Turtle in Paradise

The year is 1935. Our country is in the middle of the Great Depression. This means that many people were out of work and did not have much money. Turtle's mom gets a job as a housekeeper to an uptight women who doesn't allow children in her home. As a result, Turtle gets sent to live with her Aunt Minnie and menagerie of cousins in Key West, Florida. When she arrives she discovers things are wildly different than she has expected. Besides the fact that nobody wears shoes, she unearths a supposedly dead grandmother and uncovers a long buried pirate treasure. Throw in some hilarious scenes, memorable characters, and a serious adventure and you've got the makings of one terrific novel.

Here are the top three things I absolutely LOVE about this book:
1.) The Character Names.
     Beans, Kermit, Pork Chop, Slow Poke, and Too Bad, to name a few.
2.)  The Diaper Gang
Turtle's entrepreneur cousins belong to the very exclusive Diaper Gang. Yes, they change diapers and swaddle fussy babies in exchange for candy. Hey, times were tough. Candy was a hot commodity.
3.) The History.
You learn a heap about what life was like in Key West in 1935. I was intrigued by all of the references to Little Orphan Annie and Terry and the Pirates. Turtle even meets Key West's most famous writer (Ernest Hemingway, perhaps?) and advises him to write for the funny pages.
4.) Alligator Pears.
You'll have to read to find out what they are!

Little Orphan Annie



Terry and the Pirates

Recipe to Read By:
A True Key West Cut Up
Key West Cut


Here's a picture of the Key West Cut-Up we made in my class. A little sour, a little sweet, a LOT delicious!

Another Historical Fiction Winner

It's no secret that my favorite genre is historical fiction (although I'm really trying to branch out!) and at any given time there is bound to be at least two HF novels on my nightstand stack. This week I traveled back to the turn of the century in Fentress, Texas, to the home of Calpurnia Virginia Tate, or Callie Vee, as her family calls her.

Callie is the only girl out of 7 kids and lives under the watchful eye of her mother, who tries fruitlessly (meaning unsuccessfully) for Callie to learn some "housewife" skills like cookery and tatting. *Note: I researched tatting, and I still don't get the point of it. What are you supposed to do with a doily anyway? That word makes me gag: doily. Blech.

Anyway...Callie wiles away the summer trying to figure out ways to stay cool in the hot summer heat (remember, this is before air-conditioning was invented). She even goes so far as to cut off an inch of hair every week so that her mother doesn't notice. One day, she wanders into her granddaddy's "lab" and falls head over heels into the world of science. Her granddaddy is an avid naturalist and shows Callie how to look very closely at seemingly simple natural objects to find amazing things that you probably have never noticed before.

Before long, Callie and her granddaddy discover a new plant species and send it off to Washington to be officially inspected. Unfortunately for Callie, her mother notices that she is spending way too much time collecting specimens and not enough time practicing her piano and learning how to make apple pie. She sentences Callie to cooking lessons with the house cook, Viola, and you can imagine how unhappy

(from page 225)

An hour later, I stood panting and thrashing around with my third bowl of dough, with Mother and Viola growing more incredulous by the minute. The first batch had been watery and lumpy; the second so dense I couldn't roll it out with the pin; the last had turned sticky as wallpaper paste and with the same unappealing consistency. It was all over my hands and pinafore, smeared across the counter and the pump handle, and there were streaks of it in my hair. I think there was even a glob on the fly paper hanging from the ceiling several feet above my head, but how it got there, I had no idea.

Will Callie be able to grow up and attend the university and become a scientist as she dreams? Or is she sentenced to a lifetime of housewife chores? I'm not going to tell you, people! Go grab this one from the library--you'll not only adore Callie, but you'll feel mighty grateful that we have the freedoms (and technology!) that we have today.

Recipe to Read By: Callie's Old Fashioned Apple Pie

Although Callie had the unfortunate experience of making her pie crust from scratch, we can throw our hands up and praise the inventors of refrigerated pie dough. THANK YOU INVENTORS OF REFRIGERATED PIE DOUGH!

Instead of slaving away the day with a rolling pin, this delicious dessert is as easy as, well you know...

Ingredients

2 refrigerated pie crusts
1 egg white
8 large Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and thinly-sliced
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Unfold one of the pie crusts into a 9-inch pie plate. Brush with egg white (this prevents the crust from getting soggy). Let the egg white dry while you prepare the filling.
3. Toss apples with remaining ingredients. Pile into prepared crust.
4. Unfold the second prepared pie crust over the apples, tucking the extra under the bottom crust. Now pinch the edges with your fingers. (This is called crimping.)
5. Cut 3-4 slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape and to make it look fancy-schmancy.

Cover the pie loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil.
6. Bake 10 minutes. Remove the foil, lower the temperature to 375 degrees F., and bake another 30-40 minutes.

Recipe courtesy of: About.com Cooking With Kids

This Means War!

I love summer. I love staying outside until almost 9:00 when the last of the sun disappears, I love hot, sweaty days at the beach, and I love a glass of ice cold lemonade after spending time in the July heat. When I was a kid, my brother and and I would set up a lemonade stand in front of our house and charge a dime per cup. Back then, that was a lot of money and we would use our profits to buy a new Nintendo game. (No, not a Nintendo Wii--the original Nintendo. Yes, I'm that old.) We didn't tell anyone that it wasn't really lemonade, but Crystal Light. It was much easier not to deal with all that sugar and lemon-squeezing business. Plus, that's what my mom kept in the pantry. Ahh, childhood...

Now that you know how big of a lemonade (or lemon-flavored Crystal Light) fan I am, it will come as no surprise that I picked up The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies.

The two main characters, Evan and Jessie, are brother and sister, each with a problem. Evan is going into fourth grade and can't think of anything worse than having his baby sister in the same class next year (Jessie skipped a grade). Jessie, who loves math and numbers, doesn't even realize Evan is upset, until he starts a lemonade stand with his friend and doesn't include her. To show him up, Jessie gets Megan Moriarity (Evan's crush) to help her build a lemonade stand, with a fancy sign and free snacks. Before long, the two of them realize that they are lemonade competitors and declare war. The first sibling to earn $100 is the winner (or whoever earns the most money by Sunday), and the loser has to hand over whatever earnings he/she made to the winner.

Jessie and Evan will do anything it takes to win the war, including giving away freebies, lowering prices, franchising (opening up more businesses), and sabotaging each others' stands. The results are pretty funny and will have you rooting for either Jessie or Evan to win the war.

The book also includes Ten Tips for Turning Lemons into Loot written by Jessie and Evan and gives the definition for lots of business terms, such as joint venture, underselling, negotiation, and total loss. ***DO NOT have a lemonade stand this summer without reading this book! It could be the difference between making enough money to buy a game for your Wii or making enough money to buy a Wii!

Recipe to Read By: Zesty Lemon Squares

You don't have to squeeze any lemons for this recipe, although if you really like juicing lemons go right ahead. (Just be careful not to squeeze any lemon juice in your eye--that burns like a banshee and will ruin the whole baking experience.)

Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks of butter, softened
1/2 cup of confectioners' sugar

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons lemon zest (I looove zesting lemons. They look so funny when you're done, like they're naked. Hehe.)

2 tablespoons sugar

Directions
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and the confectioners' sugar.
Mix the flour and the salt together in another bowl, then add this to the butter mixture.
Add in the vanilla and the lemon zest and mix well.
Gather up the dough into a ball and wrap it in wax paper. Put the wrapped ball in the refrigerator for four hours. (Or one hour, if you're really impatient like me.)
Take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit while the oven is preheating. (Turn the oven on to 325° F.)
Press the dough into an 8-inch-square pan. Sprinkle it with the sugar.
Bake about 20 minutes, just until the edges of the dough start to turn a light brown.
Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool.
Cut into 2 x 2-inch squares.

Serve with lemon-flavored Crystal Light to balance all of that sugar.

*Recipe courtesy of http://www.lemonadewar.com/

The Winter Room

Let's establish an important fact from the start: I despise the cold. Loathe the cold. Abhor the cold. Disdain the cold. Okay, you get it; the cold and I do not share a mutual understanding. As soon as the thermostat dips below 70 you will find me wearing flannel, drinking hot chocolate, and flat-out refusing to step outdoors. Yes, I'm well aware of the names you are calling me right now (sissy, pansy, weirdo, etc.) but I don't care. I'm a cold wimp and I'm proud of it.

Now, you're probably wondering why, if I'm so prone to red noses and frozen snot, that I would choose to read a book with the word "winter" in the title. Here's my answer: I like the idea of winter. Snuggling up with a warm blanket, smoke rising in the chimney, sleigh rides through a fresh coat of snow, big pots of steaming hot soup, that sort of thing. I just don't like winter itself. Does that make sense? Bah. Didn't think so.

Gary Paulson's The Winter Room isn't just about winter, although the winter plays more than a supporting role. It's about spring, summer, and fall, too, and how each season is both celebrated and scorned by a Minnesota farming family. Although the exact date was not printed, Paulson writes about a time in the past where families churned their own butter, plowed their fields with a team of horses, and did not rely on electricity for light or warmth. The story is narrated by eleven-year-old Eldon, who lives with his mother, father, brother, and two great-uncles, and depicts the daily routine of his family's life on the farm. Beginning in the spring, Eldon describes in great detail his malodorous chores (piling manure and milking cows, ugh) and farm activities with his brother, Wayne. One particular amusing scene comes to mind when Wayne (having read his fair share of Black Ranger Westerns) attempts to jump from the hayloft and land on one of the horses.

I'm not sure how he figured the drop from the hayloft to Stacker. I
know that when Jed did it in the book he jumped out of the window and landed
perfectly in the saddle and rode away just as clean and as nice as you could
hope for and not a rustler knew he was leaving. It didn't work out that way for
Wayne...

The book gracefully transitions from spring to summer to fall and finally to it's namesake: winter. Winter on the farm brings layers of snow and a new set of chores, but the early night fall leads to a family gathering in the winter room where Uncle David tells stories about the "old country." Each of the four sections of the book are so beautifully written that I frequently lost all recognition of my location and surroundings. While reading the "Winter," I happily floated away to a warm spot in front of a roasting fire, sitting next to Wayne, and leaning in listening eagerly to every word of Uncle David's stories. My reverie was unfortunately dashed as soon as my cell phone rang, bringing me quickly back to the modern comforts of my Florida living room where it was a balmy 79 degrees outside.

The writing is that good. In fact, it's so good that I may give winter a second chance.

But only until November rolls around again...

*Disclaimer: This book is not recommended for the squeamish type. If you are a vegetarian, cry when passing roadkill, or still get teary-eyed after reading Stone Fox for the bazillionth time, then this book may not be for you.

Recipe to Read By: Baked Apples

When the thermostat reads something unbearably cold (read: 75 degrees or below) pull out the last of the fall apples and bake something so simple and delicious that you'll forget your nose is running.

INGREDIENTS
4 apples
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Scoop out the core from top of the apple, leaving a well. (Ask a parent to help you with this--it's not as easy as it looks!)

Do not cut all the way through. Stuff each apple with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1 tablespoon butter. Place in a shallow baking dish and sprinkle with cinnamon.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, until sugar begins to caramelize and apples are tender.

Try adding raisins, unwrapped caramels, or chocolate chips--the variations are endless!

(Hint for the lazy: You can always throw your apple in the microwave to cook, but you won't get that I'm-surviving-a-blistery-cold-winter-without-modern-conveniences feel. But it's your call.)