Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

My oldest really enjoyed Smile (remember the graphic novel project?) and was excited to read another book in the “series,” and so we checked Sisters out of the library.  You can’t really call it a sequel, since it’s got a lot of flashbacks and many of them take place before the events in Smile, but companion works.  (I’d say companion novel, but they’re autobiographical, and that feels wrong.)  Raina is still the main character, but Sisters is more about the evolution of her family and their relationships with each other.  The “present” chronicles a road trip she and her siblings took with their mother when she was 14; her relationship with her sister, Amara, is covered in flashbacks until that point.  My oldest said she enjoyed it, and so did I.  Why?

Here’s the thing.  Three of my four children were up in the night last night, and I’m feeling decidedly under the weather, so organizing my thoughts isn’t happening so well.  Here’s hoping a list of thoughts works for you…

1)That is one ornery younger sister.  I wonder how true-to-life the book is that way, and what Amara thinks of how she’s portrayed?

2)Gotta love the snake.

3)The open-ended aspect of the ending made me a little nuts, but if you go to her website and look at the frequently asked questions, there’s actually a good reason.

Hmmm.  I thought my list would have more thoughts, but the weirdness of the day is getting to me. Bottom line?  I possibly liked Sisters better than Smile.  Read and enjoy!

Low points of the day?

The first six minutes of the Las Vegas Bowl.

A particularly frustrating parenting situation.

The rude, profane, and (probably) drunk men behind me in the line at Kohl’s.

High points of the day?

My three-year-old son’s preschool concert.  (He didn’t sing much, but he was cute!)

A Star Wars date with my hubby (thanks to my amazing tending aunt).

The employee at Kohl’s who chose to help check people out (the line started moving!).

What were yours?

I’ve read quite a few Holocaust narratives over the years.  My father can’t deal with them–the injustice of it all overwhelms him, and he can’t understand why anyone would read something so depressing–but I’m drawn to them, perhaps because they are, ultimately, survival stories.  When my friend told me about Mister Doctor:  Janusz Korczak & the Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto, then, I put it on hold almost immediately; I’ve had it out for a while, but its number finally came up, and I finished it the other day.  I wondered at first why I found it so much harder to read–by the end–than I expected.  After a day or two, however, I figured out why.

Mister Doctor, you see, isn’t a typical Holocaust narrative.  It’s based closely on a true story–I think all of the people in it may be real people–but it is not a survival story.  The good doctor of the title refused to leave the orphans he was responsible for, and so he accompanied them from the orphanage to the Ghetto, and from the Ghetto to Treblinka, where their story ends.  The narrator who describes what ‘Mister Doctor’ was to those orphans WAS, in fact, one of the orphans in question.  The book was harder to read than I expected because the (child) narrator was doomed.  He knew it, and I knew it.

But.

Yes, I found it harder to read than I thought it was going to be.  I’m still glad I read it.  The art is haunting, the story is lyrical, and its length made the difference between “harder” and “too hard.” (Think of it as a very text-heavy picture book.)  Lately, song lyrics for every occasion have been popping into my head, and this particular story keeps reminding me of the end of “Camelot”–

Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.

We mourn for the man, for the children he loved, for the world he created for them–we mourn for the loss of all of them–but we also celebrate the fact that they lived.  Janusz Korczak was a significant force for good in the world, and this book is a beautiful record of that.

We need more books that remind us of the good in the world.

When I read When the Sergeant Came Marching Home in October, I knew it was a book my dad would enjoy; I’ve planned to give it to him for Christmas ever since.  His birthday, however, is not even a month after Christmas, and so I opted to go ahead and read the sequel this month, with an eye to giving it to him for that birthday if I enjoyed it as much as I did the first.

Out in Left Field begins with another life-ruining event for Donald–instead of making the catch to win THE game, he ends up getting more or less knocked out by the ball instead.  When he finds out that his team lost the game, he’s sure that he’ll never live down the disgrace, and vows never to play baseball again.  Instead, he spends the book thinking of new ways to win back his honor and redeem himself in the eyes of the town; predictably, none of them work out quite the way he hopes they will.  On the other hand, his year of disgrace also turns about to be a year of growth.

This sequel to Lemna’s first book has the same amusing, not-quite-naive tone that When the Sergeant Came Marching Home does, and while Donald as a narrator flirts with being a little too annoying once or twice, I ended up really enjoying this one as well.  The ending actually felt more natural, and the scenes with cousin Annie made me giggle.  I liked the background of reading the other book first, but it’s not a necessity; Out in Left Field works perfectly well on its own.  It’s a humorous look at being a boy on a farm in post-war Montana, and it’s absolutely worth your time.

In case you’re wondering, those are the kind of treats  you make when your six-year-old describes how her church class went for the day, and it sounds like no one was listening, the teacher absented herself for a time to make a point, and then there was (possibly remorseful) crying.  (These are six-year-olds, after all.)  Since my six-year-old was up late because of a family Christmas party last night, I’m sure she was just as much a problem as any other child in the class; I therefore checked my Pinterest board when we got home from church and found some fast-and-easy treats to throw in the oven.  A satisfyingly short time later, I was able to pop over to the teacher’s house with these Lemon Brownies, because nothing says ‘I’m sorry for whatever my child did today and I appreciate you teaching a group of giggling six-year-olds every week’ like lemon brownies, right?

Anyway.  I was generous with the lemon zest–NO ONE who knows me will be at all surprised by that–and I enjoyed the result.  They were quite thin, but that may have been partly because one of my eggs was smaller than it should have been; it wasn’t really a problem.  I preferred the cake-y texture to the lemon bar sort of texture, so that was a win.  Bottom line?  I want to make these again.  The problem is, no one in this house loves lemon the way that I do, and so I’m likely to eat most of them myself if I do. Maybe I’ll bring them to a potluck…

One of the consequences of living in a first-world country is that I don’t always know which diseases are no longer a real problem here and which diseases are no longer a problem at all. I’m sure about smallpox, I suppose, but what else?  Until I read An American Plague:  The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, I had no idea that there is still no cure for yellow fever.  There’s a vaccine, thankfully, but once you have it?  Treat the symptoms and hope for the best. Invincible Microbe:  Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure was even scarier; not only is the currently available vaccine for TB only sometimes effective, there are multiple-drug resistant strains of it, and treatment involves months of antibiotics.  My most recent foray into the world of infectious disease was a blend of fact and fiction, but again, it left me a little freaked out; I had no idea that tens of thousands of people still die of cholera–the ‘blue death’–each year.

Deborah Hopkinson’s The Great Trouble:  A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel describes an actual outbreak of cholera in London in 1854.  Eel is fictional, as are most of his friends and associates, but the doctor who worked to prove the outbreak was caused by contaminated water was very real, as was the Reverend Henry Whitehead, who was initially skeptical but eventually came to believe the good doctor’s theory.  The fight to find the proof to convince those in authority to remove the pump handle from the contaminated water pump is riveting, and the book’s young narrator and fast-paced narrative make it accessible to relatively young readers.  I’m excited to give this one to my 3rd-grader.

Even if I didn’t necessarily want to know that cholera is still so terribly abroad in the world.

I’ve been meaning to share this recipe for long enough now that I made it again tonight.  Sad, right? What’s even sadder is that I MADE it, but we didn’t actually get to EAT it.  This is what happens when you don’t get the chicken out to thaw earlier, and then you try and avoid your mid-size crockpot because you got it for your wedding in 1998 and it has no removable inner pot, making it a bear to wash.  (I may or may not have left it to soak on the floor of a student apartment with no counter space for SO long that a mouse drowned in it, but that’s another story.)  You instead use your smallest crockpot, and because the chicken is still mostly frozen it doesn’t squish down, and so the breasts on top aren’t done in time for dinner, and so you make waffles instead.

On the other hand, I now have this Crockpot BBQ Chicken in my fridge, just waiting for dinner tomorrow, and it’s awfully tasty.  (All of my kids devoured it the first time I tried it, and I was right there with them.)  I also have an actual pot of trimmed but still raw broccoli in my fridge, because I hadn’t started to cook it yet, and broccoli with waffles would be seriously weird.  (We had clementines instead.) I could say that the consequences of being lazy are the failure of one dinner plan, making a hasty back-up necessary; then again, I could point out that those same consequences are, essentially, unexpected waffles and an incredibly easy meal plan for tomorrow.  And really, what’s not to love about that?

(Disclaimer:  I realize that I switch from I to you to I again in these two paragraphs; I’m just over it.)

This year’s Pie Night was one for the record books, folks.  We had a record-breaking number of pies (18!), I made four for the first time, and TWO pies were finished ON PIE NIGHT.  (A Cream Puff Pie and a Biscoff Cookie Butter Cream Pie, to be exact.  We’ve never finished one before–having one more family than usual definitely made a difference.)  Here are OUR offerings for the night, in no particular order…

1)Chocolate & Peanut Butter Pudding Pie with Bananas.  My hubby picked this one (but of course, if you know us, you already guessed that).  He and I actually agreed on it–it was pretty good, but we would have preferred more chocolate and less peanut butter in the chocolate-and-peanut-butter layer.  And frankly, I would have preferred an Oreo crust, instead of the chocolate graham cracker one (since I could NOT find chocolate wafers at my grocery store).

2)Spiced Peach Pie.  I was underwhelmed by this one.  It was neither peachy enough nor spicy enough, and the cream cheese/butter/nutmeg layer–in my opinion–wanted a bit of sugar.  I wouldn’t make this again.

3)Strawberry Custard Pie.  I actually made this with raspberries and raspberry gelatin, and it was pretty good.  It would have been better with more raspberries, but mine had been in the fridge a bit long and some weren’t usable; it also would have been better with a homemade crust.  Lastly, the recipe called, essentially, for half a box of gelatin per pie; I would have preferred the flavor with the whole box, I think. (I like strong flavors.)  This one is worth revisiting.

4)Pineapple Pie with Coconut Cream.  I admit, I was a bit peeved that my daughter picked something that looked like a bit of a pain to make; it turned out, however, to be my favorite pie.  I tried my best to pick a pineapple that would be ripe–but not TOO ripe–at just the right time, and I lucked out.  It was a lovely one, and its beautiful freshness made a big difference.  The coconut cookie crust was delicious (I’d totally try it with the previous pie, actually) and the cheesecake layer made my mouth happy.  I didn’t love the coconut cream, I confess, but it would probably be different with fresh coconut milk.  (Since that’s not going to happen in Utah, I’d whip up some real cream and add a touch of coconut extract instead.)  This was a keeper.

And there you have it!  I wish I could remember all of the pies; all I can say is that it was an awfully good year.  What pies are YOU making for the holidays?

Dear Target:

Why does the Our Generation doll my daughter wants for Christmas have an online item number, an online price, and NO DISCERNIBLE WAY TO ORDER IT ONLINE?  Why is it also (apparently) not available ANYWHERE ALONG THE WASATCH FRONT?  It’s not like there aren’t, say, MORE CHILDREN HERE THAN PRETTY MUCH ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY!

Seriously.  Any ideas are welcome at this point, because I am one frustrated parent.  All I want to do is spend money on something you purport to sell.  How does this not work for you?

Sincerely,

Irritated Mother of a 9-year-old girl

I honestly can’t remember why I had no dinner plan for today–maybe yesterday’s church party lulled me into complacency?  (Or maybe it was how many times I was up last night.)  Whatever the reason, at lunchtime today I still had no definite plan for dinner; thankfully, our favorite kind of breakfast sausage was on sale on Monday, and the package I’d grabbed was hanging out in the fridge.  (Yes, we did have breakfast for dinner at last night’s party, but that sausage was too spicy for my kids.  Completely different, right?  Hey, on the amount of sleep I got last night, it totally worked for me.)

So.  We had sausages, and we had fruit; all we needed was some sort of breakfast bread that was relatively low maintenance.  To Pinterest I went, and these Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins were the result.  And how were they?

Hmm.  They were crumbly, but I did substitute butter for the Country Crock and some wheat flour for some of the white; I’m not going to knock the recipe for something I may well have caused.  I was more ambivalent about the taste, actually.  They weren’t terribly sweet, and I didn’t think they were fabulous with butter; on the other hand, when I spread one with some Hershey’s chocolate almond spread? Mmmm.  (The kiddos didn’t see me, by the way.)  Adding the suggested chocolate chips would have been nice, but two of my kids have trouble sleeping when they have chocolate at dinnertime.

Bottom line?  Not necessarily a great dinner option, but for breakfast…with the chocolate spread…that’s possibly a different story.  If you like peanut butter–especially not-too-sweet peanut butter–they’re worth trying.  If you don’t?  Skip them.

It’s up to you.