Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Today my second girlie turned 7–and started second grade.  Which means, of course, that we’re spreading her birthday meals out over a week or so, because OH, the first day of school!

Anyway.

Here are 7 things I love about my newly minted 7-Year-Old:

1.  Her smile.  It lights up her entire face.
2.  Her sweetness.  She is my child who will occasionally tell me, “You are a good Momma.  I love you.”
3.  Her diction.  She frequently (and adorably!) eschews contractions.  (“I would not like that.”  “I do not know.”)
4.  Her willingness to eat things she doesn’t love.  (And a good thing too, since she’s my pickiest eater!)
5.  Her passion for Italian food.  (I like to think there’s a little bit of RI in her!)
6.  Her gift for nurturing.  She’s a little loving mother to her younger siblings.
7.  Her imagination.  She can pretend play with Barbies, Ponies, doll house figures–you name it–like nobody’s business.

Happy Birthday to my second oldest–I hope it’s the start of a great year!

Yes, I know, I missed out posting last night.  But this week has been and will continue to be fairly crazy–we have family coming into town for a wedding, appointments galore, and a birthday celebration to schedule since the actually birthday falls ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.  At the very least I’m taking a break until next week starts; realistically, there will be enough going on next week that I make no promises until after the 18th.  Goodnight all!

Asparagus has been available for crazy good prices lately, which never happens in August in Utah.  The last of what I purchased was still in the fridge when I found this recipe for Creamy Pasta with Asparagus and Bacon and thought–hey, I’ve got half a pound of bacon waiting to be used!  THIS CAN BE DINNER!

I’ve been strapped for ideas lately, can you tell?

Anyway.  I was generous with the asparagus (a pound and a half is a lovely way to go) and subbed 12 oz of evaporated milk and 1/2 C whole milk for the cream, but other than that I followed the recipe, and it was INCREDIBLE.  The saltiness of the bacon and the Parmesan, the crisp-tender asparagus, the hint of nutmeg…mmmm.  I even added the parsley to the whole recipe instead of just my serving, which my son and I loved, at least.  (My second girlie:  “Why did you put SO MUCH parsley in here? There’s 10 YEARS of parsley in here!”  My oldest girlie immediately wanted to know exactly how much parsley she was referring to.)  If you live in a place where asparagus is both decent and affordable right now, put this on your weekly menu ASAP.

Note:  I couldn’t find any cooking instructions for the asparagus in the recipe, so I tossed it in with the pasta during the last two minutes of cooking time.  Not cooking it might have worked for me, but my one-year-old doesn’t have, you know, molars.

I am pleased to announced that I finished another of this year’s Newberys last night–only one to go!  (Yes, I know it’s August.) To be honest, I likely would have read it sooner if it weren’t so popular; I kept having to return it to the library right as I was wanting to start it.  (Newbery fame usually dies down in a few months, but this book was popular before it won.  It’s still frequently not renewable at the library.)  The stars finally aligned, however, and I can stop putting The War that Saved my Life on hold over and over again.  Wahoo!

And what did I think of it, you ask?  (Apart from the fact that finishing it right before bed after a worrisome few days about one thing and another resulted in a fairly impressive nightmare?)  I have to say, it was impressive.  This isn’t your average WWII story and Ada isn’t your average heroine; she has an untreated clubfoot and uses the evacuation of London’s children to the countryside at the start of the war to escape the abusive mother who keeps her confined in their one-room flat.  She and her brother Jamie end up with Susan Smith, a single woman grieving the death of the friend with whom she lived.  (Her life decisions and the extent of her grief imply a very close friendship, but that’s not actually the focus of the book.)  She doesn’t want to be responsible for children, but the billeting officer insists–and so Ada’s life begins to change.  As she and Jamie learn what it is to be clean, well-fed, and comfortably housed for the first time in their lives, Ada’s perception of herself begins to shift.  It takes time for her to seriously question what her mother has always told her about herself and her journey is often difficult, but the novel’s conclusion is wholly satisfying.

I will say that I might have preferred the dialogue to sound more England-in-the-early-years-of-the-war than it did, but that ended up being a minor irritation.  The author’s portrayal of Ada, moreover, was terribly impressive.  I lost count of the number of times I ended up telling myself, “NO, you wouldn’t have acted that way, and that’s not a natural way for a normal child to act, but given Ada’s life thus far, it makes perfect sense for HER to act this way.”  Bottom line?  Brubaker Bradley’s writing style wasn’t a perfect fit for me, but in the end, it didn’t really matter.  This is a story you don’t want to miss.

A friend from HS shared an article about the dangers of voting third party in this election; the article maintained that doing so may well hand the election to Trump.  I can’t abide Trump, but I’m sure not a fan of Hillary, so I’ve been thinking about voting third party myself (thankfully, in Utah doing so is unlikely to help Trump).  I was pondering sharing that on her thread when I spotted someone I didn’t know making more or less the same comment twice:  “if your voting for a third party stay home.”

Yup.

Out of respect for my HS friend, I kept my response to a minimum and focused it only on the main point, but this is MY blog, so–

YOU SERIOUSLY THINK I’M GOING TO TAKE POLITICAL ADVICE FROM SOMEONE WHO CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “YOUR” AND “YOU’RE”?

Whew.  I feel better now.

And as for voting, well, I know voting third party has its own set of problems, but there are no good options this election.

Just grammatical ones.

I’m pretty sure I checked Friends with Boys out of the library because the title caught my eye while I was looking for something else; I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it, but graphic novels are such quick reads that I figured–why not?  And lo and behold! I was pleasantly surprised.  Ghost stories are not so much my thing, but this was less about the ghost (although there IS a ghost) and more about Maggie entering high school after nine years of homeschooling; she has to find her way.  She’s used to hanging around with her brothers, but the twins are fighting more than usual and Daniel has a startling number of admirers of the opposite sex.  How do you go about finding friends when you’ve never needed them before?  As Maggie finds her people and grows more comfortable in her new reality, she also learns more about what can–and can’t–be fixed.

I liked this one enough that I’m contemplating recommending it to my 13-year-old niece; there’s a bit of language, but not much, and the message is perfect.  My 9-year-old’s not ready for it yet, but if you’ve got a junior high-er or high schooler, check this one out.

You’ll be glad you did.

Have you SEEN the latest from Lays?  (Yes, that was a Chandler Bing moment.)  I was at Wal-Mart yesterday and noticed them as I passed by the display, so of course I had to buy them.  (Must.  Try.  All.  The.  Things.)  We opened our four new bags of potato chips after dinner tonight, and OH my.  Here’s the breakdown by flavor.

1)Brazilian Picanha (Steak and Chimichurri Sauce):  By far the most popular.  I wanted the flavor to be stronger, but the kids and I all liked them; my hubby, however, maintains that meat-flavored potato chips don’t really work for him.

2)Chinese Szechuan Chicken:  The spiciest of the bunch, which I was expecting.  I’ve never had the real thing, but I didn’t think these were bad–just too spicy for me.  (And the girls.  I think my hubby felt more or less like I did.)

3)Indian Tikka Masala:  These did, in fact, taste like tikka masala (more or less), which is completely bizarre in a potato chip.  Also, making this flavor (and only this flavor) kettle cooked was a strange choice.

4)Greek Tzatziki:  The only wavy chip in the bunch.  I think the flavor could have been stronger, honestly, but what I could taste was fairly tzatziki-like.  These were weird because they sort of tasted like dip-flavored chips.

The girlies seemed to be Brazilian or bust, by the way, while my son told me he thought they were all good.  He’s not always reliable, but he may well have been serious, especially since he’s the only one of us who seems to enjoy spiciness.

Well, there you are.  Overall, another original effort from Lays, but I wouldn’t buy any of them again.  Have you tried them? Will you try them now?  Tell me what you think!

Remember Andrea Cheng’s The Year of the Book?  I had picked it up thinking my second girlie might be up for it, but it was just a bit much for a six-year-old, so I passed it on to her older sister?  Well, my nine-year-old enjoyed the book and followed the directions for making a drawstring bag that were included in the back; she gave the finished product to my hubby for Father’s Day, and I was honestly impressed.  I would never have tackled a project like that without help or supervision, and she asked for none–she did it all on her own, and it looks like a serviceable drawstring bag instead of a nine-year-old’s craft project. How awesome is that?

Fast forward to the next Anna Wang novel, The Year of the Baby, which I finished the other day.  Besides being fully as delightful as the original (Anna’s family has adopted a baby girl from China who is happy but doesn’t want to eat and therefore losing weight; Anna and her friends are able to help in an unexpected way), it also has directions in the back–this time for making “Steamed Red Bean Bao Zi,” for which you need red bean paste.  (You also need a steamer, but we’ll see if the one in my rice cooker manages.)  Now that I’ve finished the book, it goes down into my oldest’s pile, and I’m fairly confident that when she reads it we will end up buying red bean paste at an Asian food store and giving the recipe a try.

In the meantime, if you didn’t give the first book a try when I reviewed it, you really ought to do it now.  Cheng does a lovely job of creating three dimensional characters, drawing even her snotty girls with balance and compassion.  The series is thoroughly enjoyable so far, and the illustrations add a delightful touch.  Don’t miss these books!

When I discovered that The Honest Toddler:  A Child’s Guide to Parenting existed, I put it on hold without hesitating; bits from it show up on my Facebook feed occasionally, and they always make me laugh.

So did the book.

Make no mistake about that, friends.  Honest Toddler has more than a few laugh-out-loud moments.  (On Survivor:  “Being left to your own devices with a group of strangers who wouldn’t hesitate to steal your last bread crust:  Yep, sounds like a playdate to me.”)  I found, however, that I couldn’t read too much in one sitting; it was far more enjoyable in small bits.  (To be completely honest, I thought it needed to be a tad shorter.  Some of those small bits were trying too hard, and pruning those would have increased its overall impact.)  That didn’t surprise me, though–I often feel that way about this type of book.  My one true criticism has to do with voice.  The author vacillated between “toddlers as lovable but completely self-absorbed” and “toddlers as disdainfully gleeful sadists,” and I didn’t enjoy the latter bits as much.  Overall, however, it was still awfully funny, and parents of small children will have a blast looking through it.

We all know I adore a good verse novel, yes?  AND that I love a well-written memoir?  So here’s my question–why haven’t I loved and adored the last two verse memoirs I’ve read?  Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Okay, now that I’ve dated myself there, I’m serious about verse memoirs.  I read Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming when it became a Newbery Honor book, and I enjoyed it, but I remember wondering how it would fare with its intended audience.  Memoirs usually don’t have story arcs in quite the same way novels do, and I found myself thinking that I might have enjoyed Woodson’s experiences more in a traditional format.

Flash forward to Margarita Engle’s Enchanted Air:  Two Cultures, Two Wings:  A Memoir, which I finished the other day, and I found myself thinking the same thing.  (By the way, in case you’re wondering, there really are two colons in that title.  I checked.)  While shorter and held more successfully together by its theme, Enchanted Air still lacked–for me–the impact of a verse novel. I enjoyed it, you understand–at least as much as Brown Girl Dreaming–but I wanted to love it more than I did. After all, Engle was half Cuban and just old enough to remember the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis rather vividly; I should have been spellbound by this book.  And I did totally enjoy it, remember.  But.

Here’s my theory.  A good verse novel is a story stripped down to its essence; every word, every punctuation mark, and every phrase plays a deliberate part in telling that story.  Think of an arrow leading to the conclusion–a streamlined, tidy-looking arrow.  Every bit of a verse novel contributes to the plot, and the plot is central to the verse novel.  Memoirs, on the other hand, can be messy.  Memoirs wander.  Plot tends not to be central to memoirs, at least certainly not in the same kind of way. Memoirs aren’t meant to be streamlined arrows, and that’s okay, because that’s not what we look for when we read them. Ultimately, in my opinion, memoirs want words–more words than verse novels have to offer.

To sum up, as Inigo Montoya would say, I enjoyed Enchanted Air–quite a bit; I just don’t see myself reading a lot of verse memoirs.  What do YOU think about the genre?