Food & Books

Two things today.

One.

I have been reading another book since Tina Fey's Bossypants. I really wasn't sure if I could move on after that one, that anything afterwards would be disappointing. Have you read it yet? Tell the person you are supposed to borrow it from to hurry the heck up! Or just splurge and buy it, you know that after a crappy day when you want a mood lifter to read in the bathtub, you will keep coming back to that one.

Okay, anyway, I am reading a different book now. In New York, it was one of my mission's to eat at a restauarnt called Prune. I had read about it in a whole write up in the Edmonton Journal, and because Kenton and I love love love to eat out at good restaurants, this was a place on the list we had to visit.
Well we actually found the place all on our own, and loved it. It was small, a bit squishy in our spot, and delicious. And since we eat at 5pm, we got in without a reservation. By the end of our meal, the place was packed and noisy.

The owner, Gabrielle Hamilton, wrote a memoir called Blood, Bones, and Butter. I bought a signed copy right then and there at the restaurant. It was for the plane ride home. (Which I was so sick from the day before and couldn't stomach reading words on a page that I just watched the King's Speech instead). But I have been reading it since being home, and it is perfect. You can read an excerpt and book reviews on the website. I am not finished yet, but it has been incredibly interesting, and an amazing read so far- her voice throughout the book is perfect and she explains everything about her life in ways that I see all the images she describes easily.
This is definitely a book that will most likely be very different than anything else you read this year! (Unless you read Bossypants...and that is a whole other read altogether!.. as in you may want to buy a package of Poise first.)

Two.

I was just given a copy of Jamie Oliver's newest cookbook, Meals in Minutes from my mom. Kenton and I cook from his last book, Jamie's Food Revolution, on a weekly basis. We also have a bunch of other ones that have all been a bit to high-end cooking for us and maybe a wee bit difficult. So they rarely get opened.
I have flipped through this new one, as he explains that with 4 children of his own  (His girl's names are Poppy, Daisy and Petal! They just had a new baby boy- Buddy Bear Maurice Oliver.), he neeed to make dinner simpler and faster but still good, so that he could spend more time with his kids after dinner and reading stories to them at bedtime. Such is my life these days.

Here is the happy dad!

(www.shropshirestar.com)

But when I opened it up and read through the recipes and looked at the pictures, I was scared. Each page contains around 3 recipes for dinner or lunch- main course, side/salad and dessert. All to be accomplished in about 30 minutes or so. You have got to be kidding me. How is that possible?? In the past, I have spent all my time making one of his recipes for dinner, and basically had no time for anything on the side. No salad, no veggies, nothing. "Here is dinner Kenton, uh...just Beef and Ale stew. And your water glass."

However, the recipes look amazing, and I want to give it a try. I figure I will do one meal, but leave out the dessert part to save my sanity. Maybe I really can get a main dish and a salad out in 30 minutes? Maybe Kenton can too?
Perhaps you are blessed with the gift of not needing a recipe to cook dinner but it comes out delicious and tasty and interesting. Perhaps you are blessed with the gift of not needing a recipe, but it's usually just the same thing each night, plain chicken breast, microwaved corn, potatoes with some sour cream. I am a recipe girl. I need one for almost everything. Kenton is too, uh, not a recipe girl, but a recipe guy. But he is a little more extreme than me. He is the king of, "But Amy, the recipe says you HAVE to use only this much of that!!" And then I have thrown off his whole dinner making groove altogether by changing something.

My favorite night was when I came home from work and he had made J.O.'s Beef and Ale Stew. He had doubled the recipe for lots of leftovers, and when I took a look at it, it was in fact doubled, but also really...pale? I took a taste. It was gross and bland. He took a taste. He was really really disappointed and had no idea what went wrong.
"How much flour did you use?"
"2 cups."
"WHAT??"
"I doubled the recipe!"
"Oh Kenton, it asks for a tablespoon, you only needed two tablespoons."
"Oh no..."
We tossed it. And it's not the first time that it happened- and it's happened to both of us!

On his site, he has video tutorials too...which I will be checking out on a regular basis as we attempt some of these meals at home! I will let you know how it goes, which ones we love, and which ones we don't love so much. With pictures. I hope. I haven't read the best reviews so far, so I stopped reading, and will just see for myself. :)