Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

Been so busy these past few months.  Quince fruit Had a great time at OLC Expo! Turned 35 and had a wonderful weekend showing off my new city to ChicagoBoy. Work has been crazy busy; my newest hires are doing fantastic, and our patrons love them. Thing 1 and Thing 2 (my code names for my new hires) Jerry Maguire complete us--everyone gets along fine, and already after only 3 months has a comfortable repertoire and great bantering spirit! Going to work is ALWAYS fun these days. About 2 weeks back, Thing 2 gave me some quince , which then promptly moved to my kitchen counter, where they sat and grew more aromatic. Today I noticed that a couple were beginning to spoil, so I Googled until I settled on this Allrecipes recipe for the pie, and decided on using Mark Bittman's Flaky Piecrust recipe from How to Cook Everything. Warning: the Allrecipes recipe takes forever! Quince are extremely hard, and peeling and cutting the fruit was hard work, but this pie smells delicious! C...

This weekend with Chicago Boy was woooooonderrrrrful and so hard to come back to work from--at least this is only a 3 day week, as I have a 4 day weekend in Michigan coming up Friday! Chicago Boy and I: Skillet apple pie. Tasted a lot better than it looks. :) Went to Lou Malnati's for a pizza celebrating his recent birthday I made him my first homemade apple pie. We loved it and gobbled it up in just over a day with copious amounts of ice cream. I had forgotten my pie pan and since he didn't have one I wound up Googling skillet apple pie recipes--basically the spiced apples in a buttered pan with crust only on top. Hands down DELICIOUS.  Had a Lord of the Rings-a-thon all day Saturday. Staying in pjs and air conditioning on a muggy day was fine by me. Grilled dinner on Saturday Swim practice getting cancelled Sunday morning meant more sleep and making breakfast together A PERFECT Sunday--forecasted rain be damned. We had baby blue skies and puffy clouds for my fir...

I recently wrote an email to the owners of a locally owned AMAZING chocolate shop, asking if they would donate to our Library for a program featuring chocolate. I didn't hear back right away, which was good since I hadn't advertised it yet...until I DID HEAR BACK! And then all of a sudden I only had two weeks to promote our chocolate bake off, and that same amount of time to get people signed up and get local "celebrity judges." So, I sent info to our local paper and radio station, and advertised it on Facebook and Twitter, and advertised it on our roadside sign, and you know what? We had 9 people sign up! And judges were secured. And the day of 25 people came to sample the most decadently delicious desserts! And people LOVED it!  I asked if there would be interest in making this a yearly event and the decision was unanimous! And now I am imagining next year's event with double the amount of people...hopefully... And now, before you move onto the pi...

...every other day of the week is for the disasters: cakewrecks Today's cakes are an awesome tribute to books! My favorites are the Go, Dog, Go! and the Very Hungry Caterpillar cakes (maybe I am prejudiced since I LOVE both those books). I also want to eat the bejeezus out of the Berenstain Bear family!

Last weekend I had dinner with B1 & B2 and Jay. I brought the dessert: homemade pumpkin pie. Mmm...right? Wrong. I was so dissapointed; not only was my "fast" crust terrible, but the pie itself was also flavorless. The three other diners were more than gracious. For whatever reason (I think the excess of rain due to Irene and other coastal storms) has left the pumpkins less sweet this year than in years past--my pumpkin, my only one, rotted because of all of the rain! Anyway, I learned my lesson last weekend, so when I offered to bring dessert to a dinner at M & N's this week, I vowed the pies would turn out better. I again returned to Mark Bittman's How to cook everything-- no longer blaming him for last weekend's failure--and decided to try doubling everything in the recipe. The recipe should be called, "How to double everything pumpkin pie," har har. Anyway, I literally doubled everything: the cream and the eggs, doing this made the pies eve...

1. What is your most memorable meal that you ate in your life & why? So many great great meals shared around the dining room table at my parents house.  I am thinking also of a r eally excellent meal that I shared with some friends at this little, wonderful restaurant called Rouge .   2. Why did you started blogging? My friend recommended that I write a blog so that he and some other friends' back in the Mitten could better follow my life at the Farm. It took me two years after that to finally sit down and start blogging, but by this time I was just the Monster Library student. I guess I finally did it because I love writing and I thought it would be fun to cast my voice out into the ocean of the internet and see what came back.   3. What is your favorite restaurant, where & why? The French Laundry . I love that it's in my hometown. I love that I have never had anything that I didn't enjoy. I love that I have eaten there with all my besties at some point or ...

I have very specific cravings these days,  due I guess to the Vegan until 6pm diet. Almost every Tuesday (at work in the Kitchen) I do a baking project for our daily tea snack. My Tuesday baking projects are special to me because I am provided with some (rare) time to myself; no teaching moments, no explaining things, just time to clear my head. Yesterday I was craving that yeasty, rising dough smell; warm, soft goodness--I wanted bread sticks (not Breadstix ). So, I set grabbed Carol Field's The Italian Baker , and set about making Grissini. Ingredients: (Makes about 20 breadsticks) 3 1/2 cups bread flour, plus additional flour for the bread board 1 tablespoon malted syrup-- I used maple syrup 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 3/4 teaspoons instant dry yeast 1 1/4 cups warm water 2 tablespoons olive oil Additional olive oil Here are my bastardized, simplified steps: 1. You can do this part by hand, I did in mixer with bread hook. Mix all ingredients. 2. Pat the kneaded dou...