Fresh and Fun Diabetic Meals

The library has received two new diabetes cookbooks that are sure to please the most discriminating palate, whether you are a diabetic or not. The first book is Fast and Flavorful: Great Diabetes Meals from Market to Table by Linda Gassenheimer. Both titles have been approved by the American Diabetes Association, so you can be assured that the recipes are healthy and can fit into your lifestyle. The recipes in this book are packed with flavor and can be made in minutes simply because the author lets the supermarket do most of the preparation. The cookbook is packed with ethnic and comfort food recipes Each recipe includes a shopping list with the ingredients listed by department and can be purchased at your local supermarket. Gassenheimer also includes a section of cooking staples that you should keep in your pantry and fridge so that you only have to pick up a few things at the store when you decided to cook. I especially like the jerk shrimp with rice and peas recipe or the spaghetti bolognese with herbed zucchini.

The second cookbook is The Diabetes Comfort Food Cookbook: Foods to Fill You Up, Not Out! by Robyn Webb, MS. The cookbook begins with a chapter on comfort food starters (my favorite) and even includes a section on one pot and skillet meals and desserts.  My favorite recipe in this book is the Chinese Five-Spice Steak with Chinese Noodles.  Each recipes include easy-to-follow directions, and a list of exchange choices along with the nutritional values.  Both of these books will give you great ideas to spice up your boring meals and eat diabetic-friendly meals that are healthy, interesting and delicious!

A Unique Love Story

Christmas is around the corner and for some of our library patrons, this is the perfect time to settle in and catch up on some reading! I am not a big fan of "love stories," so I was amused at myself when I picked up Jacquelyn Mitchard's newest book, Second Nature. I enjoyed reading Mitchard's Deep End of the Ocean and I exprected to like this book as much as that one. I was not wrong! Second Nature is a very unique book. The heroine of the story is Sicily, a young woman who was badly burned in a fire when she was young, and was saved by her firefighter dad, who was killed in the fire, as were most of her classmates. Sicily lives her life disfigured, until a surgeon searches her out for a face transplant. The rest of the story details her life after the transplant and discusses how she experiences many things for the first time. The story is beautiful and the writing is exquisite. Sicily is a brave heroine who exemplifiies the meaning of grace under pressure and every character in this book is richly complicated. The book's action covers many seasons, and the description of the Christmas one is especially beautiful. If you love family and relationship drama, mixed in with the bittersweetness of love, you will enjoy every minute of this book.

Holiday Crafting and Baking--with Kids or Adults!

If you want to spend some quality holiday time with your kids, you should check out this new library book! Holiday Crafting and Baking with Kids: Gifts, Sweets and Treats for the Whole Family by Jessica Strand is a wonderful addition to our craft collection. The book contains recipes and craft ideas that are easy and fun and are varying degrees of complexity. The projects cover a spectrum of fall holidays, from Thanksgiving to Kwanzaa and can be enjoyed by families with members of all ages. I especially like the "Incredible Edible Ornaments" and the "Special Place for Kwanzaa Goodies" paper basket. With great pictures, easy-to-follow steps and a comprehensive list of materials needed, this is a must-read for crafty families!

The second craft book the library has received recently is Susan Waggoner's Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas: Crafts, Decorating Tips, and Recipes, 1920's-1960's. The book is full of crats, decorating ideas and recipes that date from the 1920's to the 1960's. You can pick a specific decade and use the chapter to create ornaments for your tree, wrapping paper for your presents, and recipes for your party. There is a great section at the end of each chapter that gives "quick crafts" for the time-challenged decorator! The recipes are contained in a separate chapter and each one is introduced with a history of the candy and/or a tip on how to make it. This book ends with an "art portfolio" chapter with reproductions of old postcards and other pictures as well as a section on online sources for crafting materials. This is a beautiful book and will help you plan a vintage Christmas of your own.

Double Dexter

If you have read any of these blog posts, I am sure you have discovered that I am a big fan of the Dexter novels written by Jeff Lindsay. This book series stars Dexter Morgan, a forensics blood spatter expert for the Miami-Dade Police Department who is also a serial killer. What??? No, really, he is a good guy because he only kills bad people (murderers, pedophiles, etc.) and mainly ones who have somehow escaped the "letter of the law." I have reccommended this series to many patrons and I have to admit, the responses I get from them are usually either: "I can't believe you like this book, because this guy is really sick," or "I have to read all of the books in this series because Dexter is one of those people you hate and love at the same time!" I absolutely adore Dexter because even though he is a brutal killer, he has a set of standards that he adheres to for his own "killings." The writing and tone of these books is masterful and think you'll enjoy every minute of them. The series is the inspiration for the Showtime television series, Dexter and even though the series followed the books pretty closely in season one, it has since diverged greatly from the books. The new series entry, Double Dexter, details a case that has not been covered in the television series. In this book, a brutal cop killer is targeting MDPD's police detectives, beating bodies so completely that they are completely bloodless and almost battered beyond recognition. This killer seems to be taunting Dexter, trying to drag him out and involve him in his own psychotic game. Has Dexter met his match this time? Jeff Lindsay lives in South Florida with his wife and three children and may be contacted on facebook.com/jefflindsayauthor, at http://www.doubleday.com/ or Dexter-Books.com.

Make the Best Burger in Town...

I am a big fan of hamburgers. To me, there is nothing more American than a big, juicy burger, crunchy french fries and a Coke. I know that burgers are not something you should eat every day, but the library has received a book that can enable you to eat burgers more often but in a healthy way. Joni Marie Newman's The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet contains 101 globally inspired vegan creations that showcase fresh flavors and exciting exotic tastes. The book contains twelve chapters of burger recipes, each from different regions of the world. The book also contains chapters on condiments and sauces, buns and breads, sides and salads and a few desserts. The burger substitutes include tofu, split peas, couscous, wheat gluten flour, and a variety of vegetables. This recipe book is a great inspiration for all cooks and the photographs make every recipe look tasty and may inspire you to invent a few culinary geniuses of your own!

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.