My day has been spent in the kitchen.
Dirty dishes await my attention, but I needed a breather before I tackle them so I decided to blog and hang out with you fine fellas.
Several hours passed by in the kitchen as I experimented and played around with tons of tomatoes sent to me for a freelance recipe development project for Lipman Produce.
I’ll be sure to share the final project with you guys once it’s published, but for now here’s a little preview of my end result…
If I don’t chop another vegetable for a month, I’ll be a happy camper.
Back Up
Let’s back up a bit because I did do some fun stuff other than chop endless amounts of tomatoes today.
Around 9 a.m. Ryan and I met up with Ryan’s childhood friend, also named Ryan, at a Starbucks.
We picked a coffee shop located along the interstate since Ryan W. was passing through Ocala on his way back up to his home in North Carolina and we didn’t want him to veer too far off track!
(Yes, it was another dreary morning.)
The two Ryans grew up together in Parrish, Florida and stayed close throughout the years. (They were also groomsmen in each others’ weddings!)
We caught up over drinks (a hot Refresh tea for me) and talked about planning a hiking trip together in North Carolina in the coming months.
Since Ryan W. still had a good nine hour drive ahead of him, we didn’t hang out at Starbucks for too long and said our goodbyes around 10 a.m.
Ryan and I still had a good hour to kill before 11 a.m. church, so we decided to wander into Barnes & Noble to browse around for a bit.
I finished off my tea while feeling nostalgic in the children’s books section.
Remember this lovely read from elementary school?
Apparently the kids of today are reading that classic and this little gem…
Fart Powder! It’s not only a book, but a series. Get it while it’s hot!
I also walked by this book which made me shudder.
Fahrenheit 451. My least favorite high school assigned reading book of all time. It’s about burning books and, ironically, it’s the book I’d most like to burn.
Lunch
After church, Ryan and I ran to the grocery store before heading home for lunch.
I fixed myself a bagelwich with roast beef, mustard and chipotle gouda cheese served with apple slices on the side.
And then it was time to turn our kitchen upside down as I chopped, tasted and perfected three recipes.
Now I’m ready to relax.
An easy dinner and lots of reading are on the agenda for this evening!
P.S. The Fashion page was updated today.
Question of the Evening
- Since we’ve already talked about the best assigned reading books from school, what was your least favorite assigned reading book?
Fahrenheit 451, without a doubt. I also remember finding The Grapes of Wrath rather slow-moving, which is odd because I loved Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-1e3-7hOJ_U8Bg.gif\")
The Metamorphosis by Kafka in 12th grade …. despised the entire lesson unti
I don’t remember hating too many of the books we read in high school. It’s the textbooks you have to read in college that I hate!
My least favorite? It’s hard to say, but my favorite was Night and Farewell To Arms. Oh, I do know the Worst… It was The Source. Ugh, just shuddered remembering it!
Making a mess is the best part! Ps. I love love love that dress.
*your! Maybe it can be added to the fashion page at some point? 🙂
it’s on the fashion page right now! 🙂
I love you dress!
Least favorite book in high school was definitely Heart of Darkness. Ugh, I cringe at the thought! I also loved Bridge to Teribithia when I was a kid. Along with nearly anything by Judy Blume. It’d be fun to re-read some of those childhood classics!
I loved Fahrenheit 451 (and Heart of Darkness)! (I have a predilection for dark works.) I have a B.A. and M.A. in English, so it’s hard to account for my least favorite book.
However, I do remember really disliking The Scarlet Letter in high school. This fall I was hired to teach AP English Language to juniors at my old high school. My first assignment? To teach The Scarlet Letter. Ugh! When I reread it, though, I really liked it! I think I could appreciate the language now that I have a wider vocabulary and stronger understanding of language and history! You might want to give your least favorite books a second whirl, you might appreciate them this time around.
My least favorite was definitely the Old Man and the Sea (with Fahrenheit 451 as a close second). A whole book of a guy ranting to himself=bleh!
Beowulf- the worst!
Oooh these comments are bringing back memories! I remember HATING “Life of Pi” and “Death of a Salesman” (play) in high school. I also skipped reading “The Hobbit” for my lit class in university because I thought it was boring and I already had too many things to read. My husband still hasn’t gotten over that I skipped that book.. Haha!
I read “Sweet Farts” to my 5th grade class. They loved it. The other teachers thought I was crazy and it would rile them up, but it didn’t. They were excited fr read aloud everyday and the plot is pretty good. I hunk they really enjoyed hearing their teacher day fart, SBD, and other gas phrases!
LOL! i’m sure they thought it was a riot!
If you brought your own reusable mug to Starbucks today they would’ve filled it for free for Earth Day! Next year 😉
no way!!! good to know for next year!
Walden by Thoreau. Ugh. I get it now…but as a junior in high school I really didn’t care how many nails it took to build the house or how picking berries could be a spiritual experience…my life was pretty simple in high school so I didn’t have an appreciation for “the simple things” Oh how I wish I could go back to that simplicity!
I bought cliffs notes for all my novels in high school. hah! Those things helped me in many English classes.
I laughed out loud when I saw Fart Powder and your thoughts on 451! Great post!
I (along with the rest of my classmates) absolutely ABHORRED Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I also had to read Mythology that year. Two of my least favorite reads ever.
On a lighter side, I loved the Outsiders and The Giver. I also enjoyed I Heard the Owl Call My Name. Great story even though it was quite sad.
Least favorite is DEFINITELY Walden by Henry David Thoreau…yuck!
I’m surprised you hated farenheight 451! I thought it was totally interesting. They actually made a movie back in 1966. I watched it and it was pretty similar to the book. Cool to see how movies have changed so much!
Farhenheit 451 was not a favorite back then but I’ve always wondered how I would like it as a grown up. The Yearling was a monster of a book I could of done without, as well as Beowolf (?).
Those bowls of tomato goodness look yummy!
Oh gosh Farenheit 451 & 21 Balloons were painful to read.
These three bowls look fantastic! I can’t wait to here more about it!
The Scarlet Letter is the worst book by far I ever had to read. Also the fact we had to read a Shakespeare EVERY YEAR was complete overkill. Oh and one year we had ‘Cry the Beloved Country’ on our summer reading list, I’m pretty sure that book is 800 pages long. I really tried to read it but I just couldn’t.
Least favorite assigned reading: The Pearl. Did not like that book at all!!!
Chipotle gouda sounds heavenly….where did you find it?
publix deli!
I wish there was a publix near me! It seems like you are always finding great stuff there. Is it a local chain in Florida?
it’s a chain located throughout the southeast u.s. it’s definitely a good one! 🙂 i wish we had trader joe’s though!
What makes you qualified to do recipe development? I’m asking seriously – not snarky – I’m confused by freelancers who do recipe development when they have no background in it only their own interests and research it seems. In this case, couldn’t anyone start doing this with the right amount of “publicity”?
I had a horrible english teacher in grade 10 – he could suck the fun out of any book. I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird and absolutely hating it.
Now it’s one of my favorite books, and I’ve probably read it close to ten times.
Yummm those salsas look great! I can’t wait until you post the recipe! And I loved Bridge to Terabithia! Soo good! I also remember loving The Giver and Shiloh (in elementary school) but hating Fahrenheit 451 and just about everything else I read in middle school/high school. Too bad because I bet I would like a lot of those books now!
Sometimes I hated a book while I was reading it, but when the teacher started talking about it and guiding the class through everything I found that I really liked it. However, I never came to like Wuthering Heights. It was booooring. I know it might make me sound like an uncultured heathen, but it was just so freakin’ stupid to 11th grade, spring breakin’ Katie. UGH.
I HATED a tale of two cities in high school and couldn’t even get through it!
“Crime and Punishment.” by Fyodor Dosoevsky. I like the idea behind it, but it was the hardest book to slog through!
My students are reading Bridge to Teribithis right now!!! They love it, but like “Walk Two Moons” better!!!
i hated farenheit 451 too!!! I really loved of mice and men and catcher in the rye!
I love Farenheit 451! And anything else in the Bradbury/Vonnegut cache. I feel guilty admitting this, but I hated The Great Gatsby. I found them all so insufferable!
This post got me thinking about all of the books I read in high school and I’m really curious as to whether or not I’d like them now. Cut to me on Amazon looking for free Kindle books and adding over 90 of them. When exactly I’m goign to actually read all of these books is beyond me, but I’m going to try. It’s nice to break up memoirs, thrillers and the youth dystopian fiction I love with the classics!
Hmmm… this is hard, because we read SO MANY awful books! And I LOVE reading, but the book selections they gave us was seriously awful. I’d have to say my least favorites were Old Man and the Sea (Or any Hemingway…ew), Great Expectations, or Ethan Frome. Or Animal Farm, which we read in 6TH GRADE! I dont know what they expected from us, but I’m pretty sure most of us had zero clue what it was about!
Also, I have a friend who is a 9th grade English Teacher (with Teach for America) in Atlanta right now, and he just had his class read Hunger Games. Best teacher ever – I think so!
Chipotle Gouda! Solid!
Oh and I hated “The Scarlett Letter”….lamest read ever
I skimmed over the comments and I am stunned that nobody said Catcher in the Rye…my goodness I hated that book. I read it with pain every night and pitched a fit when I got to the end and nothing major even happened. Maybe I just didn’t get the point of the book, or the whole rebellion thing just wasn’t my cup of tea, but I swear if I ever see that book in my presence again I will scream 🙂
I apparently am the odd one on here. I actually liked Grapes of Wrath but I hated Of Mice and Men. Probably my least favorite book I had to read in High School was Oliver Twist. Although, I think my one HS English teacher could have probably been sucessful at making reading interesting books a miserable experience.
I absolutely HATED Heart of Darkness. It’s so small so I thought it would be a breeze but it is so boring and dense.
I hated the Last of the Mohicans and never managed to finish Les Miserables. I still want to read that book!
I’m also surprised that you didn’t like Fahrenheit 451, my 18 year old daughter just finished it. It was long, but she thought it was similar to the Hunger Games books she had just read. In fact, that’s what she wanted to focus her paper on. Now she’s challenged me to read it this summer.
Machiaveli’s The Prince!
IT WAS HORRID!!!
I loved Fahrenheit 451! I did NOT like Heart of Darkness or The Scarlet Letter. Couldn’t finish either of those. I always aced the tests on the books I liked and miserably failed on the books I didn’t like.
Things fall apart. Omigosh. I hate that book.