Happy birthday Charlotte!
David’s mom baked the cake, and David did the lettering. It’s been quite a year: We’ve gone from having a bald head to rocking a mullet (we’re still waiting for the top part of her hair to fully grow in), having two tiny teeth to almost the full set, and she was a champ at teething through all of it. She’s learned to walk, run, jump, and she’s so talkative. She’s thrown us a few curve balls (oh my God), and she’s getting more and more vocal about her strongly held opinions, but she’s also nailed the good stuff like “I love you,” asking for hugs throughout dinner, and getting excited when we come home at night. Cheers to the next year!
Here’s what I’m reading and cooking for dinner this week:
This is Margaret Atwood’s newest title, and I was excited to read it because I’m such a fan of her work. It’s a reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Unfortunately, it’s not a favorite. It took me forever to read, plodding through to the end, hoping her talent for storytelling would win out in the end. But it’s a retelling of someone else’s story, which didn’t leave a lot of room for unexpected turns. In her modern take, she sets the action in a Canadian prison where inmates stage a production of the original play as part of their education curriculum, run by a former (jilted, bereft) community director, a Prospero on many levels. She plays with the theme of prisons both literally and imaginatively, but the literal prison element was one of the reasons the book was so hard to read. The title, Hagseed, is one of the Shakespearean insults the inmates are allowed to use instead of the usual swear words we’d expect. The dialogue inside the prison when they’re in class with the director is littered with these Shakespeare-area throw backs, and it’s a gimmick that not only doesn’t work well, it actually gets in the way of reading the story.
This book aside, Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. If you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale and want to explore more of her work, or if you’re new to Atwood altogether, I’d highly recommend The Blind Assassin.
Here’s what I’m cooking for dinner this week (if you need inspiration for menu planning):
Monday: Leftover lentil soup with garlic bread and green beans
Tuesday: Ground beef and bell pepper cheesy macaroni
Wednesday: Macaroni leftovers
Thursday: Black bean, pepper, and onion quesadillas
Friday: Shrimp, chickpea and quinoa veggie bowl with avocado-cilantro dressing
Saturday: Sweet potato ravioli, beet and citrus salad over arugula
Sunday: Ordering pizza for the Packer’s playoff game
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