Busy as the bees…

This has turned out to be a very busy summer, and I feel like the bees I see working about me as I work in my garden and walk about this fair city of mine this month. Already we’ve made our new yearly pilgrimage to the mountains to celebrate another year together; wandered among the fairies and flowers out at Summer’s Past Farm; ventured into the heat and dust and local plants down in Old Town Historical Park; trekked to the very tip-top of Cowles Mountain; tried to get over my fear of Zombies by going to see World War Z (it was really good!); ushered in a new era of teaching with a new classroom for the Learned Boy; took a few whacks at an overgrown-but-beloved family backyard; and begun the now-firmly-entrenched-yearly- tradition of The Summer Reading List.
A list!  Let’s make one, shall we?
Mad Hungry Craving by Lucinda Scala Quinn- Love her no nonsense-I’ve-seen-it-all-because-I-feed-boys “voice”, lots of fried, meat centric, basic food.
Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes by Jeanne Kelly- Unfortunately, I picked this one based on the title and the cover picture and was thoroughly disappointed. Not enough pictures inside, pages filled with negative space, formatted into a huge, unwieldy book. Liked the pizza section though.
The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman- Love it! Part gardening book, part beautifully inspiring cookbook, it’s a fun, interesting look at practical gardening. Yummy dessert section, too.
River Cottage Everyday; River Cottage Veg; The River Cottage Family Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall- these books make me long to visit England and experience the restaurant for myself. And cook Nettles and Ferns and make yogurt and bread all day long…
The Farm by Ian Knauer- So much beautiful food, essays on farming and a bit of foodie-centric recipes made this a fun book to read. Loved the section on pickling and canning. And Sour Cream Ice Cream…
The Homemade Pantry by Alana Chernila is just plain magic. Make your own everything- crackers, ketchup, soda (!!!) and take back control of your food.
Eat Greens by Barbara Scott-Goodman is  a lovely little book arranged by type of vegetable, giving several recipes for each. Loved the section on cooking with herbs- lots of good sauces, marinades and butters. Excellent ideas for summer cooking, too.
Green Market Baking Book by Laura C. Martin- I want this book for my collection. Alternatives for commercial ingredients, farmers market-based recipes, and tons of reasons to go locally organic. I cannot wait to make the Maple Ice Cream this fall…
And last, but never least: Home From the Sea by Mercedes Lackey. Last years entry in her Elemental Masters series, a very moving tale based on the Selkie mythology. With guest appearances by Robin GoodFellow, mystical Indian Warrior companions, coracles, steam engines and assorted old myths and legends from days gone by…
Whew! I didn’t intend to read all of these at once, but the public and county library systems are on it this year, and they all came in the same week. Glad I ordered them though- lots of new ideas, facts, recipes and story ideas are swirling around this old noggin, jumpstarting some exciting new projects for the summer.
Now, if I could just get those Faeries to help out in the garden this summer instead of just making dresses from all the flower blossoms…

Spring Reading

We use our Public and County Libraries a lot in this bookish little family of mine- so much so that sometimes it can get a bit overwhelming. Ahem. (they let you check out so many! And it’s free! what’s one more? picture me hidden behind the stack of books in my arms…) So lately I’ve given myself a 3-book maximum rule: One for research, one to read, one for fun. It works out pretty good, too- two libraries, once a week or two, 6 books. More if my husband brings something good home. It can overlap though- right now I’ve got 7 books to post on the reading list to the right over there (they are going back this weekend) to be replaced by the 6 I picked up last night (holds that came in midweek are too tempting to leave at the library!). I’ll order books I see in the bookstores, or titles I find recommended in my blog reading online. With so many titles lying around I thought I’d round them up and make a list!

Julie Czerneda’s A Turn of Light- This is so good! Wishing Magic, with invisible Dragons, armored House Toads, traveling Gypsies, and pie…all against a backdrop of Frontier Homesteading and Doorways to the Otherside. Yummy.

Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent- Alternative Victorian fanciful piece with Dragons  of all sorts, a tragic love story, Russian folklore, and even a  bit of amateur sleuthing? It was read in a mere 4 days- worth every second of lost sleep!

Mark Alan Hewitt’s Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms- Lovely pictures and line drawing of the houses, furniture and landscapes of the Arts and Crafts movement, some background info of how it came to be, and an in-depth look at the attempt of one man to create a Utopian community.

Michelle Obama’s American Grown; The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America- I’m enjoying this for all the information and background on kitchen gardens, the White House Gardens in general, and the impact food has on our health and well-being.

Bob Thomson’s The New Victory Garden- Love this one! Broken down by month, with colour pictures and beautiful line drawings, this is a gold mine of gardening information, with a little bit of personal history that keeps it from being a dry text book.

Gladys Taber’s The Book of Stillmeadow- A personal account from the 1930’s of running away to live in the country. Susan Branch quotes her constantly in her books and artwork, so I wanted to see what she has to offer. Lovely anecdotal and lyrical writing, and bits are truly funny- she has a ton more that I might check out too.

Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone- A really big, heavy book (not convenient for reading in bed) with lots of really good ideas, some simple, some rather complex looking. Why do these vegetarian books always work out to be behemoths? Vast encyclopedic monstrosities with every single recipe the author can think of, very few (if any) pictures, and rather a lot more commentary and “instruction” than I want to wade through. I am finding ideas, but it’s taking forever to get through it, and I get bored every other page. Very disappointing really. 

So there you have it- some research, some reading, some fun (some not so fun…but necessary). What can I say?

I love to read.

Some books I like this time of year…

I’ve been to the library a few times in the last two weeks, and thought I’d make a list of the books I brought home…oh my. I might have bitten off more than I care to admit this time around:

1. Martha Stewart Living December 2012

2. Gooseberry Patch Christmas 2012

3. Christmas Gifts From The Kitchen Georgeanne Brennan

4. Christmas With Rosamunde Pilcher

5. Mary Engelbreit’s Tis The Season Holiday Cookbook

6. The Best Of Gooseberry Patch Old Fashioned Christmas Favorites

7. Christmas With Mary Engelbreit Voume 1 Let The Merrymaking Begin

8. Betty Crocker’s New Christmas Cookbook (1993)

9. Southern Plate Christy Jordan

10. Eating Well Comfort Foods Made Healthy Jessie Price

11. The Book Of Burger Rachel Ray

12. Quick Fix Meals Robin Miller

13. Christmas Cookies Lisa Zwirn

14. In The Heat Of The Kitchen Gordon Ramsey

15. Martha Stewart’s Dinner At Home

16. The Homemade Pantry Alana Chernila

17. The Food52 Cookbook Amanda Hesser & Merrill Stubbs

18. Williams Sonoma Casual Entertaining: The Best Of The Lifestyles Series

 

Ahem. I’m going to be fairly…busy…the next week or two it seems.

Christmas is coming, I can almost smell it! Well, actually, ok- I do, because I’ve been trying out some of these recipes and the house smells amazing…

What? Doesn’t everyone check out 18 books from the library just to test recipes for Christmas two months in advance…  while rereading every back-issue of Victoria magazine for Thanksgiving decoration ideas, in between making paper houses and animal cutouts for Yule decorations and Pajama bottoms for Solstice gifts?

Or is that just me…

Hey, you Faeries get out of that glitter- it’s not snow!

Weekend Booking and other things…

Whew! That was a crazy, whirlwind weekend, wasn’t it? Appointments, family visits, heavy rainstorms, no grocery shopping, a garden overhaul, and some last minute-but-really-good! booking:

The King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book- I’ve loved this ever since it was first hinted at, even if they faked me out and printed the regular-flour-cookbook first. Baking with whole-wheat is so tricky without help- stone biscuits and rock pancakes was on the menu at our house when I first tried baking with it! Ah. . . now it’s feather-light whole wheat scones and faerie cakes. (no, not faerie-in-or-is-a-cake! You faeries get outta that flour bin right now!)

Delia Smith’s Christmas- English Tradition Christmas, with time-charts! How much fun is this? I’ll be dreaming over this one for the rest of the year. Apricot Orange Chutney, Mince Pies and Pheasant Terrine! Okay, maybe not the Pheasant…

The Foster’s Market Cookbook- I check this one out from the library every spring and summer to ogle the luscious pictures of farm-fresh veggies, dreaming of opening my own restaurant someday, which oddly looks just like Foster's Market does in this book…

And I scored a hardback edition of The Best of Martha Stewart Living Great Parties! These are all so much fun to browse through for ideas, without having to dig out my collection of old magazines. I love that they have collected all her party layouts and Good Thing’s section from a few seasons of the magazines and bound them into a book- they’ve done this with a lot of the categories from the magazines. I especially like the Christmas ones. Great resource, and lots of fun to just flip through, dreaming of spring parties.

Lastly, I wanted to note here that I have officially started the Couch to 5K exercise program today. It went great! The stretching guide is the best part- it helped fix the first calf muscles cramp I’ve had in years (!!!), and got my heart rate down to where I didn’t need a nap after I got back from my run. (eep! I just went for a run! Who is this girl?) Go me! Actually, I will get going just as soon as I can peel myself off the floor- I haven’t done anything like this in about 5 years! Wish me luck…

Foggy China Cabinet

I opened my photo files, and this picture jumped out at me. It's blurry I know, but it speaks to me right now.

And lopsided, and a bit over exposed, too. Arg! But it still speaks to me, in a melancholy little voice that moans a bit for the spot in the dining room that no longer exists. Do you do that? Move things around, change things out, swap furniture around? And then miss it horribly the way it used to be? Sometimes I really dislike change. Things move around here every few seasons or so, because it's a small apartment and heck- where's everything gonna go when I bring home a new t.v. stand? Or a worktable, or sewing table, or chairs? Hmm? So we move stuff around every now and then, to see what fits, what's old, and what just plain doesn't work anymore. That cabinet is now holding all my yummy fabrc in the study/workroom. And I love it in there. But this corner of the past was so loved by us, that I have to think of a way to recreate it somehow. It held our collection of childhood literature, some old, but most new/old- my Harry Potter books, his Dr. Seus, our grandmothers' collections of weird old Junior Classics and Thornton Burgess books. And our Tamora Pierce collection which I just can't live without reading at least once a year. Ahem.
Books- they're our life, our escape, our comfort. Are they yours?