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1. It's always a good day when you have pancakes for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner) ☺. My pancakes of choice remain Orangette's Oatmeal Pancakes, a recipe she adapted from the pancakes served at the Inn at Fordhook Farm in Pennsylvania. Since I first mentioned Mollie's oatmeal pancakes here, we've made them at least six times, and it's become our favorite breakfast to serve houseguests. We haven't mashed in any blueberries yet; they're delicious without them. And as Mollie says, they are great the next day and the next . . . they freeze well, too.

 

2. Do you remember when Kevin Slattery declared May, Bob Dylan Month? And he ran his "Three for Free Giveaway" with copies of Ain't Gonna Hang No Pixel (his first Picture Book for Big Kids) as the prize? Eeeeee! I was one of the winners!

 

This 16-page pop phenomenon parody, inspired by Dylan's infamous decision to go electric in 1965, offers a tantalizing cross-section of Kevin's unique digital art. Movers and shakers Billie Holiday, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul McCartney (*swoon*), Marilyn Monroe, Jack Kerouac, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Hitchcock, and of course, Dylan -- are portrayed as never before. Kevin loves to mix things up and surprise you with unexpected juxtapositions: there's a beautiful pink and yellow floral Billie as well as a funky cartoony Hitchcock making quite the television appearance (or should I say, "emergence"?). Wish you had your own copy? Click here for more details about this book as well as the second book in Kevin's Picture Books for Big Kids series, Emily Comes to My House!

3. Big thanks to Zoe Toft at Playing by the Book for presenting alphabet soup with the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award!
 
   

We truly appreciate this honor and are proud to be recognized along with these other blogs:

Kat Cooks the Books
Reading, Writing and Recipes
Storytelling, cooking and kids!
Children’s Books for Grown Ups – look out for Natasha’s Bookish Bites!
Maison Cupcake
The Tea Box

Check out Zoe's list of books about sweets and baking th

It’s always fun and exciting when something you’ve read sparks your imagination and makes you want to learn more.  

That’s what happened when I read Carrie Jones’s new picture book biography about Civil War nurse and spy Sarah Emma Edmonds. When I studied American history in Hawai’i eons ago, I learned a lot of names and dates that I couldn’t really relate to. I certainly never dreamed that one day I’d live near a real battlefield site, meet people who like to don period garb to participate in battle re-enactments, and be steeped in heady historical richness that would actually mean something. 

I had heard of female Confederate spies, but knew very little about the ones spying for the Union army. Sarah Emma Edmonds Was a Great Pretender (Carolrhoda Books, 2011) is a provocative introduction to the feisty Canadian teenager who fled her home country, assumed the identity of a man (calling herself Frank Thompson), and then served in the Second Michigan Infantry, first as a field nurse and then as a spy under the command of Major General George B. McClellan. 


Sarah Edmonds in female and male garb.

Jones’s tightly woven narrative emphasizes Edmonds’s skill as a master of disguise. An adventurer at heart, Edmonds was motivated by a deep sense of patriotism to her adopted country because she was able to forge a new life, far away from her abusive father who hated that she was a girl and who tried to force her into an arranged marriage.

Steely, brave, clever and highly adaptable to whatever circumstances came her way, Edmonds assumed various guises, as an African American male slave, an Irish peddler woman, and a black laundress. She infiltrated enemy lines many times and returned with valuable information for the Union army. When she contracted malaria, she chose to recuperate in a private hospital in Illinois to avoid blowing her cover. After learning that she was listed as a deserter, she reclaimed her identity as a woman and returned to nursing, with no one the wiser. 

Further reading revealed that much, if not most, of Sarah’s exploits took place on Virginia soil. She participated in both the First and Second Battles of Bull Run, The Peninsula Campaign, Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Antietam, Williamsburg and Yorktown in her various capacities as field nurse, postmaster and spy. When I read that she nursed wounded soldiers at an army hospital in the Old Stone Church in Centreville, I had to see the place for myself. I’ve lived in Virginia for 30 years and might never have heard about the church (only 10 minutes away) if I hadn’t read Carrie’s book. 


Old Stone Church circa 1860's (Library of Congress photo).

The Old Stone Church was first built by Methodists in 1854, and used as a hospital by both the Union and Confe

     


My dad, now 96, continues to amaze us. We feel so blessed to have him in our lives. He recently joined Facebook, where he shares lots of food pictures (must run in the family ☺), jokes, short videos, words of inspiration every Sunday, and whatever amuses or fascinates him in the news.

We wish him and all the other dads out there a Happy Father's Day, and special ((Hugs)) to those of you who might be missing your dads.

            
            Charlie, overwrought with excitement.

Well, flap my jowls and tickle my ears! 

Have you ever seen a more lovable dog? Yep, it's Charlie, easily the most famous basset hound in America. He lives with Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman herself, and his new picture book, Charlie the Ranch Dog (HarperCollins, 2011), has been on the New York Times Bestseller List for the past 6 weeks! Doggone awesome!
 

Is that bacon I smell on his breath?

Anyway, just in case you're not familiar with the book (where on the wide prairie have you been?), it chronicles a typical day on the cattle ranch from Charlie's point of view. Along with his best friend Suzie (a spunky Jack Russell terrier), he gets up too early every morning and works so hard (wink, wink) fixing fences, gardening, keeping cows and other critters in check, fishing, and rounding up cattle.

A dog this busy certainly deserves oodles of bacon a good meal and endless naps a little rest now and then just to keep his strength up. Why, if not for Charlie's steady vigilance, Daisy the cow could have destroyed the garden! Personally, I happen to admire those who've perfected the fine art of napping and bacon nipping, and I know exactly how Charlie feels: a dog's work is never done. ☺

Recently, Ree blogged about the experience of writing about Charlie (her first children's book), and I thought it would be fun to get the illustrator's side of the story. Of course I'm talking about the brilliant and talented award-winning author/illustrator Diane deGroat, who's visited with us before, and is known far and wide for the 120+ books she's illustrated (most notably her beloved self-illustrated Gilbert series). 

            

I sent Diane a few questions and she came back with some right chewy answers and lots of photos. She's done an outstanding job with the pictures in this book, and I think you'll enjoy learning more about how she created them. How did she manage to perfectly capture Charlie's ranch-roving, bacon-loving ways, and extend Ree's trademark wry humor? Grab a biscuit, tap your boot heels together, sit and stay. Roll over if you like, but do read on. (No need to beg.)

Congratulations on the great success of Charlie and the Ranch Dog! How did you get this gig, and what did you like most about doing it?

It's true that when one door closes, another opens. I had just learned that my Gilbert series at HarperCollins was ending. I anticipated using this time to work on a proposal for a whole new series when I received an email (from a different Harper department) asking me if I'd be interested in submitting some art samples f

"Then followed that beautiful season . . . Summer . . .
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape/Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood." ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Okay, how did this happen? It's June already?

Doesn't matter what the calendar says. Summer has already hit Virginia with my "favorite" menu of H's: hazy, hot, humid. Hell's bells, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Since I can't and don't want to do that, I'll just have to requisition a few extra hunkalicious hotties to cool me off with palm fronds and tall glasses of sweet tea. (It would help tremendously if they all resembled Colin Firth and/or George Clooney and had the songwriting chops of Bob Dylan.)

Ooh, ooh! Have to share this video that was posted on the When Bob Met Woody Facebook Page. Hubba hubba! Hopefully, this will temporarily silence some of the misguided folks who constantly complain about Dylan's singing voice. Every word is intelligible.

Okay, where was I? So, what mischief have you been up to? Did you have a good Memorial Day weekend? We took it easy and slow; actually, we were forced to on Sunday since we had a morning power outage. Couldn't plug in, charge up, cook or flush -- when the power goes out, our well pump doesn't work, so no water to wash or rinse. You'll be happy to know we somehow managed to remain fair of face. Amazing what bathing in a few dewdrops will do. ☺

Though I often complain about the heat, I remain enamoured with the idea of summer -- long, sun-drenched days marked by leisurely mornings, lazy afternoons, relaxed, starlit evenings. And the food is the best -- lots of fresh fruits and veggies and good things on the grill. I'm perfectly happy with all-American burgers, steak and ribs, but like my share of marinated Portobello mushrooms, green peppers, eggplant, zucchini, asparagus and onions. We also enjoy grilling seafood and teriyaki chicken; Len feels especially accomplished when he slices fresh corn off the cob and grills the kernels with lots of butter in a foil packet.



And who doesn't welcome the much-anticipated "summer reading?" Books you've been dying to get to all year, saving them for those extended, uninterrupted periods of pure immersion. Summer also gives us permission to indulge in the guilty pleasure of "trashy" books, so-called beach reading. For me, this would include rock/celebrity biographies and memoirs, anything food-related, some popular women's fiction. I do draw the line at formula romances, though (even though I actually wrote one once), and continue to avoid anything self-help. But one girl's "trash" is another girl's gold, so who's to judge? 

As Jules of 7-Imp would say, "whatever blows your hair back." There is inestimable value in reading as widely as possible -- especially in those genres you may have

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