Bring Your Lunch: Quick & Tasty Wallet-Friendly Lunches for Grownups by Califia Suntree

I was SO excited to see this cookbook pop up on NetGalley. My work schedule has recently changed so that I only get a 30 minute lunch period each day*. This is not enough time to go home and eat, so I have been bringing my lunch every day. I have a handful of constraints- while we do have a fridge and microwave at our disposal, they are in the dungeon of a basement and I prefer to use my precious 30 minutes to actually eat. So food should ideally be both ok eaten at room temperature and not be so delicate that it will spoil in a lunch box with blue ice for a couple hours. During the winter I'll be more willing to sit in the basement, but so long as the weather is nice I plan to eat outside at the picnic table. So you can see why this cookbook would get my attention!

I ultimately found about 1/4 of the book useful- the sections on containers and packaging, and the general ideas for sandwiches and salads. I did not find any of the recipes useful because so many of them required actual reheating and refrigeration. None of them seemed quick to me. Basically, she was giving out regular recipes cut down to one or two servings and then reheated. I can figure out how to make leftovers on my own. I was hoping for some nice room temperature salads or other ideas and the book completely fails on that. If you have time to sit and reheat and space to spread out your lunch, this may be ideal for you, but for myself, it was pretty useless.
Bring Your Lunch was published on September 9th.

*I'm taking 30 minute lunches so I can leave at 2:30 on Wednesdays to take the Princess to ballet class.

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Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn

Just to show you that I occasionally break out of my romance loving life... I recently read Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good by Kathleen Flinn. I had read both of Flynn's other books (The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School) and enjoyed them both tremendously. When I saw this one, I was anxious to read it as well.


Here's the Summary:
A delicious memoir from the author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry
In this family history interwoven with recipes, Kathleen Flinn returns readers to the mix of food and memoir beloved by readers of her bestselling The Sharper Your
Knife, the Less You Cry. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home. It is the story of her midwestern childhood, its memorable home cooks, and the delicious recipes she grew up with. Flinn shares tales of her parents’ pizza parlor in San Francisco, where they sold Uncle Clarence’s popular oven-fried chicken, as well as recipes for the vats of chili made by her former army cook Grandpa Charles, fluffy Swedish pancakes from Grandma Inez, and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Through these dishes, Flinn came to understand how meals can be memories, and how cooking can be a form of communication. Brimming with warmth and wit, this book is sure to appeal to Flinn’s many fans as well as readers of Marcus Samuelsson, Ruth Reichl, and Julie Powell

You might wonder just how many foodie memoirs a person has in them. I know there are authors who are able to keep churning them out, each with it's own spin and each as good as the last. Sadly, I didn't feel that this one was quite as strong as the previous two. I did enjoy it, and it's a fun quick read, but I didn't feel like the food related quite so much, and that possibly it was a stretch to try and center this one around food as well. As a family history that is not about food, it was pretty average, and not entirely memorable. For example, I read it last week and honestly can only tell you the barest of details. I didn't try any recipes and I can only remember what a couple of them were for, let alone why they were relevant. This seems a very negative review, and I didn't dislike the book at all, I just think perhaps I only liked it as much as I did because I had a history with the author's books. I would definitely recommend starting with the other two books before this one.

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good was published on August 14th.

PS. I totally wrote this weeks ago and thought I published it. Imagine my surprise to find it still in my drafts!

 

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Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach

I have kept a book list for nearly 20 years now.  I started it in January of 1993 and have kept it up ever since. (In reality, I started it in 1992, but for whatever reason when I decided it was a "real" thing I tossed those random months that didn't go back to January. Argh.) I thought this was impressive, my list of 40, or 60 or 80 books a year. (My annual reading tops out at 116 books in 1999.)  Jenny Rosenstrach has me beat though. She has a list of every dinner she's eaten for the last 14 years. Sure, it's not as many years, but it's every day! Every one of them!  I can only aspire to such things.

Even without my awe at the Dinner Journal, Dinner: A Love Story: It all begins at the family table is a terrific book. It's one of those mixes of memoir, how-to, self-help and cookbooks that come together in a terrific book. (I had a similar reaction to A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (my review) and The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time (my review)). Rosenstrach's goal is to get the reader to see that making dinner for a family doesn't have to be a painful, heavy obligation. You can learn to love having dinner without being a terrific chef or a stay at home Martha Stewart.  There's no guilt to not eating together every night, if little kids need to eat an early dinner, so be it. Once they learn a few manners, everyone can sit together. Mostly. In either case, dinner should be pleasant, and not a chore. The book is full of pictures from the author's actual life, of both the food and her family. Its a nice book, full of text, but not heavy and preachy about what you should and shouldn't been feeding your kids. I completely enjoyed it.

As I was reading Dinner: A Love Story, I marked a few recipes to try later. Imagine my surprise when I went back to count and discovered that I had marked FOURTEEN of them!  I tried a few of the ideas from the book early on, with some huge substitutions, but last week was finally the week to try actual recipes. I choose four from the book for my weekly menu (links go to the recipes on her blog):

Chicken with Bacon-y Brussels Sprouts on page 156- Mike and I liked it, the kids were unimpressed. As usual with Brussels Sprouts.

Great- Grandma Turano's Meatballs on page 194.  We didn't love the sauce, it was sweeter than we are used to, but the meatballs were terrific and there were no leftovers.

Grandma Jody's Chicken from page 11. I made these with a little oven baked bacon and we had them as sandwiches. These were excellent. Also, we used crushed corn chex cereal for the breading because that's all I had and it seemed close enough to Corn Flakes.

And last, and best, Pork Shoulder Ragu with Pappardelle on page 179. Except we had ours with linguine noodles, cause our grocery stores don't sell pappardelle. This was knock your socks off terrific, and I copied it into my dinner journal (you had to know I'd start one) to make again. This one made the house smell better than I can every remember it smelling. Ever.  She suggests this one for low key adult dinner parties, and I can easily see that.

I have a few more marked in the book to try before I take it back to the library (or maybe I'll just use these handy links):

Chicken Curry with Apples
Pomegranate Pork Loin with Cabbage
Yogurt Marinated Grilled Chicken
Mustardy Pork Chops with Apples and Onions


Huh. Looks like my menu for this week is already planned. Good thing my family like apples!

In short, terrific cookbook, and even if I didn't like the food, worth it to read for the writing between the recipes.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. More information at the welcome post.

Monster cupcakes

The monster cupcakes turned out awfully cute, even with the Bug's help!  He really enjoyed helping me make the eyes, especially the part where someone had to eat the reject side of the oreo.

They did turn out to look more like a Jim Henson muppet than a scary monster, but the Pirate didn't notice and the Bug (thankfully!) didn't point it out in front of him.

We had enough left over to deliver them to all the nearby neighbors, which was good since we had a very loud weekend in our small apartment.


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Moroccan Chicken Tagine for the Foodie Challenge

A few weeks ago I found a copy of The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David on the shelf at the library. I started to read through it this week and it's full of great looking recipes.  Last night I made one that is well outside of my family's usual fare and everyone except the Pirate and miss le ate it down with pleasure. (The Pirate ate the chicken though and little miss doesn't have any teeth or eat solids yet!) Since I recently signed up for the Foodie Challenge, I thought I'd share this one with you, with my notes.

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

You need:
2T olive oil
1 large onion, sliced into wedges
1.5 lbs skinless, boneless organic chicken thighs, trimmed (I used chicken breasts)
1T grated fresh ginger (I used powdered, cause I didn't have fresh)
1 cinnamon stick (again, powdered)
1/2t turmeric
1/2t cumin
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1.5 cups chicken broth
1/2 c small pitted green olives, like picholines
10 dried apricots
salt and pepper to taste
lemon juice to taste
handful of whole blanched almonds (I used slivered ones)
handful of chopped fragrant tender herbs, like cilantro, parsley and basil

To Make:
Heat up a heavy-bottomed pot and drizzle in the olive oil. Add the onion and saute until it's soft and golden. Add the chicken and the remaining ingredients, saving the almonds and herbs for later. Let the tagine gently simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, toast the almonds in a dry skillet until they are golden. Watch them carefully as they burn easily. Just before serving, taste for seasoning, remove the cinnamon stick and sprinkle on the herbs. Top with the toasted almonds.

Serve with couscous cooked according to the package, then toss with plenty of lemon juice and a mixed green salad with fresh sliced oranges topped with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Ok, I left out the olives. I didn't think we'd eat them and I didn't want to spend the money. Next time I make it, I'm putting them in, I think it needed the saltiness.  I served it with rice (didn't have couscous) and well, corn. Like I said, everyone in my family liked it and we plan to make it again some time, perhaps even for company!

I'll say more about the book once I get to the end, but it looks to be an excellent addition to the shelf, wish mine weren't a library copy.

I am an Amazon Associate. As such, any purchase you make at Amazon.com after following a link from this blog will earn me a (tiny) percentage back as income. Thanks. All content copyright Books. Lists. Life. at http://bookslistslife.blogspot.com. If you're reading this post anywhere other than there, you are reading stolen content.