Gardening!

Yesterday I ran into three people working on the flowerbeds in front of our building. I had always wondered who did the planting, and it turns out it is a group of volunteers. So this morning, I helped plant bulbs in the flowerbeds in front of my building... and worked on another flowerbed up on Broadway.

All that digging is hard work! And it gave me a newly heightened dislike of people who let their dogs poop in flowerbeds. Who does that?! But I can definitely see the attraction of gardening. You get to see some results right away--I felt like the areas we worked on looked better when we are done. Just removing trash is a big deal. And also, you know that, come spring, there will be beautiful flowers! So I hope to be an active volunteer in the 137th street beautification project. We're also going to try to get a garden plot in the community garden at Riverbank State Park (fingers crossed).

Here is a picture of us digging today. If anybody is interested, I'm posting links to the facebook group and a description of the group on a donation website called ioby.

Any of you gardeners have a suggestion for the two beds in front of our building? Or for a smallish plot in a community garden? Any gardening advice for a brand new gardener?

-Kristin

Read More: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I decided to give another bookfair pick a go, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. A few years back I read Everything is Illuminated and really loved that, so I was sure this one couldn't be nearly as good. But it was! After reading the first page I already knew it would be getting a five star (out of five star) rating from me.

The story is about a little boy who loses his father in 9/11. Two years later he is in his father's closet and breaks a vase that contains a key in an envelope labeled 'Black'. So he goes through the phone book, attempting to visit every person with the last name Black in order to solve the mystery of the key. Along the way he meets many interesting people and forms new relationships.

Like Everything is Illuminated, it was a humorous read, but this one was also incredibly heartbreaking at the same time. I never really give 9/11 much thought, maybe because I wasn't here at the time. And I had to go to work so I didn't watch the news coverage at the time. But this book makes you look at how the families of the victims were affected. (Not in a sappy way). And if that weren't a sad enough story line, you also learn about all sorts of other people and their sad, lonely stories (non 9/11 related). Luckily Foer knows exactly how to pepper in humor and adventure and mystery to make this a really super read.

I'm so happy this was the book I ended my 2011 with!

- Megan Leigh

One Hour Runner: More Than Half Way Done!

Yesterday I ran week 6, day 1 of the one hour runner program, which means I'm more than half way done with the program. Disappointingly, my longest run has only been thirty-eight minutes. The time picks up in the second half of the program. Still, I've been hanging in there, even in the cold weather! This week I will finally run for longer than 40 minutes, which will be exciting. I may run slow, but at least I'm running. 2011 was a great year in that I proved to myself that I could do something that I never really thought I could do.

-Kristin

Good Food: Ravioli from Scratch

 We finally tried out our new pasta machine! We used the pasta recipe from the Williams Sonoma pasta cookbook, and the creamed ricotta, herb, and pinenut ravioli filling from Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef Takes Off. Ben was the one who actually made the ravioli. I thought it would take hours of toiling, but it really didn't take all that long! I was skeptical of the filling. I chose it because everybody could eat it (no meat), but how many bland cheese ravioli have you had in your life? I have had plenty. I thought they turned out spectacular though. Ben topped them with olive oil, parmesan, and toasted pinenuts... and this delicate topping really allowed the filling to shine. Delicious!

-Kristin

Recipe in Progress: Monkey Bread

For Christmas breakfast, we decided to make monkey bread. I had never had monkey bread before, so I was pretty excited. AND mom had just sent up a special bundt pan, expressly so we could make monkey bread. The world was our oyster!

I used the recipe from the Pioneer Woman website.

I am sorry to say that many disasters befell my monkey bread. First, the bundt pan I had was a two-piecer. You could lift out the middle part, which I guess is a nice feature if you are making a bundt cake. But for the monkey bread, you pour on this buttery, sugary glaze... And it dripped right out of the bottom! Ten minutes after I had put it in the oven, I smelled something strange. And about two sticks worth of buttery sauce was all over the bottom of my oven! After I had cleaned up the mess (or actually, after Ben cleaned up the mess), I stuck the monkey bread bundt pan inside of another cake pan, so there would be no more leaks. Which was good, because pretty much all of the remaining butter glaze leaked out during the rest of the cooking time.

So after forty-five minutes, the top of the monkey bread looked nice and golden and hard. Time to take it out. But the monkey breads at the bottom were still doughy and semi-raw. WHY? Also, my monkey bread was like four times as tall as the one in the Pioneer Woman picture. And my tubes of biscuit dough looked much fatter to me. Did I get the wrong kind of biscuit tubes? They were the only kind I saw!

So anyway, many disasters. But I actually really enjoyed the monkey bread anyway. I will continue trying to get it right. But you know what? I don't think I want all that buttery glaze that leaked out! Just the biscuits dipped in cinnamon and sugar would probably be A-OK for me. So next time I make this recipe I might put in less glaze.

-Kristin

Read More: The Radleys

At the Goddard Book Fair I picked up a copy of The Radleys by Matt Haig. One of the volunteers in the fiction section was lamenting that a couple of books she thought were really good weren't selling. I asked her which ones and decided to give this one a try. There's a reason it wasn't selling. It's because it was awful!

It's a book about suburban vampires who abstain from drinking blood, trying to have a normal life. The idea was fine, but the writing was so awful! I thought maybe if it had been written for young adults it would have been excusable, but it wasn't. This was written for adults. Adult nincompoops. Both reviews on the back of the book refer to the book as witty. I'm pretty sure this book contained not one fluid ounce of wit.

Anyway. I could go on about how the surprising twists and turns this book promised me could be seen coming a mile away. Or how even trying to read this with a British accent (this is an English novel) couldn't save the dialogue. It made me wish I had caved and read Twilight instead (and that's saying a lot seeing as that would be the ultimate betrayal to myself).

- Megan Leigh

Christmas Eve One New Thing: Gingerbread House

We have never made a gingerbread house before. Elliot and I saw a kit at Michael's and decided this would be the year. It came with the gingerbread pieces, the icing, and the candy... you basically just assemble the house with the icing and decorate. Ben and Elliot were the ones who actually ended up making the little house. It looked fun! And now we have another Christmas-y decoration.

-Kristin