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Food Books & Yarn

Based in Iowa

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About Me

Hi, I’m Eleanor, a mom of two, passionate about food, books, and yarn. Here you’ll find all sorts of fun things: recipes, books and reviews, and crochet patterns! Still building this site. Stay tuned!

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PopSugar Reading Challenge
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🍲 Filipino Sotanghon Soup Ingredients: 5 clove

🍲 Filipino Sotanghon Soup

Ingredients:
5 cloves garlic
1/2 carrots julienned
1 stalk celery chopped
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/4 bag of Morningstar Veggie Chik'n Strips chopped
1/2 - 1 cup chopped cabbage
1 cup cooked rice vermicceli
5 cups vegetable broth
1-2 tsp annato achiote powder
Chopped spring onion to garnish
Boiled eggs
Salt to taste

Sautee garlic, celery, carrots, in a pot at medium heat.

Add frozen corn and chopped veggie chicken.

Add cabbage and sautee.

Add vegetable broth and bring to a boil.

Add annato achiote powder and mix.

Add cooked rice vermicelli and mix. (I just dumped 1 small pack of uncooked rice vermicelli and let it cook in the pot)

Add salt to taste. Cook till cabbage is soft.

In a bowl, scoop the soup and top with chives or spring onions and boiled eggs. Top with fried garlic for extra flavor.

➡️ Not in Blog. Honestly I've gotten lazy updating the blog. I also cook without measuring so if it needs more broth or spices, adjust accordingly.

◽️ 🥔🥚 Au Gratin Frittata Ingredients: 2

◽️
🥔🥚 Au Gratin Frittata

Ingredients:
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 zucchini chopped
1 package frozen peas & carrots
2 packages Au Gratin Potatoes
2 cups water
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1 cup egg beaters
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2-3 tbsp chives
Salt & pepper to taste

Easy peasy recipe.

Sautee zucchini and frozen vegetables. Add potatoes and mix. Top with a layer of shredded cheese.

Mix all liquid ingredients, Au Gratin sauce mix, and chives. Salt & pepper as desired. Pour over the potatoes and vegetables. Top with asparagus.

Bake 425° F for 30 minutes until top is golden.

➡️ This is not in the blog.

🦉I’m a HUGE fan of Harry Potter and the Wizar

🦉I’m a HUGE fan of Harry Potter and the Wizarding World. As soon as my eyes saw this owl pattern, I had to make it. I named her, Lyra since music moves me in many ways. 🎶

I subscribe to Scribd. Love Embroidery magazines is one of the many I follow. This particular one is Love Embroidery, Issue 8.

Honestly, it was a joy to make.

There were several things I did differently from what the pattern suggested: used two threads instead of one for the stars and I didn’t line the owl’s tale like I did the wings. If I could do it all over again, I’d go for a lighter dark gray instead of a darker shade of it – also I would embroider the wings in one angle from bottom to top. Still… she turned out beautifully.

➡️ See link bio for materials used and link to pattern.

📚 Book: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter Author:

📚
Book: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
Author: Kim Edwards
Genre: Fiction > Contemporary > Historical
Date Read: 2/10/22
Stars: ★★★★☆

Challenge: The 52 Book Club
Prompt: # 17 – A book picked based on its spine

Summary:
A mother, Nora, gives birth during a blizzard in 1964 Kentucky. Her physician husband, Dr. David Henry, delivers twins: a perfect boy, Paul, and a little girl, Phoebe, with down syndrome. Immediately he orders his nurse, Caroline, to send the baby to an institution. His wife was told the baby died at birth and had to be buried straight away. However, Caroline travels to another state and raises Phoebe as her own. The story progresses through the years with trauma, guilt, and difficulty from everyone involved.

Reaction:
I discovered this at a hotel library that specialized in Iowa authors. This otherwise wouldn’t have appealed to me, but after reading the first chapter I was intrigued. How unusual for a book to focus of a character with down syndrome? Amazing. My heart was moved by Caroline’s actions. Likewise, my heart completely broke for Nora mourning a baby she never held. However, as the years went on, the Henry family devolved into unlikable characters. In the end it comes full circle but the choices Nora and David made disappointed me.

How absolutely beautiful is this book? Ugh... I ca

How absolutely beautiful is this book? Ugh... I can't handle it. Gorgeous.
🥰😍

Haven't read it but it came with my @fairyloot box.

📚 Book: A History of Wild Places Author: Shea

📚
Book: A History of Wild Places
Author: Shea Ernshaw
Genre: Thriller > Magical Realism
Date Read: 1/17/22
Stars: ★★★★★

Challenge: The 52 Book Club
Prompt: #14 – A character with superhuman ability

Summary:
It begins with Travis Wren, a man with the superhuman ability to touch objects to envision memories associated with each piece. He is hired to locate a missing author, Maggie St. James, who entered the woods and never returned. Into the thick of it, he stumbles upon an off the grid community. Like Maggie, he disappears.

Reaction:
I find it enticing to live in an off the grid community. A world where you can feel your heart beat at a slow pace while finding peace in nature with like-minded people; practicing yoga and meditation; eating food from harvest — letting children be children, educating them on survival, farming, building, math, and reading. A place away from smart devices and anxiety induced phone calls. Away from the drama of the fast-paced life, media, and consumerism. Ah, utopia.

However, I would not want to live in the cultish group of Paradise led by a serpentine leader in the book. A nightmare! Wow.

Haunting, poignant, dark, disturbing, and spellbinding. Ernshaw built a world down the rabbit hole filled with love and simplicity mingled with manipulation and nightmare. I could not put it down.

📚

Book: Death At The Chateau Bremont
Author: M. L. Longworth
Genre: Mystery > Cultural
Date Read: 1.8.22
Stars: ★★★☆☆

Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #51 Two books set in twin towns, aka “sister cities” (2) – Aix-en-Provence, France

Summary:
Story takes place in Axe, France of a nobleman falling from the attic window. Enter ex-lovers – a judge (detective) and a law professor determined to solve a possible murder. When the victim’s brother is found strangled, the case develops into a double homicide. The couple traipse through the French countryside and interview friends, family members, and shortly uncover a deeper world involving the Russian Mafia.

Review:
The characters were nondescript in a way that had zero connection with me emotionally. The twist was somewhat cliche leaving me unmoved.

A slow burn that was difficult to get into but progressively got better. It was a nice reprieve from horror and psychological thrillers. I loved the description of the French countryside, culture, food, and its people.

📚 Book: The Push Author: Ashley Audrain Genre

📚
Book: The Push
Author: Ashley Audrain
Genre: Fiction > Family Drama > Marriage
Date Read: 1/7/22
Stars: ★★★☆☆

Challenge: The 52 Book Club
Prompt: #1 – A second-person narrative

Summary:
Blythe and Fox met in college in a whirlwind of romance that soon resulted in marriage. When Blythe hesitatingly agrees to have a baby, it began the downfall of their marriage; likewise, the emotional disconnect/neglect between mother and baby. Soon follow devastation.

This story is of a multi-generational trauma between mother-daughter relationships. It is penned as a letter to the protagonist’s husband.

Reaction:
Unpopular Opinion – a painful read. As a mother who went through postpartum depression, it was agony watching the protagonist and her husband continually dig themselves in a deeper grave when they should have pursued the help they were offered and desperately needed. Both continually circumvented complex issues by superficial communication that caused emotional and physical repercussions: loss of self, undefined expectations, collapse of their marriage, extramarital affair, neglect of their daughter, and multiple deaths.

There were countless moments when Blythe deserved to be slapped for the things she continued to do and not do. Likewise, her weakling of a husband wasn’t man enough to improve the family dynamics that unfortunately devolved into the ever expanding chasm that broke the bond and trust crucial for the nuclear family.

➡️ Read the rest of the review in bio link.

🇺🇦 Solidarity with Ukraine We have been fer

🇺🇦 Solidarity with Ukraine

We have been fervently following the war in Ukraine. We have family near the Black Sea and have been anxious with worry over the hell that Putin erupted upon its people.

I’ll keep this brief, but in solidarity, I designed this crochet pattern. It’s a corner-to-corner chart using yarn the colors of the UA flag with the map of Ukraine in the center. I stopped at row 32 and cleaned it up with single crochete around with the respective colors.

➡️ Download the pattern in bio link.

📚 Book: We Were Never Here Author: Andrea Bar

📚
Book: We Were Never Here
Author: Andrea Bartz
Genre: Thriller
Date Read: 1/14/22
Stars: ★★★☆☆
▫️
Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #33 – A book with a quote from your favorite author on the cover or Amazon page
▫️
Summary:
College best friends Emily and Kristen are on their annual overseas trip to a random country, Chile. The previous year, they were in Cambodia where they threw a body off a cliff to drown in deep waters. Now in Chile, a similar chance takes the life of a backpacker. When the friends cover their tracks to bury the bloody corpse, things take a turn for the worse. When they return to the United States authorities unearth the body in Chile and it becomes the number one news, especially since the deceased was a United States citizen. The girls begin to question the strength of their friendship. Are they able to get away with murder?
▫️
Review:
Bartz’s tone and amazing writing induced my anxiety at every chapter. My heart palpitated like a metronome at 200 bpm as Emily narrated the past and the progression regression of her crumbling life. However, it was a ride that sped up to a disappointing climax. In the end, everything was tied in a neat bow when it should have been splattered with detailed litigation, social, and media chaos.

🐅 Book: Blind Tiger Author: Sandra Brown Genre:

🐅
Book: Blind Tiger
Author: Sandra Brown
Genre: Romance > Historical Fiction
Date Read: 1/30/22
Stars: ★★★★★

Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #A book with a tiger on the cover or “tiger” in the title

Summary:
Texas in the 1920’s was the capital for bootleggers during the prohibition Era. Laurel Plummer finds herself widowed and becomes successful in a lucrative business of making corn whiskey. Her life becomes endangered by competitors. Thatcher Hutton, an ex-soldier gunslinger, decides to live in Fulton, Texas after jumping off a train. There he is befriended by the sheriff and promoted to deputy. Between an abduction, murder, a corrupt mayor, a madam from the brothel house, and violence, Laurel and Thatcher hold secrets from each other that position their attraction at an unrelenting succumbing force.

Review:
I picked up this book blindly knowing nothing of its content – likewise the term, “Blind Tiger” had zero meaning to me. It is defined as an illegal bar – synonymous with speakeasies during prohibition. One view is that if an establishment had a stuffed tiger or a pig, it sold alcohol. Blind, because authorities knew nothing of it, or turned their head the other way had they known.

I knew of prohibition, but this book ingrained a side to the 1920’s I knew little about: moonshine, bootleggers, crime, corruption, competition, mayhem, violence, danger, culture, jealousy and lust. The movie in my mind showed me a time and culture that felt incredibly real – that in an alternate universe, this could have happened. It reads like a western historical fiction.

One surprising thing was learning that white lightning was an illicit lucrative business where women thrived.

The cast were written in such detailed history that one can understand the actions they had to take, be it noble or unlawful. This is what made this book unforgettable.

🐅 Read the rest of the review in bio link

🍀 HAPPY mad Hatter March! 🍀 It’s unbelieva

Another wonderful library crochet book find, Croc

Another wonderful library crochet book find, Crochet Cafe, by Lauren Espy.
🧶
As soon as I brought this book home, my daughter looked through it and begged for me to make the Eggs Benedict. Pattern was easy and fun to make. My four year old is obsessed with this creation and can’t sleep without it.
🧶
The pattern includes the egg, hollandaise sauce, veggie ham, and muffin. I used Aunt Lydia’s #10 thread in Myrtle Green and Black for the chives and mouth. So cute.
🧶
See bio for links.

📚 Book: The Circle Author: Dave Eggers Genre:

📚
Book: The Circle
Author: Dave Eggers
Genre: Science Fiction
Date Read: 1/11/22
Stars: ★★★☆☆
▫️
Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #34 A social-horror book
▫️
Summary:
Early twenty something, May, gets a position at a highly coveted social media tech company, The Circle. The employees of this business must live a mandatory public life: posting and live streaming their activities and whereabouts 24/7. Likewise, the establishment’s goal is to wear a camera in their person, to attain global transparency to prevent secrets/crime/misdemeanor, and to consolidate login for health and online accounts. Their mission is to complete the C of its name into a Circle to obtain world knowledge shared by all. May becomes a disciple of the Circle and does everything to fulfill its purpose no matter the consequence.
▫️
Review:
Protagonist is frustratingly malleable for her 20’s and easily acquiesces to the policies of The Circle. The company’s regulations raise numerous red flags on privacy yet she naively becomes devoted to its practices without considering possible repercussions. May has zero boundaries to other people’s wishes to be disconnected – to go off grid – one incident proving to be fatal.
▫️
I was waiting for an internal coup followed by civil unrest between the government, private company, and the people – but it never happened. If I read this when it was first published in 2013, the ending would have been incredibly frustrating. But low and behold, the book set the tone of the world to be continued in the 2021 published novel, The Every – which will probably delight my absolute need for retribution and closure.

📚 Book: The Hunting Party Author: Lucy Foley

📚
Book: The Hunting Party
Author: Lucy Foley
Genre: Thriller > Mystery
Date Read: 1/8/22
Stars: ★★★★★

Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #27 – A book with a misleading title

Summary:
A band of Oxford alumni friends and their spouses/significant others escape to a remote Scottish highland for their annual New Year’s holiday getaway. When they are snowed in, secrets surface causing tension among the group. On New Year’s day, someone is found dead in the snow.

Reaction:
Foley writes from the perspective of five people: Heather, Emma, Doug, Miranda, and Katie. Through these individuals the story is told revealing the duplicitousness of each character, including the estate’s care takers.
It was intimidating to be introduced to many characters in the second chapter – but as you read on, it gets easier to place them.

Since the prompt is for a misleading title, the crew do go into the woods to hunt for deer. In truth, they are all haunted by their past.

It was difficult to put it down after sorting everyone out. I couldn’t get enough of everyone’s deceitful nature, especially the killer’s. It was intricate and delicious. A fast and gripping read.

👋🏾 Happy Black History Month! 🚌 This mon

📚 Book: The Island of Missing Trees Author: E

📚
Book: The Island of Missing Trees
Author: Elif Shafak
Genre: Historical Fiction
Date Read: 1.1.22
Stars: ★★★★☆

Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #12 – A #BookTok recommendation

Summary:
Star crossed lovers separated by culture, religion, family, and war – joined together under a fig tree in a tavern allowing their love to blossom in secret. Years later, their teenage daughter seeks to learn her heritage and the origin of the fig tree in their backyard. Finally, she learns of her history.

Review:
The fig tree has a voice, which at first is ridiculous but become brilliant. Never thought of the significance of a fig tree viewed from a biblical and multicultural perspective. Adam and Eve covered themselves in fig leaves to hide their shame following their fall. Could the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil be a fig tree? Likewise, many cultures symbolize the fig tree for wealth, fertility, and prosperity.

The trees have a double meaning in the book – one, it signified all the lost people from the civil war between the Greeks and the Turks in Cyprus in the 1970’s. Many people were buried in the rumble never to be seen again. Two, the actual trees where birds, bees, insects, and bats reside keep trees thriving. Both fit into the story to tell the history of its land and people.

It was a good read with a dual, nay, triple timeline: 1970’s, 2000’s, and 2010’s – the latter focusing on the couple’s daughter, Ada, doing a research of her family history for school.

It was a pleasant read and expanded my views of culture and world history. I have never come across a fig tree and wish to do so in my lifetime. I have an innate connection with trees. They speak to me at a deep level that brings me peace. Meditating under a tree or spending time under its shade close to its trunk is one of the most peaceful practices I hope to implement in my life someday.

🥬 Ingredients 2 heads medium cabbages 1 larg

🥬
Ingredients
2 heads medium cabbages
1 large chopped onion
1 tbsp garlic
2 large bay leaves
1 bag MorningStar Farms Veggie Grillers Crumbles (see link in notes)
8 oz can tomato sauce
1 cup cooked jasmine rice
6 tbsp Just Egg (see link in notes)
5 oz shredded carrots (see link in notes)
28 oz can Italian Diced Tomatoes (see link in notes)
1 tbsp granulated sugar
2 tbsp plant based sour cream (see link in notes)
salt & pepper to taste

Instructions in the blog link in bio.

Date Read: 1/2/22 Stars: ★★★☆☆ Challe

Date Read: 1/2/22
Stars: ★★★☆☆

Challenge: 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge
Prompt: #13 – A book about the afterlife

Review:
A story of a close knit family in Oregon hit by a truck on a snowy day. This resulted in the death of the father, mother, and their six year old boy while their eldest daughter, Mia, strives for survival in the hospital.
Told in Mia’s perspective revisiting the past and describing the present as an apparition while laying unconscious in a hospital bed. There she decides if she should stay or if she should join her family in the other side of the living.

Spoilers:
In the end she decides to stay by waking up to squeeze her boyfriend’s hand as he pleads for her life. There she realizes that even though her immediate family passed on, there are many she can call family.

Caveat, I didn’t like the undertone for teens that boyfriends are worth living for. Live for you, fight for your life, fight for your personal experiences, and LOVE LIFE!

Who else loves a good doily? This was from two dif

Who else loves a good doily? This was from two different patterns turned into a doily wall hanging. 🥰

✔ Link in bio for details

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