Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler

I've wanted to read an Anne Tyler novel for years. For whatever reason, other books have always jumped ahead on the every expanding "to be read" list. I skipped my book club's pick for October which presented an opportunity to select a title. I landed on Ladder of Years after seeing a recommendation by Hellogiggles.com (if you don't already read it, then you MUST start reading Hellogiggles.com). The book was published in 1995.

Tyler is a master storyteller of the domestic tale. She can focus in on the tiniest details because her word selection is exquisite. Delia Grinstead just turned 40. She's married to an older man, and the mother to three young adults. Her father recently passed away. The story starts with a delightful, flirty scene set in a grocery store. A younger man approaches Delia, and asks Delia to step in as his date. Delia is not accustomed to any kind of attention so she is immediately weary (yet smitten) by the man. It's a breezy opening scene that sets the right tone for the novel.

As the family prepares for its annual vacation at a rental summer home, Delia pursue a demure relationship with the younger man which ends in a comic confrontation at dinner time (of course!). I won't spoil the scene, but let's just say her family doesn't believe for a moment that Delia would stray from her marriage. The family heads for the vacation, and Delia proceeds to walk home from the beach...but she keeps going...catching a ride with a local handy man...she keeps going. She leaves her family to start a new life.

I enjoyed the cast of crazy characters and the snapshot look at the intimate scenes from a marriage. The novel is funny (and absurd), heartbreaking, and sometimes unbelievable. Tyler weaves the characters around Delia. There are hints of King Lear throughout including the name of the main character who's also the youngest daughter and she's tossed out like King Lear (although she does the tossing).



Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann

First thing first: Liza Klaussmann is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Herman Melville. How freakin' awesome is that?? It says so in the author biography on the back flap.

I've mentioned before that I adore stories set in summer homes. I've never visited let alone owned a summer home, but I find them fascinating. It may stem from the yearning to hang out with my siblings. You see your siblings every day for the first several years of your life, then everyone goes their own way. Kind of sad...but I think a summer home would provide a great excuse to hang out.

I have a huge crush on Nick. She's stylish, strong, smart, a reader. I wish the story focused only on Nick. She could be BFF's with Kate from Rules of Civility. I found Nick's cousin, Helena, to be a not so fully developed character. She seemed like a wisp of a character. The story starts at the end of World War II as the cousins separate and go their own ways. Helena to California to get involved with a loser. Nick moves South with her husband...who's living with a lie that doesn't quite ring true.

Their summers progress through the years. Eventually, they each have a child. The story spirals into a who-dun-it mystery which I could have lived without. The story of Nick doesn't need a distraction. She's a character who has great potential, but Klaussmann doesn't allow her to reach it.

Pink Bake Sale

We held an office bake sale this week for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

*steps onto soap box*

I was bitterly mad at SGK earlier this year when they chose to politicize women's health. They've since restored grants to Planned Parenthood, the founder stepped down, and they let go of a few of the extreme right conservatives who were offering nothing but negative guidance. I know that other organizations are keeping their eyes on SGK, so I reserve the right to change my find if they return to their evil ways. It's just not cool to mess with women's health.

*jumps off soap box*

Let's talk cookies. Our bake sale organizer decided that all baked goods should be pink. At first I'll admit that I was a little bummed since we are within 2 weeks of Halloween. I wanted to bake with the colors of Fall. Oranges and yellows and rich reds. But then  I was totally inspired by Glorious Treats' riff on traditional pumpkins. A chevron orange and white pumpkin! Yes. More, please.

I decided to make pumpkins, bats, "pink" cats and ghosts. I made the pumpkins and ghosts with regular sugar cookie dough. I decided to mix it up by making the "pink" cats and bats with chocolate cookie dough. I thought it would make the pink icing POP, and it really did. I added a teaspoon of King Arthur Flour's Espresso Powder. Don't worry. It does not add coffee flavor, but it really enhances the cocoa by giving new depth to the flavor of the cocoa. I used Trader Joe's natural cocoa...trust me, it wasn't fancy!

I love packaging sugar cookies as favors. They're lovely little treats. I used these adorable tags by hey love designs. Everyone went bonkers for the "fight like a girl" tag.

Yellow Ribbon Sugar Cookies (aka Cancer Sux!)

I made over 180 cookies for my sister's party to celebrate her 10-year battle with brain cancer. She requested cookies to give as favors. How could I resist? I used a ribbon cookie cutter that I bought at Pryde's Old Westport many years ago. If you are ever in the Kansas City area, then you must visit Pryde's. Be sure to plan a few hours to explore. I placed 2 cookies back-to-back in clear cello bags from Michael's. I attached these lovely tags from Vintage Indie which tied into my sister's theme of LIVE LOVE LAUGH!

This is the piping order I used to create the ribbon's tie. It was hard for my brain to get a grip on this to make it look more like a ribbon. I think the end result is kind of fantastic.

This is the biggest batch of cookies I've ever baked and decorated. Cookies took over my freezer, kitchen, house, and life...but it was definitely worth it! Now that's a lot of cookies.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is the perfect read for a long hot summer. I'm not a huge fan of suspense/thrillers, but Flynn is a master. Her characters are so developed. You feel like you know them. So much has already been said about this book. It's a huge hit. What's left to say?

I'll keep this short. I loved the alternating chapters between Nick's present (in Summer 2012 no less!) and Amy's diary entries. This is where Flynn's skills at character development are in full glory. Flynn's portrayal of Amy's parents is so clever. You understand how Amy is the way she is...how could she NOT be who she is with parents who exploit her childhood to make Perfect Amy children's books??

I wasn't too keen on the final quarter of the book. I thought Flynn lost her way a bit, as the story veered into an almost comical farce (even pushing to absurd maybe?) about true crime and Nancy Grace-esque "news" programs and whodunit territory. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it...I just wished Flynn had taken a different route.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

I'm still reeling from reading this novel. This isn't so much a review, but more like a collection of my thoughts.

Esch is a female protagonist unlike any other. She's growing up in rural Louisiana surrounded by boys and men. The theme of motherhood is thread throughout the story which starts while China, Skeet's prized pit bull, is giving birth to her first litter. We learn that Esch's mother died giving birth to Junior. Then we learn that Esch is pregnant as Hurricane Katrina swirls around in the background. As the hurricane warnings build, life goes on. I've lived in the Midwest my entire life. You don't go to the basement when you first hear the tornado warnings. The warnings slowly build while you go about your life.

One of my favorite elements of this book is the relationships between the siblings. Skeet, Randall, Junior and Esch stick together. They're loyal. They look out for each other as their Dad is adrift in alcohol and grief. Esch's romantic obsession with the myth of Medea and Jason permeates the story as she becomes obsessed with Manny.

There are several dreamlike scenes: looking for chicken eggs from chickens who roost everywhere but the dilapidated chicken coop, the dog fight involving China and 2 other pit bulls in the eerily silent woods as the sun light filters down while the hurricane winds pick up above, Skeet and Esch's journey through the woods to the white farmer's medicine, Randall and Esch's journey through the woods for supplies.

Violence and tenderness are woven together throughout the story. When Esch watches Skeet skin a squirrel, she thinks of her love for Manny as she watches the pulsating heart. China is a majestic character. She is Medea. Skeet's devotion to China makes Esch crave Manny's attention more.

I'm adding Jesmyn Ward to my list of must read authors. Her storytelling skills are major. She often uses one two many metaphors, but I can adjust to that. I anxiously await her next novel.

Flower Power

I'm on a sugar cookie kick. Everywhere I look I see inspiration for cute sugar cookies. I've been thinking about the '70's lately so of course this obsession lead into my sugar cookie obsession. Robin Gibb, Donna Summers, gone all too soon. This is my small little tribute to all things '70's.

I use Bake at 350's royal icing recipe. It never fails me. As you can see, I really dig a rather wide outline. I made these for a Memorial Day party. I know, mushroom cookies for Memorial Day? How random?

Happy Mother's Day, Moms

Paul and I hosted a Mother's Day brunch for my family which included about 20 guests. Stella and I made this kind of artsy sign. It originally said Mom, but Paul commented that there would be more than one Mom present! So true. And even if you're not technically a mother, we all mother somebody. We used letter stencils from Amy Atlas' Sweet Designs: Bake It, Craft It, Style It (buy this book, trust me, you will LOVE it). We taped the letters to a mirror which isn't the best design choice but it looked kind of cute in person!

My Mom loves lemon so we decided to give her a lemon dessert table including a Vanilla Sixlet Cake with Lemon Custard Buttercream and Vanilla Buttercream, Vanilla Sugar Cookies, Lemon Shooters, and Tangy Lemon Bars. We added lemon drop candies plus a jar of sixlets. Guests were encouraged to take home sixlets, lemon jelly belly beans, lemons, and limes.

The Vanilla Sixlet Cake with Lemon Custard Buttercream and Vanilla Buttercream was dreamy. I used Amy Atlas' Vanilla Butter Cake recipe (p. 11) and vanilla buttercream recipe. I added Trader Joe's Lemon Custard to about one cup of buttercream. I used this for the filling. This cake cuts like wedding cake...perfect slices every time. The texture is sturdy, but delicate and so good. Stella helped by separating the sixlets by color since we were only able to find bags of yellow/green/white. The top looks a little lonely. Mental note: decorate the top next time!

Stella helped me stack the Vanilla Sugar Cookies. I decided to decorate with yellow and green polka dots to mimic the sixlets. Stella really enjoyed placing the cookies on a bed of lemon jelly belly beans.

The Lemon Shooters were the star of the party. Everyone loved the refreshing sweet and tangy flavor. I made the vanilla pastry cream from the recipe for Boston Cream Pie Cake found in BAKED Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented (p. 135-137). I used a pastry bag to add the pastry cream, then a layer of Trader Joe's Lemon Custard, then I topped it with fresh homemade whipped cream. I served them in shooters with adorable little spoons. I wanted to sprinkle with crushed gingersnaps, but decided to pass since I associate gingersnaps with the Fall.

I didn't take pictures of the food (apologies, but I'm a dessert girl!), but we also served bacon/sausage, Roasted Potatoes with Green Peppers, Shutterbean's Baked Artichoke Squares, Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Baked French Toast with Blackberry Butter, fresh fruit, Biscuits and Gravy, and mimosas.

Talking with My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater by Gail Simmons

I absolutely adore Gail Simmons on TopChef and TopChef Just Desserts. She's the only judge who is capable of routinely giving constructive criticism without sounding mean spirited. It's a great life skill. You can tell that she truly cares about food and the chefs who cook it.

I don't read very many biographies, but I devoured this memoir because I wanted to learn how she scored such a great job. Talking With My Mouth Full does not disappoint. I anticipated the TopChef chapters the most, but I discovered that the first chapters are much more illuminating. Perhaps the more recent past needs more time to marinate to develop.

Ms. Simmons sprinkles recipes throughout the book. I cannot wait to try this simple salad (p. 64). I'm waiting for summer when the tomatoes are more in season:

"And every single day for breakfast and dinner, I would eat the same salad. The Israeli kids taught me how to make this kibbutz staple. Dice a tomato and a whole cucumber. Mix them with cottage cheese, salt, and pepper. I also would mix in a little mustard, with a fried or hard-boiled egg."

I recommend this book to anyone obsessed with Gail. She's lived a very interesting life from Canada to New York, from working with Jeffrey Steingarten to TopChef, and she even includes a photo of the menu she used at her wedding! She includes useful infographics like a list of those who work the front of the restaurant and the kitchen (p. 126-7). The sketches are darling. She also lists the 12 courses served in general order (p. 99). Simply amazing.

Books I Crave

Amy Atlas is smart, clever, and oh so crafty. She invented the dessert table phenom that's kind of sweeping the nation. Her blog provides more inspiration in a single post then one girl can handle. I can spend hours sifting through the details on her blog, so you can imagine how excited I am to buy the book! Sweet Designs: Bake It, Craft It, Style It will be published on April 24th...and you know I already pre-ordered a copy. The anticipation is killing me!

SprinkleBakes: Dessert Recipes to Inspire Your Inner Artist is another book that I'm really looking forward to. I like how Heather Baird combines sweets with art. Baking is an art. It takes a certain level of skill to make a dessert look really great.

I. need. these. books.

March Madness Basketball Sugar Cookies

I love the NCAA Tournament. The Kansas Jayhawks are my team. Every year I root for them, and sometimes they win. This is the first time in years that I failed to get my picks entered into the office pool. That's a huge bummer, but these cookies are my excuse. I baked them on Monday and my master plan included outlining and flooding the orange on Tuesday, then adding the lines on Wednesday which would give them plenty of time to dry by Thursday's office party. Unfortunately, I crashed early on Tuesday night. Seriously, I was out by 9:30pm. Chaos ensued. Not really...but kind of.

I decided to pipe the outline for the lines first, then flood with the orange. I thought this would lend them that "puffy" look some baker's manage to attain. The other option would be to pipe the outline, flood it with orange, then add the black lines. I was hoping they would dry in time, but they didn't. Amazingly, even though we're only in mid-March, the weather did not cooperate. It was very humid which really slowed down the drying time. Oh well, they'll make a lovely addition to Friday's office party!

 

Hey, who let the hippie in? I just couldn't resist turning a few of the basketballs into peace signs. The University of Kansas is located in Lawrence, KS. It's like one giant hippie commune which is a hard habit to lose once you're into it.

I need to work on piping, but it really takes a lot of practice. It's getting better, but there's lots of room for improvement. I'm planning on making bunnies and chicks for Easter which will give me more practice opportunies. I think I'll write the kids' names on their cookies. Stay tuned!

This is the very first cookie that I've used black icing for the outline. I used AmeriColor's Super Black, but it still took several squirts to reach this level of black-ness.



Salted Dark Chocolate Lollipops

I really love Sweet Confections by Nina Wanat. The book is stunning to look at. I've spent hours pouring over the lush photos. Making candy is definitely outside my comfort zone. I've made toffee and caramel sauce, but I wanted to try the lollipop molds I bought a few months ago.

I was really nervous around the boiling candy. There are no picutures because I was too freaked out to snap photos. My hands were literally shaking like a leaf while I gently spooned the hot candy into the molds. I could barely sprinkle the sea salt onto the molds. I was still afraid even though I was aware that I needed to be safe and made precautions (a huge bowl of ice water at the ready in the sink) in case I splashed the hot candy on my skin. Don't worry about the chocolate strings on the side of the lollies. They break off really easy.

I made 2 batches which produced 36 lollies. I own 3 lollipop molds with 6 cavities each, but I wish I owned more so that I could have made more lollies. After I filled the 3 molds, the candy was starting to harden. I took a piece of parchment paper and gently picked up the mass of leftover candy. While it was still warm, I molded the chocolate by carefully covering it with the parchment paper and rolling it between my hands which formed a chocolate log. I cut the chocolate into chocolate bits using kitchen shears. Fun!

Stellabration!

Stella turned 3 last month. I don't even want to get into the whole "how did that happen" conversation, so I'm just going to skip to her Stellabration! She wanted her party to be filled with pink butterflies. I added orange so we didn't find ourselves drowning in pink.

Stella requested a butterfly cake, vanilla cupcakes, butterfly cookies, cake pops, and candy. Sadly, I ran out of time which meant something had to give so we'll do cake pops another time. I added rice krispies treats on a stick. Next time I make them I plan to dip them in white chocolate, then wrap in cellophane to make a portable treat. I originally planned to use these mini butterfly cookies as cupcake toppers, but I used them to incorporate color into the rice krispies treat display. I also used them to make a border around the cake.

I love how these butterfly sugar cookies turned out. The pink is really bright. I used sixlets to add texture to the middle.

The butterfly sugar cookies made really cute cookie pops. The kids at the party really loved the cookie pops. I thought it would be kind of tedious to bake the cookies on a stick, but I followed these guidelines from Glorious Treats. It's hard to see, but the small square bowl is filled with butterfly gummies. I filled the large jars with pink Whoppers and tangerine sour balls. Guests were encouraged to fill the "Goodies to Go" bags with as much candy as they wanted!

I included bunting on the cake which spelled out S*T*E*L*L*A! It's kind of hard to see, but I found the bunting here by The TomKat Studio.

Where's the birthday girl? I'm hoping my husband caught better photos, but all I have is this one! Stella requested that she wear her pink "pretty" dress and pink Chuckies. I love my girlie tomboy!

New Year's Resolutions

Okay, so I'm about 8 weeks late on this post. How did THAT happen? Life, it's bigger, it's bigger than you...thank you R.E.M.

I'm a goals type of girl. I like to have something to focus on. In 2008, get married. In 2009, have a baby. In 2010, love that baby. In 2011, play with that baby. In 2012, teach that baby. What's wrong with this picture? Yeah, I need to expand my world. Stella will always be priority #1, but I'm making time for baking and cooking and reading...oh yeah!

I really love that 2012 is an even year. They seem better, right? I can't believe it's already March, but let's make the most of it!

1. Make macarons...the fancy French treat.
2. Learn to make a mean vegetarian paella. I already found the perfect recipe in Gwyneth's My Father's Daughter cookbook.
3. Read Joan Didion's Blue Nights.
4. Learn how to use an X-acto knife.
5. Send someone a Postcard Birthday Poster.
6. Read Colson Whitehead's Zone One.
7. Listen to the Joy the Baker podcast. I'm just now listening to the Christmas edition. It's such a fun, girlie podcast...surely I can listen to it on time!
8. Learn how to sew. That's a giant one, so maybe let's narrow it down to determine if you can sew! Is it fun?
9. Clean house. On a regular basis. Clean it!
10. Cook more often.
11. Buy another work of art that I truly love.

Okay, that's enough for now. I love rounded numbers, so it's taking huge amounts of restraint to stop myself from adding a #12.