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Weekend Cooking; Whipping up something yummy with Groovy Girl

Did you know October is National Cookie Month? I didn’t until we visited the library a few days ago and they had a table display of kid’s cookbooks laid out (just for us, I’m sure) and we picked just a few!

Kitchen for Kids; 100 amazing recipes your children can make

Jennifer Low

176 pages including index/glossary

We didn’t make cookies but we did read through the whole book cuddled together in our comfy chair. Wednesday night after she thumbed through it again she found a recipe she really wanted to make and said in her sweetest voice: “We have all the ingredients! It will be so simple.” I’d already made a pan of our favorite eggplant lasagna for dinner and wasn’t looking forward to more time not relaxing after dinner but after I perused the recipe I agreed. I couldn’t resist her or the recipe. Could you have resisted?

Gooshy S’More Cakes
[makes 4 ramekin cakes]

Cakes:
4 large marshmallows
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup all-purpose flour [spoon in, level]
1/3 cup whole wheat flour [spoon in, level]
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

Chocolate Goosh:
1/4 cup water
2 T. packed brown sugar
1 T. unsweetened cocoa powder

1. Pop the marshmallows into the freezer.
2 Preheat the oven to 350*
3. To make the cake, melt the butter in a bowl at 50 % power in the microwave (about 1 minute). Use a whisk to stir in the sugars. Cool slightly. Stir in rest of ingredients for the cakes (so not the Goosh) until smooth. Spoon into four ramekins or baking cups, filling 2/3 full. Put a cold marshmallow in the middle of the cake.
4. To make the Goosh, put the ingredients in a cup and heat at 50% power in the microwave, until hot. Stir smooth. Pour over the marshmallows and cake batter.
5. Put the ramekins or cups on a baking sheet. Bake 23 minutes or until puffed, the chocolate is bubbling and the marshmallows melt into top crusts. Cool until warm. Don’t unmold.

Eat it right up! You could lick your bowl but you might get your nose stuck in the ramekin! I would have taken my own photo of them but I couldn’t find my camera fast enough and then… they were gone.

The cookbook is well-designed with lots of photographs to ooh and aaah over. 6 sections are divided into 1. breakfast, lunch and dinner
2. breads and crackers
3.cookies
4. cakes
5. pies, pastries and squares
6. candies, confections and cool treats.

You can see where the emphasis is; kid-friendly sweets. Low also provides an interesting section on organizing the kitchen for your child, tools and measuring instructions.

We liked the Paddy Thai Noodles from the first section, the big soft pretzels from the second section, alphabet cookies from the third section and candy marbles from the last section. Most recipes don’t include as much microwaving as the s’mores cakes, which is good because I’m a little weird about using the microwave too cook. Many recipes in the book are done in smaller sizes or kid-sized. This is definitely one book you will want to read the recipe through before making something just to make sure you will have enough. I’m pretty sure we’ll make a few more recipes before we return it to the library.

Jennifer Low’s website.

Weekend Cooking is hosted at Beth Fish Reads. Stop over there and find many other food-related posts.

How To Buy A Love Of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson

I can’t imagine not having a book in my hand for most of my life. Even in my wild 20’s I read during parties and in my 30’s I read between waitressing and bartending shifts. I’ve never wavered in my love for books and all they hold so it was interesting to have my handsome husband give me this book for a birthday gift.

Synopsis:

When Carley Wells is asked by her H.S. English teacher what her favorite book is, she answers: “Never met one I liked.” Her parents are both horrified when the English teacher passes this information to them and so begins her parents quest to bring literature to Carley. Because they have a ton of money her parents decide to hire a writer who will help Carley create a work of fiction. Through the hired author and Carley’s eyes we see this incredible life of money, boredom, parental error and self-loathing.

My Thoughts:

Carley is an overweight young woman who is in love with her best friend Hunter. Hunter suffers from major depression and chooses to drown his feelings in Vicodin and alcohol. Hunter and Carley have a somewhat toxic friendship as they rely on each other, trying to hide their own negative feelings.

The parents of each of these teenagers is a terrible parental example. Hunter’s mother has a thing for Jackie O and spends more time watching clips of Jackie’s tour of the White House than she does listening to her son. Carley’s mom wants her to be thin and reminds her of it every day. Carley’s dad had a few good qualities until its revealed that he’s having an affair. They seem to think throwing money at each problem is the best solution. It doesn’t work. Carley’s character grows throughout the story and this makes the journey very worthwhile. Does she get a love of reading? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

A sample:

Carley’s father had bought her Choose Your Own Adventures when she was a kid, mazelike books that begin with you waking up places like the planet Zantor and having to make choices like whether to trust a family of six-headed purple Zantorians who tell you to follow them home to safety before sundown when the planet’s carnivorous plants will wake up. Only problem is that the Zantorians, with their six mouths of fangs, are a little vague about what they themselves eat. If you take the Zantorians up on their offer to “have you over for dinner,” turn to page four. If you decide to take your chances tiptoeing through the snapping tulips, turn to page ten. The only thing Carley ever liked about them was working backward from the end, taking the forks in reverse to figure out how to end up on a spaceship bound for home. (39)

Here is Tanya Egan Gibson’s website and her twitter link.
I am interested to see what her next book might be like.

p.s. I read this book way back in August-one of these cold Fall days my reviews will catch up with what I’m reading now.

Weekend Cooking; Weekly Menu

Tomato Pie

Oh so many recipes to share! This week my menu planning for has been very exciting. We ate leftovers (garbanzo pesto soup) from last week’s guest menu two days out of the week. Then I made a Sweet Potato Soup inspired by this post at one of my favorite new blogs, Sweet Mama Jane’s. On Thursday night I made this amazing Tomato Pie that I discovered on Janssen’s Everyday Reading and she via Perry’s Plate. This pie was delicious and because I didn’t think my kids would really enjoy the combination of flavors I made them something else and served the pie just to my husband and I, date style, after he got home from a late meeting. He loved it and I shared a piece with my co-worker, Janice, and she asked for the recipe. This pie was quite perfect as it was but I could imagine it with sprinkles of local bacon under the cheesy/mayo topping. The pie had a BLT quality and this got my mind thinking about bacon.

It is a virtual cornucopia of recipe sharing out there. It is so easy to pick and plan when there are such a wide variety of recipes around! I find much of my inspiration on the internet, googling ingredients to find a recipe or from blog posts but I’ve also turned inward toward my own cookbook collection to new and favorite recipes. Friday night, with a little extra time on my hands, I used the last of Janice’s cherry tomato bounty, which she shared with me, to make Giada’s Cheeca Sauce and tossed it with spiral pasta. Shocking was the fact that Groovy Girl hated it. She said the orange cherry tomatoes taste funny to her. Seriously.

I found this Potato Pancake with Cinnamon Apples in a Tyler Florence book from my own cookbook shelf and I plan to make it this coming week. I love apple season.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads-pop over and see many other food related posts.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

My friend Tina and I strolled through the library one afternoon on lunch break and I came home with an arm full of books. Anna and the French Kiss was one of them. Tina always reads the newest stuff and often picks up brand new books that the library has ordered for her. She’s on the cutting edge of book-newness!
I, on the other hand, am always a little behind! It is a good thing I have her to lead me a long like a blind person.

Synopsis:

Anna’s wealthy writer dad decides she needs to experience a year abroad her senior year. Anna is happy with the life she’s already living in Atlanta with a great mom, a little brother, a wonderful best friend and her job at the movie theater with Toph, her might-be crush. Her divorced parents get her set up at The School of America where she meets her next door dorm neighbor, Meredith who in turn introduces her to the rest of her friends. `Etienne is one of them and he makes Anna a blushing and bumbling idiot for most of the book. They get all their signals mixed and confusion occurs.

My thoughts:

I loved all the characters and the Parisian setting was beautiful. I did so want to shake both `Etienne and Anna at different times. Good golly: `Etienne has a girlfriend for more than half the book-obviously it’s not working out-but really you can tell he is totally smitten with Anna. She, on the other hand, keeps throwing this almost crush with Toph in `Etienne’s face every chance she gets. Once they finally begin to connect it is a bit of magic though.

Stephanie Perkins has a gift for a teen chatter, which makes it easy to read. I’m very interested in her follow-up books, Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After. I understand these are companion books but I would really like to know what happens to Anna and `Etienne once they are ever so close to each other in California. Of course, Anna and the California Kiss lacks a bit of romance! If your behind the times like me don’t leave this book behind.

It begins:

Here is everything I know about France: Madeline and Amelie and Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, although I have no idea what the function of either actually is. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and a lot of kings named Louis. I’m not sure what they did either, but I think it has something to do with the French Revolution, which has something to do with Bastille Day. (3)

I know a little bit more about France than this but an interesting starting point for Anna…

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship of Her Own Making

Official Website: Fairylandbook.com

Groovy Girl, Handsome Husband and I stopped for a ~~quick~~ library visit on Sunday. We found a few books and had fun wandering together. Groovy Girl and I had finished up the sixth Sisters Grimm the night before and she was anxiously scanning the Buckley section for the seventh. It was gone (gasp!) and the nice librarian at the desk put a hold on it for her.

In the meantime I scanned the new elementary fiction section for something inspiring and The Girl Who Circumnavigated... popped out at me on the shelf. Literally I think it moved a few inches out to attract me. My friend V and I had recently skyped with our three kids to talk books and this was one we discussed. She hasn’t been able to get it from the Little Rock Library and here it was popping off the shelf for me. I tucked it under my arm and hummed just a little.

Mind you, I haven’t finished it so this is not a review per se but Groovy Girl and I have read 4 chapters the last three nights and I’m in love with the writing. It reminds me of one of my favorite books, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. The main character’s name is September. She has conversations with the Green Wind, Latitude and Longitude, two witches named Goodbye and Hello and rides on the back of a flying leopard. And if that isn’t cool enough the language is thrillingly descriptive and beautiful.

It was difficult to choose just one but here is a sample:

The Leopard of Little Breezes yawned up and farther off from the rooftops of Omaha, Nebraska, to which September did not even wave good-bye. One ought not to judge her: All children are heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb tall trees and say shocking things and leap so very high that grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. but, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless at all. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown. And so September did not wave good-bye to her house or her mother’s factory, puffing white smoke far below her. (4)

and this from what we just finished with tonight…

The full moon shone jubilantly as September strode up over the dunes and into the interior of Fairyland with her belly full of witch-cake. She smelled the sweet, wheat-sugar of sea grass and listened to distant owls call after mice. And then she suddenly remembered, like a crack of lightning in her mind, check your pockets. She laid her sceptre in the grass and dug into the pocket of her green smoking jacket. [given to her by the Green Wind] September pulled out a small crystal ball, glittering in the moonlight. A single perfectly green leaf hung suspended in it, swaying back and forth gently, as if blown by a faraway wind. (38)

It is hard for me not to read ahead after I tuck her in…
Sweet Dreams.

Girl Power picture books

Groovy Girl read all these picture books the first two days we had the bag home from the library. Me, well, it has taken me over two weeks to read all of them and I had to renew them once in order to write about a few of them.

1. The Queen of France by Tim Wadham, ill. by Kady Macdonald Denton (2011); Rose wakes up and “feels royal” so she plays dress up and goes to look for her mother dressed regally. Using her imagination her parents play along as Rose changes from the queen to Rose and back again. A seemingly simple tale of love and acceptance, Rose demonstrates one can be a girl with many sides. Denton draws Rose with a Ramona-like haircut in amazing watercolor illustrations. Click here for an interview with Tim Wadham. Hooray for first time author Wadham, a fellow librarian, with this picture book.

2. Not All Princesses Dress In Pink by the mother/daughter writers Jane Yolen & Heidi E.Y. Stemple; ill. by Anne-Sophie Languestin (2010); Similar message in this one with quirky digital illustrations. Each page shares how princesses can play soccer, baseball, wrestle with a dog, dance in the rain, break their nails while planting a garden of pumpkins (of course), and my favorite, escape a stony tower using all their cool girl power, using a ladder like monkey bars. I like Denton’s illustrations better but the message of this one is equally strong: whatever you choose to be you can still wear your sparkly crown!

Happy Sunday and wear your crown with pride!

Weekend Cooking; Oatmeal Apple Scones for our guest

It’s not a happy thing to look back on my week, blog-wise and know that my last post was my cooking post from last weekend-especially when I have many finished books waiting for review. We did have a busy week plus we had a guest this week-my husband’s cousin came from Colorado via the train and we had a great time catching up. My husband drove the two-hours to pick him up from the train station and I got inspired and made scones for the next morning. This recipe was incredible easy, fairly healthy and they tasted good. I can’t find my camera or I would share a photo of the finished scones.

Oatmeal Apple Scone Drops
(makes 12 scones)

1 cup uncooked old-fashioned cooking oats
1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking soda
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into chunks
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 medium, organic tart apple, unpeeled, cored, finely chopped
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 egg, slightly beaten

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Combine oats, flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a large bowl; stir until well mixed. Cut in butter with pastry blender or fork until mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in remaining ingredients until well mixed.
Drop batter by 1/2 cupfulls, 2 inches apart, onto lightly greased baking sheets. Slightly flatten each mound.
Bake for 12-15 minutes or until toothpick trick comes out clean. Remove to wire cooling rack.
Can add drizzle of powdered sugar (3/4 cup with 2-3 T of water) if desired over warm scones. Serve warm.

Drizzle would make them pretty but I chose not to add it and they were wonderful. I would add it though if I were to make them for a party or brunch. I did not have golden raisins in my pantry so I substituted dried cranberries, which totally worked. I would try other substitutions next time like slivered almonds with the apples sounds good. I always use milk mixed with a little vinegar to make my buttermilk. I just cook so infrequently with buttermilk that this easy substitution works great for me.

They turned out like a breakfast cookie, with a more casual free form shape, compared to another scone recipe I make that requires rolling the dough and cutting into neat large triangles. Everyone liked them and even though our cousin is health-conscience and is trying to stay away from sugar, he had one because, as he put it…he knew I baked them with love in honor of his visit. I didn’t have the same willpower; I ate three the first day.

Happy cooking!

Weekend Cooking is sponsored by Beth Fish Reads. Click on her link to see my cooking related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Pesto and a canoe trip

I had an amazing day yesterday and wished I could have posted about it last night but I was too exhausted to type. I got up early to mix up some bread dough for my family. I’d made 10 loaves on Thursday and Friday for the market and my children are always a little unhappy as that bread bakes and they know it is not for them. Now we have two loaves for the week.

While I had the flour out I made a pan of Butterscotch Brownies-this is an old recipe that I love and you make it on the stove and then bake it-super easy. While the brownies were in the oven and the dough was rising I helped Groovy Girl get ready for her figure skating lesson at 9. I dropped her at the arena and headed back home to make several batches of pesto for my freezer. Don’t worry my husband picked her up after lessons were over!

My mom and I worked together, using the recipe from Everyday Italian by Giada DeLaurentis, and made five batches of pesto using fresh basil from her garden and the little I had left from my own. The temperature is beginning to dip down at night and rather than have the basil freeze in the garden I want it to freeze in my Sub-Zero.

Here is Giada’s pesto recipe (72):

2 cups [packed] fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
About 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

In a blender (I use the food processor), pulse the basil, nuts, garlic, salt and pepper until finely chopped. With the blender still running, gradually add enough olive oil to form a smooth and thick consistency. Transfer the pesto to a medium bowl and stir in the cheese. Season the pesto with more salt and pepper, if it needs it. The pesto can be made up to 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate.

**If you are going to freeze your pesto for the long winter months as I did then skip the cheese step and don’t add as much olive oil. Later when you grab it out of the freezer to use it you will add in the cheese and a little olive oil to your pasta. Good Parmesan does not freeze well in the pesto.

Giada has a note following the recipe that shares her secret of using pasta water to help blend the pesto so it doesn’t glob up your pasta. The trick is in saving a little of the pasta water back when draining your pasta. I generally just take a large measuring cup and scoop out about a cup before I drain the pasta and before I add the pasta back to the pot I put the pesto in the pan to soften it up and then add small amounts of water as I mix the pasta into the pesto. Viola; fabulous dinner! My mom bought these handy little Tupperware freezer containers that stack perfectly. Pine nuts are ridiculously expensive right now but we did use pine nuts for these batches. I have a spinach pesto I want to try from the same cookbook and I’m going to substitute walnuts for pine nuts, just to give it a try.

I am so happy to have this accomplished as I did not can pickles or make salsa this year. When the snow starts to fly I will be ecstatic to pull out this freshly frozen treat, reminding me of the Spring to come.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Candace at Beth Fish Reads. Pop over and see what she and other’s are cooking up!

Now for the canoe trip:

The pesto making was the easy part of the day though as our afternoon was with a group of church friends paddling down a local river. I expected to lazily float but the river was low and we ran into every snag and sandbar in the river. We canoed for 4 hours and Teenage Boy made me paddle the whole way! My shoulders are tired-truthfully every part of me is tired! Once we landed at our destination I realized [hate it when the light bulb clicks on and it is BAD news] that I’d left the keys to the car parked by our landing in the vehicle parked where we’d put in the canoes!! Uh No. [I was just finishing up Anna and the French Kiss, can you blame me!?]

I whispered this new bit of information to Teenage Boy and he was ANNOYED. Thankfully, everyone else, including my husband, was a bit more understanding. Luckily we quickly rounded up someone to get us back to point B so we could get keys and canoe trailer. The coolest part of the day was when a friend pointed out a young eagle in a tall, bare tree. We floated right under it. It was a glorious sight.

Have a peaceful week!

Friday Features; Kindness

This week in the library our focus was on kindness. We do have Character Counts! at our school but I really wanted to get at the idea of each of us making another person feel special. The world would be a better place if we could all make that happen.

I read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud and David Messing to each class except kindergarten (they had Eric Carle). Even the 5th graders listened and it opened up a good discussion of what each of us could do to fill someone else’s bucket. A first grade student said that the bucket is like your heart! Ah, thank you [big teacher smile] He understood the message.

With that book I read one of my all-time favorite picture books, Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell and David Catrow. The message and the illustrations come together into one outstanding tale of being true to yourself. We conversed about bucket fillers in this book (Grandma and Molly Lou) but also that Ronald Durkin learns to be less of a bully and more of a bucket filler by the end. I found this great Molly Lou video by Spoken Arts.

I also read Todd Parr’s It’s Okay to be Different and Carrie Weston’s The New Bear at School. I read Todd Parr all the time to kids but Weston’s book was a new read aloud and perfectly transmitted my kindness message. Stay tuned for more as I look forward to more kindness next week.

Do you have book favorites that share this message? Any book suggestions would be much appreciated!

I also finished off a beginning of the year order and sent it off to my secretary just because Jana at Milk and Cookies; Comfort Reading waxed poetically about getting her first school order of books for the year. I had to jump on the bandwagon!

Happy Friday!

One More Birthday Post; The Special Handmade Gift

One day I was bopping around the blog world-and happened upon this post, Mama Made A Dress, by Lisa at Books. List. Life. Have you ever been to Books. Lists. Life.? If not, do stop over she writes about her adorable kids, her books, and her craftiness! Love reading about her life. When I looked at the special pinafore dress she made for the Princess-I left a comment expressing the thought that my Groovy Girl would look great in a bigger size dress and well, as things happen in the blogging world, a conversation started up and a deal was made and a dress created and sent to my Iowa address.

It arrived months ago but I had to wait until September to present it to her. Lisa sent it in a lovely handmade drawstring bag so it was already “wrapped” and ready at her birthday breakfast. She choose to open it that morning and heavens…she loved it. Also Lisa shows a great close-up picture of the pinafore dress in this post as well as a bunch of other sewing items.

P.S. If you look closely to the above photo you can see chocolate near the pocket…Groovy Girl alias Messy Tessy wore the dress for the cake eating portion of her birthday night because she was trying it on for her godmother and viola…it now has cake stain on it. I’m going to have to wash it!

Thank you, Thank you, Lisa! She loves it very much.
Here is the link to her Etsy shop so you can get one too!