I know, I know, you have New Years Resolutions and bathing suit season is just around the corner and whatnot, but I dare you to read this book and not want to eat each and every recipe it contains.  I can’t begin to describe how scrumptious everything sounds.  Desserts to Die For was written by the chef at The Trellis in Williamsburg who invented Death by Chocolate.  I ate Death By Chocolate a few years ago and did not perish, but then again I shared the dessert with three other people.  If you need a new dessert cookbook, or even if you don’t need it per se, I highly recommend this one.  The recipes can be a little involved, but they all look worth it.  Many could be adapted to be gluten-free.

Have you ever made a fruitcake/Christmas pudding?  Not those things with the nasty little cherries, but a real fruitcake that involves leaving baked goods soaked in liquor around in your cabinet for a couple of months?  I’m really fascinated by the concept, and if you are too, Classic Crafts and Recipes for the Holidays might interest you because it has a detailed section on fruitcakes, how they work, and various types to try.  Since it’s such an involved project I wish I could taste them first before giving it a go.  I also liked the section on how to propagate a Christmas cactus since I have one and inexplicably have not yet killed it.  Furthermore, the book contains good ornament ideas including some inventive ways to use pinecones.

Holiday Celebrations is a Williams-Sonoma book with creative twists on traditional holiday dishes.  I’m not one to monkey around too much with traditions when it comes to holiday cookery, but I did find several side dish recipes that I plan to try. The nice thing about a book like this is that if you can forget about the holiday thing, you can easily use the recipes at other times of year in different combinations and not feel as though you’re having an endless round of Thanksgiving or whatnot.

Williams-Sonoma Simple Classics Cookbook: The Best of Simple Italian, French & American Cooking has some great ideas like adding cardamom and orange peel to chocolate mousse and also contains a ton of basic how-to sections with pictures, like for zesting and roasting red peppers, and trussing a chicken and so forth.  If you need the basics, that would be helpful.  However, I felt like some of the recipes I read through sounded a little bland for my tastes.  For example, I would not describe a recipe that seasons two pounds of lamb with a mere 1/2 teaspoon each of coriander and cumin as “strong” like this book does.  But that’s a matter of personal tastes, and you may find that the less spicy route is better for your family.

If you’re interested in the history and trends of cooking, you might really enjoy Celebrating the Pleasures of Cooking: Chuck Williams Commemorates 40 Years of Cooking in America.  The book is a discussion and history of how cooking trends have developed over the past 40 years.  I found it pretty intriguing, especially since the book is from Williams-Sonoma so it also contains information about when different tools began to be imported and how that influenced cooking styles.  The book also contains recipes, primarily of the sort you read in French cooking books.  They are the recipes that apparently defined being a foodie in each decade, which could appeal to you if you are a certain type of person.  I would have been even more interested had the book gone back further, because I love reading really old cookbooks and marveling at what was thought the height of sophistication for dinner parties at different times, like the apparent 1950s craze of gelatinizing everything, like the cookbook I once reviewed that included a recipe for gelatinized tunafish.  The recipes in this book are more palatable, I promise.

Although it’s not a cookbook, Making Crafts from Your Kids’ Art has a lot of great ideas for creative ways to use the artwork that your kids (or your spouse or your coworkers or your dog or whoever) give you.  I think this could be especially helpful for people who need ideas for grandparent gift ideas or are unsure how best to display artwork in a non-refrigerator-front manner.

If you got any great cookbooks or other creative inspiration lately, let us know!  I’m sure I’m not the only one who is in a rut this time of year!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. The Week in Books 2008, No. 49
2. Great Cookbook/Memoir
3. The Week in Books 2009, No. 45

Another consultant on my team loaned me the book because of something I’m working on, and I expected to find it a little bit boring, but on the contrary the framework is quite interesting.  Basically, the RUP is  a way to plan and do projects that helps you clarify what you’re trying to do, stay in control of risk factors that could keep you from meeting your goal, do the project and test that your product is effective, and roll it out so it can be effective to others.  Although the book approaches this from the perspective of technology projects, the framework is definitely applicable to other sorts of projects or goals you might pursue.  Here are the main components of RUP, applied more generally:

Inception: take time to define the project. Whether you’re building a huge new system or writing a book or reorganizing your closets, it helps to start with a plan.  What do you want to achieve?  What need will the project address?  What is the scope of the project (that is, when will you stop?  What does finished look like?) Could you work with something you already have or do you need to start from scratch?  What are the risks (thinks that could keep you from meeting your goal or being successful) and what will you do to mitigate them?

Elaboration: flesh out your plan and think it through. Once you have a general definition of your plan, the RUP suggests you think up some scenarios of how your project could play out, how the product might be used, and so forth (these are called “use cases” in the framework) and use those to help you design your product.  So for example, if you’re reorganizing your closet you might think of the ways you use your closet, what sorts of accessories you wear with which clothes in which season, whether or not you are ever trying to get dressed at the same time your spouse is (at our house, we didn’t use RUP when organizing our closet, and that is why I’m always accidentally opening the door right into my husband when he’s trying to access his sock drawer!)  As you elaborate on your plan, you continue to refine your vision and monitor your risks.  Whenever you change your ideas, you might change the factors that could influence whether you will finish on time or within the budget and you’ll need to alter your mitigation plans accordingly.

Construction: do the project in an organized and logical fashion. As you launch into the project or task itself, it helps to be organized.  Refer to the use cases you thought of, and solve for the most critical ones first.  As you go, continuously test your product: ask yourself if it’s meeting your goal, if it’s working, if it’s solving the problem.  If you’re going to need some sort of reference at the end, keep good notes.  In software development, this means working on the manual and tutorials as you go, but in other projects it might mean keeping a log of what paint color you used, the dimensions of the closet, the font you liked, the password you chose for the website, or whatever.

Transition: put it into place and think about what you learned. My tendency is to set up a big project, get all the plates spinning, and then look around for someone to hand it off to.  I really don’t like day to day operations.  But when you’re doing a project or pursuing a goal, it’s important to actually follow through and put the thing into place.  You can design the best blog, but if you never post what was the point?  You can build all sorts of nifty closet organizers into your space, but if you just throw the clothes back in there haphazardly you won’t get the best use of out it.  A good follow-through is key.  Then, after you have the process in motion, take time to think about what you learned.  My mom is a fantastic seamstress, and even had her own smocked clothing boutique when I was little, but she still says she learns something new from every project she tries.  It’s a good practice to identify your lessons learned and use the results for the next thing you move on to do.

And there you have it folks, my attempt at a broadly applicable post about a very very technical book that I can guarantee 99.9% of you would never read.  If you know someone who is a techy person, or involved in IT in some way, you could give them The Rational Unified Process Made Easy for Christmas, but if not, you can rest assured that you now know enough to apply the RUP to your everyday life. 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. Don’t forget!
2. Projects
3. Marriage Project Winner!

That said, I did find a few interesting nuggets I thought I would share with you.  When it comes to books my policy is to take the good and leave the weird.

If you find yourself asking “Am I really a writer?  Am I really an artist?” chances are you are.  The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident.  The real one is scared to death.

Good news!  I’m not wildly self-confident about writing!  Yes! 

Of any activity you do, ask yourself: if I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?

Pressfield makes an interesting distinction between things we do because of territory and things we do because of hierarchy.  If you do something because you love it and you’d do it even if you were the last person on earth, that’s territory.  That’s something you should stick with.  But if you are doing something because of what other people will think of you if you don’t, that’s heirarchy, and maybe you should think twice about it.  Now you can take that too far of course, but I found it thought-provoking, especially because I tend to be a people-pleaser and I certainly have made a lot of choices based on what I thought I was supposed to do, rather than what I really felt called to do (and I’m talking about good things, not choosing bad things – not all good things are the best for everyone).

I didn’t really get much out of this book, but at least it was a quick read.  It could have just been an accident of choosing the wrong book at the wrong time.  If you read it and got tons out of it, please leave a comment and tell me what I missed!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. The Week In Books 2009, No. 21

In other news, I’m tackling a big work-related project beginning today for the next several weeks so I plan to go down to 2-3 posts per week for the summer.  I know you don’t mind, but usually when I skip too long people start emailing me wondering what happened so I thought I’d get y’all the heads up in advance this time.

Thanks for following A Spirited Mind and if you read any fabulous books at the beach this summer be sure to let us know!

Related posts:

1. I Love Pyrotechnics
2. 7 Quick Takes
3. Some Sewing Projects

First we melted some chocolate in the microwave and blew up some water balloons.  When I say “we” I mean “I” and you should know that I nearly passed out from the balloon blowing up part.  Yeesh, water balloons are tough to inflate!

When Bakerella’s instructions said to let the chocolate cool, she wasn’t very specific so we dipped some balloons in it when it was too hot and they popped noisily.  The kids loved it!  Eventually we had to put the chocolate in the freezer for a bit and then the bowl making went more smoothly.

Hannah got to make the first chocolate bowl because she dearly adores any chance to show the little kids how to do stuff.  She is always reminding us that she was “the first baby.”

Next, Jack got to try.

Jack also takes his older sibling teaching responsibilities seriously.  Eventually Sarah got a turn.  Then she monitored who got to go next.  “Hannah TURN! Zhack TURN! Sawah Soo TURRRRRRN!”

After they finished making the bowls, they began arguing over who should get to lick the bowl.  As I tried to mediate the dispute, I started twisting the bowl against the spoon to see if I could get some of the chocolate out to dispense in three equal portions when CRASH!

The bowl hit the floor and smashed into smithereens.  The kids looked at each other like “Shoot, Mom is really mad.  We should stop arguing now.”  I wasn’t mad, of course, but it did solve the dispute!  It was everything we could do to keep them from coming to lick at the glass shards.  Hannah asked, incredulous, “So you’re just going to throw it AWAY?  WITH the chocolate on it still?”

While we waited for the bowls to harden, we made the pudding.  I got all the ingredients ready in advance so the kids could mix.  If you don’t have some of these multi-sized nesting bowls, you should get some.  They are invaluable, super handy, great for cooking with kids, and are made of some sort of less breakable glass.  If only I had used one for the melting chocolate part of this project!

The kids enjoyed mixing the pudding.  Again with the TURNS!  Then we watched for the pudding to develop bubbles “like volcanos” on the stove.

I forgot to take a picture of the part where we popped the balloons to get them out of the chocolate bowls, but that was fun.  It was hard to get the balloon bits out of the bowls even though I had used cooking spray like Bakerella advised.  I had to use tweezers.  But we prevailed and got the pudding in the little bowls and the kids applied sprinkles liberally.  We invited my in-laws over to help us consume this feast of chocolatey goodness.

Annnnnd this is the face of a child who has consumed a LOT of sugar!!!!

Related posts:

1. Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate
2. China for Kids?
3. Nectar and Ambrosia

The section on jams and jellies and conserves is extensive and not just basic “strawberry jam” type recipes.  Plum Jam with Walnut Brittle sounds particularly tasty to me!  The preserves section also includes recipes for flavored oils and vinegars and marinated and pickled things like Marinated Cheese with Herbs and mixes like Blended Spice Tea.

I also enjoyed the section on truffles and chocolates – the pictures show you step by step how to achieve professional results with various types of chocolates and candies, which make a very impressive looking gift to judge by the pictures!

The part of the book I found most interesting was the bath products section.  I had never read such detailed instructions for how to do herb infusions and use essential oils.  The section includes instructions for bath foam, baby shampoo, soap, hair rinse, shampoo, moisturizer, hand cream, lip balm, and more.  If you’re interested in all natural and organic body products, I don’t doubt that you could save money by making them yourself.  The instructions in the book are so detailed that I think it would be easy to try it, and I can also see how you could build up a small business with products like this if you were so inclined.

Throughout the book the instructions are detailed and accompanied by several pictures per recipe, which I think would make trying the recipes quite simple.  I think this is a helpful little book and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the suggestions it contains.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Related posts:

1. Bread Again, Week in Books #21
2. Making the Cut
3. Great Cookbook/Memoir

1. Taco Fusion

One thing you can do with a lot of small amounts of leftovers is make tacos.  Although the taco seasoning packet would have you believe that tacos can only be made from a pound of ground beef, in actual fact you can mix just about anything with taco seasoning and have great filler for taco shells, tortillas, or on top of greens as taco salad.  Last night, for example, I threw together leftover amounts of cubed chicken, quinoa, and green beans, heated them up with taco seasoning and water, and served it on top of fresh spinach with a sprinkling of shredded cheese and Catalina dressing.  It was awesome!  My son, who rarely eats dinner at all, asked for seconds!  I’ve made leftover tacos from all sorts of things: beans, lentils, various meats and vegetables, rice, etc.  As long as the leftover is seasoned or sauced with something that goes with taco flavor or fairly plain, tacos will work.  Experiment.

2. Pizza Fusion

I keep a batch of whole wheat dough (from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day recipe) in the refrigerator so I can make a quick pizza dinner when I need to rush.  The secret to homemade pizza is that you can top it with anything.  Think outside the box!  For example, I recently mashed some leftover roasted squash cubes and spread it out on the crust as sauce, topped that with a leftover Persian chicken and spinach dish, and finished it with a sprinkling of mozzarella cheese.  It was AMAZING.  We also like taco pizza. (Leftover leftovers!  Now we’re really getting crazy!)  My rule of thumb for pizza is not to top a pizza with a starch unless it’s a natural/vitamin rich one like squash or something, so rice pizza or potato pizza might not be a good idea, but tons of other leftovers make a great addition to basic crust and cheese.

3. Soup Fusion

They say that you know you’re an adult when you can cook an extemporaneous soup.  I’m not sure if that’s really a reliable indicator of maturity but the ability to cobble together a soup from whatever you have on hand is a useful skill.  You can put any sort of leftovers in broth, add vegetables or whatnot, season to taste and have a great dinner.  I keep a container in my freezer for storing odds and ends of leftover vegetables I can add to other on hand leftovers for soup.  Soups can be seasoned in a lot of different ways, so chances are you can think of something to add that will enhance the flavors of the leftovers you’re using.

Have fun with leftovers, but play it safe. Be smart about using leftovers – get leftovers into the fridge quickly, don’t keep meat too long, and of course don’t use moldy science experiment leftovers in new recipes!  If you treat your leftovers right they will probably be fine for a few days, and since you’re creating a whole new dish out of them anyway, you won’t feel bad about eating the same thing two days in a row.

What is your favorite thing to do with leftovers?

Related posts:

1. What We Might Eat
2. When Life Gives You Mashed Potatoes….Make Muffins
3. Fiesta Chili

I think it’s OK for families to be different in parenting styles and atmospheres, but I do want to try to think of more just-plain-fun things to do with the kids.  So lately we’ve been having “face lunches” a few times a week, just for fun.  Really this is not a big deal.  I take whatever I have around and make a face out of it on the plates.  The kids see a face on their plates and you would think I just gave them a pony.  Seriously.  That is how not-fun I am normally!

What sorts of things do you do with your kids just for fun?

Related posts:

1. China for Kids?
2. All You Can Handle, Plus the Odd Chicken Leg
3. Happy New Year’s Eve

Jack asked for a sea turtle cake and I think it came out all right.  I made a green velvet cake (just the red velvet cake recipe but with green food coloring instead of red) and green marshmallow fondant.  Finally, I suspended the cake in blue jello to look like water.  I’m fairly proud of that little maneuver, as it totally increased the realism.  That’s a 3 iced on the top.  The 3 did not increase the realism.

Here you can see how I was not kidding about the green velvet cake.  Or the blue jello.

I also made sea turtle cookies

Some of which were packaged up as party favors.

Jack had a few of his friends and their parents over to celebrate with him, and in spite of not having slept much the night before from excitement he had a good time at his party. All weekend he reminded us “I am the birthday boy!” and announced that he was not going to wear diapers to bed anymore.  He’s been potty trained during the day for a long time now, but it’s great to have him self-training at night too!  Now, for the first time in years, we only have one kid in diapers at our house.

Jack is a fun and sweet boy, full of hilarious observations and meltingly adorable smiles and hugs.  He is, for the most part, great at sharing and considerate of his sisters.  He and Hannah play together all day, and recently he’s become good buddies with Sarah too.  She calls him “Zhackum” and he calls her “Sawah Soo” or “Sawah Magoo-dee.”  He doesn’t have a nickname for Hannah, although she calls him “Buddy” and he told her to call him “Handsome” instead.  So you can see that he has a good level of self-esteem going!

Jack loves to play with cars and trucks, puzzles, and trains, and lately he’s gotten really into tools.  His friend Kate gave him a tool box for his birthday and he’s been carrying it around asking me if I have anything I’d like him to fix.  He also loves to read books, and is happy sitting on my lap for as long as my voice lasts reading to him.  Since Hannah is learning to read, Jack wants to learn to read too, and although he’s not ready to really learn, he knows all the alphabet sounds and can read two letter words pretty well.  He also likes to count and paint and “write” (mostly the letters O and A and squiggles) and listen to music.  One time recently he asked me to play him some “Moke-sock” and it took me a while to realize he was requesting Mozart!  He likes violins and plunking around on our piano and wants to play guitar like his daddy.  In his spare time, Jack does killer pushups and likes to play t-ball and soccer in the backyard.

I love that Jack is all boy and yet still super cuddly and affectionate.  He’s just so much fun to be around and such a blessing to our family.  We love you Jack!  Happy Birthday!

Related posts:

1. Jack Plays a Mean Guitar
2. Five In A Row
3. Happy Birthday Jack!

We’ve been in somewhat desperate need of a coffee table in front of our couch, but I felt like having a big piece of furniture there would seriously disrupt the flow of the room.  When a friend offered me two padded stools, I thought perhaps I could use them as a mobile coffee table and also extra seating when necessary.  At first I thought I would paint the legs and recover the tops, but then I noticed how complicated the assembly was and I thought better of that.

Above you can see the stools as they were originally, with Jack adding human interest.  Yes, his boots are on the wrong feet, but he wanted to get dressed all by himself and it wasn’t worth fighting him over it.

When we were first married I made a bedskirt and comforter for our double bed.  We have since sold the double bed but I hung on to the bedskirt because I liked the fabric.   It so happens that the fabric coordinates with the colors in our living room, so I ripped up the skirt (which wasn’t hard since I was a horrible seamstress back then) and used my glue gun to stretch fabric over the top of each stool and glued it down with my trusty hot glue gun.  Then I glued on panels to the sides, forming inverted pleats on the corners.  I sustained minor burns from the hot glue, but it was worth it for the easy factor.

Now the ottomans are sitting in front of our couch in great style.  They are perfect for the spot.  I’m hoping to find a wooden tray at a garage sale or something so I can put it on top of them for drinks and whatnot, but even without the tray they are a vast improvement to the nothing that was there before.

I’m linking this post up to DIY day on A Soft Place to Land.  You might want to head over there to get inspiration from other projects, or to enter one of your own.

Related posts:

1. Enlighten Me
2. coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee!!!!
3. If Only I Could Bottle It…