Daily Archives: February 26, 2007

Books, Food and Drink, Household

Cookbook Open Thread

11 Comments

What is your favorite cookbook? Especially in regard to making regular old weekday family dinners?

I like the Leanne Ely books—Saving Dinner, Healthy Foods, and Frantic Family Cookbook—although I’ve never been able to make the Saving Dinner plan work for us on a regular basis. Picky, picky children here. And hubby doesn’t eat beef or most kinds of cheese.

As long as we’re talking recipes, what are your favorite cooking and meal-planning websites? I had a good time playing around at the interactive Robin Miller’s Quick Fix Meals toy at Food Network, but there aren’t many recipes there; you have to click over here to find the archives.

This week’s edition of Carnival of the Recipes is all about slow-cooker meals, hosted by (appropriately enough) the Slow Cooker Recipes blog. I love my crock pot. Speaking of which, I have half a roasted chicken in the fridge awaiting crock-pottish inspiration…I’m envisioning some kind of chili-chicken-corn chowder, but I don’t have a recipe. Winging it in the kitchen is not my special gift, let me tell you! Time to cozy up to my pal Google…

UPDATED: Found this and this. This one looks tasty. This one too, but Rilla can’t tolerate my having cream. (Wah.) Still, between them all I think I can come up with something.

UPDATED AGAIN to add the Loveliness of Baking fair. Yum!

Family, Geography

Letters from Thailand: the Third

Feb. 12, 2007
Bangkok

Dear Beanie,

Thailand is called "The Land of Smiling Faces." You, my sweetie, would fit in here rather nicely. People do seem happy here. Maybe because the sun is always shining. It shines so hard many people use umbrellas to keep in the shade.

One thing I’ve enjoyed seeing is the folk dancing. The Thai dancers wear beautiful long dresses in vivid red and gold colors. Their head dresses look heavy. They are very graceful and it’s beautiful to watch.

There are many places to shop for food in Thailand, but my favorite has been the Floating Market. This market is not in a store, but it’s on the river! Shop keepers load up long wooden boats with fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers, & seafood. As they float downstream they can stop and sell their goods. You can sit on the river bank and watch everything you need for a delicious dinner float by! I wish you could be with me on that river bank.

Love,
Keri