Minestrone Love: Five Different Minestrone Soups for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

I spent most of my Saturday helping out at a job fair for work and after an exhausting week, you guessed it, I wasn't in to spending time in the kitchen this weekend. So instead, I relaxed and caught up with my reading, and I bring you some minestrone soups I have loved.

Minestrone is a classic and can have so many variations. Wikipedia says, "Minestrone is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice, sometimes both. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, croutons, and tomatoes."

Here are five of I ave featured on the blog:

This Farmer's Market Minestrone with White Beans is satisfying and summery:

My Middle Eastern Minestrone with Chickpeas and Israeli Couscous is an exotic take on the classic made special with One Flew Over the Couscous Nest spice from @thebookclubcookbook: 

A simple, healthy classic is Ellie Krieger's Family Favorite Minestrone: 

Back when I ate meat on the regular, I threw this Smoky Minestrone Soup together from my pantry and fridge:

And when I was eating vegan and lots of raw foods, I tried this no-cook Home-Style Minestrone, another good option for a hot summer day. 

Five different versions--all delicious!

Now let's see who is in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week.

Melynda from Scratch Made Food shared another three dishes this week. The first is a Avocado Caprese Salad. She says, "This is a bit off the path from the usual Caprese salad, but very much a delightful rendition. And because it is a freestyle salad, feel free to improvise as you wish, to please your family. This Avocado Caprese Salad makes a lovely starter to any summer meal, as well as a delicious main course."

Next is her Tuscan Bean Salad with Tomatoes and Oregano. She says, "With fresh tomato season ending soon, you too will want to make this salad. Like all cooks before me and everyone that will come after, I changed the process a bit. Made is easier on the cook...Oh and used what I currently have in the garden.....tender baby beet greens and swiss chard, from the garden."

Finally she shared her White Bean Soup with Cilantro Broth, saying it's "is perfect to enjoy just about anytime, but especially when you desire something fresh, frugal, and full of vegetables! With already cooked beans on hand, this easy delicious full meal soup comes together quickly!"

Tina of Squirrel Head Manor brought a cooling Tomato, Cucumber & Mozzarella Salad, saying, "Tomato, cucumber and mozzarella salad is just perfect for a hot summer dinner.  It's a quick and easy side dish, healthy ingredients and tasty too. I've been enjoying reading through this Jacques Pepin cookbook lately, staying inside and avoiding the high temperatures. This recipe was one I'd bookmarked awhile back,  no time like the present."

Judee of Gluten Free A-Z Blog shared Watermelon, Cucumber, Tomato, and Mint Salad and said, "When temperatures start to rise to over 90 degrees, you will welcome this refreshing watermelon, cucumber, and tomato salad seasoned with chopped scallions and freshly chopped mint-  it is sweet, savory and delicious. This revitalizing salad is perfect during hot and humid summer heat waves when the need to hydrate is so important, and you only feel like eating something light." 

Thanks to Judee, Tina and Melynda for joining me this week! 

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
• Although we are pretty wide on what defines a soup, sandwich or salad, entries that are clearly not in the same family (ie: desserts, meats, random main or side dishes that aren't salads, etc.) are meant for another round up and will be deleted. 

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy week!

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "No Names To Be Given" by Julia Brewer Daily, Served with Two "Egg in the Hole" Recipes

I am happy to be on the TLC Book Tour for No Names To Be Given by Julia Brewer Daily. Accompanying my review are links to some favorite Egg-In-the-Hole recipes inspired by my reading.

Publisher's Blurb

1965. Sandy runs away from home to escape her mother’s abusive boyfriend. Becca falls in love with the wrong man. And Faith suffers a devastating attack. With no support and no other options, these three young, unwed women meet at a maternity home hospital in New Orleans where they are expected to relinquish their babies and return home as if nothing transpired.

But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations-and reverberate all the way to the White House.

Told from the three women’s perspectives, this mesmerizing story is based on actual experiences of women in the 1960s who found themselves pregnant but unmarried, pressured by family and society to make horrific decisions. How that inconceivable act changed women forever is the story of No Names to Be Given, a heartbreaking but uplifting novel of family and redemption.

Publisher: Admission Press (August 3, 2021)  

Paperback: 334 pages

My Review:

There are many things to like about No Names Given. I think the idea of this book is a good one and liked that as an adopted child with a similar backstory, the author wrote this book about the experience of three young women who came from different circumstances and found themselves pregnant and sent to a maternity home in New Orleans in 1966, a time when the consequences of unwed motherhood were devastating and often covered up with the babies adopted out. I like that it delved into what circumstances were like for these women feel like that seems realistic. While the individual stories of Sandy, Becca, and Faith were compelling, it was hard to delve deep enough into their characters to feel connected and I found the dialogue clunky at times which pulled me out of the story. Midway through the book, it switches to twenty-five years later and more of a mystery vibe for the women to figure out who knows their secrets and wants to expose them and destroy their lives and careers, but that part of the story didn't have any real teeth to it. There were several plot points that felt too convenient and coincidental and that made it hard for me to believe it would have played out the way it did and left me somewhat disappointed in the ending. This is a debut novel, so points for that, and I imagine that it was cathartic for the author to write given the tie to her own history. I'd love to read more about her personal, real-life journey to learn about her past someday. 

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Author Notes: Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a southern accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi. She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even shadowed Martha Stewart. As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to the public. Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New Orleans. She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test, her birth father’s family, as well. A lifelong southerner, she now resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband Emmerson and Labrador Retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star.

You can connect with Julia on her website,  Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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There was quite a lot of food and a lot of southern food in the book. Mentions included catfish, corn, dumplings or a stew, chicken pie, bakes sweet potatoes, onions and bell peppers sizzling on a griddle, a hot dog and a bottled strawberry drink, eggs in a hole, French toast, point cake, chocolate chess pie, mason jar of pimento cheese slathered on crackers, Salisbury steak with hot brown gravy, dinner rolls, green salad with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits, black coffee, strawberry cake with cream cheese icing, roast, gravy and peas, hamburgers, hot chocolate, cherry snow cone, French pastries with layers of fillings, coffee with chicory, cold cuts, grape soda, bread, pears, petit fours, mixed nuts, tiny cucumber sandwiches and fruit punch with vanilla ice cream floating in it, seafood, brandy, muffulettas, shrimp and oyster po'boys, beignets, turkey and oyster dressing, glass bottles of Coca-Cola and moon pies, club sandwiches, pecan pie, fresh fruit, shrimp cocktails, beef stew, peanut butter crackers, sherbet pushup, chips, ginger ale and saltine crackers, potatoes, sweet ice tea, blackberry cobbler, fried chicken, tiny quiches, stuffed mushrooms, grilled cheese sandwich, banana popsicle, soup, baked ham with pineapple rings and whole cloves, birthday cake, crawfish étouffée, cupcakes, peanuts poured into a glass bottle of coke, turtle soup, ham and cheese croissants, potato salad, fresh lemonade, chicken salad, tenderloins from the grill, peanut butter on every table as an appetizer, scrambled eggs, champagne, tiny crab cakes and oysters on the half shell, grits and biscuits, shrimp salad, Angels on Horseback (grilled oysters wrapped in bacon), hot crab dip with toast points, tiny grits cakes topped with Mississippi sausage, and a meat and three (southern special of meat, three sides, cornbread and sweet tea).

For my bookish dish, there wasn't one dish that really stood out for me except the eggs in a hole that Becca's housekeeper and mother-figure growing up makes her. It's a small mention but since I grew up with it myself (it was called "ding-dong eggs" at my house) and it's a favorite nostalgic breakfast or occasional dinner for me. I have featured it on the blog a few times and would have made it this week but work and some new COVID-related duties have really kicked my butt this week and I have been coming home, eating things I can heat up quickly and falling asleep before 8:00 PM most nights and just didn't have the energy to make a pretty dish and take pictures of it.

So, here are two favorites from the past--one a classic, eggs in a bread frame and the other a grilled cheese (also mentioned in the book) combination. The links in each lead to the recipe post. 

First up, the Grilled Cheese Egg in a Hole that combines two favorite classics. 

Then a more classic Egg In a Hole.

You can't go wrong with either of these! 

 

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to last week's post. 

Note: A review copy of No Names to Be Given was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.    

You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here. 

 

Chilled Cucumber & Dill Soup from Mark Bittman for Souper (Soup, Salad, & Sammie) Sundays

I have been meaning to make this Chilled Cucumber & Dill Soup for a few weeks now, but I have been lazy--even though it requires little more than a bit of chopping and peeling, then chilling it until it's nice and cold. Although it rained hard last night and is supposed to rain even harder tonight and tomorrow, it's really warm and humid today so this soup sounded perfect.

It comes from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express, a great little cookbook full of little recipe sketches. I have made multiple recipes from it on this blog and was surprised when this one popped up in an email, that I had never made this one. I love cucumber and dill and cold cucumber soup, so it was right up my alley. It says to serve with crusty bread and I saw this cheese bread in the shape of a hedgehog from a table at the month craft/gift/food fair near my house and thought it was cute, and that it would be a great accompaniment. 

Chilled Cucumber & Dill Soup

Slightly Adapted from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express

(Serves 4)

Peel and seed three cucumbers. Chop them up and put in a blender with two cups of buttermilk, a half cup of sour cream, a tablespoon of olive oil, a couple of tablespoons of freshly chopped dill, a pinch of sugar, salt, and a splash of white wine vinegar. Puree and garnish with fresh dill. Serve with crusty bread.

Notes/Results: Just a simple cold cucumber soup--refreshing and good dill flavor. The crusty bread is fun and tastes good dipped into the soup. Easy enough to make, I would make it again. 

Linking up this Jacques Pepin recipe at I Heart Cooking Clubs for August Potluck. 

Now let's see who is in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week.

Tina of Squirrel Head Manor shared Potato, Pea and Chickpea Curry, from Donna Hay's Modern Classics, saying, "Besides the Mandarin chicken we also had tried a Donna Hay recipe - a Potato, Pea and Chickpea curry. ... Serve with steamed rice and cucumber yogurt."

Melynda from Scratch Made Food brought three dishes this week. First is Ham Bone Soup with White Beans, Sweet Potato and Kale, saying this soup is "one of the soups I make on regular rotation. Smoked ham broth, tender sweet potato chunks, creamy beans, and tender kale, ladled up in a steamy bowl of comfort food." 

Her second contribution gives a lesson in How To Make Borscht, saying "Borscht is just one of those soups people don't think about. But they should! ... And this version is loaded with vegetables for good health."

Finally she shared her One Cup Two Cup Three Cups Lentil Soup and said, "Lentil soup is one of the most delicious soups to offer your friends and family! But it does not have to be heavy with too many flavors."

Finally here at Kahakai Kitchen, I shared a Shrimp Cobb Salad and one of my favorite easy recipes for Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing from Ina Garten. It's perfect on a Cobb Salad or just a thick wedge of iceberg lettuce or a pile of lettuce, celery and radishes as pictured below. 

Thanks to Tina and Melynda for joining me this week! 

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
 

If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.
• Although we are pretty wide on what defines a soup, sandwich or salad, entries that are clearly not in the same family (ie: desserts, meats, random main or side dishes that aren't salads, etc.) are meant for another round up and will be deleted. 

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy week!

 

The Book Tour Stops Here: A Review of "Mrs. Rochester's Ghost" by Lindsay Marcott, Served with a Shrimp Cobb Salad & a Blue Cheese Dressing Recipe

It's almost Friday! I am excited about that and the fact that I am today's TLC Book Tour stop for Mrs. Rochester's Ghost by Lindsay Marcott, a modern retelling of Jane Eyre.  Accompanying my review is a Shrimp Cobb Salad from a nearby restaurant and a recipe for one of my favorite Blue Cheese Salad Dressings.  

Publisher's Blurb:

In a modern and twisty retelling of Jane Eyre, a young woman must question everything she thinks she knows about love, loyalty, and murder.

Jane has lost everything: job, mother, relationship, even her home. A friend calls to offer an unusual deal, a cottage above the crashing surf of Big Sur on the estate of his employer, Evan Rochester. In return, Jane will tutor his teenage daughter. She accepts.

But nothing is quite as it seems at the Rochester estate. Though he’s been accused of murdering his glamorous and troubled wife, Evan Rochester insists she drowned herself. Jane is skeptical, but she still finds herself falling for the brilliant and secretive entrepreneur and growing close to his daughter.

And yet her deepening feelings for Evan can’t disguise dark suspicions aroused when a ghostly presence repeatedly appears in the night’s mist and fog. Jane embarks on an intense search for answers and uncovers evidence that soon puts Evan’s innocence into question. She’s determined to discover what really happened that fateful night, but what will the truth cost her?

Hardcover: 398 Pages

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (August 1, 2021)

My Review: 

Although Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte does not garner the same level of love and devotion from me as Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Jane Austen do, I have always enjoyed it and have read it four or five times throughout my life. This made me more than happy to jump on the tour for Mrs. Rochester's Wife, the modernization of the classic novel. I love a good retelling--preferably where the author doesn't just pick up the novel and put it in a different time or setting, but rather one that reaches out and gives me another angle to explore. 

Mrs. Rochester's Wife manages to keep the dark gothic vibe of the original, even as it moves the story to the dramatic and rugged coastline of Big Sur. Jane is now the unemployed writer of a gothic television series that was recently canceled--making it impossible to afford her rent. She is also recently an orphan, having lost her mother to cancer, and she also lost her boyfriend and best friend who together, betrayed her when her mother was sick. An old friend calls and talks her into leaving New York for California to take a summer job tutoring a notorious tech mogul's teenage daughter and living in a cottage on a massive coastal estate, she is unsure but low on options. Evan Rochester is darkly handsome, and is thought to have killed his mentally unstable wife Beatrice--although no one has been able to prove it. Jane begins to look for answers and finds herself falling for her employer at the same time.

The story is told both by Jane and in flashbacks of Beatrice Rochester which adds an interesting element, as she is quite mad and these bits are very dark and twisty. I liked how the Thorn Bluffs estate setting was brought to creepy and gothic life and how some of the supporting characters in Bronte's work were reimagined here. I did get annoyed a time or two by Jane and some of her actions, and at how quickly she fell for Evan, despiser her misgivings, his secrets and lies, and some pretty good evidence that at the very least, he may have driven his wife to drown herself. But, I get a bit annoyed at the original Jane Eyre too--so it wasn't a new feeling. For me, overall it worked and I had a hard time putting the last third of the book down. I think someone with an appreciation for the original novel (but who is also open to interpretations of it) will enjoy it and someone less familiar or completely new to the story will appreciate it as a slightly soapy and gothic mystery/thriller. 

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Author Notes: Lindsay Marcott is the author of The Producer’s Daughter and six previous novels written as Lindsay Maracotta. Her books have been translated into eleven languages and adapted for cable. She also wrote for the Emmy-nominated HBO series The Hitchhiker and coproduced a number of films, including Hallmark’s The Hollywood Moms Mystery and the feature Breaking at the Edge. She lives on the coast of California.

You can connect with Lindsay on her website, Twitter or Instagram

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Food Inspiration:

Jane's friend and Rochester's cousin is the chef on the estate and so there was plenty of food and drink to be found in Mrs. Rochester's Ghost. Mentions included, a menu of pear and allium to start, black cod with caviar beurre blanc, chocolate ganache, and cocktails made of lavender and lemonade, caraway cookies, a bottle of Sancerre, tapas, peanuts, cabernet, Frappuccinos, a turkey wrap, margarita, coffee, orange juice, homemade cranberry muffins, honey, gelato, a $27 Cobb salad at a sidewalk cafe, a Manhattan, copping (chunky with fresh seafood and fragrant with anise and oregano), a mascarpone fig tart, Cristal, baby back ribs, cheese, soba noodles, garlic, cherries, mojitos, a turkey and Swiss clubs, tubs of assorted salads, apples, peaches, Argentinian Malbec, liqueur, kirsch, chicken tikka masala, mezcal, venison chili, clove tea and lacy rose water cookies, Dr. Browns Black Cherry Soda, cokes, Wavy Lays, burgers, wilted kale and a pear, kugel and potato knishes, matzo ball soup, egg creams with extra Hershey's, Le gloop (penne pasta glooped together with a bunch of random ingredients from the fridge like leftover steak, sour cream, Greek olives), a tale of eating fried rattlesnake, cantaloupes, pizza, popcorn shrimp, Mac and cheese, candy-colored tropical fruit drinks, breadsticks shrimp in cocktail sauce, crab salad lemonade, Perrier, salmon, chocolate-hazelnut biscotti, an açaí bowl, soft-shell crabs, eggs, Fat Tire beer, sushi, bison burger, sweet potato fries, zinfandel, Vanilla Spice Energy tea, fried food, Grape Nuts with blueberries on top, a salad of arugula, radicchio, and fennel with white sardines and toasted slices of sourdough, pistachios, croissants, strawberry-and-kiwi tonics, champagne, martinis, vegetable curry, carrot cake, ice-cold Stoli, Sweet Chili Doritos, steak, and cranberry-bread toast and vanilla yogurt. 

Set in Big Sur, California, salads seemed to feature heavily-- a crab salad for Beatrice, a Cobb salad Jane purchases on a first day there and various salads that Otis made. I decided on a Cobb salad--mainly because it sounded good for a hot and humid night. It has been a long and busy week, and even though a Cobb Salad is not at all difficult to make, I wanted someone to make it for me so I ordered one from a local restaurant/brewery by my house and ran in and grabbed it. I subbed in shrimp for the chicken and although I asked them to hold the bacon, it came with it. 

But, because you probably come here for a recipe, I am including one of my favorite easy blue cheese dressing recipes, perfect for a Cobb salad. It comes from Ina Garten and I first tried it on her Crunchy Iceberg Salad with Creamy Blue Cheese, here. 

Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing
Slightly Adapted from Ina Garten via BarefootContessa.com
(Serves 4)

For the Dressing:
4 oz Roquefort blue cheese, crumbled
2/3 cup good mayonnaise
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 

For the dressing, place 4 ounces of blue cheese in a small bowl and microwave for 15 seconds, until it begins to melt. Place the mayonnaise, yogurt, warm blue cheese, sherry vinegar, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade and process until smooth. Set aside or refrigerate until ready to use.

Notes/Results: Never underestimate the power of a good Cobb Salad. This totally hit the spot and I didn't complain that they left the bacon on. ;-) I will order it again. 

 

Ina's dressing recipe above is pretty perfect too--just blue cheesy enough without being too overpowering and thick and creamy enough to be a dip or spread. If you love blue cheese, give it a try.

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

And of course a delicious salad and dressing has to get linked up here at Kahakai Kitchen for this week's Souper Sundays post, my weekly feature where anyone can share their soup, salad or sandwich recipes. Here's the link to this weeks post. 

Note: A review copy of Mrs. Rochester's Ghost was provided to me by the author and the publisher via TLC Book Tours. I was not compensated for this review and as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.   

 
You can see the stops for the rest of this TLC Book Tour and what other reviewers thought about the book here. 

 

Donut-Fried Apple Rings for "What You Wish For" by Katherine Center {#WhatYouWishForParty}

Two Blog Parties in one month? Yes! I am very excited to be joining The Book Club Cookbook, St. Martin's Press, and a group of fellow bloggers today to celebrate the paperback release of What You Wish For by Katherine Center. For this #WhatYouWishFor party, we received copies of the book and were tasked with coming up with a dish inspired by it.  

Publisher's Blurb:

Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living.
But she wasn’t always that way. 
Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. 
But he wasn’t always that way. 

And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before―at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him―but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. But when Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there, it feels like the best thing that could possibly happen to the school―and the worst thing that could possibly happen to Sam. Until the opposite turns out to be true. The lovable Duncan she’d known is now a suit-and-tie wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he’s willing to destroy it.

As the school community spirals into chaos, and danger from all corners looms large, Sam and Duncan must find their way to who they really are, what it means to be brave, and how to take a chance on love―which is the riskiest move of all. 

With Katherine Center’s sparkling dialogue, unforgettable characters, heart, hope, and humanity, What You Wish For is the author at her most compelling best.

St. Martin's Publishing Group

On Sale: 07/13/2021

ISBN: 9781250219374

368 Pages

My Review:

My first Katherine Center book was How to Walk Away, which I read and loved a few years ago. I have Things You Save in a Fire downloaded on my Kindle and I will get to it soon. She writes books that balance the sad and the joyful parts of life with wonderful characters and What You Wish For is exactly this. I so enjoyed this book! I think it was a case of the right book at the right time--it's funny but poignant, light but deeper than you think. Mixed into the romance, friendship and family relationships is a message about embracing who you are--the scars both visible and not, and living with joy despite all of the ups and downs and pain that comes with life. This is a message I think we can all use right now. I especially loved Sam, the main character and her friend Alice and friend/mentor/mother-figure, Babette--they made me laugh and made me tear up. The setting, the romance, all the quirky characters that made up the school and community, it all worked for me. Sure, at times it was a bit predictable, but I relished every page. It engaged me and gave me all the feels. One of my favorites of the summer❣️

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Author Notes: Katherine Center is the New York Times bestselling author of over a half dozen novels, including What You Wish For, Things You Save in a Fire, and How to Walk Away. Katherine has been compared to Nora Ephron and Jane Austen. The Dallas Morning News calls her stories, “satisfying in the most soul-nourishing way.” Katherine recently gave a TEDx talk on how stories teach empathy. Her work has appeared in USA Today, InStyle, Redbook, People, The Atlantic, Real Simple, and more. She lives in Houston with her husband and two kids.

You can connect with Katherine on her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

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Food Inspiration:

Although it was not a huge focus in the book, there was food to be found in What You Wish For. Mentions included: cake, cookies, booze, coffee, blueberry muffins, pasta and tomato sauce, frozen dinners, pizza, bakery items--cinnamon rolls, donuts, eclairs, a birthday cake, honey, chocolate bar, tacos, hot chocolate, warm tea, baking, fudge, funnel cake, chocolate, lemon cake, home-brewed beer, and cookie-decorating competitions. 

My recipe inspiration came from a scene where Duncan is challenged with juggling and walks among the school lunch tables looking for round objects to juggle. He grabs different fruits from the kids lunches but calls them by the wrong names to get the kids laughing and involved: 

"So I'm sticking with easy," he said then, lifting up the apple, and saying, "Like this donut!" 

"That's not a donut!" the kids called out.

A tangerine becomes a watermelon, then he mentions a pomegranate, a tomato, and a cactus, before finally settling on an unpeeled kiwifruit on Sam's plate, calling it an avocado, as his final fruit to juggle. 

At first I was going to make a fruit salad or a salsa with all of the fruits named, but the apple and donut combo kept replaying in my head. Since I am not much of a baker, apple donuts or fritters were out, but apple rings deep-fried like donuts? That I could do! This is not an original idea, there are lots of recipes for deep-fried apple rings online, but this is what I did for mine. 

Donut-Fried Apple Rings

By Deb in Hawaii

(Serves 3-4 as snack or dessert)

a few cups of cooking oil for frying

3-4 large apples of choice (I used tart Granny Smith apples)

fresh lemon juice

1 cup all-purpose flour

a good pinch of baking soda

a small pinch of sea salt

3/4 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp granulated sugar 

1 large egg

1 cup buttermilk (or regular milk with vinegar or lemon added)

cinnamon-sugar topping (buy prepared or use a mix of 1/2 cinnamon & 1/2 sugar)

Heat a large shallow pan with 2-3 inches of cooking oil and heat over medium heat.

Prepare your apples by slicing them about 1/4-inch thick and removing the core with a small round cookie cutter. Sprinkle slices lightly with lemon juice and set aside. 

Mix your batter by combining the flour, baking soda, sea salt, sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl. In a mixing cup, blend egg into the buttermilk until thoroughly combined, then pour the milk and egg mixture into the flour mixture and mix together until well blended. Place some cinnamon sugar mixture on a plate or shallow bowl. 

A few slices at a time, dip apples into the batter mixture and let excess batter drip off before placing slices into the hot oil. Just put in a couple slices at a time so they don't touch/clump together. Let the slices cook for a minute or two until the bottom of the slice is golden brown, then gently flip slices over and cook until the other side is golden brown. Carefully remove slices from oil with a slotted frying spoon and allow excess oil to drip off on paper towels before dipping them into the cinnamon-sugar mixture--making sure both sides are coated and gently sharing off excess. Place on a plate and keep warm. Repeat until you have dipped and fried all of the apple slices. 

Enjoy immediately (while they are still warm). You can east them as-is or dip them into caramel or chocolate sauce. 

Notes/Results: OK, YUM! My fall flavor is never pumpkin spice and always apple-cinnamon, so these tasty little battered apple slices with soft and juicy tart apple inside the sweet, slightly crispy cinnamon crust were right up my alley. My shaking off the excess batter technique needs a little work for their appearance, but extra fried batter is no hardship. The batter will make probably 4 to 6 apples or more worth of slices. Because it was just me, I sliced up 2 apples and I am saving the batter for more later because they are best when fresh and warm. These are great as-is but a caramel (salted) dipping sauce or even a chocolate sauce would not be unwelcome. I will definitely make them again. 

I'm sharing this post with the Weekend Cooking event  being hosted by Marg at The Adventures of An Intrepid Reader. It's a weekly event that is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share. Here's a link to this week's post. 

Check out this link for the #WhatYouWishForParty at The Book Club Cookbook to see the other bloggers taking part in this event and their delicious recipes!

Mahalo to St. Martin's Press (@stmartinspress) and The Book Club Cookbook for the review copies of the book, and for hosting this fun event. I received no compensation for my participation and, as always, my thoughts and opinions are my own.  

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