What's Outside My Kitchen Window, Cookbook Countdown and Flashback Friday

If you want to know more of what's outside my kitchen window, head over here to my Big Backyard Blog.



For now.... It's the Handyman enjoying the warm spring sun on Sunday.

Last night I finally settled on Linguine and red clam sauce.
(I knew you were all waiting on pins and needles to see what I had made)
 
I found a post I did about it in 2008... but no pics. Hey I was new to this.

Go here to see.

then, I found my very first food post ever
I had been doing just a personal blog before this....so I had NO IDEA what I was doing the day I decided to do a food post. LOL



BUT, this clam sauce is the easiest---semi homemade--and tastes great!


And....yep, I'm using this for my cookbook countdown. I use this cookbook all the time, Pasta with a Flair, by Katherine DeDomenico Reichert.

Reichert is the daughter of of the founder of the Golden Grain Company, which is well known for it's pasta, Rice-a-Roni and Noodle-Roni products. I love this little cookbook. I use it all the time. It has the best and easist pasta recipes I've ever made.

Everyone loves this red sauce...it's a bit different, as one usually sees clams in a white sauce.


For the recipe go here.
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I just found out about Flasback Fridays   from my daughter-in-law over at "So Many Books"    And even tho it is Saturday, I'm going to participate. I'll pretend I wrote this at 11:50pm last night.
Flashback Friday is a chance to showcase books that you loved as a kid or teenager.
 
   

Every Friday we’ll post about the books that we loved. Do this however you want. You can outline the plot as you remember it, tell why you remember this particular book, talk about how it is still affecting you, whatever you want. This part is totally up to you. Feel free to nab the little guy up top and put him at the top of your blog post.
Come over to Lovely Little Shelf and comment (with a link to your blog) on my Flashback Friday post. Explore each other’s childhood book loves.
Don’t feel like you have to participate every week, although that would be fun! Anyone is welcome to join at any time.

Seventeenth Summer.
I read it in the 8th grade.
It was old even then. (it was written in 1940).
I picked it up at a book fair in the Jr. High Library, where my friend Kathy and I meandered for what seemed like hours, to get the most books for our money. We would make sure that we picked up books we could share with each other, so in a sense we had doubled our buying power. I should have known back then in 1972, when I picked up Seventeenth Summer, that my life was sealed forever....



"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes" - Erasmus


.....Book Fairs, book sales, used book stores...have always been my downfall. Always. But at this particular book sale, I happened to grab Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly.


It holds a special place in my heart. I will admit, it's not great literature. In fact, when I was reading some reviews on Goodreads, most were written by young women who had read it recently and they just didn't "get it."


They didn't GET the love story of Angie Morrow and Jack Duluth!? They didn't love their summer of "cokes with the crowd," "rides in Jack's car," "movies?"


They didn't get young love from 75 years ago?!! Sheesh!
Seventeenth Summer is considered the first ever Young Adult novel, the first ever to anticipate an audience of between 12-18 (professor Amy Pattee)


It's not great literature, as I said, but it's a sweet and simple summer love story between two teenagers, in a more simple time, so you're not burdened with all the social issues that teenagers have to deal with today. I know it's not realistic, but I think it's okay to just have an escape book for young girls.


In the book, Angie didn't kiss Jack until the 3rd date! And then she was embarrassed that we, the readers might think badly of her. We might think she was "fast".


Maybe it's not the love story or the characters that have stuck with me all these years, but the descriptive writing.


"It was just after nine o'clock and I was in the garden picking small round radishes and new green onions for dinner at noon. I remember it was a warm day with a blue and white sky. The garden was still wet with last night's rain and the black earth was steaming in the sun, while between my toes the ground felt soft and squishy--I had taken off my shoes and left them on the garden path so they wouldn't get caked with mud--and I remember thinking how much fun it would be to go barefoot all the time. The little tomato plants were laid flat against the ground from last night's downfall and there were puddles like blue glass in the hollows. A breeze, soft with a damp fishy smell blew in from Lake Winnebago about three blocks away..."


The way Daly described  everything in the book, made me fall in love with it. The writing really did take me there, to the sweltering heat of lazy summer days, small towns and summer love. I loved the garden, the family dinner table, the lake, the town...everything.


Perhaps it was just that I was beginning to notice boys around the same time, and that combined with reading a "love-story", has just stuck with me after all these years. Knowing that I might have a romance just as Angie did.


I'm not sure what I think of the newer book jacket. It changes things up to look more contemporary. And the book is not.



Here is a link to an article on the changing of book jackets Cover Girls.
The article talks about rebranding books as their latest readers come of age. Could you imagine rebranding Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice as the latest readers come of age?

It's an interesting subject.

I think books that stick with us for years, and I have many, just spoke to us in some way....a way that's hard to describe, as hard as it is to describe why you love somebody....and we each have our own favorites. Ones we might "flashback" to every so often.