cookbooks

Last weekend, we made the trek to the other side of town to attend a book signing in honor of Heidi Swanson's beautiful new cookbook.  I won't go on and on about how great the book is--everyone else on the web has already taken care of that.  (Don't believe me?  Trying going here or here or here.)

It is a gorgeous book, and I can't wait to start cooking from it.  As you may have gathered by now, I'm pretty passionate about cooking and eating "real food" and lately, I've been especially interested in the science and nutrition behind all the tasty goodness.  I'm sure that we learned about vitamins and minerals in science class, but science class was a long time ago.  I've definitely had some catching up to do.

I'd like to say that I'm clever enough to come up with delicious, healthy dinner ideas all on my own.  The truth is, I'm hooked on cookbooks.  Especially pretty ones.

Instead of a Friday to-do list, here are a few of the cookbooks--and other books--that have been occupying our kitchen counter lately:

Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food

Local Flavors by Deborah Madison

Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair

Nina Planck's Real Food books

I'm also hoping to soon get my hands on Heart of the Artichoke by David Tanis and the newest River Cottage cookbook, which I thumbed through at a bookstore a few weeks ago.  I've had the beet hummus recipe stuck in my head ever since.

Do you have a favorite cookbook that you'd like to share?  Let us know in the comments below...

Happy weekend--and happy eating--to you!

P.S.-- If you're in the Seattle area, don't forget that Seattle Tilth's Edible Plant Sale is this weekend.  Brave the rain and join in on the fun!

balancing act

Sincere apologies for my time away, dear readers.  I found myself being a little swept away by my life this past week, chipping away at 'the novel,' spending quality time at work, and visiting with my father--the first family member to visit me in the Emerald City in years.  A lot of years.

Now that he's gone back home to the midwest, and I have a few days off of work, I'm trying to get a foothold on other, less important things.  Like laundry.  And, yes, the novel.

Isn't it funny how, when we have things we should be doing, we always find ways of distracting ourselves with pointless, time-consuming projects?  Yesterday, I took a "twenty minute" break from the novel to stretch my legs and ended up spending four hours sifting through my (embarrassingly large) collection of children's books.  First, I needed to look through all of them, to see whether or not there were any duplicates. There were.  Then, I had to move them all from one shelf to another, trying to find the right system for ordering them.  By author?  By illustrator?  By year?

And after all that, there was the matter of dealing with my sad dolls.

A few years ago, I started collecting sad dolls, especially down-trodden, forgotten playthings that I felt compelled to rescue from thrift stores and garage sales.  I tucked them all away, up on a shelf, and then promptly forgot about them myself.

Yesterday, I decided that the shelf would be better suited for my vast library of Little Golden Books, and so I began sorting through the dolls, too.  I haven't decided yet what to do with all of them, but I think they deserve better than I've been giving them.

For starters, most of them are, um, naked.  Which is the way that I found them, I swear.

And even the ones that have clothes need some serious attention, like having their hair glued back on to their little heads.  My favorite of the little orphans is this gal.  According to the stamp on her back, she's an original "Lingerie Lou."

I love her hand-beaded little tutu, but I'll admit, I have no idea what to do with her hair.  If anyone out there has any DIY doll repair suggestions, please let me know...

I seem to be more than capable of finding silly things to do with my time this weekend.  If you're in need of some suggestions, though, here's a to-do list for you:

Fancy up the pumpkin.

Keep your hands busy.
Promote yourself.
Have fun with felt.
Read more fairytales.
Do some nesting.

Happy weekend, everyone!  

I promise I'll be back to regular posting next week.

(And I've got some extra holiday fun in mind.  I'll share my plans with you soon!)

November

Perhaps you've already heard, but if not, it's important that you know:  November is National Novel Writing Month.  I'm choosing to celebrate by participating in the twelfth year of an annual competition to write a 50,000 word novel.  I'll start tonight, and hopefully, if Thanksgiving doesn't trip me up, be penning the final words on the last day of the month.

And I won't be alone.  Would-be novelists from all over the world are participating in this harebrained scheme.  At the time of this writing, NaNoWriMo writers have already generated over 800,000 words!  And I haven't even had my morning coffee yet...

I am not a novelist.  If you don't count the posts that I share here on the Sparrow, I'm not even a writer, really.  This year, though, I've decided that fact is not enough to stop me.

I'm not expecting to generate a great work of fiction.  At best, I'm hoping for an extremely rough draft that will inspire me to start picking up a pen a bit more often.  Mostly, I'm just hoping to survive.  Sixteen hundred words a day is a lot.

I'm worried that this writing thing might eat up some of the time that I usually spend crafting or goofing around in the kitchen.  I'm determined, though, to keep posting here.  I hope you'll be patient with me, especially if my posts start turning into short, desperate paragraphs whining about writer's block and caffeine withdrawal.

So, yes, I have my concerns, but mostly I'm excited.  This is a big endeavor, and I'm eager to get started. If your interest is piqued, it's not too late to join in.  You can learn more at nanowrimo.org.  If you are participating in NaNoWriMo, by all means let me know!  And to the rest of you, watching from the stands, I will, no doubt, be in need of some cheerleaders, probably sometime early next week.  I'll let you know...

Wish me luck, dear readers.  Oh, and happy November!

weekend reading

The good news is that there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  The bad news?  Um, there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  I've only recently overcome the tendency to be magnetically drawn to the yarn shop every time I leave my house.  Now there's a beautiful new trap to fall into.  Never mind the fact that I can't sew at all.  Fabric is just really hard for me to resist.

I managed alright today, though.  I didn't buy any fabric at all.  Instead, I bought a book.  I just couldn't resist it, and if you ever come across a copy, I think you'll understand why.  The title is Carefree Clothes for Girls.  It's by Junko Okawa, and it's actually a Japanese craft book that's been reissued in English.  The photography is ridiculously gorgeous, and the patterns are great, too, in a timeless kind of way.  Of course, there is the little matter of my inability to sew.  And the fact that, even if I could, I don't really have any little girls to sew for anyway.  But still...

Another book that's really tempted me is Material Obsession, a book about quilting by Sarah Fielke and Kathy Doughty, two crafty ladies that co-own a quilt shop in Sydney, Australia.  I've never tried quilting, but if that's what it takes to get one of the fun, functional quilts featured in this book, I'm willing to give it a try.  If you're curious, you can also check out the shop website at www.materialobsession.com.

And for those of us who probably shouldn't be left alone with a sewing machine, there's Lena Corwin's Printing by Hand.  There's a little bit of everything in here: stamping, stenciling, even screenprinting.  The instructions are straight-forward, the projects are clever, and there are lots of photos.  My copy from the library is two days overdue, so I think I'm going to have to postpone some of these projects for later.  Maybe when I'm not, you know, planning a wedding.

Happy weekending, everyone!  I'll see you on Monday...

homework

The other day, a gentleman I'd never met before walked into our shop and promptly said to me, "Congratulations on your upcoming nuptials."  At first, I was a little puzzled as to how he'd heard--or why he'd care--about my engagement.  As it turned out, he'd seen my photo in the neighborhood newspaper and read the accompanying article about the Salvage Bride workshop we held a few weeks ago.

My brief encounter with mini-celebrity has left me feeling a little exposed.  In the past month or so, I've spoken with dozens of people, not just about the workshop, but also about our upcoming wedding.  Up until then, I'd really thought of the wedding as a private thing, an event that involves my man, a chosen few, and me.  Now, though, people I hardly know have asked about everything from our vows to our dessert buffet.

Please don't misunderstand me.  It's not that I find these conversations intrusive.  (Could I really post on this blog, day after day, about our big party in June, and then complain that people are nosing into my business?)  It's more that I'm having to rethink my feelings about the public nature of our wedding.  My idea that the wedding represents a commitment that exists only between my man and I--well, it only goes so far.  At some point, I have to concede, the wedding really represents a contract between us as a couple and society as a whole.  In getting hitched, we're making a promise to the community as a whole that we'll conduct ourselves in a new way.

It's no wonder people are interested in what shoes I'll be wearing.

It's kind of making my head spin.  If I have anything in particular to blame for my having gotten into this new mindset, it's probably Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, Committed.  It's been a few decades since I've written a book report, and I'm not all that inclined to start now.  If you've read Eat, Pray, Love--and if you haven't, you're one of, like, twelve people on the planet--you already know who Elizabeth Gilbert is, and you know that she has some issues.  Among other things, she has issues with marriage, and Committed is her way of examining why people marry, why they don't, and what it means when they choose one or the other.

Maybe a book like that sounds like too much work--although I'll point out right here that Gilbert is pretty darn accessible--or maybe it just sounds, um, scary.  If you'd rather leave the subject of marriage alone and just worry about the wedding day, then maybe you should try Rebecca Mead's One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.  Mead looks at wedding planners, bridal fashion, gift registries, and everything else that's we've crammed into the modern American wedding while asking what it all means.  Or what we wish it meant.

If you're planning a wedding, you might be better off reading something, well, relaxing.  But if you're feeling brave, try one of these.  They're both good reads and your library probably has them.

When I'm interested in something, I'm prone to becoming absolutely immersed in it.  If I get into, say, "organic gardening," then I'm perfectly capable of eating, sleeping, and breathing organic gardening for, oh, maybe a year and a half.  It's true that eating, sleeping, and breathing "wedding" probably isn't the best choice for anyone, including me.  You can't blame me, though, for wanting to understand just what exactly it is I'm getting myself into.