Harriet the Spy Tomato Sandwiches

Happy Banned Books Week!  I am kicking off both BBW and my writing again with SEVEN posts about banned books, for your reading pleasure - one a day until Saturday! 

So, what is Banned Books Week?  Well, it's a celebration of the freedom to read whatever we want to.  There are a lot of people who want to have books banned - taken out of schools and public libraries - because they find them to be inappropriate.  Sometimes you can kinda understand where the concern is based, though I personally think that if a book has been chosen by a (professionally trained and certified) teacher to be appropriate for a class, it probably is.  And sometimes, the ban is so incredibly silly that you can't even stand it.  (My favorite? Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr., was banned in 2010 from schools in Texas, because there was a book about Marxist communism that was published in 2008 by a man named Bill Martin.  A completely different Bill Martin, by the way.  They didn't even take the time to check if the guy they objected to was the same guy who wrote Brown Bear, and it wasn't - in fact, there's no way it could have been, because Bill Martin, Jr. died four years before the political book was published.)  

This week, we'll be talking about seven books that have been banned for various reasons.  Tonight's is Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.  It was first published in 1964, though the cover shown here is the one from the 90's, which is the one I had when I first read it, even though I like the original cover better.  They did keep the original illustrations, though! 

Now, there aren't a lot of illustrations, but the ones that are really seem to enhance the text. Which is the point, of course.  

This illustration, for example, is our title character in her spy outfit, including jeans and a sweatshirt, sneakers so comfortable that they have holes over the pinky toes, and glasses with no glass in them (they make her look smarter).  She has has a spy tool belt, which she has usefully loaded down with pockets for her notebook and extra pens, a flashlight (in case she ever needs to be out after dark) and a boy scout knife with a collapsible knife and fork (which might come in handy eventually, although it hasn't yet).  Harriet puts on her outfit after school, before she goes out to find out what people are up to.  

Harriet has quite a list of people that she needs to keep track of.  There are her friends, of course, and her classmates, but the random people in the neighborhood are the most interesting.  And you know that the most interesting stuff isn't going to happen out in the open, so maybe she has to sneak into people's houses once in a while, maybe up a dumbwaiter every so often.  It's worth it - she writes down exactly what she sees and thinks, and she is always brutally honest.  For example, the first day of school invites the following note:

MY MOTHER IS ALWAYS SAYING PINKY WHITEHEAD'S WHOLE PROBLEM IS HIS MOTHER. I BETTER ASK HER WHAT THAT MEANS OR I'LL NEVER FIND OUT. DOES HIS MOTHER HATE HIM? IF I HAD HIM I'D HATE HIM.

That's okay, though, because it's a private notebook.  It's not like anyone could ever read it... right?  It's not like any of her routines will ever change.  Until they do.

Harriet is a girl who likes her routines.  She has her parents and her nanny, Ole Golly, and her friends, and her spy routes, and every day she has a tomato sandwich for lunch. 

    "The next morning Mrs. Welsch asked, 'Wouldn't you like to try a ham sandwich, or egg salad, or peanut butter?' Her mother looked quizzically at Harriet while the cook stood next to the table looking enraged.

    'Tomato,' said Harriet, not even looking up from the book she was reading at breakfast.

     'Stop reading at the table."  Harriet put the book down.  "Listen, Harriet, you've taken a tomato sandwich to school every day for five years. Don't you get tired of them?'

     'No.'

     'How about cream cheese and olive?'

     Harriet shook her head. The cook threw up one arm in despair.

     'Pastrami? Roast beef? Cucumber?'

     'Tomato.'

So be it.

Harriet the Spy Tomato Sandwiches

Your favorite bread (I used sourdough)

Fresh tomatoes

Condiments of your choosing

1) Slice the tomatoes into the desired thickness (Mine were about 1/4") and lay onto the bread.  Add condiments as desired.  

I cut my rounds in half, so I could make sure there was sandwich-wide coverage, like this: 

Yummy!

The tomato sandwiches are one of the things I remember about this story from when I read it years and years ago.  That, and the people she spied on, of course.  And that her middle name doesn't exist, so she gave herself a middle initial (it's M).  I love Harriet.  Unfortunately, some people don't, and her book was often criticized for teaching children to spy, be disrespectful, talk back to their parents, and curse.  And while I enjoyed every minute of this re-read, the critics do have a point: there's a part of me who wants a notebook and a toolbelt and a group of people to spy on.

Question of the day: If you could eat one thing for lunch every single day, what would it be?  

High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake

Have you ever had one of those memories that seem so amazingly perfect, where your eyes glaze over when you think about it, and no matter how hard you try, you can never replicate the experience?  No strawberry tastes as good as the one you picked it off the vine on a summer day, sun-warmed and delicious.  You can't seem to find the exact picture book that your Grandpa used to read you again and again and again when you stayed at his house on weekends and ate butterscotch candies from the candy dish on the end table. They stopped making Keebler Pizzeria Chips and nothing tastes the same.  Do you ever want to get that feeling back, of having exactly the right thing at the right time?

That's what the main character in The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake (by Nancy Willard, illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson) sets out to do for her mother's birthday. (Note: I'm going to be a pain in the neck and tell you the whole story, but I'm paraphrasing and I have very few pictures, so you still need to go out and read this book, okay? Okay.)  When she had been a little girl, her grandmother made her a cake so delicious that she has dreamed about it for years.  She's never had a cake even half as good as that one. If only she could have that cake just one more time, it would be the best birthday gift she could ever ask for.  It's too bad that her grandmother had passed away without ever telling anybody her recipe.

Well.  That might be a stumbling block, but it wouldn't stop our main character (who, frustratingly enough, is never named).  She stays up late into the night reading her great-grandmother's journals, trying to find the recipe that nobody knew about.  She eventually finds a recipe for plain-old-boring angel food cake, and with it, the note that there is one special secret that makes the cake so amazing - so mind-bogglingly delicious! - that the angels themselves sang its praises.

It isn't until her crazy uncle spills jell-o into the piano (yes, really.  I love the aunt and uncle characters) that she finds the secret to making a regular angel food cake into a High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake.  The secret, dear reader, is this: before combining all the ingredients, you take the sugar and pour it out onto a plate, and with little finger on your left hand and write "EVOL EVOL EVOL."

This is what I look like when I'm baking yet again.  "I hope he doesn't catch me sampling the batter..."

Our heroine sneaks down to the kitchen on the eve of her mother's birthday and manages to make the cake without waking up her parents, but as it's baking, the delicious smells attract a different type of visitor.  The cake, miraculously cooled and ready for eating, is exactly what wandering angels have been hoping for - it is, after all, angel food.  And she can't exactly turn down angels when they come calling, can she?  Although... it was for Mom's birthday, and now there is no gift at all. "And she's such a good mother, too!" Oh, dear.  And there aren't enough eggs left to make a new one.  It looks like this birthday isn't going as planned... but maybe the angels have something up their colorful sleeves. 

Though my mother's birthday is in September, I still needed to make the cake.  The angels didn't come a-calling for me, but I did get to eat angel food cake, so I call that a win.  I didn't use the recipe as written in the book (maybe that's why they didn't come?), but my recipe is darn tasty.  Incidentally, I didn't use Alton Brown's recipe either (my recipe came with my tube pan), but I did learn about stiff peaks and folding in sifted flour from his tv show.  You can watch the angel food cake episode here.

High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake

12 eggs
1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (or another flavor - lemon or orange would be tasty)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar

1. Separate your eggs.  You can use an egg separator, or your fingers, or crack the egg in half and gently pour the yolk back and forth until all the white is apart from the yolk.  I find it best to use the 3-bowl method: pour the egg white into a white bowl.  Put the yolk into a different bowl.  Inspect the white, and make sure no yolk is present (any little bit of yolk will keep your egg whites from foaming, and your cake won't set).  Once you're sure there's no yolk present, pour that white into a measuring cup.  You need 1 1/2 cups of egg white, which for me was 11 extra large eggs, but each egg is different, so you may need the whole dozen.  NOTE: If you get any yolk into the white, don't use that egg white! Wash out the bowl before cracking another egg into it, because it'll make your cake fail.  (You don't need the egg yolks for this recipe at all, so you can throw them away, or save them to make a butterscotch pudding or a German chocolate cake frosting with another time.)
2. Let your egg whites stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. They'll whip up better this way.
3. Sift the confectioners' sugar and flour together three times (I don't know why three times, but it worked for me, so I'm sticking to it.)  Set aside.
4. To the egg whites, add the cream of tartar, extracts, and salt.  Beat on high speed.  Once it's really foamy, gradually add the sugar and beat on high until stiff peaks form.  This takes a really long time - in my stand mixer, it took at least 10 minutes.  You can tell they're stiff peaks if you dip the beater straight down into the mixture and turn it over, and the batter stands straight up in a peak, even if you shake the beater a little bit.
5. This is messy: you want to gently (your batter is made of tiny bubbles, and you want to pop as few as possible!) fold in the flour mixture 1/4 cup at a time (1/9 of what you have sifted).  It takes forever and it's messy because you can't stir or the foam will collapse.  Basically, sprinkle on the flour/sugar and, using a rubber spatula, cut through the middle of the batter to the bottom of the bowl and scrape the edges, folding some of the batter on the bottom of the bowl to the top while going in circles.  (This is hard to explain.  It's easier if you see someone else doing it: again, I recommend YouTube tutorials for cooking methods that you're unfamiliar or uncomfortable with.)
6. Gently spoon the now-complete batter into an ungreased tube pan.  Cut through the batter with a knife to remove extra air pockets, and pop it into a preheated 350 degree oven for 40-45 minutes, or until the cake springs back lightly when you touch it.
7. When you take it out of the oven, you want to immediately turn it upside-down; until the cake sets, it's a rather heavy cake supported by weak bonds, and it can collapse if you skip this part!  You also want to let it cool completely before removing it from the pan for the same reason.  My cake looked like this:

Golden brown and delicious!

The book specifically told me that the cake was frosted, but I prefer mine with  with strawberries and whipped cream.  Or with coffee in the morning as a muffin substitute.  Besides - can you look at this and tell me honestly that you'd cover up all of that beauty?

"If I hadn't brought this to work, I'd still have some to nibble on while blogging!"

Well, Mom got her cake, and my official food taster found that TGI Friday's Pizza Chips come pretty darn close to those Keebler ones, so my question to you is: what is it that you wish you could experience one more time?

**Thanks to Christy McAwesomeSauce Meisler for introducing me to this awesome book - and so many others!**

Rah, Rah, Radishes! Alpha-Veggie Pasta

This may not be the prettiest dish I've ever made, but I really wanted to tell you about this book!  

I'm well aware that this is not the healthiest blog on the planet.  My justification for making cakes, cookies, ice creams, and other bad-for-you foods is usually somewhere along the lines of, "but I can get excited about butterbeer and eat-me cakes and pink peppermint ice cream!  Nobody wants to watch me make a salad!"  But you know what?  I need to get more excited about healthy foods, too, and if anything is going to make me cheer for vegetables, it's Rah, Rah, Radishes! A Vegetable Chant by April Pulley Sayre.  

"Rah, rah, radishes! Red and white. Carrots are calling. Take a bite!"  

There are beautiful, mouth-watering photos of any number of vegetables in this book, which look like they were taken at a local farmer's market.  These are paired with a fun, energetic cheer to create a really fun book that I must have flipped through 5 or 6 times.  

The author mentions the usual veggies, but doesn't stop at peas and carrots.  Yams, squash, parsnips, rutabagas, and multiple types of peppers are shown - jalapeno, serrano, habanero.  She even shows veggies that I (I admit with some degree of embarrassment) have never tried, like fennel, Swiss chard, and kale, and a few (kohlrabi, bok choy) that I wouldn't even have known what they were if they were placed in front of me. 

The veggies are paired into families of related produce, so the combinations work well together, and the rhymes don't seem forced, though they're not using just veggies to make the chant flow.  ("Onion. Scallion. Leek and shallot.  Grab that garlic. Please your palate!")

I love that the author also added in "Thank you, farmers. Thank you, bees.", as if to open discussion on where the vegetables actually come from, and she suggests in the very back of the book that each family member become an expert on one certain vegetable - how and where it grows, how to cook it, what it tastes like - and then, once that person has taught all the others about it, they can pick up a new veggie and start over.  Cool idea!  The last page also mentions, "Note: no vegetables were harmed or mistreated in the making of this book.  Most, however, were later eaten."

Now, this is not an alphabet book, but the short, catchy chant, and the bright, beautiful photos, I believe, would appeal to the same audience as those working on their ABCs, so I made for you a lovely alphabet-pasta-with-veggies dish, that I first saw in one of those magazines that the supermarket puts out for free.  I've adapted it a bit, but the inspiration comes from Publix's "Toddler Pasta" recipe.

Alpha-Veggie Pasta

4 cups chicken or vegetable broth (I used low-sodium)

1 cup alphabet pasta

2/3 cup mixed frozen peas and carrots

2/3 cup frozen broccoli (I chopped it into bite-sized pieces before I measured)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tbsp. olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

1) Put the broth in a large (spaghetti-type) pot and bring to a boil.  You can use regular old salted water, if you like, but the broth adds a lot of flavor to the party.

2) Add the pasta and boil, stirring occasionally, for 7 minutes.

3) Add the frozen veggies and boil the whole thing for another 6 minutes.

4) Drain the chicken broth, and set it aside.  Mix in the olive oil, cheese, and salt and pepper, adding in more broth as necessary to make it have a nice coating.   (I also put some of the broth into tupperware containers with the leftovers, since the pasta might get a little dry when you reheat it in the microwave.)

Incidentally, the letter-shaped pasta holds up really well in the fridge.  I've been eating this for lunch for the past few days, and it's not mushy at all!

See?  You can read every letter!  (Hmm... I wonder what those initials stand for.)

"Sun and seasons, leaf and stalk.  Know them. Grow them! Veggies rock!"  Thank you, April Pulley Sayre; I finally agree.  Veggies do indeed rock, and I'll try to showcase them more often.

As we discussed a while back, I'm partial to lima beans; what's your favorite veggie?

Chicks and Salsa

It must get awfully boring being a chicken.  There's nothing to read, no coloring books laying around, and - gasp! No TV!  No wonder the Rooster in Aaron Reynold's Chicks and Salsa snuck up near the house to watch what Farmer Nuthatcher's wife was watching - Food Network, as it turns out.  And they're making Mexican food tonight!

The Rooster is intreigued.  Maybe chicken feed isn't the best there is?  He plans a field trip to the garden to scrounge tomatoes, onions, and peppers and makes salsa - Ole!  Nothing boring about that!  This spicy dinner inspired the ducks - tired as they were of life at the pond - to make "Quackamole", and the pigs to indulge in Hog Wild Nachos. 

It looks like everyone wants to get in on the fun, and the Rooster (along with an enterprising group of mice, who supply the trimmings that you just can't get in the garden like tortilla chips) plans a fiesta!  But what happens if Farmer Nuthatcher and his wife get in on the fun?  Will there be enough to go around?

I loved both the story and illustrations in Chicks and Salsa, and it only got better when I found out that there are recipes for Salsa, Quackamole, and Hog Wild Nachos in the back of the book.  In the interest of honesty, I'll let you know that I didn't make the salsa recipe in the book, and I'll tell you why: for one thing, the recipe wants you to roast the tomatoes on a grill, and I didn't want to do that.  For another, I have a salsa recipe that I use fairly often, that I really enjoy.  If you'd like to try those recipes, please let me know how they turn out for you!  Otherwise, here's my own:

Chicks and Salsa
3 tomatoes
1-2 jalapenos, depending how spicy you want your finished salsa
1/2 bell pepper
1/2 red onion
1 tbsp. lime juice OR red wine vinegar
1 tsp. minced garlic
Bouquet of cilantro
Salt, to taste

1. Swish the cilantro in a bowl of water and let it soak for about ten minutes.  Any dirt will fall to the bottom of the bowl, and the clean leaves will float.
2. Meanwhile, seed and dice the tomatoes, jalapenos, bell pepper, and onion and put them into a bowl. (If you like, you can use a food processor to make this go very quickly.)  Be very, very careful with the peppers, especially the jalapenos; wash your hands thoroughly after touching them, because there is enough heat in them that they can seriously sting!  (Particularly if you touch them and then cut onions, because then you'll want to rub your eyes and everything will burn!)
2. Pull the leaves off the bouquet of cilantro and pat them dry with paper towels - the amount of cilantro you use is up to you.  (My Official Food Taster and I really like cilantro, so we use a lot, but if you're unsure, you can add it at the end and keep tasting it until it tastes right.)  Stack the leaves on top of each other on a cutting board, and carefully chop them fine.  Add to the vegetables.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and stir well.  Trust me; salt really brings the flavors out of the vegetables.
4. Let the salsa sit for at least a few minutes to let the flavors blend.  Eating it the next day is better yet.

I use red wine vinegar instead of lime juice because limes don't agree with me.  You can use lemon juice, but I find that the vinegar has a nice acidic quality that lemon juice just doesn't have. 

It's just so good!  I ate it on chips...

And then I made it into Hog Wild Nachos!

To make these, simply lay out tortilla chips on a cookie sheet, and top with any combination of salsa, black beans, cheese, and even taco meat, and bake until melted.  Serve with additional salsa, sour cream, or quackamole.

You can use any variation of vegetables to make salsa, and it's so delicious, you don't even usually remember that it's healthy!  Try adding peach, mango, or pineapple for a special fruity kick.  What's your favorite type of salsa?

Cat In The Hat Hats

If he were with us today, Dr. Seuss would be 108 years old!  Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!!!

Today, I'm planning to write about his most famous character - The Cat In The Hat - but first, let's talk about his creator for a few moments.  (Note: Most of the following information can be found at the official Dr. Seuss website, here: http://www.seussville.com/.)  Dr. Seuss - born Theodore Geisel - came into the world on March 2, 1904.  He remained Ted Geisel until college, until he got into some trouble.  Having been banned from writing and drawing cartoons for the school paper and magazines, he started using his mother's maiden name, though with a different pronunciation - "Seuss".

After cartooning for quite a bit, and writing and drawing for advertisements, Dr. Seuss started writing books for kids in 1937 (To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street was the first one).  All in all, he wrote and illustrated 44 books for children.  The Cat In The Hat was his 13th book, first seen in 1957.  To this day, The Cat remains the author's most recognizable character, and some even say that The Cat was a metaphor for Seuss himself.  Let's get to The Cat now. 

The Cat In The Hat is a story that focuses on a boring, wet, dull day - "The sun did not shine.  It was too wet to play."  There was nothing to do... blah.  But then The Cat shows up (despite loud protests from The Fish), and the boredom vanishes.  His "look what I can do!" attitude is both entertaining and scary (what if they get caught?!), and even cleaning up the playthings becomes fun with The Cat around.  (But will it get done by the time that Mother gets home?)

For this story, I just had to make The Cat's iconic Hat.  I tried to make it both delicious and not horribly unhealthy.  I think it came out pretty well... what do you think?

Cat In The Hat Hats
Strawberries
Bananas
Vanilla wafers

1. Cut a banana into rounds.
2. Cut a strawberry into rounds.  For this, I tried to choose strawberries that look like they do in drawings, instead of the giant 3- and 4-lobed ones that you sometimes get in the cartons. 
3. Stack one banana slice onto a strawberry slice and cut them in half.  Repeat until you have the desired amount of fruit slices.
4. Break one vanilla wafer in half.  On a plate, lay down a vanilla wafer half so that it stands straight up.  On one side of it, place the half-moon slices you made of banana and strawberry to make the stripes, and you have yourself a hat!  Repeat as necessary to make as many hats as you like.

I also tried this in 3D, placing whole slices on top of a wafer to make hats, but I prefer the laying-down version.  Here's a photo of those type of hats, though:

You may do with it as you will.  But whatever you do, don't ever stop celebrating Dr. Seuss.  You won't be alone - his birthday is now the official day for the NEA's Read Across America Program.

I can't decide which Seuss story is my favorite.  It's either Horton Hatches An Egg, or The Sneeches.  What's your favorite?