Books Read in 2026: June

 A Murder for the Books by Victoria Gilbert.  I picked this one off the library shelf because the cover looked interesting.  The blurb sounded like it might be good.  And then I got it home, looked at the cover some more and thought "I think I've read this before".  But, rereading the blurb, I wasn't sure if I had or if the storyline was just similar to a few others I've read in recent years.  However, by Chapter Two I was predicting what would happen next, what 'new' character was about to come into the story--right down to their name, and I knew that yep, I have read this book.  Well, into the DNF pile it went (although, technically if I read it all the way through in the past [covid times???] is it truly a Did Not Finish?)  Like movies and TV shows, if I've read a book before it gets stored in some corner of my brain and then when I try to read/watch it again my brain goes "here, this is what's going to happen now and now and now, the end, let's think about something else shall we?"  In other words, my concentration and enjoyment go out the window.  Been there, done that, next!

The Secret History of Audrey James by Heather Marshall. I picked this one up at the spring book swap based on the blurb on the back of the book.  Sounded like it could be interesting, depending on how it was done.  It was alternately interesting, horrifying, somewhat frustrating (as in sometimes I felt the author was putting too many twists--character lifestyle wise--into the time period in question), a bit stale and trite, and I set it down, took a break, and picked it up again several times. I did finish it; about 2/3 the way through I thought I knew how it would end, what would be revealed in the final third, and so I did read it completely.  Yes, I had figured it out.  Overall, I think I did like the book and may possibly look up more from this author.

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman.  Not sure where I first saw this book mentioned, but I ordered it from my local library. It sucked me in.  What's that trite movie review quote?  "I laughed.  I cried."  Very apt for this book.  Entertaining and thought provoking (at least for me) at the same time. Two thumbs up.

Murder Unshelved by Vannetta Chapman.  This is an author that I have read for years, mostly liking her murder mysteries more than her Amish fiction.  This is her latest mystery (maybe the beginning of a new series?)  If I may be blunt here, it was awful.  Started out good, got a little questionable (Was it written by AI?  By a high schooler? Was it editedn for content at all?) about a third of the way through and just past halfway I was so sick of the ever weakening writing that if it wasn't a short book I would have just set it down as a DNF.  Instead I forged on to the end.  But I don't think I will read another book by this author ever again.

How To Ride The Horse You Thought You Bought by Anne Buchanan.  Another book I saw somewhere online and decided to see if I could borrow it from the library.  While my local county library system didn't have it, I was able to get it via the statewide library interloan.  So far, I've only read the first few chapters, which are very basic.  Not to say they are lacking, but rather that after 40+ years with horses there wasn't anything in them I haven't known for a long long time.  Hoping that further into the book there will be clear to understand descriptions of much more technical and difficult stuff (ie. perhaps new or stated in a new way to me)  Everything so far has been written in an easy to understand format and with helpful illustrations.

Goodwill Treasures in June

 The week DH was out of town, I rounded up some of our stuff that we don't use anymore, and also a bunch of DD2's stuff that moved back with her in 2024 that she has since decided she no longer wants/needs, and I took it to the local Goodwill.  I had decided to stop debating the 'best' or 'most ethical' place to donate it to and just went with 'get this shit out of my house' and took it to Goodwill (which happens to be the closest and most convenient with drop-off times charity to this little place here). 

Ahh, the joy that a now empty 12 square feet of floor space in my house brings me is immeasurable.

After I dropped off a literal floor to ceiling backseat of a pickup load of stuff to the rear door of Goodwill, I drove around front, parked and walked myself in the front door of Goodwill to see what I could see.  You never know if you will find something useful or not, it's kind of like a treasure hunt.  What thing that I actually need would they have for sale today?

Well, I found a new summer dress, which I don't have many of that fit anymore (lost weight and also toned up core muscles in the last 18ish months).  I also found a few jigsaw puzzles.  But my two big 'wins' are actually things that don't take up much space at all.

Browsing the housewares, I spied a small heart-shaped springform pan.  I've had a hankering for cheesecake for literally months, but haven't made one because DH and I surely don't need to eat that much of a rich dessert in a few days and I wouldn't want any of it to go bad.  Neither have I, really, wanted to invite extra people over just so I can share cheesecake, and all the planned family gatherings haven't worked out for me to have the time immediately beforehand to make a cheesecake.

But with this little cheesecake pan, I could cut down a recipe to be just enough for two people to not overindulge in calories or have to endure unnecessary company.  Not only that, the sticker was the color of the week, which meant this little gem was a mere $1.24!!  WIN!  Into my cart it went.

Now I will be ready to make a just right sized cheesecake whenever the time is available and motivation strikes me.  

My second big find was also in the housewares section.  It is the perfect replacement for this, my favorite pan to make a grilled cheese (or ham and cheese, or turkey or beef and cheese) sandwich in.  It is older than my marriage, and is the last remaining piece of the pots and pans set I was gifted by a really good friend back in 1991 when I moved out of my parents' home and in with DH (who was my boyfriend at the time).  It used to have a non-stick coating, but, as you can see, that has mostly worn off.  It still makes a great hot sandwich, so I have kept using it.  But in the last year or so, the handle has started to crack and break where it is attached to the pan, and is getting looser and looser.  I have to be really careful how I hold it to not have it swivel and unintentionally dump the contents of the pan.

So when I spied this little (8-inch) ceramic frying pan on the shelf in Goodwill, I grabbed it for closer examination.  It appeared to be very lightly used, if at all.  I could find no scratches on it.  Maybe a very slight discoloration from beind heated and used a time or two, but it was so faint I couldn't say for sure.

Then I turned it over and saw this:

 

a good quality pan indeed

and I knew that it was definitely coming home with me.  (Googling it, I found that brand new this exact pan costs $40-50 near me depending on which store you shop at.)  Given that it was the perfect replacement for my beloved sandwich pan and it cost a mere $5.49 at Goodwill, how could I not buy it?

I have, since purchasing it (and washing it), tested it out.  It does indeed make a perfect grilled cheese sandwich.

I'm really glad I decided to just get rid of the space-eating pile of cast-offs in the manner that I did.  Not only did it gain me floor space and a happily less cluttered home, I found two very useful small items at very small cash outlay.

Dad's Socks

 It has been several years since I made my Dad any knit socks.  This spring, since I was knitting a pair of socks for my Mom to surprise her with for Mother's Day using some of the free Zauberball yarn she had gotten for me, I decided it was nigh time to make my Dad a new pair of socks also.

He has wool allergies, so I wouldn't be using any of the Zauberball for him, even though there are several skeins of it in manly colors.  Instead, I dug into my stash of cotton fingering that I bought in the past just for him.  I pulled out two colors: Doe and Marlin, intending to do contrasting cuffs, heels and toes.

Well, I got distracted when I was casting on and grabbed the Doe (main color) instead of the Marlin, and had knit the entire cuff before I realized my mistake.  I was using the Deflect pattern, which is rather more involved of a cuff than I typically have on sock patterns, and I wasn't about to tear it all out and start again in the intended (contrast) color.  So I 'personalized' the socks by doing only contrasting heels and toes, LOL.

I have knit this pattern before, without adding in any contrasting yarn parts, so I was confident I could adapt the pattern for them despite my screwing up of the cuff color.  What I didn't fully realize was that I was heading into the busy growing/gardening/riding/being-outside-all-the-time season and that this somewhat complicated pattern might not be the best project to try to do and have finished by Father's Day.

And it wasn't.  I got sock #1 finished in April.Things were still looking good for my Father's Day deadline at that point.  But the second sock, well, it was delay after delay after delay from early May on in terms of finding time to work on it.  The week before Father's Day arrived, and I was only halfway through the (men's size 10) foot.  I thought maybe, if I pushed, I could get it done in time.  I looked at the plethora of tasks with my name on them, and stressedover how, exactly, to push knitting that sock.

One week before Father's Day

Then, two days later, I had a revelation in three parts: 

1. I wasn't going to be seeing my Dad on Father's Day itself.  
2. He had no clue (and neither did anyone else) that I was knitting him socks for a present (most years I don't get my parents presents).
3. I would be seeing him the Saturday after Father's Day and could surprise him with socks then.

Phew!  That gave me a whole extra week to work on that second sock!  And, with DH being out of town for that entire 'extra' week, I could (hopefully) use the time I wasn't spending on normal taking-care-of-DH tasks (cooking his eggs for breakfast {I typically eat yogurt and granola, so actually 'make' two breakfasts every day since DH doesn't eat yogurt or granola}, packing his lunch on in-office days, emptying and putting away his lunch box after said in-office days,  doing his laundry {half the people, half the # of loads}) and apply that to knitting Dad's sock.  Because really, if I looked at the breakfast and lunch packing/putting away lunch box time alone, it added up to like 2.5 extra hours I should theoretically have available!

(Which also made me really look at labor distribution as empty nesters and conclude that perhaps we need to have a meal responsibility related chat in the near future. . . )

You know what?  I got that sock done!  

two days after Father's Day

They are now washed, blocked, and ready for surprising Dad with this afternoon.  😁

Finished and blocking on the clothesline.

Aunt L's Cookies

 For over three decades, there has been an annual family reunion on DH's father's side of the family.  And, until the last six or so (because she's in her late 70s now), one of his aunts always made and brought hundreds of cookies to share.  They are simply known as "Aunt L's Cookies" because nobody else in the family makes them.

(And because she made literally hundreds of them, nobody else ever brought cookies to the family reunions, LOL.)

Thankfully, around 2010, someone compiled a family cookbook (of submitted favorite recipes), and the recipes for both of Aunt L's special cookies was included.  So, once in a very long while, I have made them myself for eating at home with my family.

It's been a long, long time though, since I had made either one.  Since this year I am trying to make lots of different cookies and not the same old three or four recipes over and over again, I thought what a great excuse to take the extra time that Aunt L's cookie recipes require and make those.

First up, her Magic Peanut Butter/Chocolate cookies

Dough:

 1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 tsp baking soda

Combine above ingredients and set aside.

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup softened margarine (or butter)

1/4 cup peanut butter

Beat these together until fluffy, then add:

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

Then add flour mixture and mix thoroughly, then set aside.

Make the filling:

3/4 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup powdered sugar

Blend well

To make the cookies, divide both filling and dough into 32 balls each.  Assemble by flattening a chocolate dough ball in the palm of your hand and place a filling ball on top, wrappinng the chocolate dough around the filling.  Place on a cookie sheet and flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.  Bake at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

the magic peanut butter surprise inside

Then, her Orange Chocolate Chip cookies

1 cup shortening

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp orange juice

1 Tbsp orange zest

2 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chocolate chips, chopped

Cream shortening and sugars; add egg, orange zest and juice.  Sift flour, baking soda and salt, then add to creamed mixture.  Add chocolate chips.  Shape into a log and roll in waxed paper.  Refrigerate several hours or overnight.  Slice 1/4" thick and bake for 10-12 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

my slicing was a little generous on the width

(These are much easier to slice cleanly if you chop the chocolate chips.  If you get distracted [ahem, me, in the past, not this time!] and forget to chop them, it still works, just doesn't slice as easily.)

And I Also Love This Guy

 After publishing Monday's post I Love The Sky, I realized how, if you read it out loud and didn't enunciate, it could sound like I Love This Guy.  Which could make you think that that post was about something totally different than it is.  It's not about a man.

And, since I have an old, partially thought out, post in my drafts folder that is about DH, I thought now would be the time to finish that one up and get it published.  

Because I do love this guy🡻🡻🡻🡻🡻

He doesn't really like to have his picture taken, so most of the ones I have of him were taken kind of on the sly.  Like this one where he has his back to me.  But it is a photo that I really like because he's not a horse person.  Or at least, he's always claimed that he's not (but, unbeknownst to him, they are growing on him and he's starting to show signs of growing towards being a horse person).

This photo was taken on a chilly rainy day last fall, one where the combination of air temperature and amount of water falling from the sky were too cold to put horses out into.  The kind of weather where they get soaked through and chilled.  

So, on that day (which I think was a Sunday), I had decided that horses would stay in the barn all day.  When I cleaned stalls after church, I put each horse, in turn, into the cross ties while its stall was being mucked out.

DH had been working in the tack room on some part of the finishing of it, and when I got to the Poetess's stall, he insisted that she didn't want to stand in the cross ties for those ten minutes while I cleaned.  She had been rather unhappy about the other horses being in the cross ties right outside her door while she was shut in the stall, and I knew that she would rather be outside (she has a rainsheet she can wear to keep dry, while the others didn't) even if it was raining.  

Unfortunately, even with her rainsheet, it wouldn't have worked for her to be the only horse out there because the others left in the barn would have been upset that I wasn't also turning them out and make a racket, which would have then caused her to get worried about being the only horse outdoors and upset and start running around.  I definitely did not want her racing around in the mud, slip, fall and get injured.  Which meant she had to stay inside all day like the rest of the horses.

Back to the photo. . .

When it was time for me to clean the Poetess's stall,  DH took her just out the front of the barn where she could munch grass (I believe the rain and wind were from the north that day, so the barn most blocked them from the rain in that spot). All on his own.

Not a horse person.  Ha!  If he wasn't a horse person, he wouldn't have cared if the Poetess preferred to be outside while I cleaned stalls.  And if he wasn't a horse person, he definitely wouldn't have volunteered to stand out there holding her lead rope while she grazed.

Yep, I love this guy.

I Love The Sky

 Apparently, from looking at my camera roll, I love the sky.  It's not a new thing, it's been going on for years.  I all ready knew that I tend to take more pictures of plants and animals than I do of people.  What I didn't really think about was how many photos I take of the sky in all its moods and formations.

I'm Glad I Didn't Blink

 Strawberry season in my area was very short.  It's not typically a long season, only a few weeks, but this year it was unusually short.  Blink and you'll miss it short.

Partly because of the cold rough winter we had and the deer damage to the strawberry fields.  Partly because Spring was kind of cold.  Partly because Spring was also rather wet, with several spells of flooding all over the state.  And, partly because just as the plants which had survived all that were starting to get ripe berries on them, our weather got hot and humid, then very rainy again.  Like five out of seven days with some sort of rain.  Which made the berries ripen very quickly and then just as quickly, even if they weren't ripe, start to mold.

I'm glad I didn't blink.  If I had, I would have totally missed out on fresh picked local strawberries.

I knew I wasn't going to get any strawberries from the patch in my garden.  The deer and other, smaller, four legged critters had ensured that by eating off the plants just as fast as they began to grow.

I had hoped to do some u-pick strawberries, so I was keeping an eye on the Facebook page of the local strawberry farm.  Unfortunately they, and a few other u-pick places not as close to me, announced in early June that they would not be able to open this year for u-pick due to crop damage (aka deer and weather).

So I watched the Facebook pages of some of the small farm markets that have popped up in the area in the last handful of years.  Pre-picked strawberries wouldn't be as cheap (or as fun to get) as u-pick berries, but at least they'd be fresh (compared to grocery store strawberries from the West Coast) and they'd be those smaller flavor-packed berries that this part of Michigan grows.

When I spotted a post that was only two hours old stating that the closest to me farm market (of the bougie kind) had strawberries in, I practically dropped everything and drove over right away.  The whole nearly 8 miles from this little place here to there I hoped that they wouldn't be sold out by the time I walked in the door.

And thankfully they weren't.  $7.75 per quart later, I walked out with two quarts of fresh local strawberries.  Knowing that they wouldn't keep for long; some all ready weren't looking too firm, I started making plans for how to best enjoy them and use them up.

First up, strawberry shortcake for dessert that night!

Me and Betty (Crocker) got busy in the kitchen whipping up some homemade shortcakes.  Since DH was out of town, I cut the recipe down to only two servings.  Because as much as I like strawberry shortcake, this diabetic girl does not need to eat six servings of it in just a couple of days.

I'm so glad I didn't blink.

I also didn't share, either.  I mean, I couldn't, really, being the only one home and all.

In case you're wondering, here's how I cut down Betty's recipe: 

It says that it makes six servings.  I only wanted two servings, which was 1/3 of a recipe.  So I did some math (ok, quite a lot of math) and got busy translating cups into tablespoons and tablespoons into teaspoons and dividing all that by three.

This is what I came up with, and it cooked up fine and tasted fine with the usual texture of this recipe when made in it's entirety of six servings, so I feel pretty confident it will work for you too if you want to give it a try.

>About a cup of sliced strawberries and 1 teaspoon of sugar per shortcake served, mixed together and allowed to sit for about 1/2 hour while I mixed up and baked the shortcakes.

>1 Tbsp plus 2 tsp shortening/lard

>2/3 cup flour

>2 tsp sugar

>1 tsp baking powder

>generous 1/4 tsp salt

>1/4 cup milk

Cut the shortening into the dry ingredients until crumbly, then mix in the milk until blended.  On a lightly floured surface (my handy dandy Tupperware pastry sheet), knead 20-25 times.  Roll out 1/2" thick and cut with a 3" (biscuit) cutter.  Bake at 450 degrees F for 10-12 minutes.  Cool slightly, then split each shortcake in half and layer with strawberries.  Top with whipped cream.