alyssakaye's Profile

Bitchin' sauce! It's raw, vegan, and makes every raw veggie you dip in it more exciting.

If you don't live in California, where they sell it, this is a good copycat recipe:
http://www.thefauxmartha.com/2012/01/23/bitchin-sauce/

Starting when I was 2 or 3, my mother read me Ruth Heller's Kites Sail High. She chose it because the pictures are bright and gorgeous. The text, though, was about verbs, and what they do in sentences. Mom read the rhyming text aloud while I looked at the pictures, and I didn't realize until I was older that I knew that "the subjunctive mood expresses a wish and uses the words AS THOUGH or IF. (IF I WERE a fish, AS THOUGH that COULD BE, I WOULD SWIM in a beautiful, tropical sea.)"

Heller has a picture book for every part of speech. I fully intend to brainwash my children with them.

My most-used cookbook is by a caterer in my mom's hometown who writes a weekly cooking column for the local paper. The recipes are the tried-and-true type; they're how I learned to cook in the first place. The headnotes, though, are hilarious -- unintentionally so, I think. Every recipe starts with something like, "Well, now, I got this recipe from my daughter's best friend's mom, who used to chair the PTA and owns three adorable poodles that always win awards at those show dog competitions you might have seen on TV. ..."

It used to irritate me, but now I see that, taken all together, these headnotes paint a picture of the women in my mom's hometown.