You would think that after the holiday season--which included baking 50 snowman-shaped sugar cookies for the second grade classes at my son's school (that's 3 batches) and a batch for my own family--I would be all baked out. I admit, it did take me a little while to recover from my Christmas bakeapalooza and now we've got Valentine's Day class parties on the horizon. This past weekend, though, I felt like making bread. Not the sandwich bread I make every week in my bread maker but a nice, sweet quick bread. I pulled out a Christmas gift, Erin McKenna's
gluten- and (refined) sugar-free. I say 'mostly' because that's what the book's subtitle says. But really, if you have celiac disease or a gluten allergy you will want to read the recipes carefully because some of them do call for spelt flour. Anyway, because the recipes are vegan/gluten-free/sugar-free (and kosher) they call for ingredients like Bob's Red Mill gluten-free all-purpose baking flour, coconut oil, dairy-free milks and agave nectar. Most people don't happen to have these sitting around in their kitchens and they can be hard to come by (though they are becoming more mainstream--I've seen them at Target!). However, once you have McKenna's favored ingredients on hand you can use them for almost any recipe in the book.
Back in October, when I had this book from the library, McKenna's pumpkin spice muffins were my first attempt at baking the Babycakes way and I can't say it was my most successful baking attempt. It had nothing to do with the recipe itself and everything to do with the user: I had gotten it into my head that I wanted pumpkin bread, and nothing else would do. The thing never cooked through, even after leaving it in the oven well over the cook time. This time I knew better and the only modification I made to the recipe for banana chocolate chip bread was to use non-fat cow's milk in place of rice milk. All told, I could have baked it a little longer because the very middle was a little undercooked but the top was nicely browned and the toothpick I inserted came out clean. Maybe I have been eating gluten-free for too long, but I wouldn't have known the bread doesn't contain gluten. My kids ate it up and asked me to put slices in their lunch boxes for their snack today.
1 Comments on Cookbook Review - Babycakes, last added: 1/24/2011
"They would feat on Who-pudding, and rare Who-roast-beast
Which was something the Grinch couldn't stand in the least!" - How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dr. Seuss
That's right. I'm made a roast. I really had to ask myself: does the novelty of making something called "roast beast" make up for the fact that making it is an elaborate and time consuming affair? And the answer is yes. I make a roast like twice a year so I might as well make it now.
I hope everyone is familiar with Dr. Seuss'
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. If you aren't familiar with the book then surely you are familiar with the
animated cartoon version that airs on television every year around this time. It's a holiday classic. But if you need a refresher...
The Grinch is a surly kind of guy who hates Christmas and all of the happy citizens in
Who-ville who love it. (Clearly, he is just lonely and misunderstood and only acts out to mask his pain.) While grousing about how much he hates the season he is struck with inspiration: he will prevent Christmas from coming! He puts his plan into action and soon is sneaking into each home on Christmas Eve to make off with all of the Christmas trappings. But something goes wrong. As the Grinch is congratulating himself on Christmas morning, he realizes he can hear singing coming from
Who-ville. Despite his best efforts, he hasn't ruined Christmas at all. The
Whos may not have presents or decorations but they have each other and the Grinch is stunned to realize spirit of Christmas comes from within. He begins to have second thoughts about what he has done. Filled with the Christmas spirit, his heart grows "three sizes" and he returns to town to return all of the things he has stolen. He even presides over Christmas dinner, where he carves the roast beast.
Awwww.
Obviously, we had to make roast beast in honor of the Grinch. Knowing Dr. Seuss the roast beast is probably some sort of moose or mammoth or something (the picture leaves it open to interpretation) but for our purposes I decided it was beef.
Roast Beast (really Ina Garten's Company Pot Roast)(I did not follow Ina's recipe to the letter. What follows is my interpretation of the original
0 Comments on How the Grinch Stole Christmas - Roast Beast as of 1/1/1900
Oh, subervsive cautionary tales in the guise of children's books--how I love you. Really, I do. Maybe it's because when I was a child my cousin and I would spend the night at my Poppa's house; if we didn't go to sleep right away he would sneak outside and bang on the window with a stick and yell that he was the Boogeyman, there to "get" us. (You have to understand, my grandfather was not a traditional grandparent in any sense of the word.) So maybe my love for books like Pierre and Monsters Eat Whiny Children is just in my genes. To be sure, these books aren't for everyone--some may claim they're too scary or dark or inappropriate for young children. To those naysayers I say: I don't care.
First up, Maurice Sendak's classic Pierre. Pierre isn't a bad child, exactly. It's more that he's disengaged and refuses to show any emotion or react to his parents' proclamations, suggestions and threats with anything other than a bored, "I don't care." Pierre just doesn't care. About anything, apparently, not even the fact that he is pouring syrup on his hair. Finally, fed up, Pierre's parents leave the house without him. Soon a lion comes to the door. Predictably, Pierre is unmoved so the lion announces he will eat him. "I don't care," says Pierre, which is all the invitation the lion needs. When Pierre's parents return, horrified to find their son has become somebody's meal, they take him to a doctor who makes quick work of rescuing Pierre. Who finally cares.
Because I love Pierre so very much, I was very interested in checking out the Monsters Eat Whiny Children, which has received a lot of positive buzz this fall. Written and illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan, it is another book in which disobedient children finally get their comeuppance. Henry and Eve whine. A lot. Their father tells them that monsters eat whiny children b
"Sofia dumped the little pear-shaped figs into a bowl on the table. She dished out more helpings of gelato, each with three scoops and a fig. " - Three Scoops and a Fig, Sara Laux Akin
I grew up in a town that was once covered in fig orchards (now many of those orchards have become housing developments and shopping malls), but I have to be honest, I don't think I'd actually eaten a fresh fig until sometime last year. I feel embarrassed to even admit this but its true. I wasn't sure what to do with them so I sliced them and put them in yogurt for the kids. That seemed about right.
Sara Laux Akin's
Three Scoops and a Fig presents a similar but tastier option for those looking to use up a fig surplus. Sofia, Akins' young protagonist, comes from a family of cooks. Her family owns an Italian restaurant and her older siblings contribute their own specialties to the family dinner table. On the occasion of her grandparents' anniversary, Sofia just wants to help her family as their prepare a special dinner but she keeps getting in the way. Unnoticed by her busy family, Sofia decides to slip away with a bowl of gelato for breakfast. When an errant fig from the fig tree drops into Sofia's bowl she discovers a new treat--and a way to contribute to the family dinner. Illustrator Susan Kathleen Hartung's muted colors and depiction of a close knit, multi-generational family infuse the story with warmth.
Three Scoops and a Fig includes extras--a recipe for an "Italian Flag Sundae" and a glossary of Italian words and phrases used in the story. Although the Italian Flag Sundae sounded delicious, I decided to stick with Sofia's original recipe.
Sofia's Fig Tree Sundae
Ingredients:
- vanilla ice cream
- figs (fresh if you can find them)
1. Scoop ice cream into bowls. In order to stay true to the book I used three (small) scoops in each child's bowl.
2. Slice your figs. I must confess, I used dried figs for this particular recipe. I had been sitting on this review until after Halloween and by the time I was ready to post it I couldn't find fresh figs anywhere. Fig season, apparently, is very short (I feel this is something I should have known, having grown up in Fresno). Dried figs, however, were easy to find at the grocery store.
Serve and eat qu
Since 1982, the last week of September has been designated as Banned Books Week. According to the American Library Association, it is a time to draw attention to "the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States." Books in our local libraries, schools and bookstores are challenged all the time, usually by people who object to the book's content or message and want to prevent others from having access to the materials they find so offensive. As an avid reader, a writer and a mother, I have a problem with the few who attempt to take something away from everybody just because it does not gel with their moral code.
This is just a partial list of books I love, books that have been challenged at one time or another:
-Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume-A Wrinkle in Time - Madeline L'Engle-The Harry Potter series - JK Rowling-To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee-Catcher in the Rye
"But there were all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best" - Harold and the Purple Crayon, Crockett Johnson
Well hi there. Long time no blog, right? I have no excuse, other than a combination of laziness/busyness. In the weeks between my older son beginning school and my younger son finally starting (he's doing kindergarten at a private school) things were kind of chaotic. It was a combination of wanting to spend some one on one time with my youngest before he headed off to full-day kindergarten, dealing with some health issues, helping my second grader adjust to the new school year, school meetings and general blogging apathy. I needed a break. My youngest started school last week, just in time for a weekend of house guests. I am finally getting it together again and dipping my toe back into the Kidlitosphere.
This doesn't mean that we weren't spending a lot of time reading and visiting our library and the bookstore. One of the things that we enjoyed during my blogging hiatus was the Crockett Johnson classic Harold and the Purple Crayon. My younger son picked it out on a recent trip to the bookstore and he is now hooked on the Harold series. My older son enjoys them too but it's the little one who carries his books around with him and asks to read them multiple times a day. He had the book mostly memorized on the second evening it was in our home.
I remember checking Harold and the Purple Crayon out from the library as a child and I find it just as enchanting now as I did then. Harold is an imaginative little boy who uses his purple crayon to create entire worlds for himself. One night, Harold decides to take a walk in the moonlight, so he draws a moon . . . and a sidewalk . . . and eventually a forest, the ocean, a city . . . until he finds his way back home to his own bed. It's all very cleverly done, with a subtle sense of humor and a lot of whimsy. Other than the brown outline of Harold, the only colors in the book are the white background and the purple outline of Harold's drawings. I love the purple and the brown, I love Harold's pointy turned up nose, I love that Johnson uses turns of phrase like "a hungry moose and a deserving porcupine."
The moose and porcupine in question are the recipients of the pie feast Harold has to abandon as he travels on his way. Nine kinds of pie. Maybe someday we'll make all nine kinds of pie; that would make an interesting ongoing feature on this blog, wouldn't it? But today we only made one kind of pie. Since the book did not specify "all nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best" I had to take some liberties and assume that one of those kinds of pie would be chocolate. Who doesn't like chocolate pie, right?
Chocolate Pie
Ingredients:
It's August and friends of mine in other areas of the country have been enjoying blueberry picking. I know this because I see their status updates and pictures on Facebook. While my family did recently enjoy picking strawberries and blackberries, we unfortunately don't live in an area that is very conducive to blueberry growth. We have to buy ours at the store. Even so, with blueberry season in full swing we're able to find inexpensive fresh berries in our local stores.
There's only one book I can think of to pair with blueberry picking (or eating, as the case may be): Robert McCloskey's 1948 classic Caldecott Honor winner,
Blueberries for Sal. It is the story of Sal and her mother and the day they spend picking berries to can for the winter (I had to explain canning to my kids). Like many small children, Sal is more interested in wandering and eating the berries rather than paying attention to her mother. This is how she inadvertently ends up following a mama bear--whose own distracted cub has been following Sal's mother. In the end everyone gets sorted out and Sal and her mother return home with their blueberries, nobody worse for the wear. (The lovely endpapers, which show Sal and her mother canning their harvest, are a nice touch.)
My kids laughed out loud when Sal took more interest in eating the berries than in following her mother, and again when the mother bear realized she was being followed by a human child rather than her own cub. My favorite part of the book? The pen and ink illustrations, which are blue and white rather than the traditional black and white. Love that blue! It's simple and effective and, well, just pretty.
If you are looking for ways to use up some blueberries this summer, I've got just the recipe for you! This is one of our family favorites and my husband shares equal credit for creating it. I may have made the first batch of frozen yogurt in our
ice cream maker years ago but he is the one who perfected and embellished i
"She opened the over door and the kitchen filled with a smell sweeter than summer gardenias--the smell of teacakes." - Saturdays and Teacakes, Lester L. Laminack
When I was growing up I had a very close relationship with my grandfather. Due to the early deaths of my other three grandparents he was the only one I was really knew and he was, in a way, like a third parent to me and my sister. Some of my favorite memories are of going on walks together, eating cheese and crackers in front of
The Young and the Restless and--when I was in upper elementary school--getting involved in stamp collecting together. My grandpa adored all of his grandchildren and bonded with all of us in different ways. For those of us who lived near him, he never missed a dance recital, concert, big sporting event or graduation. He also made it a priority to visit his other grandchildren who lived across the country. I miss him every day and think about him often--especially when I see my boys enjoying things he would have enjoyed, like getting excited about planting flowers in our garden or playing an instrument.
(Me and Poppa, circa 1981) Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack is the story of a boy and his grandmother (Mammaw) and the special relationship between a child and a grandparent. Their standing Saturday date is a ritual that begins with the main character setting off on his bike and riding through town until he reaches her home. Their day includes sharing breakfast, doing yardwork, eating lunch (with fresh tomatoes from the garden) and--finally--making and eating Mammaw's special teacakes. Chris Soentpiet's lovely, Rockwell-inspired watercolor illustrations firmly place the story in a not-so-distant past and evoke feelings of nostalgia for a bygone era--a time when little kids really did ride their bikes through town (without helmets!) and gas station attendants wore spiffy uniforms. Despite the setting, the story is one all who have a special bond with a grandparent can relate to.
Laminack's publisher,
Peachtree Publishers, has a recipe for
"Mammaw Thompson's Teacakes" on their website. I adapted it to be gluten-free.
Teacakes (adapted from "Mammaw Thompson's Teacakes", Lester L. Laminack)
Ingredients:
- 2 sticks butter (I used Smart Balance Butter Blend)
-
5 Comments on Saturdays and Teacakes - Teacakes, last added: 7/29/2010
"It's hot today. Maisy is having a nice cold drink. Mmmm. Lemonade." - Maisy Makes Lemonade, Lucy Cousins
You may have noticed that lately the recipes on my blog have tied into the season--summer is the time for sweet, refreshing delights like fruit salad and strawberry shortcake. Another quintessential summer treat? Lemonade. What's more, it's easy to prepare. Even very young children can get involved.
Maisy Makes Lemonade was a library find. My four year old is in a stage where he still enjoys simple and comforting books like Cousins' Maisy books just as much as he enjoys more mature fare such as Batman versus the Joker. He was quite taken with both on a recent library trip and while neither would have necessarily been what I'd have chosen for him, I do think it's important to give my kids the ability to choose their own books at the library.
So I was going through the stack of library books to read one more time before our beach vacation and as I picked up Maisy Makes Lemonade I thought, Well, there's a good topic for the blog.
For those not familiar with Maisy (though if you have a toddler/preschooler, you should be), she's a mouse who--along with her various animal friends--experiences things that most kids are familiar with. In addition to making lemonade there are Maisy books about going to bed, going shopping, and going to places like the dentist or on vacation. They're told simply with a minimal amount of text on each page and cute, colorful illustrations. The storyline in Maisy Makes Lemonade is simple and predictable (to adults): Maisy shares her lemonade with her friend Eddie (an elephant) and they run out. They decide to make another pitcher. They pick lemons from Maisy's tree and make their lemonade, step by step. Then they enjoy their refreshing beverage. My kids wanted to make their own lemonade after reading it. If you have a small child, it's a good opportunity to suggest making lemonade "just like Maisy."
Lemonade
Ingredients:
- 6 lemons (or, enough to yield 1 cup of lemon juice)
- 1/2 cup sugar (I used a combination of regular and raw sugar)
- 5 cups water
1. Slice lemons in half and juice them. We don't have a citrus juicer so I let the boys do it by hand. You need one cup of juice for this recipe.
3 Comments on Maisy Makes Lemonade - Lemonade, last added: 7/21/2010
"Archie cooks his specialty: fish and coconut soup. They have a wonderful meal, with fried bananas for dessert." - Archie and the Pirates, Marc Rosenthal
I had a totally different book picked out for this week. My kids, though, found a new book in the library and fell under its spell and insisted I write about
it instead. I capitulated because, well, I was completely smitten too. The world Marc
Rosenthal creates in
Archie and the Pirates is quirky and amusing and charming. It's a world in which a monkey manages to assimilate to his new island life and, with the help of a bird and a tiger, run a ragtag bunch of pirates off their island. What's not to like?
I'll admit, on first glance I saw the Curious George-
ish monkey on the cover and I thought it might be a poorly written knockoff. DO NOT JUDGE THIS BOOK BY ITS COVER. It quickly becomes clear that while author/illustrator
Rosenthal may have been inspired by H.A. Rey, Jean
de Brunhoff (of
Babar fame) and other illustrators of their era, his book stands on its own. The story begins as the tale of a marooned monkey, Archie. We aren't sure how or why he washed up on the island (it happened in his sleep...he just drifted off while in his bed) but in short order he manages to find food, build a new home and make friends with an ibis named Clarice. A menacing tiger named Beatrice turns out to be another friend. The three have a party to celebrate their new friendship but,
unbeknownst to them, pirates are on their way to the island. When the pirates kidnap Beatrice, Archie and Clarice take action to rescue her, thwart the pirates and scare them away. They and the other island creatures rejoice and Archie invites everyone to build homes near his since they are now friends.
This is a fun, quirky story with subtle humor that merits more than one reading. Close observations of the pictures reveal the pirates' impending arrival (their ship is seen through Archie's window as he sleeps) long before the animals see them. In one picture, before Archie meets Beatrice, she is seen lurking below his tree (again, with the pirate ship in the background). My kids love these little details and giggle over them every time we read the book. They also love the final illustration, of all the animals in their new homes. ("Which one is your favorite, Mommy? I like...") Rosenthal's writing style is straightforward, kind of quirky, and makes me and my kids laugh. Sample: "At the pirate camp, Captain Pequod has set First Mate LaFaargh to keep watch while they sleep, partly because he likes saying his name (LA FAAAARGH!), but mainly because LaFaargh has trouble sleeping." I know this is one of those books that, if we don't buy it, will be one my kids look for every time we go to the library.
When my kids asked me to put this book on the blog I had a brief moment of panic. What should I cook to go with a book about pirates and anthropomorphic jungle animals? Then I remembered that Archie cooks his favorite meal for Clarice and Beatrice to celebrate their new friendship. The meal? Fish and coconut soup (with fried bananas for dessert).
Fish Soup with Coconut Milk (adapted from
By: Katie Fries,
on 6/14/2010
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"Look--the moon can still shine even when the night is darkest." - When the Moon Forgot, Jimmy Liao
This week I am trying something a bit different on this blog. Instead of the typical book + recipe post, I am going to expand my theme throughout the week to include other books and projects we do that relate to our featured books (yes, two today) and recipe. With school being out we have a lot more time to spend with our books, and more hours of the day to fill with activities.
One of my boys' favorite topics--a subject we return to time and again--is outer space. They are fascinated by our solar system and space exploration. Over the years we've built up quite the collection of space books, from non-fiction to easy readers to fictional picture books. Kids are just fascinated with the moon and stars, even from a very early age.
1 Comments on ...like the moon and the stars and the sun..., last added: 6/16/2010
"'There are lemonade licks
And syrupy sticks,
Raspberry rockets
And pineapple pockets.
And my special flavor for today
Is Fun Valley Smash:
Raspberry-strawberry-marshmallow mash.'
Oh, my they did taste good." - The Good Humor Man, Kathleen N. Daly
When I was pregnant with my oldest son a co-worker gave me a set of reissued classic Little Golden Books as part of a shower gift. One of the books in the set was
The Good Humor Man, a book I had overlooked (or perhaps it had been out of print) during my own childhood of reading and collecting Little Golden Books (perhaps someday I will write a post about the profound influence these books had on my life as a reader). I have very vivid memories of sitting on the floor in the nursery reading aloud to my infant son while he did tummy time on a blanket beside me. Later, this ended up being the book we would throw in a backpack or carryon to take on airplanes or day trips into the city. Simply put, this book with its sweet story and 60s era charm is a family favorite.
Kathleen N. Daly's story about a neighborhood ice cream man who brings treats to families in a typical 60s suburban neighborhood seems almost outdated. When is the last time you saw an ice cream man? I am pretty sure that my kids know about ice cream men only from this book, although the ice cream truck was a fixture in the California neighborhood
I grew up in. In the book we see the Good Humor man make his rounds in his white truck, selling "raspberry rockets" and "pineapple pockets" to the families on his route. One of his customers is a lonely boy named Johnny. Another customer, who lives way up on a hill outside of town, is an older woman who has a visiting grandson, Dick: he's also lonely. The next day, when the Good Humor man notices Johnny is without his puppy, he learns the dog is lost. But hooray! Dick and Granny have found the puppy! This inspires the Good Humor man to play matchmaker--Johnny gets his puppy back and, in the process, he and Dick become friends.
Tibor Gergeley's original illustrations are perfectly paired with Daly's text, perhaps more now than when the book was published in 1964. The retro look (which is, of course, "retro" only by present day 2010's standards) perfectly complements this story of a bygone era--when the highlight of a family's summer day might well have been the ice cream man's visit.
Drawing inspiration from the Good Humor man's flavors, we made some ice pops on this first weekend in June.
Fun Valley Smash
"Fun Valley Smash" is the Good Humor man's special flavor of the day. He describes it as being "raspberry-strawberry-marshmallow mash."
Ingredients:
- raspberries
- strawberries
- marshmallow creme
- vanilla yogurt
Additional equipment: Stick blender, ice pop mold (mine was $2.00 at Target)
1. Wash fruit. Chop stems off strawberries and cut into smaller pieces. Place in blender cup.
2. Use stick blender to puree fruit. Children should be supervised during this process.
"When you are quiet, what do you hear?" - When I am Quiet on Maui, Judi Riley
It's been an unseasonably cool spring in the Bay Area. I am a warm weather kind of girl. I long for the warm sun. We can't control the weather but we can escape to a warmer place via our books.
A few years ago, when my boys were very young (not-quite-three and seven months), we spent a week in Maui. Although I don't necessarily recommend taking kids that young to Maui if you're expecting a restful and relaxing vacation, it is a favorite family memory of that time in our lives. When we want to remind the boys of our trip we watch videos and look at pictures or we read When I am Quiet on Maui, a book my husband and I brought back from a solo Maui trip a couple of years later.
Judi Riley's When I am Quiet on Maui is a peaceful book, a perfect reflection of the laid back island lifestyle. The first two pages, in fact, are just two questions (one per page) on a white background: "When you are quiet, what do you hear? When you are still, what do you feel?" With this we are brought into the book, which takes us through a child's day on the island of Maui. We learn about the island through sights and sounds. Each spread shows an illustration on the left with a single statement on the opposite page--a painting of koi and plumeria flowers in a pond is accompanied by, "When I am quiet in Wailea long before lunch, I hear the plumeria cascade into the koi pond." This is not a book to turn to if you're looking for excitement or a story where something happens. It is more like poetry, calm meditations just right for settling into a calm state of mind (perhaps right before naptime). It reminds us of the beauty of nature (found in a specific place) and the importance of slowing down and taking note of the world around us. It also introduces Hawaiian vocabulary, with proper pronunciations and definitions in footnotes at the bottom of the pages. (Crucial for parents who stumble over the word humuhumunukunukuapua'a.)
We made two different treats to get us into the Hawaiian spirit (they also went well with our
Lost series finale viewing after the boys were in bed).
Lava Flow Smoothies
Ingredients:
- 2 oz. coconut cream
- 2 oz. unsweetened pineapple juice
- 4 large strawberries (or handful of frozen strawberries)
- 1 small, ripe banana
- ice
Additional equipment: Blender, paper umbrella (optional)
1. Puree the strawberries in blender.
2. Pour strawberry puree in glass.
3. Puree pineapple juice, coconut cream and banana in blender with crushed ice. Blend until smooth.
4. Pour pineapple/coconut/banana mixture into glass. The strawberry puree should rise to the top, like a lava flow.
I'm happy to announce that I am the new gluten-free living blogger for the Bay Area edition of Today's Mama, a national parenting website with local affiliates in select markets. If you are looking for information about gluten-free issues, product and restaurant reviews, recipes, parenting gluten-free kids, or gluten-free resources, please check me out at my other online home!
Direct link to my introductory post
Bay Area Mama main page
"Tallulah's specialty is pancakes and she's always experimenting with new recipe varieties. Just last week she invented the chocolate chip flip with mini marshmallows and sliced bananas." - Tallulah in the Kitchen, Nancy Wolff
Part picture book, part instruction manul, Nancy Wolff's
Tallulah in the Kitchen is one of the first books I recall reading over and over to my six year old. He was a newly minted two year old who had recently stopped napping and I was very pregnant. In my desperate attempt to enforce some type of quiet time during the day we read. A lot.
Tallulah in the Kitchen was one of the books procured from our local library and during the three weeks it was in our possession it was one of our favorites.
We recently revisted this book because I remembered how much we enjoyed it the first time around. My six year old didn't remember it at all but I was happy to see that he loved it just as much, perhaps even more because he now has a better understanding of the humor. My four year old loved it too.
Tallulah is an aspiring chef whose specialty is pancakes. She enjoys creating new and unusual recipes (some are flops, like the one filled with coconut and jelly beans) and trying international pancakes (like crepes). Today, though, she is making blueberry pancakes and recruiting her friends Freddie and Roxy (and her dog, Flapjack) to help. We see Tallulah shopping for ingredients and organizing her supplies, then doing everything from mixing the batter to flipping the pancakes. Frequent asides give mini cooking tips ("oven mitts are a must when handling hot pots and pans") but feel organic to the story. It's a story but it's also a clever way of introducing young readers to the basics of preparing a meal from start to finish. In the end, Tallulah and her friends enjoy their pancakes--as pancakes should be enjoyed--together.
Beyond the appealing storyline (who doesn't love pancakes?), the illustrations perfectly complement Tallulah's quirky personality and the story's overall tone. Wolff uses a variety of techiniques (bright saturated colors, collage, newsprint, different fonts) to create unique and eye catching illustrations. I'm sure the busy illustrations and animal characters (Tallulah is a cat, Freddie a crocodile and Roxy a pig) are what initially caught my son's attention. This is a sweet and humorous book that shows just how much fun cooking can be, especially when you're cooking with friends.
It has become something of a tradition for me to make pancakes for dinner when my husband is out of town. I am of the opinion that breakfast is good at any time of the day. My boys agree. So last Friday evening, after reading
Tallulah in the Kitchen, we made:
Tallulah's Amazing Blueberryalicious Pancakes
Ingredients:
(Full disclosure: This is not the recipe included in the book. That r
"After the war Bob and Joe's colors made them rich. Day-Glo began to brighten everyday life back home. The colors made their way onto gas station signs and detergent boxes, traffic cones and magazine covers--including Joe's old favorite, Popular Science." - The Day-Glo Brothers, Chris Barton
I owe a debt of gratitude to authors like Chris Barton, who write cool non-fiction picture books. It makes my job as mom to two curious boys that much easier when I can answer their questions by picking a book off a shelf. Oh, I have my specialties, but when my boys' lines of questioning turn to how things work I turn to a book.
I knew Chris Barton's
The Day-Glo Brothers, with its true story of how brothers Bob and Joe Switzer invented Day-Glo colors, would appeal to my boys' inquisitive natures. My kids frequently scour our libraries' shelves for books about outer space, bridges and automobiles (a current favorite is
Car Science)--so I knew
The Day-Glo Brothers wouldn't be a hard sell. And as soon as they saw Tony Persiani's cool, Day-Glo infused illustrations they were hooked.
Author Barton drew on primary sources to write this biography of how two brothers invented something that most of us take for granted. It's strange for me, a child of the 80s and 90s, to think that there was a time when Day-Glo colors didn't exist. However, until the Switzer brothers began experimenting with fluorescence to enhance Joe's magic acts, nobody had ever developed glow-in-the dark paints--never mind paint that glowed in the daylight. Tony Persiani's illustrations literally (and gradually) light up the pages so readers know exactly what is meant by the term Day-Glo.
We read this book at the perfect time, just before a trip to Disneyland, so the boys were able to put their newfound knowledge of fluorescence and Day-Glo to use and point out rides and attr
"Laura always wondered why bread made of corn-meal was called johnny-cake. It wasn't cake." - Little House in the Big Woods, Laura Ingalls Wilder
Shortly after beginning to read chapter books independently, my mother suggested I read the first of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, Little House in the Big Woods. It was the summer I turned seven and I tore through the series (with breaks in between some of the books to read various books in the Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume canons) with fervor until I finished the last book during Christmas vacation six months later. I have particularly fond memories of reading The Long Winter during an overnight stay at my grandfather's house. I always, always knew that I would read these books with my kids. One of my first thoughts upon learning my first child would be a boy--I am not kidding--was that there went my dreams of being able to bond over the Little House books. Then I heard--from teachers and other parents--that their boys loved these books. And my visions of reading them with my children were restored.
My boys and I began reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series last summer, when I thought they were both old enough to appreciate Little House in the Big Woods as a read aloud. They didn't just love it; they clamored for more. Good thing Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote eight more books in the series. (Though I tend to dismiss the last book, The First Four Years, on the grounds that it is disturbing and has a different tone from the rest of the series. A fact I picked up on even at the age of seven, though a recent New Yorker article shed some additional light onto this topic.)
We are now in the middle of On the Banks of Plum Creek, my favorite of the Little House books. To me, this book has more action and character development than Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie (the first two titles we read), which are heavy on the long descriptive passages. It is in this book that the individual personalities of Laura and her sister Mary become more defined--Mary as the gentle, obedient daughter and Laura as the spitfire tomboy (my older son always gets upset when Laura does something wrong and gets scolded by Pa)--and we see them in the world around them instead of just at home. Who can forget that house in the ground, or mean Nellie Oleson and her town party, or the locusts, or--most disturbing to my seven-year old mind--Laura losing her beloved rag doll, Charlotte? Oh, there is action and plenty to love in the earlier books: the image of Laura and Mary playing with a pic's bladder balloon in Little House in the Big Woods is forever burned into my brain because it just seemed so weird to me the first time I read it. And my boys don't tire of hearing about Pa and his hunting escapades, or the way they built their homes, or the various animals the the Ingalls family kept as pets and working farm animals.
Food figures prominently in Wilder's descriptions of the (often harsh) pioneer life. So much so, in fact, that Barbara M. Walker collected many of the foods mentioned throughout the course of the series in The Little House Cookbook. It is in this book that we found the recipe for johnny-cake, a bread that was a staple in Laura's childhood home. Walker describes it as, "a crusty slab of cooked cornmeal that was mostly a vehicle for syrup or gravy." The name "johnny-cake" comes from New England pronunciation of "journey cake"--a staple of colonial travelers.
Johnny-cake (adapted from The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker)
YUM! That banana chocolate chip bread looks fabulous!