LibraryPoint Blog

The farmer's market beckons us with spring's arugula, peas, and asparagus and continues its siren call until the fall's first frost. We return with bags overflowing with berries, new potatoes, sugar snap peas, and herbs to plant in the garden. Of course there are tried-and-true recipes that we fall back on each year to use up the produce, but new inspiration is always welcome. Southern Living's new Farmer's Market Cookbook is a great resource for "celebrat[ing] the seasons with fresh-from-the-farm recipes."

The cookbook is divided by season and then further subdivided by appetizers, beverages, main dishes, soups, side dishes, jams/jellies, salads, and desserts. The format is lovely, with beautiful pictures enticing you to recreate the recipe. There are plenty of recipes that employ such typical Virginia bounty as tomatoes and zucchini, but there are also more exotic subjects like mangoes and avocadoes.

Since we are at the beginning of summer at the time of this review, here are the recipes I plan to try in the next two months: Blackberry Iced Tea, Pan-Seared Trout with Italian Style Salsa, Gazpacho, Skillet Creamed Corn, and Summer Squash Casserole. We have peach trees in the backyard, so I think I'll try the Grilled Peach-and-Mozzarella Salad as well. The Tomato-Cucumber Salad should nicely take care of extra cukes and tomatoes from the garden. Then I can look forward to fall's scrumptious apple recipes. (See a selection of recipes online).

This is Week 4 of a 12-Week series of blog posts reviewing new young adult books. Check back each Monday for a new review. 

After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick
Tad Ibsen is a scrawny kid who walks into the classroom on crutches, muttering angrily to himself, with a huge red scar across the side of his head. Why does the teacher seat the new kid next to Jeffrey Alper? “Suddenly I get it,” Jeffrey explains to the reader. “I don’t always catch on so fast, but this time, I put two and two together…I lean over and whisper, ‘Hi, I’m Jeffrey. I had cancer, too.’ He looks at me like I’m a particularly loathsome slice of school-lunch meat loaf and says, ‘Wow, congratulations! What do you want, a medal?’” Of course, they’re best friends from that moment on. 

    Children’s books are never too far from the minds of children’s librarians.  On a recent hiking trip to the North Carolina mountains, a phrase from a children’s verse got stuck in my head:  “We’re going on a bear hunt, we’re going to catch a big one, it’s a beautiful day, we’re not scared!”  Maybe our bear bells scared them away, but the black bears that populate the coves and ridges of the Nantahala National Forest never showed themselves to our group (thank goodness).

Paintings by Hsi-Mei Yates and her students are on display in the Headquarters Atrium Gallery through June.

Hsi-Mei lives in Stafford and has a studio at LibertyTown Arts Workshop.

Visit her web site to find out more:

www.hsi-meichinesewatercolor.com/
 

Hsi-Mei Yates - "Blue Chain (Crabs)"
Watercolor
$500