Beck Will Now Review Some Stuff

Little One Books AND A Giveway!

2010-08-27T05:34:00.000-07:00

The winner is number 4 - Pastormac's Ann! Thanks for playing.

I was asked if I wanted to review Little One Books online store, and I was happy to do so. They ship to Canada! You wouldn't THINK this would be a really rare thing, but it's bizarre - we're not far away, but many, many shops don't.

Little One Books does, though - and they have a very carefully grandparent-designed shop of books, DVDs and CDs for children five and under. The selection of materials is really great - instead of throwing a ton of things at you like many shops, everything feels specially chosen. I had a really REALLY hard time deciding what to select, but with the help of The Baby, I picked out the Down Under The Sea gift bundle. It arrived safely and The Baby was delighted with EVERY aspect of it - the book, cd and dvd WERE perfect for a five year old, and she even loved the silver pouch it came wrapped in. So that was a LOT of fun.

And Little One Books has asked me to giveaway a $25 certificate to one of my American or Canadian readers! Just head over to the store, look around and comment here with what you would choose (make sure I have a way to contact you!). I'll pick the winner on August 31st, because that's my birthday and everything.

Rice Thins Brown Rice Crisps

2010-08-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

The people at Christie contacted me and asked me if I'd like to review Rice Thins Brown Rice Crisps. When I heard they were gluten-free, I was pretty pleased - we've reviewed lots of snack foods before, but this was the first review the Baby could participate in, which was nice, and we already are big, BIG fans of their Rice Thins crackers. And the review crackers were accompanied by a ton of fun stuff - an exercise ball! a yoga mat! resistance bands! - which was pretty dandy, too. My kids are goofing around on the exercise ball right NOW.

They are promoted as being a "tasty, better-for-you alternative to chips." There ARE other products in the marketplace that make similar claims and I've tried them because chips would be one of my MAJOR weaknesses and generally, they're more of a somewhat-tasty non-alternative to crackers or - shudder - rice cakes. But these actually were more reminiscent of chips - they were crispier and had stronger flavours.

Our favorite was:
Delicious! My kids and I polished off the whole bag WAY faster than we should have, totally disregarding the recommended serving sizes. I liked the Sour Cream And French Onion flavour, but my kids were a bit cooler. And only my husband liked the Sea Salt and Pepper flavour.

Would I buy them again? Sure. They were tasty, had some fiber and some whole grains - a HUGE plus in gluten-free snacks - and did make a good alternative to chips, as promised.

Giveaway For Nursing Mamas!

2010-08-12T05:17:00.000-07:00

This giveaway is now closed! Thanks for entering!

Bumblebee Nursing Wear has very nicely offered to give one of my Canadian or American readers THEIR CHOICE of nursing apparel from their sweepstakes page. Their clothes are beautiful and chic and I'm happy to host the giveaway.

Obviously, leave a comment with a link to your blog or your twitter account and make sure I can reach you by email if you win. In your comment, let me know what you would choose if you win - and while you're at the website, you can enter their sweetpstakes they're hosting for their second anniversary for even better odds - and if you tell me a story about breastfeeding in public, I'll give you ANOTHER entry just because.

I'll make the draw, arbitrarily enough, this Sunday.

More Crayola Reviews!

2010-07-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

As far as my kids are concerned, I have never done anything cooler than saying yes to reviewing Crayola products - they were as excited as Christmas when that second shipment arrived.

We got:
1) Pip-Squeaks Colour Writers.
Aren't they cute? And they rather cleverly have the lid BUILT IN to the top, which solved our constant Oh no! We lost the lid! thing we have going with markers. They're fine-tipped and have a nice colour - but again, they depend upon the kid being responsible/dextrous enough to make sure the lids are snapped back on after use. They're VERY cute and solve the missing lid problem, but probably for kids who are 6-7.

They also sent:
2) Pip Squeaks Wacky Tips Markers.
I love those fat little markers, and the kids have had LOTS of fun with all of the different effects. Even with the issues around losing the lids, the kids found these easier to use them the first set of markers.

And very thoughtfully, they sent:
3) a giant Marker and Watercolour Pad of paper.

We normally just grab cheap pads of construction paper at the dollar store, and it was SHOCKING to see how much better quality this paper was. It's only $3 or so, too, and it's twice the size of the dollar store pads.

What else? We also got:
4) Body Art Henna Design

A package of face and hand tattoos! The designs were pretty and easy to apply and most importantly THEY WERE EASY TO REMOVE. The Girl and her friends have had tons of fun at sleepovers with this. We especially liked the henna-coloured marker included for detail work - it was a really fun kit for our eleven year old.

And finally, we got this:
5) Color-Fillz Cars.
"I already DID one of those," said The Boy, who was in a mood. So The Girl decided to do it instead. She told me that it was "really easy, fun and satisfying", and it makes a really cute finished product, to.

It generally retails for $12.99, which is a fair amount - we ended up with enough leftover Model Magic clay to do lots of fun sculpting, too.

One of the things I've been impressed with is how many products are available for my older school-aged kids. I'd kind of thought that arts and craft kids were for the under-10 set, but every shipment has seen something that has really delighted my eleven year old. All in all, the products have been really high quality, creative and LOTS of fun for my kids.

Crayola Review

2010-05-19T10:10:00.001-07:00

We were lucky enough to be sent a big box of Crayola products recently to review.

When I was approached to review Crayola products, I was a little leery because only one of my kids - The Baby (who is five) -seemed to be the right age for Crayola art supplies. But they did a fantastic job of picking out kits that fascinated BOTH of my older (8 and 11!) kids.

The Baby got the Color Wonder Tinkerbell Glitter Paint set. She really enjoyed colouring, and the glitter paint was a cute effect. I also enjoyed not getting glitter all over the house, which was a nice touch.

The Tinkerbell coloring book seemed a lot thicker than most Color Wonder sets, too - she's been colouring industriously ever since she got the set a few weeks back and she still has quite a few pages left. The images are nice and clear and it was a very fun project for her.

The Boy got the Model Magic Color-Fillz which I was - again - pretty dubious about. It had a black plastic mosaic that he carefully filled in with the different colours of provided Model Magic clay and it seemed like too structured an activity to be fun to me - but I was wrong. He was REALLY into it, and was extremely proud of the resulting art which he now has hanging in his room. It IS $17.99, which is pretty pricey for a one-time (if you're most kids) art set, but he really did love doing it and the resulting craft is pretty cute (much cuter than the picture on the box). Although it's expensive, it would be a really fun craft to do with kids who don't normally think they like crafts.

And The Girl got the Color Explosion 3-D set, which is one of the niftiest art projects I've ever seen. Each resulting page really DID pop with the enclosed glasses, and it was fun and cool enough to seriously impress my tween. (She wrote "WOW" and "COOL" on most of the pages, as evidence of her excitement.) It was fun enough that we've promised to get the kids more of Crayola's 3-D line over the summer, since her younger siblings were PRETTY JEALOUS of how cool it was. At $10.99, it's a nice size to give at birthday presents for 8-11 year olds - kids who are old enough to be precise with the materials and still young enough to like crafts.

In conclusion: that was a lot of fun!

Sunlight Green Clean Cold Water Power

2010-04-16T06:19:00.001-07:00

I was ALSO sent some Sunlight Green Clean Cold Water Power (includes Plant-Based Cleaning Ingredients): Citrus Fresh Laundry detergent.

I have had some fairly negative experiences with cold water laundry soaps before - often they leave a crunchy film on clothing - but this detergent was serviceable and kept everything pleasantly clean. It's also a HIGHLY concentrated detergent, so the little bottle really lasted a long time.

The only real downside was THE SMELL. "Citrus Fresh" = smelling like lemon dish soap, at least to me. It didn't leave any real scent on the laundry, so it didn't matter much, but I found the smell as I loaded the washing machine unpleasant. This is a minor quibble, however.

Affresh Dishwasher Cleaner

2010-04-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

I was sent Affresh Dishwasher Cleaner to try. It claims to "remove odour from dishwashers", and it DID WORK. My rather-repellant dishwasher smelled fresh and clean afterwards, so hey!

Cookies, Part Deux

2010-03-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, my oldest two children reviewed some cookies, with inadvertently hilarious results. So when I was asked if my children would like to review Mr. Christie's Snak Paks Soft Baked Cookies, I did not hesitate: OF COURSE THEY WOULD. My children are uniformly pro-cookie.

We received three boxes of cookies: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate and Oatmeal Cinnamon. Each box contained several individually-packaged servings, and each type of cookie featured a different vegetable puree, which was pretty undetectable. They were reasonably high in iron, which is always a plus for my bloodless children, and each type was the same soft consistency.

Out of the three, I really only liked the double chocolate. My children showed a slight preference, strangely enough, for the oatmeal cinnamon. All three types were serviceable enough, in my opinion, but my children were DELIGHTED since their cruel, cruel mother generally does not allow them to have store-bought cookies. So as a lunch-box add-in sort of snack, I think these would be a good idea- peanut-free, highish in fiber and iron and child-pleasing to boot.

Another giveaway!

2010-03-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

And the winner is.... Lynn! Thanks for playing, everyone!

I am a giveaway machine these days.

If you are anything like me, the approach of spring means a lot of closet-y angst and worrying about what on EARTH you're going to wear. I have a lot of fairly dress-y events coming up this spring too, which means that I've been looking at dresses and despairing - all the dresses I've seen have either been aimed at teenage trollops OR women who are 94 and considering joining a convent. AND they all cost a zillion bucks too. Discouraging. I just want a nice dress to wear to a Christening and a spring wedding and maybe out and about with a nice pair of flats AND that doesn't cost an arm and a leg - is that too much to ask?

Check these out!

Mikarose makes such pretty dresses AND they're affordable AND they manage to look both age-appropriate and yet neither matronly nor trollop-y. I think they're swell. I think they're even more swell now that they've offered one of my readers a $60 gift certificate, which will get you pretty much any of those nice dresses AND pay for shipping.

Interested? Leave me a comment. Mention this post on Twitter, let me know and that's another entry. And if you don't win, use the coupon code frogandtoad and get 15% off your order.

Contest open to both Canadian and American residents and I'll draw the winner's name on Saturday.

Canadian Family Magazine

2010-02-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

*and the winners are!* (thanks to an online random number generator)

Janet
Jenifer
Happy Geek
Phat
Omaha Mama

Thanks for playing!

I have five subscriptions to Canadian Family magazine to give away - leave a comment if you'd like a change to win one, and make sure I have an email address to contact you with. I'll pull five names on Saturday.

Sally Kitty

2009-12-30T06:47:00.000-08:00

The nice people at Ganz Canada contacted me a little while back and asked me if my youngest child would be interested in their Webkinz Jr. line. I asked her and after she stopped shrieking, she said yes.

They sent her the orange kitty, which she promptly named "Sally Kitty", to distinguish her from Sally Horse and Sally Puppy and Sally Bush Baby. If you don't have older kids, the ways of Webkinz might be new to you, so: each Webkinz toy comes with a code that unlocks a virtual pet on the Webkinz website, and the Webkinz Jr. toys are no exception - the Webkinz Jr. website is aimed at younger kids, and The Baby, at 4, seems to be the ideal age for it. She had a lot of fun bathing and playing with her virtual Sally Kitty.

The toy itself is softer, bigger and floppier than the usual Webkinz line, which makes for a nice cuddling toy. The line itself is limited to six animals, but they're all very appealing and young child friendly and they won the Best Bet Award for 2010 from the Canadian Toy Testing Council.

So Ganz Canada has asked me to giveaway a Webkinz Jr. to one of my readers - if you're in North America, let me know which pet you think your 3 to 6 year old would like the best, and I'll put all of the entries in a hat and have The Baby pick one out on Sunday night.

And the winner is LORI D!

Her Fearful Book Review

2009-10-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

I really loved The Time Traveller's Wife, just like pretty much every other person who a) can read and b) has ovaries. So I did that split Oh Boy Another Book By That Author With The Name I Can't Pronounce/Uh-Oh, Second Books Often Suck sort of reaction when I heard about Her Fearful Symmetry.

I had a whole bunch of mixed reactions to the book, which means that it's taken me 2 weeks after I read it to write about it. So here, in no particular order, is what I thought about it:

1) It was enjoyable in a Gothic We Live Near A Famous Cemetery And Our Apartment Has A Ghost In It And We Are Twins And One Of Us Is Unhealthy In That Victorian Sort Of Way thing. I appreciate writers who are willing to take wild chances in their books, and this book was inventive and highly Victorian and fun in a Halloween-y sort of way. If I was still 15, this might have been my favorite book ever.

2) Really, Audrey Niffenegger? Really? Are you really going to have grossly inappropriate age-match-ups in all of your books? I don't want to read about a childlike 20 year old (who, the book makes clear, looked and acted like 12 year olds. Ick.) making out with some 50-something fella, thank you. That's repellent, not erotic.

3) Those cutesy hand-holding, white-wearing little mousy twins? I wanted to slap both of them. Ugh. It's not that I object to having immature characters as the primary characters in a book - but it's tricky to write them so that they're not twee or irritating or just frankly unbelievable. I liked the brief glimpses of a middle-aged Dutch female character so much that I really hope that in her next book she gives up writing about adolescents and starts writing about actual adult women. It is an important thing to realize that being a weirdo doesn't make you interesting AND it's extra important for authors to realize that their books don't have to abundantly full of yucky nutbars, either.

4) I find the combination of macabre and cutesy unsettling - and I can't decide if that's a good or a bad thing. I like my macabre to be full-out macabre, and cutesy has to be done carefully for me not to start rolling my eyes and swearing in a distinctly uncute manner. I don't know if I think this book was successful as a book, if you know what I mean. I don't know if it works.

5) It was disappointing BUT it was still interesting, and she's a beautiful writer. I LIKE that she handles macabre themes, I LIKE that she was willing to take such a tremendous risk as an author for her second book, and I liked the book well enough. Oh, and I really loved the cover art.

6) Is it worth reading? Yes, unless you really want to read The Time Traveller's Wife Part 2. It's a completely different book and much closer to her roots as a graphic novellist, but it's an interesting, entertaining read - and it would be a fun choice right now with Halloween right around the corner.

Julia's Kitchen Wisdom

2009-09-23T05:36:00.000-07:00

Random House sent me a copy of Julia's Kitchen Wisdom: Essential Techniques and Recipes From A Lifetime of Cooking, a Julia Child cookbook released to go along with the Julie and Julia movie. Although it's a slim book, it's fantastically helpful, full of pretty much everything you'd need to know if you actually want to learn how to cook.

It's not a book for stark kitchen beginners but if you're already comfortable in the kitchen, this is the sort of thing that can help you move on to the next level - techniques and recipes that are both challenging and laid out in her intelligent, easy-to-follow style. And there are lots of fun pictures of Julia Child, too - all in all, a nice introductory book to Julia Child's recipes.

SafetyTat Review

2009-09-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

I was asked if I would review SafetyTats, and it was a very timely question since we were planning on doing a bunch of travelling at that point of the summer: county fairs and big malls and science centers and parks and I don't know about YOU, but I've already misplaced one kid at a crowded venue and those minutes until we located our wandering kid are probably going to deduct whole decades from my life. So a product specifically intended for THAT situation really appealed to me.

We were sent a package of boy and girl tattoos, as shown, some alcohol wipes and a permanent marker. My kids were immediately gung-ho to try them out - who KNOWS how far they might wander in our yard? But we saved them for a Big Outing and frankly, they were a TREMENDOUS peace of mine for me. They stayed on for several days, too.

The only downsides:

1) They HURT to take off! They're much like bandages but with much better adhesive. One of my kids was very stoic and just yoiked them off when the time came but the other one wailed a whole lot. Still, the kid in question is prone to that, and insisted upon putting on another SafetyTat THE VERY NEXT DAY so it can't have hurt THAT much.

2) My youngest kid had an allergic reaction - which I was not expecting - to the adhesive. She's had bandages before and not reacted, so this was a bit of surprise. She's fine and it wasn't serious, and according to the company, she's one of only 3 kids to react to the medical-grade non-latex adhesive. She's just a special kid, that one. My other 2 kids had no reactions and LOVED wearing their SafetyTats, and the company recommends that adhesive-sensitive kids use the Original SafetyTats (which have your cell numbers already printed on) instead of the Quick Sticks.

Would I recommend them? Yep. My kids liked wearing them, and they seem like a much better, tidier option than writing a cell number on their arms with a permanent marker, which is what we've done in the past. I also liked the number of SafetyTats for young children with serious allergies and health issues - something I can imagine bringing parents a lot of peace of mind on field trips and school outings. They also made my older kids feel much more confident and less nervous in busy settings this summer, because they knew that they would be able to reach us if we became separated - which was a big deal for them.

If you are interested, SafetyTat has offered my readers a 15% off coupon on orders of $15 or more. The coupon code is FrogandToad.

Poly To Go

2009-07-12T07:00:00.001-07:00

I was sent several packages of Polysporin's new product, Poly To Go, to review. It's a little egg-shaped portable spray bottle of Polysporin that's a good size to tote with you during summer outings, and my kids were very eager to injure themselves so I could use it on them, the weirdos.

I was, to be honest, a bit baffled by this product - and then one of my kids cut their leg on a piece of DIRTY, FILTHY PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT and I remembered that I'd stashed one of the little Poly eggs in the car. It was a big relief, my kid found it very comforting and suddenly the product completely made sense. It's a nice size to toss in a pocket or a purse for summer outings, since kids DO hurt themselves a lot during all of the summer fun. If you're in Canada, here's" a $3 off coupon, too.

Babycakes, Maybecakes

2009-07-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

I have rarely been as disappointed in a cookbook as I was by Babycakes (which has the subtitle "Vegan, Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery)".

Let's start with what I did like about the book, though.

1) It is BEAUTIFULLY photographed. Before I'd looked through it first - and I really should have, but more on that later - I handed Babycakes to The Baby and told her cheerfully that I could make her anything out of it, and she very cheerfully looked through it. Most books aimed at people with severe allergies or food intolerance's are not so beautifully photographed, and it was a pleasure to see it.

2) Erin McKenna has a nice, friendly writing style, and does a good job of explaining baking basics to novices. This sounds like a small thing but it is NOT - I have many baking books that are as dry as dust, books where the author does not explain even complicated instructions.

3) The gingerbread that I made - with some adaptations, which I'll explain later - and that I am currently eating is VERY good. I am sure many of the other recipes would be equally good, too.

Let's look at the book's claims now, shall we?

Vegan
It IS a vegan cookbook, and if that mattered to me, I would be very cheerful. Of course, the book makes a lot of claims that the things in it are healthy - which would be irresistible for many people I know: healthy frosted cupcakes? SIGN ME UP.

Just taking the eggs and dairy out of a cupcake does not make it healthy (unless you are allergic to eggs and dairy and then BY ALL MEANS) and using - excuse me while I vomit into my garbage can just thinking about it - "garbanzo-fava bean flour" in your cupcake does not make it virtuous. Taking the eggs and dairy and wheat out of a cupcake is a good thing if you are allergic to eggs and dairy and wheat, but it is does not magically transform a cupcake into a slice of healthy bread or something. The cupcake recipe, for example, has 1 CUP of coconut oil in it, and 1 1/2 cups of "agave nectar" or, as my husband calls it, "really expensive corn syrup."

The book claims that coconut oil "stores in your body as energy and not fat, and supports the proper function of the thyroid.... it's a bit pricey, but so are the heart attacks it helps prevent." The health claims being made for coconut oil are not universally held to be true - Dr. Weill, for example, wrote bluntly on his website that he does not recommend using coconut oil.

The author DOES suggest other substitutions for coconut oil, so I wouldn't let that deter me if I was interested in the book. The only recipes where coconut oil seems to be essential are the lush-looking frosting recipes, which depend upon coconut oil's thickening qualities. Or you could use coconut oil. Your call.

Gluten-Free
Sigh.

A fourth of the recipes in this slim book - there are only 48 recipes, I believe (not counting a handful of beverage recipes) - are NOT gluten-free. They use spelt, which while WHEAT-free, contains gluten.

There IS an explanation on how spelt is wheat-free, not gluten-free, but THE COVER STILL SAYS "GLUTEN-FREE" right on it. If I wrote a book called "Beck's Completely Vegetarian Book" and 1/4 of the recipes had BACON, wouldn't you be ticked off?

So, many of the recipes that my little tiny child with celiac disease happily wrote her name beside are completely off-limits to her. If you have a child on a restricted diet, you likely know how that made me feel.

(Mostly) Sugar-Free
What?

Every recipe - all of them, with no substitutions offered - uses "agave nectar", which is widely touted in health food-y circles as being a miracle food. The claims being made for it are EXTREMELY controversial, and it is STILL sugar. It is AS high in calories, is no more "natural" then corn syrup (and many people believe as bad for you as corn syrup, too), not any safer for diabetics and did I mention EXTREMELY expensive? My little wee bottle cost me $12 and was enough for ONE batch of cupcakes.

Other liquid sweeteners - honey, molasses, maple syrup or corn syrup - might be able to sub in for agave nectar in some of the recipes, although agave nectar is so sweet that without it, many of the recipes would NOT turn out. I was quite happy with the pumpkin gingerbread that I made last night, using honey instead of agave nectar, but it would not work as a substitution in cupcakes, for example.

So the book is not "Sugar-Free." It is not even "(Mostly) Sugar-Free."

Most Talked-About

By famous people.

Yes, nothing impresses me more than having Natalie Portman tell me that these recipes "all tasted better than anything made with butter, cream, and eggs", than Mary-Louise Parker telling me how good for me these recipes are, that Zooey Deschanel is so happy to finally have safe snacks, that Pamela Anderson loves them because they are "less chubby desserts" and ON and ON. Yes, we GET it. You have famous friends.

Celebrity butt-kissing is one of my big pet peeves, in case you've just started reading me today or something. Natalie Portman is not magically an expert on baked goods just because she's talented and pretty. Pamela Anderson is not the person to ask about the calorie content of baked goods (and the calorie content would still be quite high from my guess, although the book provides no nutritional information). Mary-Louise Parker does not have an additional degree in nutrition as well as being on television.

So how were the recipes?
I've tried a handful of recipes from the book - the vanilla cupcakes, which I made as directed, the cornbread, which I adapted to be gluten-free and using honey as a sweetener, and the pumpkin gingerbread, which I also made with honey.

The vanilla cupcakes were a dud. The taste of the gluten-free flours was overwhelming, and everyone in the house had a stomach ache after eating ONE unfrosted cupcake.

The cornbread was more of a success - lighter than most gf cornbreads I've made.

And the pumpkin gingerbread was DELICIOUS. I frosted it - not being a vegan - with a cream cheese frosting, which was perfect, but if you are a vegan, a plain vanilla - or lemon!- frosting would set it off nicely, too.

So on its own terms, it is not a bad cookbook. The recipes perform reasonably well - although I am not going to make the cupcakes again - and if you or your child have dairy, egg or wheat issues, this might work well for your family. I find the kind of miracle food claims that books like this make worrisome, however, and I dislike having bony celebrities in my cookbooks telling me that a batch of not-anything-special cupcakes that cost $25 to make - in the middle of a severe recession! - are in some way morally or nutritionally superior to another batch of cupcakes.

I did like the author's calm writing, and the recipes looked beautiful. I'd be interested to see future gluten-free books from her, books that don't rely on such controversial, expensive ingredients.

Marrying The Mistress

2009-06-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

Joanna Trollope is, I find, a bit of an under-read modern author. It's not at all that she's not a good writer - she's very good and has a deft, subtle voice - but that her topics tend to be small and thus rather unfairly relegated to the ladies' fiction pile.

I just reread a recent rerelease (can I fit any more REs into this sentence? Maybe.) of her book Marrying The Mistress, which is both a very good book - golly, she can write - and a very bad book in that it suffers from Baby Boomer* disease and a rather subtle moral rot.

(*she's a few years too old to actually be a Baby Boomer, but close enough.)

The book, to sum up, concerns Judge Guy Stockdale, who leaves his wife of a very, very long time for a much younger woman. His wife has been a homemaker for her whole life, but over the book we learn that it's all right that she loses both her long-time husband and her beloved house because not only does she not have a career, but she is that most Baby Boomerish of sinners, an emotionally reserved mother. His mistress - the fatherless and MUCH younger Merrion Palmer - is obviously more deserving of his love. For one, she dresses much better. For another, the lighting in her apartment is more carefully chosen, designed to enhance one's very special moods. Don't our moods deserve enhancing? Obviously, she is a special woman, unlike First Wife.

Merrion's mother - another emotionally reserved mother and hence another villain - has only Merrion in her life and is horrified to find out that her only child is boffing a married man, instead of supporting and encouraging her, as any good mother would. Why, she even has the temerity to directly confront Guy and to say outright to him that he is jeopardizing her child's happiness and that his being so much older means either that her child will be deprived of being a mother herself (also, she commits the sin of suggesting that having children is in some way linked to the fulfillment of most women. Tsk.) or that she will be a widow with young children. For this unwarranted intrusion, Merrion does not speak to her mother again for the remainder of the novel.

Guy has two children, both grown men. One is married and has three teenaged children and is his mother's favorite and the other is a saintly gay man and the confidant of his brother's wife. I can't remember anyone's names at this point and I'm too lazy to look them up. Anyhoo. So the married guy and his wife have a chaotic messy house and busy careers and no one ever seems to be able to prepare a meal and their 3 young teenagers roam around the house unsupervised, and in one case, having a short-lived and upsetting sexual relationship. But never fear! The teenager learns that what's really important is that he Expressed His Feelings to the girl in question, and who taught him this? Why, his errant grandfather, who emerges from these pages as a New Man, able to freely express his feelings. Simon - ah, that's his name! - and his wife have a Good Marriage - they talk about their feelings and cry a lot and they both have careers instead of being some pampered, childish first wife - the Old Wife - who is thrust unceremoniously from her home and her garden, mocked by her children, and forced to turn to pottery. The end.

Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

2009-06-05T06:01:00.001-07:00

This is a very, very tempting book.

I've already baked a lot of the recipes - they're from the stable of Martha Stewart magazines - and I've had mixed results with them, as is fairly typical with Martha's recipes. ("Martha"? Are we on a first name basis now?) The pictures make every recipe look just sweepingly gorgeous, but I happen to know, for example, that the Strawberry Cupcakes - so irresistibly pink - turn into leaden fleshy lumps. The Red Velvet Cupcakes are delicious, however, and the Devil's Food Cupcakes - the cover model! - are lovely. And my son went through and carefully wrote his name beside every recipe he wanted me to try, which would be all of them. Every. Single. One.

There's some helpful information on basic decorating techniques, which still probably wouldn't help me much, and a dandy chapter on holiday cupcakes. There are lots and lots of pictures that are the baking equivalent of pin-up girls, all lush icing and full cakey curves. And to carry the pin-up girl metaphor stupidly far, many of the recipes are unreliable and will fall flat - but it's still a completely gorgeous book, and probably a necessary addition for the baking fan.

The Illustrious Dead

2009-06-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

Another reviewing guest writer! This time, it's my dad's turn.
The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army by Stephan Talty.

This is an account of the typhus epidemic that road with the Grand Armie of Napoleon to Moscow and then came home with the pitiful remnants back to Western Europe.

It's quite a book, I have always been a student of the Napoleonic Wars and thought that there had to be more than the Russian armies and snow that lay that great man's most ambitious endeavour low. It is also a book that talks of the great battles in that campaign, complete with battle maps (I like that), and with personal glimpses of men's life and sad deaths. It is about glory and horrid crawling death of disease and privation on the barren steppes of Russia.

It was a shock for me to learn that by the time of the main battle - Boradio - the Russians actually outnumbered the Grand Army of Napoleon

It would be easy for Talty to pin it all on Bonaparte or his medical staff, but he does not do so, he is tender with the truth about the indifference of mighty men to the suffering of their "lessor" underlings.

I have also read Stephan Talty's book about Captain Morgan the famous pirate, it is in my opinion a better book than this, but pirates have always been better reading than armies dying slowly in the snow.This is a good book for people like me, interested in such things to start with, wargaming and such, it would also be a fast read for medicos and that type, I am not sure that the average hockey oriented grandfather would find his interest held to the bitter end though.

Well-Preserved

2009-05-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

This cookbook - written by the enviably named Eugenia Bone - is not my favorite book I've ever read on putting up small batches of preserves, although I definitely can imagine WHO would like it.

Someone more sophisticated than me, for starters, which does not take much doing, and someone who has always dreamed of the day that they could make their own gravlax, and then make a lovely meal afterwards (on page 214) of Farfalle Alfredo with Gravlax.

Hee hee hee.

Okay, having gotten that out of my system, there are quite a few lovely, appealing recipes in here, and the book would be useful for anyone who has a good farmer's market nearby and wants some smaller preserving recipes for the sorts of things you might buy there. The book isn't a conclusive overview, but rather an interesting assortment of different sorts of recipes and what to use them for afterwards and it has a useful introductory chapter on canning basics, too. I found the chapters of canning fruits and vegetables most appealing, but since I've never been gripped with the desire to make small batches of home-cured bacon or "Fava Bean Cream", the rest of the book is perhaps not for me.

The Little Stranger

2009-05-13T05:48:00.000-07:00

When I started reading Sarah Waters' new book, The Little Stranger, I immediately felt like I was in very familiar literary territory - the decaying aristocracy in post-war Britain are featured in a lot of books I read, and the book itself had been described to me as being much like Henry James' The Turn of The Screw. Ah ha, I thought.

But Waters is very much her own author - subtle and unrushed, with a deft hand at character and the rare gift for making a period book feel like it was written in the time itself and not some modern author's arch attempt at applying modern attitudes toward long ago people. The characters - the aristocratic and ruined Ayres, trapped by the maintenance of their great house and their now-unneeded roles - and Dr. Faraday, who becomes both the family's friend but also the rather unreliable witness (oh, and possibly a participant) in the family's inevitable destruction - are breathtakingly well-done.

Also, the book is scary.

It's not over-the-top gore, not evil clowns and leather-faced dudes with chainsaws, but a subtle creepiness, a lot of little wrongness, and Waters was very content to let it build up a gradual pace. The book unnerved me so much that even now, sitting in my bright room typing in the sunny morning, I still feel a chill down my spine. I can't write too much about the plot without giving a lot away, but I really recommend it. Haunting, sad and lingeringly mysterious - it's one of the best books I've read in AGES.

Mr. Christie Snak Packs

2009-05-06T04:38:00.000-07:00

The Girl took this picture, too!

... as reviewed by The Boy and The Girl.

Mini Oreo Snak Pak Cookies

The Boy: I think they have a nice amount of icing.

The Girl: They are delicious with good flavour. Kids really like them, too.

(my husband picked this kind as his favorite)

Teddy Grahams Honey Snak Pack Cookies

The Boy: I think they have a nice amount of honey.

The Girl: Delicious, a good size and with a nice sweetness.

Barnum's Animal Snak Pack Crackers

The Girl: Buttery tasting and delicious. They're fun and have a unique flavour. I am worried that cruel kids would smash the cookies and go on to hurt real animals, though.

The Boy: I don't think you should worry about that.

The Girl: THEY MIGHT!

The Boy: They are delicious cookies and they look like animals. I am going to bite off this elephant's head now.... (with his mouth full of cookie) I would not really eat an elephant.

(both kids picked these as their favorites)

Mini Chips Ahoy! Snak Pak Cookies
The Girl: Delicious, with a nice balance of chocolate. They're crunchy and tasty.

The Boy: Chewy. Kids would like 'em.

Barnum's ABC's Cocoa Snak Pack Cookies

(with Omega-3 fatty acids)

The Girl: Delicious and a nice amount of chocolate. They have an exquisite taste.

The Boy: They are really good even though they do have fish oil in 'em.

The Girl: Yeah, you can't taste the fish.

(this is my favorite. Very nice.)

Jump Start 3D Virtual World: Trouble In Town

2009-04-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

as written by The Boy

I think it was a really fun game. I liked the art studio and the musical caverns. I kind of felt like I learned things, too. It felt a lot different than other games. I liked getting my guy a pet. My guy was a robot but you could be a fairy or a rhino sort of thing. There was no problems with the game and it would be a good game for 5 to 7 year olds. My sisters loved it too. We all played it a lot.

The website was fun. I liked the Story Land. It had a bunch of places and you had to do stuff that the characters tell you and it helps you earn your story books. Now if I can play for a while, I can get my last one done.

The game and the website were super duper fun.

Howdy!

2009-04-28T11:17:00.001-07:00

This will be my all-purpose review blog.
For example: I just ate a banana. I give it an A+.