Intimidating books. No matter how deeply rooted our love of books may be, we’ve all encountered a daunting book at some point. Sometimes it’s a book big enough to rival the dictionary, or maybe the language is so complicated as to be overwhelming. Sometimes it’s just a genre we’re not sure we’ll like!
But all books were made to be read, even the intimidating ones, so I’ve resolved to read the ten books that intimidate me most. Here they are! 🙂
Ma’s Apple Pie Tea from the Little House Books (Jan. 2017)
Took February off to have a baby! 🙂
Mudder’s Milk: A Firefly Tea (March 2017)
The Once and Future Tea: Our King Arthur Custom Tea Blend (Jan. 2016)
X-Files Tea: The Tea is Out There (Feb. 2016)
All for One and One for All: Three Musketeers Tea (March 2016)
Arrietty’s Cherry Tree Tea (May 2016)
Where No One Has Gone Before: A Trio of Star Trek Teas (June 2016)
Princess Sara’s India Chai (July 2016)
Introducing THREE Studio Ghibli Teas! (Aug. 2016)
Elementary: A Sherlock Holmes Tea (Sept. 2016)
Quoth the Raven: An Edgar Allan Poe Tea (Oct. 2016)
White Whale: A Moby Dick Tea (Nov. 2016)
The 5 Teas of NaNo: Week 2 (Nov. 2016)
The 5 Teas of NaNo: Week 3 (Nov. 2016)
The 5 Teas of NaNo: Week 4 (Nov. 2016)
Reading on the Prairie: A Little House Reading Kit (Jan. 2017)
Took February off to have a baby! 🙂
You Can’t Take the Sky from Me: A Firefly Marathon Kit (March 2017)
Reading Kits: My Real Life at Home Guest Post (Aug. 2015)
The Once and Future Reading Kit (Jan. 2016)
The Truth is Out There: An X-Files Marathon Kit (Feb. 2016)
All for One and One for All: A Three Musketeers Reading Kit (March 2016)
The Remarkable Reading Kit: A Series of Unfortunate Events Reading Kit (April 2016)
A Borrower’s Reading Kit: A Kit for the Tiniest of Readers (May 2016)
Make It So: A Star Trek TNG Marathon Kit (June 2016)
A Reading Kit Fit for a Princess (July 2016)
A Studio Ghibli Marathon Kit (Aug. 2016)
A Sherlock Holmes Reading Kit (Sept. 2016)
Some Midnight Reading: An Edgar Allan Poe Reading Kit (Oct. 2016)
Here in the Midwest, we’re in the middle of sickness season. The flu is steadily making its rounds through most schools and businesses, and here in my family’s usually cozy hobbit hole, we’re battling a nasty cold. The Mister, as usual, has barely a tickle in his throat, but the Little Mister and myself have been suffering through some pretty crummy days and nights. So crummy, in fact, that even though I realized last weekend that I didn’t have a bonus recipe planned for today, I never really came up with a plan. Energy and brain power have not been on my list of strengths this week. Plus, I figured an extra trek through the snow to the grocery store wouldn’t be the healthiest thing ever.
Long story short: No bonus recipe today, BUT I didn’t want to leave you with nothing. The Mister suggested I make a post featuring some of my favorite sick day food. I loved the idea, so here are my top 5! 😀
Father’s Day is just around the corner, and I’m extra excited this year!
This Father’s Day will be my husband’s first official Father’s Day AND it falls on his birthday, so I really wanted to make it count. Especially since most of the gifts baby makes for him these days come wrapped in diapers! 😉
I usually wind up cooking something for the Mister on gift-giving occasions (for Christmas I made him white rum and almond hot chocolate!). So for Father’s Day, I decided to peruse my archive of meaty main dishes for inspiration when I realized that lots of other moms are probably in the same boat! So I decided to share a roundup of all the dishes I’m considering, so you can use them too!
What would a James and the Giant Peach menu be without peaches? A travesty, that’s what. Of course, not just ANY peach recipe will do. I wanted to make something special but simple at the same time. After all, this is a kid’s book we’re talking about! Grilled peaches with ice cream came to mind, and I dressed them up just a little by glazing the peaches with honey and making homemade ice cream with the most glorious of all the spices: CINNAMON. The end result was sweet, refreshing, and delightfully simple. The perfect snack after flying across the ocean on a giant peach!
P.S. The cinnamon ice cream recipe included below is for a Cuisinart ice cream maker and is a slight variation on the vanilla ice cream recipe that comes with the machine.
One group of characters often forgotten from James and the Giant Peach is the Cloud Men (perhaps since they were left out of the movie). In the book, the Cloud Men are responsible for creating such atmospheric phenomenon as rainbows, storms, and snow. When James and companions float past a Cloud Man city in their flying peach, they see Cloud families preparing dinners of fried snowballs.
These sounded delicious, so of course I wanted to make them for the blog! And I knew exactly how I wanted to create my own interpretation: mashed potato balls mixed with bacon and cheese, rolled in panko crumbs, and deep fried. Utterly delicious and fun to make!
Of all the characters in Firefly, Hoban Washburne is my all-time favorite. “Wash”—as he’s known by the crew of Serenity—is the ship’s pilot and resident goofball. There’s lots to love about Wash, but I think the best thing about him is how different he is from the rest of the crew, who’re all hard-bitten warriors (including his wife, Zoe).
When we first meet Wash, he’s playing with dinosaur toys at the helm of Serenity, acting out a narrative in which a T-Rex horribly betrays a kind-hearted stegosaurus. Like many people, this was the moment when I knew I was going to love his character, so I decided to make a dish in honor of his dinos!
These homemade dino nuggets are made from thin-cut chicken breast cut into shape with dinosaur cookie cutters, coated in bread crumbs, and baked. The ketchup recipe is one I found in a Zagat video, and I LOVE it! It’s more tomato-y than storebought ketchup and super easy to make!
Howdy, folks! Today’s recipe marks the start of our first TV show menu of the year. It’s themed after one of my favorite shows: Firefly!
The show is set in a dystopian future when mankind leaves Earth to terraform the universe. The arm of the law doesn’t really reach the outer systems, which have taken on an attitude toward law and justice reminiscent of the Wild West. The show follows the travels of the crew and passengers of the spaceship Serenity.
In the first episode, the ship’s mechanic convinces a preacher named Shepherd Book to travel with them, and he pays for his passage with something unusual: a small box of strawberries.