books – Page 3 – Peaceful Reader

Talents

This week at school we had two mornings filled with our talent show. It was amazing and as I watched I was overwhelmed by all the talent we have in our school. We had dancers, very funny comedy routines, dynamic singers, piano players, tiny musicians, and one young man who solved his Rubic’s Cube while jumping on a pogo stick.

As teachers we put together a synchronized routine following these two routines from YouTube. We did a good job of and had lots of teachers involved.

I started thinking about my own talents that I could share and came up with a very short list:

I am a very good reader

I can mix a great drink

I am an adequate cook

None of these are talent show worthy. Long ago I was in a small town beauty contest (not my idea) and had to come up with an act. I wrote an interesting parody about friendship and read it aloud; people laughed and I won third place. Not bad for a brunette. My talents will have to remain low-key.

I am ready for the year to end but it is always bittersweet; this group of 6th graders were in 2nd grade when I became the librarian at Hansen. There are more than a few of them that I will miss a great deal.

In other talented news I made this dish, Mediterranean Chickpea Salad, this morning for a picnic and it was delicious. I’m reading two books right now; The Inquisition by Taran Matharu (the 2nd in the series) and Eat to beat disease by William Li. Recently my husband and daughter watched his excellent TedTalk, Can we eat to starve cancer?, and I watched What the Health on Netflix one afternoon. I was pretty disgusted how major health organizations are sponsored by meat/diary/fast food companies. If you have a chance both of these videos are worth your time.

Happy June!

Snow Day

I finished reading both An American Marriage, a decidedly sad tale, and Less, an uplifting tale of love and highly recommend both books. I’m now reading Front Desk by Kelly Yang, which won the ALA Asian/Pacific Award this year.

These week I made Khichdi which a friend posted on IG referring to it as comfort food. Mashed potatoes with a slice of real butter melting on the top has been my comfort food for years. I can picture it in the large bowl my grandmother brought to the table for many family meals. I can smell it; the creamy yellow potatoes mixing with the soft butter on top. Comfort food means different smells and feelings to everyone and I thought this lentil dish was definitely worth trying. All the spices made my kitchen smell amazing, maybe the comfort starts in the making, as I took lots of deep healing breaths while chopping and stirring. When it was finished we soaked it up with toasted naan and cleaned our bowls. It was a perfect dish for a freezing evening.

Last Sunday I made a tomato soup recipe I’d ripped from a food magazine. It was a very easy recipe to put together and it was delicious. Tomato soup pairs perfectly with grilled cheese and I used white cheddar with some yummy sourdough to fry up in my cast iron skillet. They were a perfect gooey mess to dip into the creamy soup. Here is the recipe for yourself.

Creamy Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

4 red bell peppers, seeded and sliced

4 large tomatoes, seeded and quartered

1 T olive oil

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 cup onions, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, diced

1 can tomato paste

32 oz vegetable broth

1/2 cup loosely packed basil leaves, torn

Parmesan croutons *I didn’t make b/c no me gusta croutons

1/2 cup shaved Parmesan for topping

1. Add olive oil to large saucepan over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, chopped red peppers and tomatoes and sauté until tender.

Stir in tomato paste and then add vegetable broth.

Bring to a boil and then reduce heat .

2. Allow the soup to cool just a tad and then add in batches to a blender or use an immersion blender. Blend until smooth and creamy.

3. Ladle into bowls and add Parmesan shavings, fresh cut basil leaves, and freshly ground pepper to top.

The red peppers added an excellent flavor to the soup. Also I didn’t have 4 fresh tomatoes on hand but I did have a Mason jar of tomato sauce from this summer so I substituted that which worked fine. I even think you could substitute a good quality can of diced tomatoes for this. Fresh tomatoes in the winter are not as flavorful as the summer so it’s a fair switch.

Stay warm and drive slow. We are on our 8th snow day.

Just do it!

I’m happy to share that I’ve made it to a yoga class the first Saturdays of January. State Street Yoga has a new teacher, Corinne, on Saturdays at 10:30, which is a very good time for me, because I can’t roll myself out of bed too early on a day off. Corinne is slightly unconventional, with a very soothing voice, good energy, and I’ve learned some new poses from her. New learning is always good. So I’m happy to have started again and found someone interesting in that process.

I’m reading several books right now, trying to read more than watch, which is a struggle especially because Groovy Girl introduced me to Grey’s Anatomy. I didn’t pay attention when the show aired originally but now I’m genuinely interested in the characters and what’s going on. It’s a bit like watching General Hospital while I was in college.

Books I’m reading:

The Library by Susan Orlean – so beautifully written, would not have thought I’d enjoy a nonfiction book about a library fire.

Endling by Katherine Applegate – I am just about 6 chapters in and curious about where the story is going. This morning I had the book in my arm at church and a precocious 10-year-old reader told me she thought the story was great. That recommendation alone should keep me going…

Code Girls: the untold story of the American women code breakers of WWII by Liza Mundy – This is for book club and I’ve cracked the cover twice and read a total of one page. I’m not encouraged to read this whole (572 pages) book. I’m a fiction girl at heart and struggle with titles like this. I’ll take a fiction book about this topic any day. If you loved this title, let me know…

My hands (and the house) smell all spicy from chopping onions, garlic, and ginger for a big batch of chicken korma. Friends are coming over for a beer tasting first and a bite to eat after. I’d already planned the korma dinner for family; I just had to double the batch. It smells delicious.

Namaste…

Are you ready?

There is magic in the air! Are you ready? I feel like I am in a good place with my lists and plans. I just need a little voodoo magic to get it to all come together. Everything seems to sparkle just a little bit more right now.

Today is my first official day of break and I started the day by sleeping in a little, which felt so lovely and going to have brunch with friends. While we were brunching we sampled the new Resilience beer coordinated for fire relief by the Sierra Nevada Brewery. It was pretty good for an IPA but more importantly an amazing effort to pull together to help others.

Last weekend we made it through the graduation~ it was amazing. Everything came together in a magical way like the universe was simpatico. We now are the proud parents of two college graduate adults, making their way out there in the world. One left and I’m in no rush for that to happen.

I have all my shopping done, my menu is planned but everything still needs to be prepared. If I waved a magic wand the food could all be thrown together at once but then I would miss the joy of tying on my apron, pouring a glass of wine, and mixing things myself. I hope the next few meals go together as smoothly as the graduation food did.

I just finished Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman. I loved it and wanted Eleanor to find her way to happiness. I highly recommend this title and just ordered it today for a friend’s birthday. When I finished it I compiled a new stack of books from bookcases and piles about my house, trying to decide which one to read next.

Here are just a few of my choices:
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
My absolute darling by Gabriel Tallent
inward by yung pueblo (this one is perfect to read to start/end the day)

and I also brought home an armful from school to read. Now I need to carve out some time to read in between cooking and family time.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all! Enjoy the magic.

Small thoughts

It’s cold and rainy here and I miss summer already. I am taking another class which I thought would be easy to fit in but there is more to it and the homework takes a lot of deep thinking. Just like my summer classes though it will push me to be a better teacher.

It is taking me forever to finish Stephen King’s 11/23/62 time-alternating look at Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination. I feel like I’ve been reading it for months now, really just August and September. Luckily I found a DVD at the public library of the series which helped me when it came time to discuss at book club but I was committed to still finishing the book. The series with James Franco was very good and I highly recommend it as I do the book-if you don’t want to read an 849-page book though feel free to check out the series. It does stream on Hulu as well.

I have a lot of elementary fiction I need to get back to though as my students are serious readers and are constantly recommending books to me. I have stacks of new books from Follett that I want to bring home and read so I need to finish and move on.

I’m in shock that tomorrow the calendar turns to October, that it is already cold here, and that I have a pumpkin decorating my table. My mindset is still back in the hot days of August. At least we have baseball for a few more weeks. And we have the Cubs!

I’ve watched bits and pieces of the Kavanaugh hearings and am disgusted that he is still very much considered to be a great candidate for our most important court of the land. What a joke. Although when we consider that Trump is not too far from Kavanaugh’s privileged and ridiculous behavior than it all makes some sort of reverse universe sense. If women have any pull in the universe this man will be done and we won’t hear any more from him. Watching the hearings should give us all pause in that we are being led by many old white men set in their chauvinistic ways. We need more women, more young people, more people of varying shades of color. Pasty old men need to go. Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley-be gone.
And what if in time we can time-travel back to change all of this ala Stephen King-what and how would we change it?

That’s my rant for the weekend. Drink more tea, take care of yourself as the weather changes.

Highlights of summer

I finished all the assignments for one of my grad classes and am on the homestretch for the last class, Creative Schools. My major goal is to finish before my birthday which is just around the corner! I’ve done some deep learning and am excited to implement changes in my library this next year based on the two books I read.

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My stepsister, Robin, and her family came to town for a weekend. I made these delicious dairy-free rhubarb-pecan muffins for breakfast one morning. I liked that the recipe had orange juice and orange zest as ingredients and I substituted lemon zest because that’s what I had. They were really easy to pull together and came out nice and soft. Diana, my niece was my assistant baker and took care of all the mixing and measuring. I found lots of great rhubarb recipes and these muffins at Thyme and Love look really good to try too.

I’m on the last legs of a major summer cold, luckily it’s lasted just about a week. We’ve gone through a major amount of kleenex between G.G., husband and myself. Which by the way he finished RAGBRAI on Saturday in good spirits. I’m happy to drop him off for his start and I’m happy to pick him back up again, safe and sound. Ragbrai is his happy place.

Yesterday I hosted my 2nd annual Croquet & Cocktails game and it was perfect weather for it. We had snacks and margaritas and hit the balls around with heavy mallets in thick grass. It was a perfect summer break with teacher friends especially because that morning I’d finished the 3rd module of this last class. Today I started on module 4 and should be able to finish in the next few days. I’m school obsessed right now.

What have I been reading other than Creative Schools and Formative Five you ask? I finished Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon. Thanks to Verda and Sela for the push to read it. Now I have to find time with Groovy Girl to watch the movie. She was dubious about the story; she liked it, read it just a few days, but was like, that wouldn’t really happen. Maybe she is more of a nonfiction, biography reader? I loved the story and yes, it is somewhat unbelievable but that’s what fiction is!
If you haven’t read it please pick it up from your local library.

Quick review: Madeline is sick and she cannot handle outside germs so she has been inside her (fancy) house for years. One day a new family moves in next door and she meets a boy, Olly, through the window. Her house nurse, Carla, conspires with her so the two can meet inside her airtight, vacuum sealed house. Young love-it can’t be beat. What would you do for love and how do you protect those you love?

I’m now reading Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Until I finish the very last homework assignment I only have a few minutes to read at night. This one is very good though and I’ll read more by both Ng and Yoon.

What are you reading? What have you filled your summer up with so far?

Hello June

There are some people in our lovely little house making a movie, creating art. About 7 people and my husband, shooting, holding a boom mike, and going over lines. Groovy Girl and I have sequestered ourselves on the second floor, in our rooms, doing homework and reading. Not what I expected to do with my day, ALL day, but such is this life.

It is a fairly gorgeous day out and I did take the dog for a long walk. It seems like it would be a perfect hammock day but I cannot for the life of me find where I stashed them over winter. I always keep them in one particular place for safekeeping and they are not there. I think the husband must have taken them down and stored them and he needs to find them. We are missing precious hammock lazy moments.

So with lots of time on my hands, I finished Anne Tyler’s A spool of blue thread, a good solid story that tells the tale of the Whitshank family of Baltimore. It doesn’t have a major plot upheaval and yet generally that is how family stories often are in life. Just a straight line with many zigs and zags up and down. This was my first Anne Tyler and I would read another. With that one done I’ve started Tangerine; a novel by Christine Mangan plus reading more of Cleo Wade’s Heart Talk, a very inspirational book of wisdom.

I love it when a friend orders a book based on my recommendation. It happened this morning; I raved about a book, News of the world, to my friend Tim at our church picnic and sent him a photo of it when I returned home. He responded back a few minutes later with “Just ordered it from Amazon!”

We have just 2 1/2 days left of school! The year has flown by and in a few short days, it will truly be summer. Groovy Girl and I are taking to the road, headed to Denver, CO to stay with family for about a week. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve made this road trip myself and while G.G. will keep me awake, she isn’t able to drive just yet so it will be all me. Generally, my husband does most of the driving (while I read) but I used to make this trek at least once a year when I lived there before there was a husband so it’s a challenge for myself. Bring on the Red Vines and blue chips, the loud music and the laughs.

Not my best week…

I tipped over last Sunday and injured myself. I didn’t trip or fall, I didn’t feel myself go over. One minute I was walking and the next I was picking myself up from the pavement. It was weird. In my right hand, I was holding a glass water bottle which smashed against the pavement and into my hand. My left wrist took the brunt of my fall. It was slightly embarrassing as it was broad daylight (4pm) and there were people around. I’d come out of a play and was saying goodbye, and walking and thinking at the same time. It made me feel a little old and at the same time resilient.

I drove home with a wad of wet wipes in my hand to stave the blood flow from my hand and I made dinner for people that were coming to my house for a cast party. Both hands were in great pain and Groovy Girl was off with friends. As soon as she got home she bandaged my right hand and helped me clean but by that time I had the Mexican Lasagna recipe already cooking. I even whipped up my own fajita seasoning spice mix for the recipe. The kitchen looked like hell as I could just barely open bottles and didn’t have the energy to try to recap and put away. And I’m usually a-clean-as-I-go kind of cook. Everyone enjoyed the cast party and the lasagna. I had someone request the recipe; they’ll have to supply their own blood drips and pain.

I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend. I have a little school work to do. I have a couple of great books to read; I’m halfway done with The Self-driven child, a fantastic life book I wish I’d had when my kids were younger, my book club read News of the world by Paulette Jiles, and from my mom A spool of blue thread by Anne Tyler.

And while browsing around on Epicureous I found this great article about cast iron skillets which I use frequently in our kitchen.

Here’s to a better week ahead!

The end of the month is trudging along

What an unusual April it has been! I’ve made some good food, read some interesting books, and watched some interesting shows/movies with my family.

A long walk to water by Linda Sue Park (2010): This is a fictionalized story of one boy caught up in the Sudanese conflict with alternating sections sharing a young girl’s story as she spends her days carrying water. The stories come together in such a meaningful way; I finished this one in the car as I was waiting for my teenage dancer. If you were watching you would have witnessed me crying in my car. Highly recommend for many readers of all ages.

Green Angel by Alice Hoffman (2004): A short dystopian tale of a young girl left behind after her parents and younger sister take a trip into the city to sell vegetables never to return. The language and descriptions are beautiful and it is an amazing story of Green’s rebirth.

Lost in the sun by Lisa Graff (2015): I read this a few years ago and didn’t love it, then I assigned it to 6th-grade book club and read it again. I liked it much better this time around. I enjoyed Trent’s character more and understood the angst. The parents in the story left me wondering why they did seek help for him and especially thought the dad was an insensitive character.

Choosing Civility; The 25 rules of considerate conduct by P.M. Forni (2003): Forni teaches at the university level and saw a need for an introduction to manners for students. This book is a wonderful refresher course on rules we know but often don’t put into practice. Buy it for yourself or for someone you think could use it.

Curried Lentils: Delicious and easy. We had them with rice first and then another night wrapped in tortillas and heated. Oh so good. She has a similar recipe for curried chickpeas as well.

Chicken & black bean Enchiladas: I made these at the beginning of last week so we would have a few easy dinners. Groovy Girl is really good at making her own food but that takes time and right now she is short on that ingredient so I whipped up this batch of enchiladas so she wouldn’t have to make anything for a few days. I left out the pumpkin this time and used free-range local chicken from our meat market.

Atypical (Netflix)-watched by myself, then with Groovy Girl, and now want to watch with husband. Tells the story of a young autistic named Sam and his crazy yet also normal family. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Sam’s mom. We love his sister, Casey and her boyfriend, Evan.
Everything Sucks! (Netflix)-We only watch this one altogether. It’s about high school students at Boring High, OR. And in doing some googling discovered this show has been cancelled after one season-that really sucks Netflix. Everybody rush to watch this first season…
On my block (Netflix)-Groovy Girl and I watched this series in one night and cannot wait for more. I plan to watch again with husband when his schedule frees up a little. A small group of LA teens who live on the same block try to focus on surviving their neighborhood. Excellent performances by all!
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)-yes, I’m still watching. I waited to read the book and then I’ve tried to take it slow. It is a tough show to watch and gives me the chills.

Speaking of chills we went yesterday on a family outing to see The Quiet Place. I loved it and I am not a fan at all of anything scary. No Jason for me, no slashers, no creepy houses, etc. This one was more of a scary dystopian with loveable characters. John Krasinski wrote, directed, and produced this one and his talented wife Emily Blunt plays his wife. Give it a try; truthfully I only closed my eyes once or twice and I brought headphones (one reviewer said this might help) but didn’t end up using them much.

This post sums up my whole month except for some major family downs, two road trips, lots of dance classes, and a few friend celebrations. What do you have to share back with me?

Craving Chickpeas…

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Happy December!

Last week I was craving spicy soup, which has nothing to do with Christmas or December but just my own odd taste buds. I looked through recipes both online and in my massive stacks of books looking for just the right one. I found this one by Rachael Ray that looked interesting: Indian-spiced Chickpea, and this one, Morroccan Chickpea, from Good Foods, and then this, Chickpea Chili, from MyRecipes. I ended up kind of making my own up loosely based on the last one except I did not have butternut squash on hand and I left out pimento-stuffed olives because seriously I couldn’t imagine that flavor with the soup I was craving. Once I settled on a recipe I found some friends to invite over to be my tasters.

I made a batch of brown rice, tossed up a fresh salad, and this rustic bread to break together. Oh and I had a couple of chicken breasts on hand and as other people love their protein I shredded it and left it as a topping to be tossed into the soup like the parsley and sour cream. They left quite full, smiling and with half a loaf of bread in their hands. Also they’d both done well at Spite and Malice and Taboo; games that we played. It was a lovely winter night; cold outside, toasty on the inside.

I finished Maggie Stiefvater’s new book, All the Crooked Saints, tonight. She is a very imaginative writer and I think she casts a spell on each of her stories. This one, set in Colorado in 1962, is about the Soria family and their ability to collect pilgrims looking for miracles and it’s about radio waves, saints, and love. I don’t understand how she weaves that altogether but she does. My Maggie favorites are The Scorpio Races and The Raven Boys series. Now I’m on to Choosing Civility by P.M. Forni and Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam.