Meal Plan Monday

Now that the semester has started and I'm teaching college again, I've discovered that I simply can't make as many foods from scratch as I did over the summer. My goal these days is to make big meals once a week so that I can eat easily the rest of the week!

Sunday - I had friends over for brunch after church and made a hash brown potato casserole and an oven omelet. For dinner I cooked up some french toast and we ate leftover has brown casserole with it. I made a HUGE amount of french toast, so I will be eating that for breakfast, and maybe for dinner too this week until I am sick of it.

Monday - Tonight I made enough hamburgers so that I can eat them for dinner for the next couple nights. The meat is from LOCAL, a store near me that sells local, grass fed meats. I basted the hamburgers with teriyaki sauce and ate one on a bun with pineapple rings. Yum! Side dishes were broccoli and baked beans.

Tuesday - leftovers from Monday, eaten quickly before I attend a meeting of the local chapter of the Holistic Moms Network.

Wednesday - more leftovers from Monday.

Thursday - most likely will need to finish up the french toast.

Weekend - I'll be away visiting friends, so they will be feeding me and I'll most likely eat a couple of meals out.

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It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Since the semester started back up, I haven't been reading many books other than those I need to read for class. But now that the semester is halfway over, for some reason I'm reading again. For class I just finished Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. This is a fascinating read, and every time I read it I underline more and more passages. Pretty soon I will have underlined the whole thing!

Most every day I read a small amount of poetry, and right now I'm reading David Wojahn's World Tree. I have to say, this book of poems is so fascinating that I am speeding through it and will probably be finished by the end of the week. The poems are odd and fresh and unusual. I also read a bit of a spiritual book each day, and right now it is Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, by Kathleen Norris. These are short chapters each on a word from the Christian faith, such as "Incarnation," "Salvation," and "Silence."

At the library this week I picked up Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua, because I kept hearing about this book. I was excited that my tiny library had a copy! I don't really have time to read it, but I'm reading it anyway. It's ending up having a lot of connections to my class, since we are talking about education right now, and have spent some time exploring what getting a good education means in other countries/to other cultures. I'm also making my way, very slowly, through a book called Teaching Literature, by Elaine Showalter. I believe I started the book this summer and am still not finished. It's a bit dry, but contains some good teaching ideas.

As I type this up, I'm realizing what an odd conglomeration of books I am reading all at the same time. Click here to participate in "It's Monday, What Are You Reading?"

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Last week I participated in the High Summer Read-a-Thon, and I managed to finish two of the three books I had on my TBR list for that. I finished Deeper Reading, by Kelly Gallagher, and The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, Ben Hewitt. Deeper Reading was full of practical advice and exercises to help students delve deeper into classroom texts. Although it was written with grades 4-12 in mind, I found a lot in the book that I can use in my college classes. The Town That Food Saved was about the local food movement going on in Hardwick, VT. It was an interesting and balanced read. I appreciated how the author simultaneously critiqued and praised the movement.

After finishing those two books I stared The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study. Today, I also started a book called Teaching Literature, by Elaine Showalter.

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TBR Booklist for the Read-a-Thon

Here are the books I'm going to work on next for the High Summer Read-a-Thon.

A Village Life: Poems, Louis Gluck
The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food, Ben Hewitt
Deeper Reading, Kelly Gallagher

And here's a picture of the raspberry jam Lucy and I made this morning!

High Summer Read-a-Thon

Lucy and I are participating in the High Summer Read-a-Thon today, over at The True Book Addict. You can read anytime throughout the week. I've finished one book already this week, and Lucy has finished two. Today we are planning on spending some more concentrated time reading. (We also spent some time this morning picking raspberries from our yard and making jam!)

The book I finished earlier this week is The Feast Nearby, by Robin Mather. I absolutely loved this book! It's about a food journalist who lost her job and moved to her small vacation cabin in Southwestern Michigan (not too far from where I live). She decided to eat local food as much as possible. The book is full of essays about her first year in the cabin, and how she survived on a very limited budget and mostly local foods. There are also a lot of practical tips in the book about how to can, freeze, and preserve food as well as other food tips, and plenty of recipes. I checked this book out from the library, but I want to own a copy of it!

The books Lucy read this week so far are The Dopple Ganger Chronicles Book 1: The First Escape, by G.P. Taylor and My Teacher Glows in the Dark, by Bruce Coville.

Moving Towards Earth Friendly Living

When my first child was born ten years ago, I started to pay more attention to environmental issues because I wondered what kind of world my child would be living in as she grew. And once she started eating solid food, I paid a lot more attention to the ingredients in the food that I bought for her then I had to food ingredients when I was shopping simply for myself. While I'd always enjoyed cooking, I began to cook even more from scratch, and I cut way back on the amount of processed foods that I bought. As I read more about eating naturally, I was pleased that doing so also could have a positive effect on the environment.

While having a child spurred me on to these decisions about food, I think having a mother who loved to cook, and who insisted on family dinners most every night of the week ingrained this sense of healthy eating in me from an early age. Despite working outside of the house for much of my childhood, my mother cooked healthy meals from scratch nearly every night of the week. And frequently in large amounts: My friends often wanted to eat at my house, since their parents didn't do much cooking.

For years I enjoyed making health meals, and I tried to keep my home low on chemicals by buying eco friendly cleaning products. However, my quest for natural living became more intense after I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver, a few years ago. This book is mainly about Kingsolver's decision to eat only local food and food her family produced themselves for one year. I learned so much from this book about nutrition, growing your own food, eating locally, and sustainable living. Kingsolver's experiment has inspired me to slowly but surely add more sustainable living practices into my life. Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to blog about different sustainable living practices I've added into the way I live, as well as some I'd still like to strive for. In the meantime, here are some more books on the topic that I've enjoyed:

Off the Grid, Nick Rosen
Farm Together Now, Amy Franceschini, Daniel Tucker
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, Novella Carpenter
Simple Country Wisdom, Susan Waggoner
A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg
Real Food, Nina Planck
Made from Scratch, Jenna Woginrich

Meal Plan Monday

SUNDAY: On Sunday I took my daughter to see the new Harry Potter movie, and my mom made dinner that night. Steaks and salmon on the grill, a delicious bread salad, and raspberry chocolate cheesecake for dessert.

MONDAY: I have a lot of leftover veggies from the veggie and dip platter I had for my son's birthday party last week. So tonight I sauteed some veggies and peanuts, added in some peanut sauce and served it over linguine. Delicious! I also had an ear of sweet corn on the side. Local sweet corn is amazing here right now.

TUESDAY: Will be having dinner at a friend's house, so I have no idea what she'll be making.

WEDNESDAY: Pasta salad with lots of veggies (hopefully that will use up the rest of the leftover veggies). I'm considering making homemade bread to go with that, but it's so hot this week, I hate to turn on the oven.

THURSDAY: Salmon. I've been obsessed with a particular salmon recipe lately: you mix brown sugar with plenty of salt and pepper, and cook the salmon in that, which forms a glaze. Then served the cooked salmon with a sauce of maple syrup, Dijon mustard, and dill. It's so good, it's like candy! I may attempt a new salmon recipe this time, though. Maybe more veggies on the side with this, and a bag of coconut rice I discovered at Target. Usually I make my own coconut rice, but I will attempt to cheat this time and see how it goes.

FRIDAY: Out to eat with a fellow poet before a reading that we are performing together.

SATURDAY: I'm not sure what I'll eat yet on Saturday.

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