August 5, 2023

WEEKLY MENU 08.06.23

National Book Lovers Day falls on Wednesday during the Weekly Menu 08.06.23: time to peruse some tomes!

Every Weekly Menu is impacted by my love of cookbooks, and the Weekly Menu 08.06.23 is no exception. I am an avid reader – when I saw that Wednesday, August 9th was National Book Lovers Day, I knew we had to pay homage to one of my most favorite things.

Books!

According to Wikipedia:

A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover.^[1]
Wikipedia

And to that I say, not anymore. I am a voracious reader of a certain age, so my book reading began as a non-digital experience. But it hasn’t stayed that way.

Back (way back) in the day, I’d head downtown after school to Woolworths, which was across the street from where I caught the bus. (I was in 6th grade.) Harlequin Romances were my crack – and the day I found a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk was taken as an omen that I should fill the house with them, much to my Mother’s chagrin. When I started reading Harlequins, they cost $.60, brand new.

I had oodles of physical books. Eventually I graduated to Harlequin Presents, and they did not disappoint. In addition to feeding an obsession with a happily-ever-after, they provided me with a strong basis for the verbal portion of the SAT. My vocabulary scored big. I not only knew what sardonic meant, I could use it in a sentence.

One semester when I was away at school, my Mom threw away an entire garbage bag of books. Literally. I was horrified, and have not fully recovered. You know, dear reader, that was more than a few years ago.

Eventually, I branched out~

The books I enjoy the most fall into a few main categories. Romance/Paranormal (witches rock and vampire novels don’t suck, teehee), Cozy Mysteries (especially the ones that include food somehow), Travel Guides, Biographies and Cookbooks. Ah the cookbooks. I have quite a collection. And I held onto them, even when I went through my Marie Condo stage and tried to purge as much clutter as I could. Honestly, most of my books made the cut. Mom was Marie Condoing before Marie was born.

But then, I discovered Kindle. These e-readers changed my life. (Affiliate Links precede and follow. See Disclaimer Page for Details.) I started with a Paperwhite version – the most “book-like” of the bunch. I eventually got jealous of the boysies and all their digital capabilities, and upgraded to a Kindle Fire (pretty similar to an Ipad) and replaced that Kindle Fire with a slightly smaller version when I shattered the screen one Friday night on the back patio.

The trauma!!

I never thought I would be swayed from physical books, but I adore my Kindle. No one knows what I’m reading. If I change my mind and decide I don’t want to read what’s open on the e-reader, no harm, no foul, I just open up a different book. You can even borrow library books on it. And I can play games. Solitaire and Word Search are awesome and free.

And then Amazon introduced me to Kindle Unlimited. Click here to get into that goodness:

For those readers like me (according to Goodreads, I’ve read 141 books so far this year, and they’re a little concerned, because my totals are down), KU is a game changer. Not all books are available in Kindle Unlimited, but if they are, you can read them and return them (kind of like a library that you pay a monthly fee for) as often as you want. Plus magazines. Currently, I subscribe to Taste of Home and AllRecipes for no additional fee as a KU subscriber.

And there are KU cookbooks!

I just read Nigella Lawson’s newest cookbook Cook, Eat, Repeat (which reads like a novel) and enjoyed every second of it. Then I returned it. Marie Kondo would be so proud.

Weekly Menu 08.06.23

How do books (and magazines) work into our Weekly Menu 08.06.23? I like to try at least one new-to-us recipe each week. This week it’s the Berries with Spiced Cream from Giada/Food Network Magazine (I get that one the old fashioned way, via US Mail.) We’re also trying a Taste of Home recipe for spiced up Ritz crackers to go with the fresh corn chowder.

We’re eating kind of healthy on to start the Weekly Menu 08.06.23 with a grilled chicken salad. We ARE blowing it a little bit with the Corn Bread Croutons and Cheddar Cheese Dressing. We’ll utilize a wee bit of moderation to make things even out. The Cheddar Cheese Dressing is a great alternative to Blue Cheese Dressing, especially for those littles that don’t like the strong taste (and slightly murky backstory) of traditional Blue Cheese Dressing.

On Friday we’re making Corn Chowder with fresh corn on the cob – because we make the most of corn when it’s in season around here. A week or so ago Bert made COTC on the Blackstone! ‘Twas fabulous.