Cooking | Book Chatter

My Reading

Happy Sunday! Today is all about relaxing because I made the mistake of going to the mall yesterday to do a little shopping. Good lord! I have no patience for that stuff anymore. People were friendly. Actually, I was surprised how friendly the store clerks were given the amount of people they were assisting, but I was in a foul mood and it just got worse from there.

I hate how regular products are repackaged for Christmas and then marked up a dollar or two just because it’s Christmas. I wore the wrong shoes which made the entire experience more painful and I only picked up one gift, and I was there for over three hours. That’s right. I got overwhelmed with the glitz and the volume of everything. Stores so full of merchandise and people, that I literally could not walk from point A to point B.

I love LUSH, but their stores are too small to have more than ten people working the floor. I need to go back at night, during the week to pick-up what I need because I could not even get to the shelf. But everyone was as happy and perky as can be when they asked me no less than five times if I needed help. Not their fault that I had a case of the grumps.

The holidays, gotta love them.

Oh, and it’s been so cold here!! The mornings have been about 30 degrees and last night, when I left the mall a gust of wind took my breath away. It was so cold. It sort of felt good after being in that stuffy mall but I could not get to the car fast enough.

By the way, I forgot to buy coffee creamer while out so this morning I am without creamer again.

Sunday Salon

What am I reading?

From the photo above, you can see that I am still reading The Abominable. I love it and now I am just prolonging the inevitable, the end of it. It’s a great adventure book but given that it takes place on Mount Everest and the characters brave below freezing temps, I find myself shivering and reaching for my blanket every time I read it. I wonder if it would have the same effect on me if I had read it over the summer months?

What am I cooking?

At the request of The Teen, I am making Potato Cheese soup tonight but guess what? He won’t be here to eat it because he just offered to work a holiday dinner event. That kid is a “yes” man. He needs to learn how to say No. I am hoping to make a big enough batch to eat it more than once this week. Tonight, we’ll pair it with a nice, leafy salad to round it out.

Click on the photo to see the recipe.

What am I watching?

Well, it’s that time of the year. We watched Deck the Halls with Matthew Broderick and I may watch The Family Stone later today. I really wanted to watch White Christmas with a group on Twitter yesterday but the timing didn’t work for me, given that I am on the West coast.

The other day, I heard about CBS airing the lost Christmas episode of I Love Lucy along with her Italian movie episode where she stomped on the grapes. Remember that one? Well on 12/20 both episodes will air in color? Will you watch? I prefer B&W but to see the lost episode for the first time? Yes, I plan to record it. We will be at Disneyland that day so I will have to wait until the next day to see it.

Click here to see a preview. Is it me, or do they look better in color?

The Lost Art of Mixing
By Erica Bauermeister
(Putnam Adult, Hardcover, 9780399162114, January 24, 2013, 288pp.)

The Short of It:

A literary treat for the senses.

The Rest of It:

If you haven’t read a book by this author yet, you are really missing out.

In The Lost Art of Mixing, Bauermeister returns to Lillian’s restaurant, first featured in The School of Essential Ingredients. Lillian’s restaurant is known for bringing people together. It’s a place to rediscover yourself and the pleasures around you. Through her carefully prepared meals and the cooking classes she offers, her simple acts of kindness provide the much-needed tonic that these folks have been searching for.

Included are some familiar characters from the first book, but we also meet Al, an accountant whose marriage has left him pondering who he is. Finnegan, nineteen years-old and orphaned at a young age, he finds solace when he gets a job as a dishwasher for the restaurant. Isabelle, who is struggling with dementia but finds a friend in Chloe, who you might remember from the first book and then finally Louise, Al’s wife who doesn’t seem to know her husband at all, but at the same time, seems to know everything about him.

The first book was filled with the smells of cooking. I literally drooled my way through it and then did not have any food in the house which was bad planning on my part. It was hard for me to believe that a book could evoke such feelings of comfort, but it really did. This time around, there is a lot less cooking, but more going on with the characters. They are complex and intricately layered with real-life problems that readers can relate to. I found the characters to be endlessly fascinating.

Additionally, there is something wonderful that happens when you return to familiar territory and I loved visiting with these characters again. The Lost Art of Mixing is a fabulous complement to The School of Essential Ingredients. Although you can read this one as a stand-alone, I encourage you to read her other book first. The writing is wonderful in both and trust me, you’ll want to extend your visit once you are done reading them.

Release Note: This wonderful book does not hit the shelves until January 24, 2013! If you can hold out, I promise to host a giveaway once the book is released.