The Raw and The Cooked - Simple Rhythms for SAHM, Honest Motherhood, and Books Worth Reading

Reading books aloud to children stimulates their imagination and expands their understanding of the world. It helps them develop language and listening skills and prepares them to understand the written word, none of this is a surprise. Here is a list of our tried and true favorites!

• Julia Donaldson: The Grufflo and Room on the Broom
• Eric Carle: Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See and The Very Hungry Caterpillar 
• William Stieg: Shrek, Dr. De Soto, and Amos & Boris
• Corduroy
• Little Gorilla
• Dinner at the Panda Palace
• Clap Your Hands
• Just Like My Brother
• Road builders
• Play with me
• Cordroy’s Shapes
• Squeak
• Where is your nose?
• Shhh Bears Sleeping
• The Rabbit Listened
• Red house tree house little bitty brown mouse
• There’s a hole in the log on the bottom of the lake
• One Leaf, Two Leaves Count with Me
• Let’s count Arizona
• Scotland 123
• Monsters Love Underpants
• Under the Sea Search and Find
• The Gas We Pass 
• Good Night Cowboy
• Good Night Moon
• Good Night St. Louis
• Good Night, Buenas Noches
• Good morning Yoga
• The Good Egg
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If you Give a Cat a Cupcake
• The Frog and Toad Series
• Oscar Otter
• Side by Side and Dad by My Side
• Dr. Suess: Green Eggs & Ham, the Cat in the Hat, 10 Apples Up on Top, Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb, and Go Dog Go
• Richard Scary’s Best Word Book Ever and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go 
• Big Franks Fire Truck
• Lift the Flap Books we love include: Dear Zoo, Where’s Spot, 100 First Words, and Where’s the Unicorn
• Our Sandra Boynton Collection: Doggies, Blue Hat Green Hat, A to Z, Spookie Pookie, and The Going to Bed Book
• Baby Duck (Finger Puppet Book)
• I Love Classical Music
• The entire Raffi collection, including: Baby Beluga, Five Little Ducks, Down by the Bay, Shake My Sillies Out, and Wheels on the Bus
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Thomas the Engines A crack in the track
• The I Spy Series
• The Quiet Book
• Happiness is a Warm Puppy
• Most of the Little Owl Collection, including: Little Owl’s Night, Little Owl’s Day,  Little Owl’s Numbers, and Little Owls Colors
• I Spy on the Farm
• Bats at the Beach
• Who Moved My Gooey Butter Cake?
• The Curious George Series
• And lastly, this isn’t a book you can buy but rather a book you can make, a family photo album. My toddler loves flipping through it! I use Mixbook

Also...our new beloved Quiet Time Timer
And of course, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, an excellent parent resource for babies and toddlers!

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Yes, a minimized kitchen utensil collection and good cooking can co-exisit together. You really don’t need ALL THE THINGS to make excellent home cooked meals.

So, I have a homework assignment for you, it'll only take 10 minutes: collect ALL your tools and gadgets, go through them and seriously consider how often you use something before deciding to keep it and put it back in your drawer, or wherever it lives. 

It’s pretty rare you’ll ever be in a meal prep situation where you need more than two sets of anything (tongs, whisks, spatulas, etc.) As for all these duplicates I know we all have… you have two options: 1. If it’s broken, trash it immediately, and 2. If it’s still functional and in decent condition, donate it. 

I want you to only keep the tools you actually use. Group and organize them in whatever way works and makes sense for you and your flow. Everyone’s kitchen is set up differently, so really think about how you prep, where you prep, and is there a space you move and shift things around so it flows better? 

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The cost of being a bookworm can add up very, very quickly, especially if you’re flying through four, five, or even six books per month — $18 here, $25 there, and next thing you know you’ve spent several hundred dollars in a mere few months, this lifestyle is expensive! 

Here are some cost-effective ways to help you save money:

1. BOOK-SWAP

I’m starting off with my favorite method of saving money: book-swapping! This works beautifully with friends, family, and co-workers. Even if you don’t have exactly the same taste in books, it’ll broaden your horizons to read outside your comfort zone. 

2. THE LIBRARY / OVERDRIVE / LIBBY

This may be super obvious, but the library is a resource that a lot of people don’t take advantage of. Libraries have everything you could ever ask for, and yes, that includes new releases and NYT best-sellers. 

3. NETGALLEY

NetGalley is also a free resource for newer books that generally haven’t been released to the public yet. It’s sort of a testing ground for authors.

4. PAPERBACK SWAP

This is an online book swap and the coolest concept ever. It’s also pretty easy. You create an account, list books you’d like to swap with another member. Once someone requests it, you mail it to them. In return you get a ‘credit’ which you can use for any of their 1+ million available books. You do have to pay for postage for books you mail — but hey, that’s less than $4! 

5. BUY PREOWNED

I almost exclusively go for this option when I buy from Amazon. It can save you anywhere from $10-$15 and honestly, why not? You can also find tons of secondhand book stores near you. Or Half Price Books is a great online option!

6. LITTLE FREE LIBRARY

Alright, so this is totally, totally, totally hit or miss but I’ve found some little nuggets of gold in these Little Free Library’s before! 

7. GOODREADS DEAL OF THE DAY

Almost daily GR offers daily eBook deals. I don’t search it often, but every now and again I’ll come across books that are on my To-Read list, and it’s a major HECK YES! Books are listed for as low as $1.99!

8. OTHER FREE EBOOKS

Did you know that Amazon and Barnes & Noble both have free eBook collections? I’m not saying this is the worlds best collection of books, but hey, if you’re super bored — maybe give it a go?

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Having an efficiently run and organized refrigerator makes meal planning, generating grocery lists, and daily life function much smoother. Ensuring your fridge is stocked with the essentials (listed below) will allow you to whip up almost anything with no notice whatsoever. Buy what works for you and your family. Here's my list of key ingredients to always have on hand in the fridge:

1. unsalted butter
2. tomato paste
3. garlic 
4. a jar of capers
5. vegetable (and / or chicken) broth
6. fresh herbs (such as parsley, thyme, rosemary, cilantro, basil, etc.)
7. whole milk
8. heavy cream
9. white cooking wine
10. lemons & limes
11. ginger
12. avocados
13. onions
14. shallots
15. eggs
16. parmesan cheese
17. carrots
18. celery
19. maple syrup
20. greek yogurt
21. tahini
22. mayonaise 
23. dijion mustard
24. kalamata olives

I hope today's episode gives you a sense of how I meal plan, prep, and rotate throughout the week. I also encourage you to go back and listen to episode two, which is all about creating a sustainable meal plan, if you haven’t already listened. 

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It's definitely a thing.  Loving an authors debut novel, and then picking up a copy of their newest release thinking it’ll have the same magic, and getting extremely disappointed by said second book. And it doesn’t have to be an authors second book per se, but rather the subsequent book that follow a really, really successful one. 

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Making your own tomato sauce is much easier than you think. All you need is a 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes, a yellow onion small diced, and a few cloves of garlic run through a garlic press. And a bay leaf, if you want to get cute. You can jazz it up from there, adding in whatever additional spices you want — thyme, oregano, basil. Whatever! Bring your sauce to a boil and allow it to simmer for 15-20 minutes and boom! Homemade tomato sauce with only a handful of ingredients no added sugar, no added preservatives, the perfect amount of salt.

That’s the basic foundation of a homemade tomato sauce. The three sauces I’m teaching my students this week are building off of that, more or less.

spaghetti allaa putenesca
better than your grandmas bolognese
pops vodka sauce

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It all started back in 1990, when the term Beach Read was coined. It was created as a marketing tool for publishers, referring to blockbusters published in the summer. And it stuck. Thirty plus years later, it’s impossible to not see the term Beach Read on every website and magazine. Welp, here are my Beach Read recommendations for you and your summer travels: 

1. The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
2. Beach Read by Emily Henry
3. One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London
4. Red White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston
5. Less by Andrew Sean Greer
6. Happy & You Know It by Laura Hankin
7. Friends and Strangers by Courtney J. Sulivan 
8. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
9. The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy
10. A Good Marriage by  Kimberly McCreight
11. The Sundown Motel by Simone St. James
12. Verity by Colleen Hoover
13. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
14. Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson
15. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

And the two kindle books I packed with me for my weekend trip: 

1. One Last Stop by Casey McQuinston
2. The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Verdict is still out on both of them -- review soon!

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Pan sauces are seriously the best thing ever. They’re made with just a handful of ingredients, can be completed in less than 10 minutes, and it gives your meat life. Also, the variety and combinations are limitless. You just need fat, aromatics, herbs, acid, and another liquid -- all can be swapped out to whatever you'd like!

Here are my top three favorites pan sauces to jazz up my meat:

1. Rosemary mushroom cream sauce. 
Butter, quartered mushrooms, shallots, garlic, 1 part broth, 1 part heavy cream, minced rosemary, fresh from the sprig. It's earthy, nutty, creamy perfect. 

2. Piccata sauce.
Oil, shallots, garlic. 1 part fresh lemon juice, 3 part broth, capers, reduced, and off heat butter is added, so much butter, fresh parsley minced and stirred in at the very end.

3. Tomato-thyme sauce.
Oil, shallots, garlic, tomato paste, 1 part broth 1 part white wine, or balsamic — depends on whats in my fridge. Sometimes I throw in cherry tomatoes, sometimes its mushrooms. Always a sprig or two of thyme. Once reduced, and off heat I add in lemon juice, butter, sprigs of thyme removed and add in fresh minced parsley.

America's Test Kitchen: Wooden Spoon Review and the wooden spoon winner!

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This year, I challenged myself to read 60 books. We're officially halfway through the year, and I seem to be on track, I’ve finished 31 books! So, I'm recapping the top 10 so far, and of course, plan to tear into the books I couldn’t stand — only seven of those
 
FAVORITE 10 of 2021 (so far)

1. White Ivy by Susie Yang
2. This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousins
3. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russel 
4. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 
5. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
6. Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowtiz
7. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrel 
8. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
9. How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
10. Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

THE DISAPPOINTING 7 of 2021 (so far)

1. The Lost Girls of Devon by Barbara O’Neal
2. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman  
3. The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins
4. There, There by Tommy Orange
5. The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
6. The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri
7. Salt to the Sea Ruta Sepetys

How are you doing on your annual reading challenge? 

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four little things you can do that'll have a big impact for boosting joy and will make you actually want to cook dinner. because a smoothly run kitchen is KEY for success. 

1. the clean up after every single meal 
   1. mainly the dishes, but also any food / tools / equipment that needs to get put away
   2. the sweep! anything that doesn't belong in your kitchen needs to get out of the kitchen. our kitchen counters are magnets for clutter, stay on top of it after every meal.
2. kitchen drawers and cabinets 
   1. declutter!  get rid of anything that is broken, missing parts, you never use, a duplicate, or isn't as functional as you'd like. 
   2. reorganization! once your drawers and cabinets are decluttered (pace yourself with this!) begin rearranging and moving things around so you have a good flow. items that are rarely used shouldn't sit in a prime spot. items that are used daily should be easy to access!
3. have a MEAL  PLAN! oh my god this will make your life so much easier. refer back to episode 2 if you don't know where to start ;-)
4. the pantry
   1. declutter! get rid of anything you don't like, use, or is expired
   2. simplify and organize! take note what you use regularly and bulk up. i also suggest decanting items in clear containers. 

working on these four steps will provide you with a beautifully organized and smoothly run kitchen, which will hopefully keep the chaos at bay. I'm a big believer that before any actual cooking can get done, your kitchen needs to be functional. 

find your local food bank: feeding america and loaves and fishes (local to STL)

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