why worry about real drugs when they are giving them to our children daily in pre-packaged form. Yuck.

Seven books. Can you beat me? Let me know your total.

Gregor and his last bite

I finished book five in The Underland series, Gregor and the Code of Claw, by Suzanne Collins. This has been quite an accomplishment as I read the whole series with 3 fantastic 5th grade boy readers. They’ve loved this series, reading each one in a quick span of about 2 weeks, which is an excellent triumph. Along the way each young man created a plausible character would they be lucky enough to exist in the Underland world. At our last meeting they were so animated about discussing the series and that there is not a sixth book that I charged them with appealing to Suzanne Collins to continue the series with just one more book. Like a dying man to water they all agreed how it would help them to know how Gregor is faring and if Luxa and Ripred are holding to their bond.

As a teacher and a reader I am overjoyed by their display of emotion over the book. I love that they get to know Suzanne Collins through this work as well as The Hunger Games. We’ve discussed such deep topics through this series; war and peace, what it means to be a warrior, how does this compare to our war-plagued world today, and the mind-set of a soldier during battle and after. Whew. These conversations have spilled over into guns and why we need to have guns in our homes. One of my three shared that his mother almost shot him one night as he came in late through the front door of their trailer. Guns. But this blog post isn’t about guns so much as it is about cookies. Not to {ever}make light of guns but honestly we need cookies more.

In one poignant scene as Gregor is preparing for battle, one in which he believes he is doomed to die, he eats one last cookie made by his kind neighbor Mrs. Cormaci. It’s an oatmeal raisin cookie and that cookie got me to thinking about last bites. Not a last meal, mind you, but just a taste of one last thing-what would it be? For Gregor he was very excited to have that cookie in hand.

I’m going to make these oatmeal cranberry cookies (cuz if it were my bite I would prefer cranberry over raisin) and Martha does it best. I’m going to bring these to book club this week as we have our final conversation about The Underland Chronicles, we find a way to mail our letters to Suzanne Collins and we pick our last book of the year.

The quote:

“They settled themselves down to wait. Gregor passed Ares (his bat bond) a cookie and ate the other. If he did end up dead, he was glad the last taste in his mouth came from Mrs. Cormaci’s kitchen.” {339}

Happy Saturday! This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekly cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Signs of Spring

{new fountain addition}

It’s been a glorious weekend. We had exciting events to attend to and the weather stayed fairly nice all weekend. I have tulips popping up in my front garden that my mother and I planted late fall. I worried that the massive population of squirrels that reside in our front yard had dug up the bulbs but nope, there are 10 tulips plants springing up! Joy!

This afternoon my husband completed a fountain project that has been two summers in the making. Do-it-yourself projects often run long here but they always get finished. Tonight we dined outside and the fountain bubbled happily behind us. I love the sound of flowing water; it breaks up static energy or maybe provides good feng shui for my environment. We spend a lot of time outdoors in the spring and summer and I know this fountain will be a draw. We have a popular bird feeder that sits near the fountain and I think the birds will enjoy the fountain as much as we will. Our kitchen table sits facing a window that looks out on the back yard and the pond will be in our view. We need a few more rocks around the edge of the pond and Groovy Girl says we need more fairies. Naturally.