Review: My Stinky New School

My Stinky New School by Rebecca Elliott

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is a cute book that you just have to admire the imagination of the kids within (if you have boys, maybe it's something to look forward to or reminisce). Often little kids don't like new schools. This would be a great book to demonstrate to your child how a peer might go through the experience and end up finding awesome friends and have a great time; they can discover that a new school is not always a bad thing. I could see this being read to preschoolers and depending how integrated the kindergarten class is with the rest of the school, them as well. This would especially be good for children who are change resistant and need routine stability (like a child with high functioning autism).



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Review: My Family Tree and Me

My Family Tree and Me by Dušan Petričić

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book essential reads starting with the great great grandparents on dad's side to the middle of the book then flip the book to read from the back cover to the middle for the same written but for the mother's side. In the middle there is a family photo with three generations (kids, parents, grandparents and various pets).

I liked the idea of this book (I love how both sides of the family read to the middle). To make it clear that one side is paternal and one side is maternal, the paternal side is Caucasian and the maternal side is Asian. I felt like the family photo of everyone was random and hard to explain to my children whereas a family tree diagram with illustrated portraits would have been easier to explain how everyone is related.

I think would have preferred to see this as a template to add your own photos with a family tree diagram in the center. Maybe an app or website to help with the layout and then when finished customizing, I would be able to order the custom book in a hardcover format. I think seeing people you know in this organized way with similar sentences to this book would have been more relevant to my kids.



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Sweetly Raw and Turtle Cookies

I'm kinda excited at the moment. I discovered a book called Sweetly Raw by Heather Pace. Like many other raw cookbooks, this one uses uses nuts... and lots of it. This book takes a lot of traditional favorites to make in the raw. I found a recipe for chocolate turtles that I just happen to have all the ingredients for... so unbaking time!

The recipe is in three parts; a cookie, a caramel style spread and a chocolate dip garnished with pecans. At the moment, my food processor needs a new life so I used my vitamix for making the cookie dough which required the use of a tamper. I might have over processed it a smidge... a little bit... okay a fair bit but not enough to render unusable or tasteless... just a bit oily. I rolled the dough and used a small round cookie cutter to make the base. I weighed my ingredients and used a slightly smaller cookie cutter which made 25 cookie bases. After the initial hour dehydrating and a higher temperature (to raise the core temp of the food)... it needs to dehydrate for 30 hours! Oh my...

That was yesterday. Fast forward to today. The next part I plan to blend the spread this afternoon. Sitting in the fridge thickens it making it mound worthy. Then all that's left is making the chocolate to dip in. I will post pictures of the cookies completed when I'm done (Monday morning possibly).

Here are a few highlights of the recipes I'm most interested in trying (although many others look really good as well):

Nanimo Bars
Peppermint Swirl Cheesecake
Keylime Pie Bars
Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars
Pecan Preline Ice Cream
Mint Chip Ice Cream
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream Cake
Chocolate-Covered Chewy Toffee
Tiramisu Parfait

You can get remarkable results with the right ingredients. Unfortunately, the ingredients in this book require an investment; luckily, for several of them a little goes a long way. I loved how this book had tons of photos and great visual instructions for certain tasks. Most recipes have an accompanying mouth watering photo.