The Garden to Kitchen Expert

The library just received an interesting book for cooks and gardeners alike. The Garden to Kitchen Expert written by Judith Wills and Dr. D. G. Hessayon contains over 680 recipes for the fruit and vegetables that you grow at home. The book contains classic recipes, methods for everyday cooking and new ideas for making the most of an "abundance" of one particular crop. There is also a great section on how to serve your produce fresh, without cooking and also how to store, preserve and pickle the things you grow. Each fruit and vegetable is presented, with full color pictures, followed by sections on storing, no-cook recipes, basic cooking and then fancy recipes. The book contains a wonderful recipe and produce index and covers almost every fruit and vegetable imaginable. Good news---even if you don't grow your own fruit or vegetables, you can still use the recipes in this book to prepare the ones you buy in the store!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We give thanks to all our loyal readers and library patrons. Thank you for your loyal readership this year and may blessings fall down upon you and your family in 2012.

Upcycling Your Life

Upclycling: Creating Beautiful Things with the Stuff You Already Have by Danny Seo is a great new book the library has recently purchased. The premises of the book is "making do with with what you have and using basic skills to create extraordinary results....[in a] hybrid of MacGyver (the rsourceful TV spy)-meets-HGTV. Danny Seo has worked as an interior designer and magazine editor where he has done everything from transforming a celebrity's home to producing magazine stories on creating the perfect Thanksgiving table settings using stuff you might have around the house. For years Danny Seo has been recycling trash and everyday objects into better, brighter and cooler things and he finally coined a phrase for his hobby--upcycling! To Seo, upcycling is a higher form of recycling, because when you upcycle, the end result is better than the material's intended purpose and you end up with something cooler and your own creation. The book begins with a section on what upcycling is, followed by a section on the basic things you need to perform upcycling projects (like a glue gun and an exacto knife). The book has chapters on different types of upcycling projects such as "Ideas for Decorating," "Ideas for Entertaining," Upcycling Ideas for Giving," "Upcycling Ideas for Kids," and "Upcycling the Great Outdoors." Each project includes a great picture of the finished project, a detailed list of supplies and a simple how-to section on creating the project. The projects range from simple to complicated, so a wide range of ages would be interested in creating the projects contained in this book. This is a great book for any crafter who'd like to create something new from something they already have.

Murder Unleashed

Murder Unleashed by Rita Mae Brown is the second book in her canine mystery series starring Magdelena "Jeep" Reed, Magdalena "Mags" Rogers and their dogs King and Baxter. The first book in the series is A Nose for Justice. This cozy mystery is set in Reno, Nevada, and furthers the story of Jeep, a seventy year old who is growing food on her ranch in the hopes of ending hunger in the area and Mags, a former Wall Street trader who was laid off from her job and is finding solace living with her great-aunt. I enjoyed the contemporary events discussed in this book, as the action of this story is centered around a bunch of squatters that are living in a group of vacant, foreclosed homes on one particular street in Reno, without food or electricity. The foreclosure crisis has taken a huge bite out of the real estate market in Reno and many banks and people are reeling from the hit. Big-hearted real estate agent, Babs Gallagher enlists Jeep and Mags to start a community research program to get the water and electricity turned back on in the houses and help the squatters find jobs. When one of their friends is attacked and a former banker is found brutally slain in one of the abandoned homes, Jeep and Mags set out to find the killer. Baxter, King and a host of other canine characters band together to protect their owners, help them find the killer and perhaps find a few clues as to where the missing silver from an old mine is. This is a great series for dog lovers and any other animal friendly mystery readers!

Heaven Is For Real

My pastor and several other friends recently read Todd Burpo's Heaven is for Real and suggested that I should read it. The book is a quiet, unassuming story that has lots of power. The book is "a little boy's astounding story of his trip to heaven and back." Todd Burpo is a minister with a wife and three kids, in a small town in the mid-west. Burpo goes through several boughts of sickness himself and his life seems to be evening out when his four-year old son Colton has to have an emergency appendectormy. Colton spends a week in the hospital and no one is sure he will live, until a miracle occurs and he wakes up, alert and almost back to his old self. It is not until several weeks later, during a family road trip, that Todd Burpo and his wife realize that something unusual happened to Colton during his hospital stay. Colton mentions that while he was having his emergency surgery, he "saw his dad praying and his mom talking on the phone in another room." Slowly, Todd and his wife begin to question Coton and they realize that even though Colton did not die, he did visit heaven when he was hospitalized. The writing in this book is beautiful and the message is powerful. Whether you believe in heaven or not, this story will touch you. This story is as much about a family and their quest for healing as it is a story about the power of God. If you like this book, try also reading Don Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death & Life.