A Library Addition

I have recently found a new author that I adore. I read one of her books a few months back and now I can’t stop myself when I see a new one of hers in the bookstore! So these books are all written by her, so I figured I would put them all together because they were all very, very good. The author is Jodi Picoult. I believe the first on I read of hers was Nineteen Minutes. Very, very good. She seems to write about some very controversial subjects and I love how her characters evolve and really discover themselves in each book.

Handle with Care is a heart wrenching story about a little girl, Willow, so fragile, the slightest touch could break her. Literally….Willow is born with a disease known as Osteogenisis Imperfecta. Also known as Brittle Bone Disease. Yes, it is real, and yes I have seen this very rare disease in person. The author goes into great detail talking about the disease, the way the whites of the eyes are shaded a very pale blue, almost grey color and when a bone breaks how they become almost electric blue. The story revolves around the little girl and her family, but it is told to Willow, from the points of view of the characters in the story. Like most of Picoult’s books, there is some legal action that needs to be taken. In this story, the parent’s sue the OB for wrongful birth of their daughter. Stating that had they known what she had, they may have made the decision to abort. So the hot topic in this book is, if you knew that a child you so desperately wanted would be born with a debilitating, life altering disease, would you terminate the pregnancy??

The Tenth Circle is yet another legal case, but this time it is a rape trial that turns into murder. A father who is a stay at home dad, but still does free-lance work comes face to face with his terrible past and a terrible reality for his daughter. He doesn’t see how she is growing up right in front of his eyes, nor does he see his wife’s secret behavior. Things go terribly wrong at a party for the girl and it only seems to escalate from there. The father seems to travel to Hell and back trying to pull his daughter back from the deep dark place he knows she is falling into, but as he chases after her, the demons he has long hidden begin to resurface and doesn’t seem to recognize himself anymore. Together the family discovers how far they will go for each other and what it takes to walk through Hell.

Perfect Match is every parents worst nightmare come to life. Nina, a very successful ADA fights child molesters every day in court. Some win, some loose, but it will never happen to her. Then one day she notices something in her son. Something not right. She looks at her son and sees in him what she sees in all the children she works with every day. She flies into a rage and will go any distance to save her child and to protect all other children. She suddenly finds herself on the opposite end of the law, not as the prosecutor, but as the defendant. Not comfortable at all in this new skin, her family is ripped apart by her choices. This novel brings to light another controversial topic, and a parents reaction of what they should or should not do. For Nina, it was the only choice she had.

Plain Truth is a book I thought was absolutely fascinating. It takes places in a sleepy Amish community in the Pennsylvania country side. In the middle of the night a birth takes place in a quiet barn. Within a few hours, the baby is found, dead. But where is the mother? No one claims to have had a child, but the mother to be is quickly found. She denies having any baby, but the truth is there in the back of her mind no one can reach. A trial quickly begins and a fight to save an innocent live begins. I loved this book and never guessed the ending, and never would have in a million years. I loved reading about the simple life of the Amish community. It just drew me in and made me wonder how it would be to live like that. Straight from the Earth, no technology, no electricity…just plain.

Mercy is probably the most controversial book I have read of Picoult’s. A sleepy little town in the Massachusetts country side is rocked when an apparent act of mercy comes to town. A man claiming to be the chief of police’s cousin has confessed to murder. He confesses he killed her because she asked him to. The police soon discover, the wife had been terminally ill and the husband was simply carrying out her wish. The town is turned upside down by this unwelcome visitor and the notion that love so strong can make you kill. This book was written in the mid 90’s so it is very “Dr. Death”. But it made me think, could I have the strength to kill my terminally ill husband? Is euthanasia for humans right? Does any human have the right to help another in an assisted suicide? Ahh…so many questions and not enough answers. This book is about undying love, faithfulness twisted with temptation, and a man’s absolute love for his wife.

I am working on another one of her books and based off the last several I have been able to get my little hands on, I cannot wait to finish it!!!

Major blog updates!!

Wow…I have been so lazy with all of my 101 updates lately. Especially on the ones that seem to happen every month like our date nights and my new recipes.

Well I guess I will go ahead an jump into my recipe for the month of September. I guess it isn’t so much a new recipe because I have made it in other variations, but the idea of it is something I have been wanting to do for a while now. I found this idea on one of the many baking/cooking blogs I follow. I have been wanting to it all summer and just never had the chance.

Well finally I had the chance! We had some friends that were getting together and having a BBQ one night and I of course volunteered to bring the dessert!! All of our friends are crazy about the cupy-cakes I have been making lately so they were all very excited as well. The idea for them may sound strange and I got some curious looks when I said hamburger cupy-cakes, but believe me, it is nothing what it sounds like!!

I took my basic vanilla cupcake recipe, added a little yellow food gel, whipped up a pan of brownies and homemade butter cream frosting and presto! Hamburger cupy-cakes!!

Here are the recipes I used:

Vanilla cupcakes
1 ½ cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter at room temp
2 large eggs, room temp
1 ½ tsp vanilla
½ cup whole milk
¼ cup sour cream

Vanilla butter cream
1 stick butter
16oz powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Milk to get creamy consistency

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350 deg F. Line a standard cupcake/muffin pan with paper or foil liners. In a bowl whisk together flour, salt, baking powder. Set aside. In another bowl measure out the sugar and scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the sugar. Work the sugar and seeds between your fingers until the seeds are well mixed in and the sugar is very fragrant. Cream butter and sugar in stand mixer on med speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Bead it vanilla and sour cream. Alternate the flour in 3 additions with the milk in 2 additions. Not waiting til all the flour is mixed in before adding the milk. Beating on lowest speed until just combined. Scrape down sides of bowl and mix on med speed for 30 seconds until no traces of flour remain. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cupcake cups, filling each about ¾’s full. Bake until lightly golden, when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean or the top bounces back when lightly pressed. 16-20 min.


For the frosting, just cream the butter and slowly add in the sugar, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom of your mixing bowl often. Once all sugar is added, add you vanilla and milk slowly until you get the spreadable consistency you like!

And this idea is of course thanks to Loves to Eat!! They were a huge hit! I did feel a little guilty that I didn’t make the brownies from scratch like everything else, but I was really pressed for time! And of course, I completely forgot to snap one when I was done!


We had our October date “night” this past weekend. We have been talking for a while now that when it is really nice outside we want to rent some bikes and go biking around Coronado Island. It seems to be “the” thing to do on the island. There are so many little bike rental shops all over the island and by the Del, we just thought it looked fun.

So we had nothing else planned that day except to go rent our bikes and take all the time in the world doing what we wanted. We slept in late, got some IHOP and then we were off on our adventure.

Luckily I have a friend who works at one of the bike rental shops and she told us she would let us have the 2nd hour free. Which, it wasn’t expensive to begin with (only $10 an hour per person), but hey, who doesn’t want to save a little money?? So we got our bikes and decided that since it was such a nice day and the board walk and beaches were just crazy busy, we would head off down the Coronado Strand towards the mainland.

It definitely took me a while to get my “bike” legs back and my balance, but it came back fairly quick. I honestly haven’t been on a bike in forever! Like years…probably since I was like 15 or 16. But it was blast! Now saying that I haven’t been on one in years, you can imagine- TMI ALERT- how my rump felt. Way sore! In fact it hurt for a good 2 days after the fact as well. The ride down the strand we had the wind pushing us along so it was nice and easy. But on the way back, the wind of course picked up and we were heading straight into it. Now my legs were on fire.

But we had our fun and got a good work out from it as well.

Next was dinner. D grilled some steaks that had been marinating a few days and I threw some salad into some bowls and there was dinner. We snuggled on the couch watching some of our DVR’d shows and hit the sack pretty early. Very nice date “night” if I do say so myself!!

And now for my first 101 fail….I wanted to do a day in the life on 10/10/10 by taking my camera everywhere I went that day. I woke up that morning with every intention to, but I just got so busy and had so much going on, I completely forgot.

I know what all I did that day, but it was less than exciting. I guess that would be the point of a “Day in the life of…”. D and I were able to sleep in and just do some normal house work and laundry. No need to take pictures there. I had already made plans to go to a friends house later that day and work on some baby shower stuff for a friend. Well that turned into, “Why don’t we cook out too??” So our original time was pushed back a few hours and that way D and I could also run to Wal-Mart.

Oh the joys of Wal-Mart. And may I just say, that under normal circumstances I don’t mind going to Wal-Mart. But when you live near one of the only Super Wal-Marts (I swear) in San Diego, and then put it next to the Mexican border…yea. Can you say crazy? And it doesn’t matter what time of day you go….believe me we have tried it all. 10am on a Sunday, nope…9am on a Wednesday, nope…11 pm on a Monday! None of it matters. There is always about 2.5 million people in there, all with 12,000 kids a piece, most of them not speaking English. But I digress…

After our fun run to Wal-Mart, we ran back to the house, unloaded our grocery stash and took off across town to our friends. We took a different route than normal because we were trying to get there quickly, and of course that didn’t happen either.

As D and I were approaching our exit, a guy who was beside us, whipped around behind us, into the far left lane and took off. I was already going 80mph so I know he was going well over 100mph. The next thing you know is D is saying, “Watch, that guy is going to crash!”, and I swear not ½ a second later he looses control of his car and smashes into the concrete divide. My heart sank and I flew past my exit to where the guy crashed to help him. The nurse in me just kept thinking, "Car please don’t explode, don’t explode!!!" The amount of smoke pouring out of the vehicle was amazing. As we get out of the car on the other side of the freeway, we see the driver’s door is open.

I am thinking we are going to have to pull this guy out of the car, cut and bleeding with a few broken bones. I didn’t see him moving at all! Then suddenly he swings a leg out and steps out. He runs across the freeway and asks me for a piece of gum. A piece of gum!?!?! Guy are you kidding me?!?! After I establish he was ok, I ran to my car to call 911. The operator was rather rude too. He kept telling me it was okay, that I can leave the scene and I don’t need to wait for the cops. Calling 911 from the road while driving is okay. Umm…no I saw the accident and I am a nurse and wanted to make sure the driver was okay. The tune changed after I told the operator that.

After I got off the phone, I checked again on the driver. He was standing talking to D and using his cell phone. Apparently the guys was late to work and he was in a hurry. He kept asking us to take him to work just right down the road. We told him over and over that he couldn’t leave his car like that (half his back end in the left lane) and he needed to wait for the cops. He was acting nervous and chomping away on the gum. So D and I assumed he might have had a drink or 2 watching some football and just lost track of the time. He didn’t seem drunk by any stretch of the imagination, but I am guessing he didn’t brush his teeth, so there might have been alcohol on his breath. Needless to say, we stayed until the police arrived and we made our way to our friends house. Finally…

We get there and the cookout started early so our friends were already there and having a good time. Baby shower stuff was postponed a few more hours. I was so busy chatting away with friends and helping cook that my camera stayed in my purse the whole night.

After the cookout, we hit the downtown area known as the Gaslamp to have a few drinks with friends. It was a Sunday but everyone had off the next day off, thanks to a guy known as Columbus, except me.

So that was my failure. Being so crazy busy, my camera didn’t see the light of day on 10/10/10.