menu plan Monday

We’re eating a lotta pasta this week

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Department of Agriculture photo, courtesy of the National Archives via Flickr.
Department of Agriculture photo, courtesy of the National Archives via Flickr.
Monday: Omelets and veggie sausages
The children have spoken.

Tuesday: Sweet & Smoky Bacon-Wrapped Chicken
This was the first eMeals recipe we tried, and it was delicious.

Wednesday: Chicken Sausages & Roasted Vegetable Pasta
The recipe calls for oriecchiette, but I couldn’t find any. So we’re using plain ol’ shells instead.

Thursday: Baked ravioli
It’s pasta midweek, I guess.

Friday: Pizza
We never had pizza last week, so we’ll probably go to our favorite local pizzeria this week instead.

I’m linking this up with OrgJunkie.com’s weekly Menu Plan Monday thing.

Reading

Recommended reading from the 2013 stacks

I read at least 25 books in 2013, and I liked most of them. (I very much did not like “1Q84” by Haruki Murakami, which was by most accounts the most wonderful thing in the history of wonderment. I thought it was horrible.) But I loved three of them, and here they are:

billylynn
“Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” by Ben Fountain is a book about war and America and (as the National Book Foundation people put it) “the commodification of soldiers,” and it takes place largely at Cowboys Stadium.

speaking
I love Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books. They’re kind of subversive “cozy” mystery novels about a young chemist-sleuth in the ’50s in the English countryside. “Speaking from Among the Bones” is Flavia’s most recent adventure. (The first was “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie,” for those of you who like to begin things at the beginning.

wolves
“Tell the Wolves I’m Home” by Carol Rifka Brunt is a coming-of-age, families-are-difficult story. It made me cry. A lot.

Flotsam / Jetsam

This past year in blogging at Butterscotch Sundae

We had just shy of 6,300 visitors this year at Butterscotch Sundae, with the majority of them being from the United States, Australia and Canada. And also one visit each from Albania, Estonia and Nepal, among other places.

What a crazy thing this internet is.

The most-visited posts of 2013 were:

  1. “Four Fun Places in Atlanta to Visit with your Kids,” which I wrote in 2011 and has been the site’s top post ever since.
  2. “How to Throw a Star Wars Birthday Party and Turn a Bunch of Kids into Jedi Knights,” about Pete’s birthday party in 2012.
  3. “So Sarah McLachlan’s on Twitter,” which was written this year but hardly contains any writing at all.

And here are some other things I published this year.

January: Resolved

I made some New Year’s Eve resolutions, and I actually managed to keep a few of them.

February: The sort of day that leads me to eat bread-and-butter pickle spears at the kitchen sink

I had a weird and trying day, the culminations of which was a stray dog leaping into my car.

March: 11 reasons I’m glad I went to Blissdom

I went to a social media conference called Blissdom, where I met some of the very best people and also made awkward small talk with Elton from “Clueless.”

April: The Terribly Tardy Bakers Challenge

I vowed to take on some of the Daring Bakers Challenges that I’d skipped. I’ve only conquered one of them to date. Hm.

May: Three sponge cakes and a tower of whipped cream

I made a cake that looked like a brain. It wasn’t supposed to look like a brain.

June: The substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen

I had the feels and pondered spiritual matters.

July: How Slushy Magic taught my children the truth about advertising

Things are not always what they seem.

August: Unmoored

My Granny passed away.

September: Introducing Douglas Mason

My nephew was born!

October: Achy necks and buttery ears

I briefly considered calling the fire department.

November: A chinquapin is a five-lined poem, and I wrote one

It was National Blog Posting Month, so I wrote a poem.

December: The quiet month

This is only the fourth thing I’ve posted in December!