Book Club Books!

The Grab Bag Book Club met for the first time last week, and we discussed a book by a local author (Patty Jane's House of Curl by Lorna Landvik). We had a great time discussing the book, and picking out some of our upcoming books. I think we have determined that we all have different tastes in books, but we do all agree that we are looking for more fun reads, not ones that are super in-depth or serious. To that aim, we came up with a bunch of books that look good!

I found a great site called Reading Group Guides that has tons of great resources for a book club leader - ideas for books, themes, questions to guide discussions, meeting location ideas and more. Check it out. :) We found some of our "to read" books from that site.

The book we are reading for our next meeting is not on that site, but it does promise to be hilarious: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands by Chelsea Handler. Erin Jane thought her books would be very funny.

Here is a list of some of the other books that the attendees last week agreed on:

1. Mrs. Perfect by Jane Porter
2. Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish
3. No Good Girls by Jean Marie Pierson
4. Names My Sisters Call Me by Megan Crane
5. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (my mom and I have read this and it is phenomenal...she has a new book out now called The Sugar Queen that we could read, but it is only in hardcover, so that could make it a bit tougher. However, I think it would be worth it. FYI, it's also available on the Kindle.)
6. Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch
7. My Best Friend's Girl by Dorothy Koomson

We also had a couple of maybes, looking for approval or not from the folks who couldn't make our first meeting on these ones:

1. Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble
2. The Next Thing on My List by Jill Smolinski

Our next book club meeting is going to be at the end of June (I'm thinking either Thursday the 26th or Monday the 30th, or even Tuesday, July 1st), where we'll be discussing the Chelsea Handler book. If you have any suggestions for a meeting location, or for another good book to read (either from the lists above or anywhere else!), please send them to me. It's always best to have a lot of options on our "to-read" list, plus you may find that one of these interests you and you want to read it now!

Please let me know which date works best for you, or if a date doesn't work for you.

• Thursday, June 26th
• Monday, June 30th
• Tuesday, July 1st

Happy reading (try not to shoot Diet Coke out of your nose when you realize how hilarious Chelsea Handler is...)

-SKH

Excited for the long weekend? Me too!!

The long weekend has really started out well for me. On Thursday, we did happy hour, and I (ME!) lasted until 10:30. That's pretty impressive, and I had a lot of fun. I did have to work a full day Friday - the last one of the summer for me - but accomplished a lot in the new building. I got grocery shopping and some errands done last night, and then went to Hava's for a house warming party, which was very fun. (We are going to make fun of the fanny pack, sorry.) :) After that, Amy, EJ and I went to grab some dinner at Granite City, and that was lots of fun.

Now it's Saturday afternoon, the weather is perfect for chilling out, Travis and I made waffles for breakfast, and I am going to go get a couple of spa treatments at my favorite salons. I'm not sure I could ask for much more today. The only thing I could request is that Travis wouldn't be working this weekend, it really sucks to have a long weekend, and he has to go to work each day.

Hope that everyone else has a fabulous long weekend (and happy early birthday, Amanda!!!)

-SKH

Go Go Gadget LISA!!!

Alright everyone...send good thoughts to my sister, Lisa. She has her last final of law school today, and then she is DONE with it all! She graduates this Saturday (which is coincidentally when Wandering Bront makes their big debut to an audience).

Congratulations, Lisa!!! Well done!
Thank God for no more law school :)

-SKH

Testing zucchini breads because I am a fishing widow

As I am a fishing widow this weekend (it's the walleye opener and Travis went up north to fish with some buddies), I decided I would be extremely domestic this evening and bake some zucchini bread. Now zucchini bread is a longtime favorite of the Schmid family, and Grandma Darlene's recipe is pretty much the bomb. However, tonight I decided I would make the original recipe and then a few variations on it. Grandma's recipe makes some extremely unhealthy (but absolutely delicious!) bread as it calls for an entire cup of oil, and two cups of sugar. Whoa.

My arteries are clogging just thinking about it. And my mouth is watering. :)

The variations I baked tonight include a cinnamon-free variety (Amanda is allergic to cinnamon) that includes the oil and sugar, an oil-free recipe (substituting applesauce for oil) that includes the sugar, and an oil-free (applesauce) and sugar-free (using Splenda instead) recipe. They're not all quite out of the oven yet - this was a full evening event. By the way, it does indeed mean that I made 15 loaves of zucchini bread so there is plenty for everyone!

Want to see what five medium zucchinis shreds into? Check out this picture. That's a little less than eight cups. To make zucchini bread, you essentially have two processes going on. You mix up the shredded zucchini with flour, and in a separate bowl, you mix up oil, sugar, eggs, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon and vanilla. Once the two things are mixed separately, you mix them together, and then you have dough.

You bake the dough for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees, and then you end up with delicious and wonderful zucchini bread. You could also make this dough into muffins - that works wonderfully. I've made bars from it as well. My favorite remains the bread...it reminds me of Grandma.

I'll be bringing some of these loaves into work and to my family to test out what is best. I know my mom will appreciate some tasty zucchini bread for Mother's Day this weekend!

Let me know if you want to be a taste tester - I've got 15 loaves to work through here!! :)

What other things should a fishing widow do? I have Mass a few times this weekend (I'm cantoring twice), and we have Mother's Day dinner tomorrow night at Axel's...mmmm. I'll definitely do some laundry, and I should clean my house. I might also start reading the Septimus Heap novels - they are sort of like Harry Potter, but not as good. I'll give them a shot.

Anyway, hope everyone has a great weekend as well!

-SKH

What kind of dinosaur are you?

This survey is from Beth, and let me tell you: this could make or break your band career. So step right up and answer some questions to determine...what kind of dinosaur are you???

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=5231314034101233143

-SKH