Reading and Eating
It’s been a while since i’ve done one of these posts (and there’s a reason for that, which we’ll get to later.) Let’s start with eating! I did some baking last weekend, because I sent a care package to my son. Today (December 8th) is his 21st birthday. Here’s his Christmas photo when he was a year old: I remember the day he was born like it was yesterday… and now he’s an ADULT. The years go by fast. Anyway, ever since the kids were little I’ve made cinnamon rolls for their birthdays. Now that my son is in college, I send him his birthday rolls. I always use the recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Brunch cookbook. I only sent half the batch to my son, so my daughter got to enjoy cinnamon rolls for breakfast all week. I also sent cookies! I made two cookies from Sally’s Baking Addiction- Peppermint Snowball Cookies and Seriously Soft Molasses Cookies. These recipes are easily veganized by using Earth Balance spread and a flax egg. When my son was a freshman in high school, he had his wisdom teeth extracted in December and could only eat soft foods. I googled “soft cookies” and found these molasses cookies, and he’s loved them ever since. I didn’t actually mail the peppermint ones- I figured they would be a melted mess before they even got out of Florida. My daughter loves peppermint so I made those for her. Here’s the first gingerbread waffles of the season! They are suspiciously similar to my “pumpkin spice” waffles. Two cups of oats, two scoops of protein powder, a banana, salt, 2 cups of water, and then lots of ginger, cinnamon and cloves. YUM. Several weeks ago, Suzanne mentioned Red Lentil Soup with Warm Spices in her “Dinners This Week” post. The link to the recipe is actually in a post by Julie. This soup is SO GOOD. It’s like dal, but with slightly different spices. I don’t even make the topping (and use vegetable broth and oil instead of butter) and it’s still delicious. The recipe says “? teaspoons cinnamon”- I use 1/2 teaspoon. And it doesn’t specify how much salt, so I do the same thing I do with all recipes- add enough salt so that it tastes delicious. If it doesn’t taste delicious, just add more salt until the flavors pop. Okay… reading. It took me an ENTIRE MONTH to finish this book. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it- I did! But NaBloPoMo really took up a lot of my time, and it’s not like this book is a thrilling page-turner. The plot was interesting, but it was very dense and wordy. I did want to find out what happened to the dad, and I liked the ending- that it was a little ambiguous but not really (I think Mia’s “most likely” scenario is probably the truth.) It’s not a book I would ever want to re-read though- once was definitely enough. Next up- a Christmas mystery should be arriving tomorrow (ahem- that is, if Amazon manages to deliver it correctly.) I’m in the mood for something festive! Have you read Happiness Falls? What did you think of it? Have you done any holiday baking yet? Header photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash