Anna decided to have her annual mild fever this week. We are not a family of fever-runners by constitution, so any temperature spike is taken seriously. That, combined with whatever on earth is happening with the weather, makes this DAY NUMBER FOUR OF ME BEING STUCK IN THIS HOUSE WITH BOTH CHILDREN. We are starting to get a little bit tired of each other.
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| Notice that she can't even be bothered to glare at me at this point. |
At least the snow (?) today means that Dan is now TRAPPED HERE WITH US. Thanks, whatever on earth is happening with the weather! Earlier in the week, when it was unseasonably warm, as opposed to ungeographically snowing (??), Ivy put on her hat and her lipstick and took her stir-crazy self outside for a while.
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| As you do. |
Oh! And shoes. Sparkly shoes are important when a brief period of being housebound has left you on the brink of insanity.
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| Maybe just a tad over the brink. |
You know what, though? I think it's time to turn this thing around. It's time…for Pippi Longstocking and a plate of muffins! Sorry to bury the lede, but I totally read one of my project books. And made a corresponding recipe. It only took me three and a half weeks to read one book and also it was a children's book written for children and uh oh I am slightly concerned about the momentum of this project already. Ack, sorry, this is the paragraph where we turn things around, I must have gotten distracted by the snow (???) outside my window.
Given that I have a hard time reading things for which I am not the intended demographic, I got on pretty well with Pippi. It helps that I am almost uniformly delighted by Scandinavian exports, Pippi's original surname (Långstrump) being no exception. (Pickled fish products and aquavit being yes exceptions.) Her hyper-ignorance/defiance of social conventions can make for an uncomfortable read for we socially-anxious, but there were usually at least one or two things funny or charming enough to pull me back in. For example, the chapter excerpted in my cookbook, "Pippi Goes to a Coffee Party," would have been one of my least favorites save for two key factors: 1) COFFEE PARTY BEING A THING; and 2) despite finding Pippi's interactions with the ladies mostly tedious, the very last line really made me laugh.
So let's discuss this Coffee Party, yes? The recipe included in The Book Lover's Cookbook is for Pippi's Orange-Cranberry Muffin Cakes and all I can say is, if all of the recipes taste like this I am going to start reading A LOT faster.
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| It also gave me more empathy for Pippi's cake-gorging ways. I almost struck my plate as if it were a tambourine as well. |
Pippi Longstocking: Too young for me and too old for Anna, but I would recommend it to the grade-school set. I feel like nine-year-old Erica would have liked it excepting the distressing chapter wherein she disrupts a classroom. There are schedules to follow, Pippi! Some of us are here to learn!
Cranberry-Orange Muffin Cakes: Recommended to people with mouths.
