book club – Peaceful Reader

Let's catch up…

September is flying by and I had the crazy thought today; I can understand the appeal of a ghost writer to very busy authors. I feel like I could use one every now and again.

What’s happening in my world?

School:

I’m having a magical year so far. This is my fourth year and I feel much more confident overall. This class of 6th grade students were 3rd graders when I arrived and we have a unique and trusting relationship. Even kindergarten this year has impressed me with their amazing excitement for library.

Home:

Japhy has settled into her high school classes and dance started last week. She is busy, happy, and still filled with so much love for me that our life together is smooth. She loves to lay with me and just hang out. My husband just finished directing an amazing play, The Man who shot Liberty Valance, which I knew nothing about until he picked it for this current season. I’m not a fan of westerns but this one, never having read the book or watched the movie, struck me with it’s very modern issues of good vs. bad.

The only part of my idyllic home life that is not going as planned is how difficult it is for Anton to understand how to be part of a healthy, high-functioning family. It is literally an every day struggle which is a major impact on the rest of us. He doesn’t understand why he needs to check in with us, he doesn’t understand about keeping regular hours, about respect or graciousness, about empathy for other humans and as of yesterday how to talk to another person after a fender bender. (Clue: YOU DO not yell at the person you just rear ended) He has not been able to save a single dime even though he only has two bills to pay. It is mind-blowing and heart-breaking to watch someone struggle and continue to lose any momentum mostly because he flat out doesn’t want to listen as a 22-year-old. The poverty cycle is hard to break. He’s never had anyone “parent” him per se or have expectations for him to follow. On the plus side he loves the community college and the digital media program he is enrolled in and loves taking and editing photos and videos. We hope and pray that he will get over a major hump and realize the gifts he is being handed and how far he can actually go if he listens and learns.

Books:

I hosted book club last night and we discussed The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Excellent read. I loved the magical realism, making it an actual train with stations. It helped me to experience the claustrophobia and fear of traveling to someplace better than where you came from hopefully. We had a good discussion, delicious food, and lots of wine. The extra bonus of hosting was that I deep cleaned many corners of my house that spiders had otherwise been living and dying in.

I’m almost finished with Eowyn Ivey’s new book, The bright edge of the world. Love it. Written in journal entries, it tells the story of Colonel Forrester as he explores the Wolverine River into Alaska, and his wife as she restlessly waits for him to return. She begins taking photographs, which in 1885, was quite a process. Set against the beautiful backdrop of Canada and Alaska their stories are captivating. I loved The Snow Child and this one uses a touch of magical realism as well through several Indigenous tribal legends and myths.

I hope you are having an amazing September as well! Life is good.

Books and food and so many other tidbits

Dance has taken over our life and when we are not at dance Groovy Girl is on my computer working on homework. 9th grade honors classes are pushing her and keeping her busy.

School has me super busy as I’m constantly tweaking lessons and working with our young leadership team. In between and sometimes because of school I’ve been reading some great books. Hansen’s 6th grade book club just finished The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. This book is underappreciated. A few libraries in our district don’t even have copies!

It is a beautifully written story of a young Ojibwa girl and her family as they rotate through the seasons. The accelerated kids in my book club thought it was interesting and the book brought forth a lot of discussion.

At home I finished The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald; a fresh fun story about a young Swedish woman who travels to Broken Wheel, Iowa to meet her bookish pen pal. By the time Sara arrives her pen pal, Amy, has died. The very small town rallies around her and the results are often strange and bittersweet. I enjoyed this tale for its quirky cast of characters and all the book trivia.

My husband and I sometimes read books to each other and we recently finished The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. This is a psychological thriller and I’ve seen a lot of up and down reviews. We enjoyed it and love trying to figure out where the story is going. This one kept us guessing for a few plot twists. Next up we are going to read a classic thriller by Nancy Price-Sleeping with the Enemy.

I made the butternut squash soup, the potato and swiss chard dish and the butternut tabbouleh from my last blog post. All were delicious. Later tonight I’m going to make my stepmother’s zucchini bread for my husband because I have two that are oversized from our school garden. First I’m going to relax with some friends, music, and wine. Just the way to spend a Friday night. Groovy Girl made me dinner also; a veggie wrap using gluten-free wraps from Aldi. Something she watched a YouTube video about…

I’ll have to work harder to wrestle the computer away from her so I can write more before the month closes out.

Enjoy the weekend!!

What DID I read in April?

Not much is the answer. It was a busy month and my lowest reading in history. I read 2 (two) books in all those 30 days. It was a month of starting books. Hopefully more free time in May will help me clean up my record.

I started:

The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow: This is the book club pick for May. I’ve read the first 5 chapters and I don’t know if I’m going to continue. It was recommended by our oldest member, Jean, who diid this year. We are reading it in memory of her so I would like to finish it but I’m not drawn to the story or the character of Gertie.

Girl at War by Sara Novic`: I won a copy of this book by responding to a tweet from David Ebershoff from Random House. Girl at War is a story from Croatia, 1991, when the war is just beginning and Ana’s childhood is a changed forever. Ten years later Ana is in NYC for school and is haunted by memories of war. I like this one and plan to read more this week now that I’ve made the choice to let The Dollmaker go for awhile.

Dreamsleeves by Coleen Murtagh Paratore: Groovy Girl and I started this one a few days ago. I’m lucky she hasn’t gone back to “I don’t want to read with you” shenanigans (read all about that here) because it is the best way to end our day together. Spunky main character, Aislinn, has a lot going on with her 4 younger siblings and an alcoholic father. They are saving money for a dream house in the country and her mother is pregnant again. Groovy Girl and I feel this is not going to end well.

The life-changing magic of tidying up; the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo: I read an article about this book and ordered it from the library (I already have enough books clutterin up my house) I like her advice and am in the process of rethinking objects in my house.

The Organically Clean Home by Becky Rapinchuk (from cleanmama.net): Healthy recipes for cleaning. Also ordered from the library. Recommended by V and a topic of conversation while in Arkansas.

The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney: Recommended to me by a neighbor friend who happens to be a counselor. One of my two kids at home right now is withdrawn and I’m trying to learn more. This book is helpful and makes me realize why I’m socially awkward at times.

This is what I finished:

Nest by Ester Ehrlich: Marvelous tale of Chirp who loves birds, nature, and playing outside. Her mother is diagnosed with MS and Chirp, her sister, and father have to watch as she struggles to deal with this new reality. Her family sets her apart in school as well, they are Jewish and her father is a psychologist. Luckily they are surrounded by nature on Cape Cod and this serves as a healing force for Chirp.

The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart: Crazy story of four orphans ready to save the world from mass brainwashing. Mr. Benedict places an advertisement looking for gifted children and once they pass all of his tests they are rushed off to save the world. Read for 6th grade book club and it was just exciting enough to take their minds off of Legend series for a just a bit. Our last book for the year is Champion by Marie Lu.

Weekend Cooking; Kale, Oh so much Kale

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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.

What's up?

Boy did May fly by or what? I cannot believe the last time I posted we were in Green Bay, WI. Since that wonderful trip we’ve had many graduation open houses (lots of food), baby showers (more food), and two weddings (more food and drink). For all this extra food and drink one might hope I’d done extra yoga. Sadly no. I’m too tired from all that extra food and drink and over scheduling.

I hosted book club two weeks ago, in fact the day after we returned from Green Bay. I like to host book club with something special and this time in connection with our book, The Snow Child, I made adult snow cones. If you’ve read this book you know the two mothers in the book often relax together with some homemade hootch and I replicated that idea with my own. I took a little from several different online recipes, waded through many snow cone pins and came up with a basil-infused simple syrup, mixed with a lemon-lime vodka and a twist of raspberry puree mix to give it a two-toned affect. Groovy Girl churned snow from ice cubes in a borrowed snow cone maker and I layered the mixture over. We had about six or seven pre-made drinks served in martini glasses and waiting in the freezer for the guests to arrive. This made it easy to hand them out as people shed their coats. We’d also stock piled some extra “snow” so all I had to do was pour over the lemon-lime mixture and the fruit puree.

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I did not take any pictures although I should have. The book club members said they liked them and asked for more. We had a great time discussing this book as we sipped our icy drinks. We all liked the fairy tale quality mixed with the harsh background of 1930″s Alaska. I look forward to more from Eowyn Ivey. According to Good Reads she has another book in the works, something to do with wolves. I hope that is another fairy tale connection.

{King Arthur Flour}

I also hosted the first annual Memorial Day waffle breakfast for my friends Rocky and Mary Kay. The greatest part of hosting a casual brunch is that I stayed in my red plaid flannel pajamas for pretty much the whole day. I’m not one to wear my comfy’s all over town EVER but on a day off from school it just felt right. The waffles were delicious. My kids are little foodies when it comes to waffle or pancake toppings. The middle of the table was filled with fresh whipped cream, syrup, my Pampered Chef sprinkler filled with powdered sugar, peanut butter, TJ’s chocolate almond spread, a cinnamon shaker, and a bowl of sliced, fresh strawberries with just a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top. Oh, the possibilities were endless and you needed to have more than one waffle to try new combinations. The perfect a accompaniment was our white wine and orange juice mimosas served in new glasses, a gift from MK.

So we’ve been doing a lot of eating around here. I have a hard core yoga boot camp planned for this week to counterattack. Now that I’m technically done with school I can focus on other projects for a bit. {jumping up and down mentally for the end of this school year}

After The Snow Child I read the ARC of The Real Boy by Anne Ursu (loved it) and Defending Jacob by William Landry (excellent mystery!) -all reviews to come. My summer plan includes more reading mixed with my yoga boot camp.

Happy June!

Book Magic

I absolutely love it when I am able to see the fruits of my labor come alive. It doesn’t happen everyday and somedays it comes in such small doses that you have to look closely to see it. Today though the magic swirled up like fairy dust!

Two days ago the 5th grade girls in my book club-ten of them!- choose Ninth Ward for their next reading choice. I only
had 6 copies so I placed an emergency rush order through my wonderful Scholastic rep, Carmen. I expected the books to come on Monday so I was happily surprised to see them this afternoon in my mailbox. I plopped a sticky note on top of each book addressed personally to each young reader and then took all 10 books down and delivered them.

This is where the magic dust sprinkled down in a frenzy as I delivered the books the girls were gleefully dancing and prancing to get their copy much to the dismay of their classmates NOT privileged to be in the “reading club of cool”. I loved hearing the giggles and watching smiling faces of girls just learning to fall in love with reading!

Weekend Cooking; What's good and right.

The family gathered.

Last week while the book fair was taking up all my waking hours I got a phone call from Teenage Boy, which is big in the first place as he texts but doesn’t “talk”. The reason for his anxious phone call was about dinner; specifically where everyone was for dinner? His voice belied that he was a teenager at all but more like the middle school boy I think of fondly. He was concerned that he was at home by himself and it was dinner time. At first I was less than amused because I thought he was asking why I wasn’t home to make his dinner. I kindly reminded him that he could easily make himself dinner, was quite capable of making a good meal for himself and tried not to sound annoyed. To that his response was “No, I can make my own dinner, it’s just that I didn’t know where everyone was and we usually eat dinner together.” Oh, yea, right.

We do usually eat dinner together. It does feel odd when one or more of us is missing from our vintage (old) linoleum table. And even though I think he’s listening as my husband and I make plans for the week he’s not always tuned in to the hum drum of what will transpire this week, like I’m won’t be home until after 8 on Tuesday and Thursday and my husband says I won’t be home Thursday night either and I’ll bring Groovy Girl to you at school. How he misses all that at said table I don’t know but we are making a new resolution to alert him to scheduling issues that will affect him.

The greater idea though was that he missed all of us being here at the same time, sharing a meal together. It is a tradition he’s had for the part of his life he remembers and I appreciate that this is important family time to him. He often is the one to start the “So what was the best part of your day?” even though when it comes back around to him he shrugs his teenage shoulders leaving that as his answer.

I made him happy this week by leaving 1/4 of a pan of these brownies at home when I made them for my 5th grade book club. Book club boys fought over the chocolate ones-I’d interspersed blondies I’d made for a funeral at church and Teenage Boy was thrilled to hear me say they were so easy I’d make more this weekend. He and his sister polished off the leftover goodies after school, leaving none for their dad much to his dismay. I guess I need to make sure big Daddy gets his fair share from this next batch.

I’m off to scrub potatoes for tonight’s dinner and once I have those boiling I will whip these up for late night happiness. What is your dinner hour like? Are you able to eat together or is it in shifts?

From The Mom 100 Cookbook by Katie Workman
(328-329)

Fudgy One-Pot Brownies

Makes 12 huge or 24 reasonably-sized brownies

1 cup (2 sticks, unsalted) butter, plus butter for greasing the baking pan
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar ( I used turbinado since the color wouldn’t matter)
1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 T pure vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose (unbleached) flour

1. Preheat the oven to 350*F. Butter a 13 X 9 baking pan.
2. Place butter sticks and chocolate squares in a medium-sized saucepan over low heat and let melt, stirring until smooth. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the cocoa powder, sugar, and salt, then blend in the vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, stirring to mix quickly so they don’t have a chance to cook at all. Blend in the flour.

3. Scrape the thick batter into the prepared baking pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Bake until the edges just begin to pull away from the sides of the pan and a wooden toothpick comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes.

4. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack. When completely cool, cut them into 12 or 24 squares.

(It should say hold the family back while they cool-they made the house smell delicious and people were hanging close to the kitchen.) Enjoy…

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