Lavender & Lovage by Karen Burns-Booth {book review}

Part travel diary, part memoir, part history & all cookbook, Lavender & Lovage is an invitation from Karen Burns-Booth to join her on a personal culinary journey through the memories of the places she has lived & visited.

That is an excerpt from the back of the book and it gives a brief idea of what this book is all about, but it's so much more. With books it's always hard to describe what's inside to make a potential reader pick the book up, buy it and take it home with them. It's hard to tell them what they will feel when reading it because books, yes even cookbooks, resinate with people for different reasons.

One of Karen's first memories is of food. As she tells us the story of her first bowl of sweet sticky rice, on a hot day during the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong in the 1960's, we get the feel for the rest of her story. If you couldn't guess it features food.

In Karen's book, like her blog, food is the constant. It's the rest of life that is the variable and makes this book a real gem amongst all the other cookbooks out there. I had the pleasure of meeting Karen at a Food Blogger Connect conference back in 2014. It was a brief 'hi what's your blog name?' and I have been a follower before that encounter and since.

The break down of the contents follows most traditional cookbooks with breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and everything in between. Karen's style is all her own, but the way the book is laid out and the passion that shows through reminds me a lot of Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater respectively.

Each recipe has an introduction and tells us where the recipe is from (the index is broken down by continents and countries.) Not only do we get the intros, but some of the recipes have memory snippets, taste notes, travel notes, or historical recipe notes. A few of the recipes even have more than one of these in various combinations depending on the recipe.

As mentioned already this book is more then a book of recipes, it takes you places you may or may not have ever been. The photography is beautiful and all of them are the author's own photos. If everything I have just written doesn't convince you or you want a taste of what to expect the book to be like visit Karen's blog Lavender & Lovage.

It's one of those books that you will keep for years and refer to time and time again. If you or someone you know is a big foodie you can't lose by picking up, yourself or a loved one, a copy of this book.

*I was provided a copy of Lavender & Lovage: A culinary notebook of memories & recipes from home & abroad  to review by the publisher, Passageway Press, retails at £31.37 and available now on Amazon (Kindle edition less, but the physical book is beautiful)! All opinions are my own, I was not given any other compensation nor was I asked to give a positive review, please see my contact/policy page for more information.

Raisin Cake with Apple Syrup {recipe} *inspired by The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

My life is always torn between books and baking and on occasion they merge.

This is one of those occasions.

The Cruel Prince was released early this year and everyone went mad for it. I love Holly Black, her Curse Worker series being one of my all time favorites, however fairies and the world of the Faerie have never been my first choice in supernatural worlds, genre, or whatever.

The book is clever and deserves all the praise it has received and I will probably read the rest of the series/trilogy but, I will do so in my own time. One thing about the Faerie world that I like best is the food. Note that if you are a human living in Faerie you sprinkle all your food with salt to counter act any spells or enchantments that may have been placed on the food. After that you are free to enjoy the delicious food they provide, the author mentions our heroine or anti-heroine (Holly Black writes a great anti-hero) eating a raisin cake with apple syrup and I literally had a light bulb moment.

Even if you haven't read the book this cake is worth a try. My apple syrup is a little thick and that was due to my timing of taking pictures, life of a blogger. So, the syrup can be made looser or thicker to match your preference.

Raisin Cake:

160g raisins
60ml apple juice
185g self-raising flour
60g plain flour
150g butter, cubed
140g light brown sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
apple syrup to serve (recipe below)

Heat the oven to 180C/350F - Start by soaking the raisins in the apple juice and leave aside for 10 minutes. While they chilling and soaking up all that juice line the base of a deep 7 in (17cm) round cake tin grease the sides of your tin, I always very lightly grease the baking paper too.

Melt the butter and sugar on a low heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. While it's melting sift both of the flours into a large mixing bowl. Once the butter and sugar mixture is done mix with the raisins and then add to the flour. Add the eggs to the mixture and stir with a spatula/wooden spoon until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth it down as best as you can. Bake for 45-55 minutes, use the skewer test to confirm it's baked through. It will brown quicker then it will cook, so keep the golden brown color you want place a piece of tin foil over the top to help stop it from burning or becoming too dark on the top.

Leave to cool and make the apple syrup.

Apple Syrup:

2 tart apples, cored, peeled, and sliced thin
100g sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp water

Place all of the ingredients in a saucepan over a medium/high heat and bring to a boil before reducing the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes or until the apples are soft and the sauce has thickened.

If you aren't using immediately take off the heat and place in a separate bowl as I left it and it thickened a little more then I would have liked. But it's all a personal preference!

Then pour over a slice of raisin cake and enjoy!

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
synopsis - Of course I want to be like them. They're beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.
And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.
One terrible morning, Jude and her sisters see their parents murdered in front of them. The terrifying assassin abducts all three girls to the world of Faerie, where Jude is installed in the royal court but mocked and tormented by the Faerie royalty for being mortal. 
As Jude grows older, she realises that she will need to take part in the dangerous deceptions of the fey to ever truly belong.
But the stairway to power is fraught with shadows and betrayal. And looming over all is the infuriating, arrogant and charismatic Prince Cardan . . . 

*All opinions are my own, I bought my own copy of The Cruel Prince from amazon for my Kindle. For more information see my contact/policy page above!

Simply Nigella: Feel Good Food by Nigella Lawson {review and signing}

About 7 years ago I left a job I hated to take care of my baby. Taking care of a baby all day is … it’s hard, easy, difficult, rewarding, exhausting, wonderful, boring, incredible, tiring, fascinating, lonely, and the best thing I ever did. The difference for me was that I was in a different country far far away from my family (I still am) and having only lived here for a few years I didn’t have many friends. The  ones I did were single and in full time jobs.

However I did have the Food Network on all day as back ground noise. With reruns of Nigella Bites and Nigella Express on all the time I fell in love with Nigella’s easy going relaxed approach to food. It was also around this time that my cookbook obsession started.

A few years later and another baby I was in my town centre and I saw that she was going to be visiting the WHSmith of course I was there and had my copy of Kitchen signed. I wrote about it on my first blog Pages of the Mind here. It meant that I couldn’t miss Nigella visiting Reading again with her new book Simply Nigella!

Nigella, for me, is like that song or scent that takes you back to a different time or place. When I watch her or read her books I am transported to that time when I was a young women learning how to be a mom and wife without loosing myself in the process.

Nigella had a love of food and worked in journalism. She put the two together and became one of the biggest UK foodies ever! She is, to me, the Elizabeth David of our time. They are both strong women born to upper-class families who did what they wanted and succeeded due to their own hard work and dedication.

As always Nigella was friendly and gave us a couple of minutes of her time! The signing was in the early evening so I brought my girls with me again and Nigella was asking them questions. Both were a little shy and not fully understanding who she was and why were were there. Hopefully one day they will be interested in food like me and they will fight about who will inherit my signed copies? Or maybe they will have their own signed copies one day!

Simply Nigella: Feel Good Food is possibly following a trend like Jamie’s Everyday Super Food. However as she says this is the food she’s eating now. Through Nigella’s books and TV programs we see her extensive cookery book collection full of old and new books and magazines! I would love to visit her library! It seems like she’s constantly educating herself on food and it’s why people, like me, love her! It’s also why I believe she’s writing about the food she’s eating now!

The book reads like a Nigella book and that’s what I like the comfort and familiarity of her voice (written and spoken) mixed with all new recipes! I love it, but perhaps I am a little biased? Give it a look through and decide for yourself!

notes: all opinions are my own, I bought my own copy to have signed by Nigella at Waterstones Reading, for more information see my contact/policy page. If you don’t know who Elizabeth David is read more about her here. Everyone should know who she is! I wrote about the Nigella Kitchen signing on my first blog, which happened to be all about books!! Picture down below... the girls were so little!!

Food Blogger Connect 2015: My Thoughts

There isn’t a definitive moment when I decided to become a food blogger. If there was one I can’t recall it. It’s something that just evolved from being a book blogger and teaching myself to cook and bake. It wasn’t until 2 years in that I started connecting with other food bloggers via the wonderful world of Facebook and Twitter. It took even longer for me to discover that conferences that cater to food bloggers existed!

It was an amazing revelation! I attended Food Blogger Connect last year and found it overwhelming in a good way. I walked away with so much to think about and met some amazing people! This year had a lot to live up too.

Just to start out here is a video I made of a selection of my many photos! It can also be found on my rarely used YouTube channel! If you visit it, please ignore the background photo, I'm working on getting a photo to fit it. If you have any helpful tips please let me know!

It started out great with my first lab: Food and Recipe Writing with Sophie Grigson! She was informative and funny! The best part was the hands on experience. She said a recipe can be written in five minutes and to prove it she told us all to write a recipe for Cheese on Toast. Then a handful of us read out our recipes, they were all different. Which is something I suppose we all knew, but I loved how it proves that recipe writing is a very individual thing.


Then she gave us the standards for recipe writing and told us to rewrite the same recipe using those standards and/or guidelines. Basically how cookbooks are written or should I say edited. Some people confuse long instructions to be difficult, but sometimes it’s just better instructed.

Last she read us a nonsense recipe written by Edward Lear circa 1870. It is a good laugh, basically he was making fun of cookery writers of the time. Following that she told us to throw those standards out of the window and right a ridiculous version of the previous Cheese on Toast recipe.  I thought it was a fun learning exercise and so I am thinking of sharing my three versions in another post, we'll see!

The panel I enjoyed listening to the most was with Ben Ebbrell from Sorted Food (You Tube) and David Frenkiel from Green Kitchen Stories (blog). They talked about content, which is why their panel was titled “King of Content.”

Ben and the boys at Sorted tend to give their viewers what they want. They do this by always interacting with said viewers. Their latest video is of the best banana bread ever! They asked their viewers how they made banana bread and took their top tips to then create said banana bread. I love this way of creating content. It’s, as Ben said, how you would describe a friendship.

I related more to how David and his wife create content, basically doing whatever they want. It’s your blog and your space to create and talk about whatever you want. It’s how I tend to write my blog…with my stomach. If I want a peanut butter pie, then I will make a peanut butter pie and sooner or later you’ll hear about it.

I found them to very informative and their discussion/talk gave me a lot to think about. This was just on the first day!! The second day wasn’t as great. I found that the main panel that lasted more then one session was a bit over done. If we were taking shots every time one of the ladies mentioned herself we’d all of been sitting under the table. It just wasn’t as informative or professional as I would have liked or expected. That is my personal opinion.

The day was saved by Monica Shaw’s Awesome Analytics! It wasn’t actually a lab I was signed up for, I just snuck in as there were empty seats. As a blogger you need or should be signed up to Google Analytics, it’s a wealth of information that is invaluable. However, when you sign on it’s very unlikely you’ll even know what you’re looking at! I rarely got on mine as I didn’t! Monica basically took us on a tour of it and showed us how to read and where to find certain information. Which was very useful!

A small group of us escaped to visit Outsider Tart, a must visit if you’re ever in Chiswick!

The highlight of the last day was Content Planning and How to deal with Blogger Burnout run by Urvashi Roe from The Botanical Kitchen. I had met her last year and had a few conversations during the StrEat Parties and knew she had a lot to say about blogging and content, so I was curious to attend her lab this year. I am mentioning it here as it was like the rest of the stuff mentioned one of the highlights of the weekend.


She asked us why we blog, because without a why what’s the point? Then she shared with us a lot of different types of posts, not just a recipe post. The other great part was she had us talking, it was an interactive experience so to speak!

Then it was time to go! Which was sad as I had a great time with all the amazing blogger people I only “see” online. It’s always the people that make these conferences fun! Where you learn from the panels, labs, and the people who talk at you about blogging and/or food stuff we learn the most from each other. I love the foodie blogging community that we have here in England I think it’s great and we all tend to support each other.

There were a few downsides to the weekend, like the venue. I didn’t remember reading that it would be held on the gardens of the Chiswick House and Gardens. If it had been in June like last year I might not have minded so much, but it was the end of September. It was cold and it was dark early. The last StrEat Party of the day was a bit of a bust because of those things. Which was sad because I really enjoyed it last year.

Last year I liked the definitive breaks where we got to talk to brands and drink cold brew coffee or tequila. This was sadly lacking this year. We could have done with better coffee and tequila considering it was a chilly weekend.

Over all it was a good weekend! I stayed at Hotel Ibis in Shepard’s Bush. I was there with a few others attending the conference, which was nice. It was really easy to travel back and forth from the event. Having it right next to the tube was a bonus. The staff were really friendly and helpful! The room was very modern and tidy. The bed was comfortable and with a hot shower what else do you need? I would recommend having the breakfast! There was a lot of variety and it was a great way to get the day started! Thank you Ibis for having me! If you're looking for a hotel in London check them out here!

Want to give a shout out to the awesome StrEat Food stalls I tried this year! Give them some love as I’ve linked to their twitter handles.

StrEat Food Stalls that I really enjoyed! (pictures in the video above!)

Oh My Dog!
Churros Garcia 
Rupert’s Street
Sibberi Water (Birch Water)
The Athenian
Coconut Chilli
Wholesome Bakes
Bit Bourbon Steamed Burgers
Roll n Rock
Massis Tea
Bol 

I forgot to mention the gift bag….. this post is already so long so I will get to the point! The Microplane (original) was the best thing ever to get and I was really excited about the flour from Merchant. Will probably pop up in future posts! I guess that's it! Until next year......

notes: I received two free nights with Ibis Hotel's for an unbiased review. My Top Ten Things I Learned from Food Blogger Connect 2014! 

Bookies into Foodies Week

Missie over on A Flurry of Ponderings has turned all her bookie friends into foodies for one week. For me it was a bit of the opposite! Although my love of books has never been a secret on here!

It started on Monday so go check out these amazing posts!

Monday/May 11- Historical Treats with Jess from Curiouser and Curiouser

Wednesday/May 13- Dinner from Nowhere But Home with Lisa from Reading, Writing, and Random Musings

Thursday/May 14 - Butterbeer with AJ from Covert/Extrovert (blog removed)

Friday/May 15th - is my day! Check out my review of The Curse Workers Series by Holly Black and a recipe for some amazing Cherry Crumble Cheesecake Bars!

Don't forget to check out tomorrow's post from Jess at Writing Pearls (Saturday/May 16th) and of course Missie's at A Flurry of Ponderings on Sunday/May 17th!

Update:
Jess at Writing Perals- Asparagus Tart
Missie at A Flurry of Ponderings - Rock Cakes and Treacle Fudge

Five on Friday: Five Fun Foodie Shows

Five on Friday is here again! I am sticking with my American theme for just one more Friday because I am missing some of the fun food shows I watched when I was there.

Here they are (in no particular order):

Chopped

Food Network

Some nights Food Network would play this show back to back and I literally sat for a couple of hours glued to this show. I had seen it once or twice here in the UK, but I haven't seen it on recently. I think I like this show so much because it's a game I play at least once a week in my own kitchen! Instead of a basket of random ingredients that I have to make meals out of I have my partially stocked cupboards. I do love seeing what the contestants come up with! I would love to be on this show! Hint to Food Network if you'd like to fly me over! 

The Chew

ABC

The foodies of the world have been asking for a show like this! Or at  least I know I have been. It's like a great food magazine in video form. The hosts are a great panel of foodies who share with the viewers great recipes, tips, and facts about food! I would also love to be a guest on this show. One episode I watched was all about chocolate... need I say more! 

Snack-Off

MTV

I want to play this game. In fact I might just have to have my friends over and say alright bring all your favorite snack foods and then we'll thrown them in a pile and see who can come up with the best snack! It's just a fun game show where the winner wins a golden spork. Along with hilarious judges what more could you want? 

Top Chef Duels

Bravo

I love love love Top Chef, so what could be better then bringing on old contestants and having them face off? The answer is nothing. Nothing is better then that. Bravo Bravo!

Rachel vs Guy Kids Cook-Off

Food Network

It was like watching fireworks when I was watching this super cute show. It was all "ahhh's" and "oooh's" the whole way through. The children on this show are talented, funny, and most can probably cook better then me! 

That concludes my second Five on Friday! If there is a topic you'd like me to cover on my Five on Friday's please leave a comment below or tweet me @unitedcakedom ! Also if you think you'd like to join in I'll add a linky if there is enough feed back asking for it!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!!

notes: Other shows to watch out for (all on Food Network): Cut Throat Kitchen – amusing to watch, The Great Food Truck Race – I’m always up for a race, Cone Wars – if you liked Cupcake Wars then you’ll like the ice cream version of it! Images are from the websites that I have linked for each show. 

My Summer Reading List

It’s officially the summer holidays! As a mom I look forward to the summer as much as my girls do! I love spending time with my girls and I won’t miss the school run!

This summer is different for two reasons 1. The girls are now big enough that when I go to the park I can bring a book with me while they play! 2. We are in America visiting my family and friends for 5 out of the 6 weeks! We will be out and about visiting and seeing things, but there will also be a lot of down time, which I am really looking forward too!

In that down time I plan to catch up on some books I have been meaning to read! Here are those books: 

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson (e-book)

synopsis: What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to? Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again.

- I am a big fan of Kate Atkinson; if you want to read her you must definitely read Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Case History (plus the 3 books that follow them!) There are so many twists and she’s one of the few authors that I actually don’t guess the ending before the end! I am really looking forward to the twists in Life After Life!!

The Story Teller by Jodi Picoult (e-book)

synopsis: For seventy years, Josef Weber has been hiding in plain sight. He is a pillar of his local community. He is also a murderer. When Josef decides to confess, it is to Sage Singer, a young woman who trusts him as her friend. What she hears shatters everything she thought she knew and believed.

As Sage uncovers the truth from the darkest horrors of war, she must follow a twisting trail between terror and mercy, betrayal and forgiveness, love - and revenge.

- Jodi Picoult has written a lot of books and I have read several of them. They all have a basic moral conundrum and/or a philosophical argument. I find it interesting how she handles all the different situations and this book isn’t any different. I am sure I will be thinking about it for weeks once I’ve finished reading it!

Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo by Matthew Amster-Burton (e-book)

synopsis: Everyone knows how to live the good life in Paris, Provence, or Tuscany. Now, Matthew Amster-Burton makes you fall in love with Tokyo. Experience this exciting and misunderstood city through the eyes of three Americans vacationing in a tiny Tokyo apartment. Follow 8-year-old Iris on a solo errand to the world's greatest supermarket, picnic on the bullet train, and eat a staggering array of great, inexpensive foods, from eel to udon.

- I have had a copy of Matthew’s first book Hungry Monkey for years now and I hadn't realized that he wrote a second! When I did realize I added it to my Kindle App for my summer reading list! I have always wanted to visit in Japan and I look forward to reading all about Matthew & Iris’s foodie journey through Tokyo!

Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts by Mary Gibson (e-book)

synopsis: They call them custard tarts - the girls who work at the Pearce Duff custard and jelly factory. But now the custard tarts are up in arms, striking for better conditions. Among them is Nellie Clark, trying to hold her family together after the death of her mother. She has the most desperate struggle to make ends meet, often going hungry to feed her little brothers. 

Two men vie for Nellie's love. One is flamboyant, confident and a chancer. The other is steady, truthful and loyal. But the choice is not as easy as it might seem. 

Looming over them all - over Bermondsey, over the factory, over the custard tarts and their lives and loves - is the shadow of the First World War. And that will change everything and everyone.

 - This was a sort of random addition to my reading list. The title caught my eye; food and love always make for a good story! I also enjoy novels set in the past, so I can’t wait to get into this book!

Ice Creams at Carringtons by Alexandra Brown (e-book)

synopsis: The third book in the delightful series set in Carrington’s Department Store.

Georgie Hart and Carrington’s Department Store have got the world at their feet. Since a reality TV series put them both on the map, life has been amazing! Carrington’s profits are in the pink, Georgie has carved herself a place in the nation’s heart and even better, her romance with Tom, the store’s boss, has finally blossomed after a shaky start.

Now summertime has come to Mulberry-on-Sea and Georgie is in great demand. The town is holding a big summer festival and she and her mates from Carrington’s are planning on making sure that Mulberry puts on the show of its life!

But Georgie is about to get the offer of a lifetime – one that is just too good to turn down and something that will test her loyalties to their limits… Will Georgie be able to pull off it off once again, or has her luck finally run out?

- As it says above this is the third book set in Carrington’s Department Store and I have read and wrote about both books here on the blog (links in the notes). I have had a hard time holding off on reading this since I downloaded it! I just wanted to save it for the summer; I won’t be surprised if this is the first one I read. I just need to know what happens next!

I Heart Paris by Lindsey Kelk (e-book)

synopsis: Angela is in the city of love – but romance is taking a nose-dive…

When Angela Clark’s boyfriend Alex suggests a trip to Paris at the same time as hip fashion mag Belle asks her to write a piece, she jumps at the chance.

But even as she’s falling for the joie de vivre of Paris, someone’s conspiring to sabotage her big break. And when she spots Alex having a tête-à-tête with his ex in a local bar, Angela’s dreams of Parisian passion all start crashing down around her. With London and her old life only a train journey away, Angela can’t decide if should stay and face the music or run away home…

- For the last three years I have participated in World Book Night and this year I had an email from Amazon saying that to celebrate they were giving away a handful of titles free to download. Out of the handful of titles this is the one I decided on. I have never read anything by Lindsey Kelk, so I am always up for finding a new author I enjoy!

My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss (paperback)

synopsis: Chocolate and Zucchini. 101 Cookbooks. The Julie/Julia Project. In the early days of food blogs, these were the pioneers whose warmth and recipes turned their creators’ kitchens into beloved web destinations. Luisa Weiss was working in New York when she decided to cook her way through her massive recipe collection. The Wednesday Chef, the cooking blog she launched to document her adventures, charmed readers around the world. But Luisa never stopped longing to return to her childhood home in Berlin. A food memoir with recipes, My Berlin Kitchen deliciously chronicles how she finally took the plunge and went across the ocean in search of happiness—only to find love waiting where she least expected it. 

- I met Lusia at Food Blogger Connect back in June and it’s where I picked up my copy of her book and she signed it for me! It’s the only paperback I have packed. I am looking forward to read of her adventures of moving around the world. I also hope to try out some of the recipes at the end of the chapters!

That concludes my summer reading list! What are you reading this summer? Are there any books I should have added to this list? Please leave a comment below!

notes: I purchased all of these books; for more information please see my contact/policy page. All of the synopses were taken from the back covers or Amazon, pictures of the covers were also taken from Amazon. 

Review of Hungry Monkey can be found here. 

Recipes inspired by Alexandra Brown’s Carrington’s series can be found here and here. 

World Book Night posts can be found here, here, and here. 

Food Blogger Connect post can be found here. 

Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater by Matthew Amster-Burton {book review}

I long for the days when I only had to think of myself at meal times. I know what I like and therefore I find it easy to feed myself.

Now I have a husband and two little people have likes and dislikes of their own. Which means dinnertime especially can be nothing short of my worst nightmare.

To be fair to my husband it’s not his fault he’s allergic to all citrus, but it is something I have to accommodate for.

My Mini-Baker loves all veggies and will try anything and everything at least once. My Baby-Baker loves meat and point blank refuses to try anything.

When I first became a mom I did stress about food. My Mini-Baker didn't like jarred baby food nor did she like homemade food, whole or pureed. She was only happy with toast and some fruits.

I felt like I was failing at one of the 3 fundamental things that all children (and adults) need: food, clothes, shelter.

I wish I had this book then, I would have saved me a lot of stress and allowed me to relax and know that it would be okay. It wasn't until she was 8 or 9 months old that I realized there was no need to stress. I caught her watching my fork go to the plate to my mouth. From then on she ate what we ate and did so just fine. 

According to Amazon I bought this book in 2011 well after both my little ones were weaned, so there were parts that I really related too.

He tells us how at first he was very smug at his 2 year old ate pretty much everything, but little did he know that by the time she was 3 she would start to get picky.

When Mini-Baker was about 2 ½ years old she loved Chilli Beef, our local Chinese does the best, so I didn't blame her. We were so tired of her stealing ours we ordered her her own portion and she ate all of it. I was so smug about it I told everyone!

We took her again for a treat around 6 months later and again ordered her her own portion expecting her to demolish it. No, such luck she decided that it wasn't that good and much preferred to just eat the rice. I wasn't so smug after that and was prepared when her sister came along.

Baby-Baker currently loves olives and hot sauce, sometimes together. But I know one day that might not be the case. For know though we have lots of olives because I love them too.

This is the reason that children are so hard to feed. One day they love something the next day they don’t.

Now that they are both older and discovering their own tastes when I meal plan they get to suggest something they would like for dinner. I always listen because it saves me the hassle of figuring out what to make!

If you are a foodie, parent, or both this book is for you. It’s full of parenting truths only learned by experience, but it’s also full of recipes!

In chapter 18 he states that his food fantasy is to take his daughter to Toyko for the ultimate culinary vacation. Well his fantasy came true as he writes about it in his second book Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo which I have downloaded on my kindle app and will be reading while I am visiting in the USA!

If you are a parent I would love to hear what your kids favorite foods and dishes are! Please leave a comment below! 

notes: I bought this book as stated above years ago, I have just re-read it and felt like writing down my thoughts on it. I will be posting a post on my summer reading soon! Matthew Amster-Burton also writes a blog called Roots and Grubs.