Sunday Happenings

Today was a bit of a lazy day. With the cold weather and snow we've been having, I'm finding myself cold, even indoors and not up to doing a whole lot.  I'm only just over my cold but not back to normal routines and I have a busy week ahead.

I did some relaxing and a little laundry, tried to read my book, The Girl With a Pearl Earring and watched the Oscars with one eye though I missed all the key award presentations, lol. I got busy making a lentil concoction and some bread for dinner, as well as some blueberry muffins for breakfast.

This pot is filled with about 3 cups of lentils and twice the water and some sea salt.  Once this mixture boiled and the lentils were softening, I  added: one peeled and chopped sweet potato, several leaves of chopped kale, 6 chopped roma tomatoes, one half of a large red onion (chopped) and a big spoon of aged miso (probably about 4 tbsp.) for flavouring.  I cooked this all down until the water was all evaporated and the lentils were nice and soft.  This dish was accompanied by a ground beef/red onion and soy sauce dish, a side of brown rice and some bannock bread.  This was all very tasty and filling and hit the spot on a cold day. For a change there are lots of leftover lentils and rice to eat through the week. I've also frozen some lentils.

I also made these jumbo blueberry muffins for breakfast.  I guess blueberries count as being blue ;-) I've made these before and you can find the recipe here.  Sorry there is no longer a photo on the original post. It used to be on my hard drive but that was several computers ago!

I started another cleanse. I liked the one I tried in January.  Read about it here.  But I felt I needed a slightly longer cleanse and this one is for 30 days. This will spur me on to eat better also.

I hope you enjoyed your weekend and wish you a wonderful week ahead!

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Book Swap Opportunity

Since September I have been having a struggle with my health more so than usual. I haven't been able to do much of anything so when I am up to it I've been catching up on some long overdue reading. The books I'm reading are those I've had on my shelves for awhile.

The three books in the photo below are some of my more recent reads:
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton, and
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.

Each of these books is well written. I'll try not to give too much away in my brief review of the books.

The Prodigal Summer is a surprisingly satisfactory book all around. I unexpectedly found myself laughing out loud at various points in the book. A welcome relief in a book filled with serious subject matter.

A Map of the World was a tad depressing and had I known of the subject matter, alleged child abuse against a school nurse, I might have saved the book to read another day. As it was, I found the book well written. This carried me through to the end though I really wish there had been more levity in the book to compensate for the grief and anguish felt by several of the book's characters.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter deals with a heavy subject matter. A doctor ends up having to oversee delivery of his wife's twin babies. One of them turns out to be a Down's Syndrome baby. What ensues is a complicated but compelling story. The book is very well written though I do have a minor beef concerning the overuse of one cliche where two people's eyes meet across a room and volumes of unspoken communication and intimacy results between the parties.Use of this cliche may have been forgiveable if only used once, but the writer uses it at least 3 times in the book. Other than that, I did find the book quite satisfying. I was grateful that the author did not write a book with complex characters and plot line and give it a nice, pat, happy ending. In leaving things somewhat unresolved, the author chose instead to reflect what might have happened in reality.

I hope I don't put you off by indicating that all of these books deal with heavy subject matter since they are all well written books that bring some insight into the human character and psyche. I'm interested in a book swap for one or all of these books.

If you are interested in a book swap, let me know what books you have available for a swap! I've added links to each of the book titles (above) so you can read more about the books. You can also click on the photo to enlarge it. I hope to hear from you soon.