Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I couldn’t resist trying the SunGold kiwis I found at Costco the other day (because really, my need to try things is only intensifying with age!).  Have you?  If your tastes run a bit sweeter, you may prefer them; I love acidity, however, and so I’ll probably stick with the green in the future.  They’re good, you understand.  Just not as tangy.  (Speaking of green, I did try an emerald plum once upon a time, and it was tasty.)

Interestingly, I’ve only just learned that yellow watermelons exist as well–which leaves me wondering how many other fruit variations I’ve been missing out on all this time.  What’s out there?  What should I try?  Anyone?

I’m not wanting to wish away this period of life, mind you, but the sick littles are miserable and I never do well when I’m up in the night too many nights in a row.  My 7-month-old has a nightmarish cough and my 3-year-old spends all day melting down over, well, everything.  (“I want to go to the store and get a golden delicious melon!”)

Surely I’m not the only parent to want to fast forward to whenever the virus of the moment has run its course, right?

(The bright spot for the day?  We found pants for the girlies to wear to school tomorrow, since the weather’s changing.  AND they fit. AND they’re both thrilled with them!)

Normally I’m feeling chatty about a successful new recipe, but my littles are both sick, and the lack of sleep is kind of putting a damper on coherent thought.  Be that as it may, however, these Cinnamon Roll Cookie Bars were AMAZING.  I had to bring dessert to a thing on Friday night AND today, and I was intending to try two different new recipes, but again with the sick littles (my poor kiddos!).  I settled for making these on Friday and only sending a couple of platefuls with my hubby and the girlies; the rest came to the family baptism today, although there were so many desserts that I still took some home.

Here’s the best thing.  Other than a quick run to the corner grocery store because I don’t normally stock cook and serve pudding, these were INCREDIBLY easy.  They’re a cake mix bar, and you just dump the ingredients in a bowl (including the lovely two tablespoons of cinnamon), stir, and spread the batter in the pan. The only change I made was to add vanilla to the cream cheese frosting, because who wouldn’t want vanilla in the frosting for this recipe?  (Speaking of the frosting, there was PLENTY.  I didn’t actually use all that I made.)

These are buttery, cinnamon-y, cream cheese frosting-y, and altogether lovely.  I’d spend more time convincing you to make them, but really, those adjectives say it all–and why should I keep typing when I could be eating one more of what I brought home today?

Mmmmmm.

Has anyone seen the 2015 Reading Challenge put out by Popsugar?  A friend of mine from RI shared it on FB at the beginning of the year, and I’ve been trying to work through it–even though having a baby in February pretty much ensures that I won’t be able to finish.  My friend Britt found Anna Elizabeth Bennett’s Little Witch for me when I was looking for a book by an author with my initials, and I finished it last night.  And it is, indeed, odd–but cute.

Part of the oddness comes from being a bit dated; it was published in 1953, and life was just a tad different then (not to mention children’s literature and fantasy in general).  It also, however, sacrificed some character consistency in favor of a cute ending.  I doubt anyone in its target audience will care, but I had an ‘alrighty then!’ kind of moment when I finished it.

Still, the premise is cute and the story is fun.  Minikin is a 9-year-old witch’s child who wants desperately to make friends, go to school, and live a normal life.  Instead, her witch mother is mean to her and turns people from the town into flowerpots that sit on her windowsill.  Minikin–Minx, for short–finally gets up the courage to go to school, however, and that starts a chain reaction with surprising (and satisfactory!) results.

If you don’t read that much children’s literature and are only interested in the very best, I don’t know that you need to pick up this one.  If you enjoy children’s literature, on the other hand, this is a fun, fast-paced, fairly short read.  Keep it in mind as Halloween approaches!

In no particular order…

1.  It looks like we’re getting a new bathtub for Christmas…3 months early.
2. My baby’s ears looked good at the pediatrician’s today.  It’s not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that it means her symptoms are likely teething, and may thus go on FOREVER.
3. I’m liking the Limited Edition Caramel Apple Oreos.  They’d be bizarre if they weren’t golden Oreos, though.
4. Monday holidays completely destroy my sense of what day it is for the rest of the week.
5. I went for a walk in the neighborhood tonight, just to drop something by a neighbor’s house, and fall is in the evening air.  The sheer wonder of it thrilled me!
6. AND I’m looking forward, rather desperately, to winter as well.  Between the pregnancy and last year’s non-winter in Utah, I feel like I’ve been hot for a year and a half.

I’ve clicked through more than one series of ‘Reasons my kid is crying’ pictures on FB; chances are, if you’re a parent and ON FB, you have, too.  After all, moments like my own son’s microburst of tears at the breakfast table yesterday–because we wouldn’t let him lick the butter out of the container–are easier when we remember that all kids have such moments.  I was, therefore, kind of excited when I saw on my library website that Greg Pembroke, who created Reasons My Son is Crying, had a book out, so on hold it went.

If you haven’t seen any of the picture collections, or the website, or the book, well, the premise is pretty simple.  People (especially Pembroke) post pictures of their toddlers during their tantrums, along with the catalysts for said tantrums.  (I was going to say reasons, but really, sometimes the reason is that your child is overtired.  Or in a bad mood.  Or, you know, TWO.)  The book gave me lots of reasons to giggle, with pictures of tears over everything from spills to terribly unreasonable rules, (like ‘you can’t eat an entire tube of diaper rash cream’); Pembroke also included occasional anecdotes better served by words rather than pictures.  All in all, if you’ve seen several of the FB lists, half the pictures may not be new to you, but they’re still good for a laugh.

Check it out someday when you need just that.

Last night I finished William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back, by Ian Doescher, and OH.  MY. GOSH.  I know I said that the first installment in the trilogy was hilarious, but I really think this one was even better.  The banter between Leia and Han is just that much more fun in iambic pentameter, and the comic relief scene between two guards discussing Imperial building codes…ahh.  (I made my hubby read that one before I went on, since he was sitting next to me.)  What I possibly liked best, though, was rediscovering the movie’s best running joke.  My dad hates sad endings, and so while I’d seen the 1st and 3rd movies more than once when I was pretty young, I didn’t see ‘Empire’ until later, and therefore haven’t seen it as many times as the others.  I’d forgotten how many times the hyperdrive fails, and Han’s (and then Lando’s) response is “it’s not my fault!”  Even after they finally make the jump into light speed, however, the book still ends with a bang.  (Tiny spoiler–the Chorus makes good use of the phrase ‘by George’.)  Bottom line?  I loved it.  I love both the idea of the trilogy AND the execution.

Don’t miss these.

My sister’s former in-laws lived in the same town I did when I was growing up; I haven’t seen them for years, but I have them to thank for the Chicken Kiev recipe we enjoyed tonight.  (As well as a carrot recipe so good I called her former mother-in-law for it–a year after the divorce.  Getting that recipe was TOTALLY worth the five minutes of considerable awkwardness.)  It’s one of the few recipes I brought to our marriage that my hubby really enjoys (he’s more of a steak and dessert kind of guy), and while it’s not exactly health food, it’s delicious.  (Two words:  Butter Sauce.)  I haven’t the faintest idea what it has to do with Kiev, but here it is.  Try it.

You’ll love it.

Chicken Kiev

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (NOT the Dolly Parton size)

2/3 C butter

1/2 C fine dry bread crumbs (I buy the Italian seasoned for this)

2 T Parmesan cheese (you want the canned kind–it’s easier to work with here)

1 t basil

1 t oregano

1/2 t granulated garlic

1/2 t salt

3/4 C apple juice

1/4 C chopped green onion (it needn’t be finely chopped)

1/4 C chopped parsley

Lightly spray the bottom of an 8 by 12 pan…or whatever the size just smaller than a 9 by 13 is.  Melt the butter.  Mix crumbs and seasonings in a shallow container.  Dip the chicken pieces in the butter (reserving what remains), roll them in the crumbs, and lay them in your pan.  Bake at 375 for 35 minutes or so, until golden brown and chicken is tender.  Combine remaining butter with juice, green onions, and parsley (I throw in any leftover crumbs as well).  Pour over the chicken and return to the oven until the sauce bubbles (you’ve got to cook the traces of raw chicken in it).  Serve with rice; peas make an excellent side.

This is good stuff, folks.  The crumb mixture smells amazing (it tastes pretty darn good, too).  I was wondering aloud to my oldest why we hadn’t had it in so long when I remembered–oh, yeah.  Cooking chicken made me ill during my last pregnancy.

Dark times, I tell you.  That’s all in the past, though, and it was lovely to have this again.

If I had to, I’d call my sister’s former mother-in-law for this one, too.

We all have books like that, right?  I was really looking forward to Barbed Wire Baseball, which I saw on display and grabbed at the library weeks ago.  It’s a picture book, so when its number finally came up it didn’t take long to read; sadly, it just wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.

I’ve had mixed experiences reading about Africa.  I read Things Fall Apart in college and hated it, although I’d probably get more out of it now; I studied Out of Africa in my Lit & Film class, but since I was married and waitressing at the time, I remember very little about the book (and not much more of the movie, although that may have been because I started it at 1:30 in the morning and ended up focused on trying–unsuccessfully–to count the number of times Meryl Streep says “I had a fahm in A-fri-ca…”).  I thoroughly enjoyed Nancy Farmer’s A Girl Named Disaster, and while her The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is not so much my thing, it was weirdly interesting.  The Poisonwood Bible is moving and well done, but it’s still 500 pages of death, pain, abuse, injustice, and poverty in Africa, and DANG.  (I stopped halfway through and read a romance novel before finishing it.)  Left to Tell was unforgettable, with a bit of the same feel as a traditional Holocaust memoir.  A Long Walk to Water was short but fabulous, and Home of the Brave, while technically about an African refugee in America, took my breath away.

Okay, I didn’t actually realize that I’d read that many books about Africa.  I generally avoid hot places, even in literature (oddly enough).

The thing about Africa, though, is that much of what you read about it is painful in some way, and with good reason; it’s had more than its share of tragic history.  (Once upon a time I was studying for a history final and parodied ‘Little Bunny Foo Foo.’  Few mnemonic devices have worked as well for me as singing “Little King Leopold, hopping through the Congo, picking up the Africans and bopping them on the head.  Along came the European Powers, and THEY said–Little King Leopold, we don’t want to see you picking up the Africans and bopping them on the head…’)  I love historical fiction, and so it is what it is, but it’s still a delight to read Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, because the feel of them is so different from anything else about Africa that I’ve read.  It isn’t that he ignores the more difficult side of life, but the Botswana he presents is a more fortunate country than some of its neighbors, and his characters are delightful.  Mma Ramotswe’s quiet strength and kindness is lovely; Mma Makutsi’s swings between prickliness and insight are shared by most of humanity; and the men in their lives are varied and interesting in their own ways.

The newest installment in the series, The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe, doesn’t disappoint.  It has its moments of tangential philosophy (although McCall Smith’s variety of this is both down-to-earth and amusing), but there is also a case of a complicated nature, apprentice difficulty, and a new project of Mma Makutsi’s.  I shan’t spoil it for you by giving away any more details, so if you haven’t read it yet, well–get going!  And if you haven’t tried the series, give the first one a shot.  It feels less like a mystery and more like a slice of culture very different from our usual fare; the series as a whole makes me laugh in a way that no other book set in Africa ever has.