sheppard girls

Holiday reading

 
I wasted two days of my precious holiday book time on We will always have Paris by Walter and Patricia Wells.  I really love her cookbooks.  I am hoping to make my time less of a waste by cooking some of the recipes in the memoir, because otherwise I will really have to hate those people.  I made roasted chicken with tomatoes and feta (page 132), which was very good and paired surprisingly well with the sticky rice from one of his favorite cookbooks, that the dad inexplicably made to go with it.

Reading

 

I added a sidebar on the right listing the books currently being read (or read aloud) around here.  The other day I said to the dad "I know I shouldn't complain, but there are so many stinkin' books laying around here".   People read and then just abondon their books - on the coffee table, on the kitchen island, in the mudroom, on the stairs, in the bathroom....  Saturday I bought this book.  I finished it Sunday evening.  I never even got to add it to the sidebar.

Maybe I should get out more

I have several friends who read all the time.  My usual reading consist of blogs and magazines, but because of all the trips we have been on recently, I had time to read a bunch, and be a little freaked out by how much all the reading was intersecting. 

I started out reading My Life in France, by Julia Child.  It was wonderful.  In it she write about the perfecting of her french baguette recipe, because the art form was disappearing in France.  Which was also mentioned in the next book I read.

It must have been something I ate, by Jeffrey Steingarten.  I must admit that I really only know of him as a judge on Iron Chef America.  He's also the food editor at Vogue and seems to know everyone in the food world, including Harold McGee, who wrote the dad's very favorite food book, On Food and Cooking.

Jeffrey also wrote about trying to find and make the definitive Turducken recipe.  In his quest he visited Herbert's in Louisiana, which was also visited by Andrew Zimmern on a recent episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.  Andrew lives in Minnesota and wrote an article for the most recent issue of Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine which the dad was reading at the kitchen island yesteday, about strange food in Minnesota, including lutefisk, which we will be eating this weekend.  Not me - one of the advantages of being a vegetarian when you move into an extended family, is that no one tries to bug you into trying gross disgusting family dishes.

Swimsuits and argula

Imagine how cool I felt when, while listening to The Splendid Table this afternoon while out doing such glamorous errands as returning bath fans to Lowe's, buying ice, and getting the dad a much needed new swimsuit ( I am correct in thinking that, if the last swimsuit you got was for your honeymoon, nearly nine years ago, then it is okay to get a new one, right?)  When I heard that the next book on Ruth Reichl's summer reading list, was also The United States of Arugula.