springdellgirl

Salt in the Dining Divas Wound...


I am once again bemoaning the end of my cooking club Dining Divas. It will be a year next month since we called it quits. Kelley and I miss it a lot. Stacey's group is going strong and the other day she called me to tell me her "good news"...her Dining Divas group is going to be featured on the Rachael Ray Show!!! I am really happy for her...seriously...I am...ok...just a tiny bit jealous...ok ALOT jealous... that her group has turned out so great and that our group turned out so lame. I guess RR is doing a show on cooking clubs and one of Stacey' s D.D. members sent in information on their group and were contacted by RR's producers. They are filming their next gathering...on January 21st. I am not sure when it will air. Way to go Stacey and the Dining Divas!!



P.S. Even the struggling Houston Chapter of Dining Divas has pulled it together and are going strong...the injustice of it all!! ;)

Now onto Rachael Ray...I am really bugged by her. Why is she so popular? Everytime I hear her say "yum-o" or "spoonula" I want to throttle her!! But national TV is national TV...yay Stacey!! Now if it were Paula Deen (my absolute fave...I daydream about what if she were my mother-in-law...how much fun we would have cooking together!!)...back to my point...if Stacey's Dining Divas were going to be on the Paula Deen Show I would be REALLY upset!! I am very proud of Stacey. Dining Divas has been her "baby" for years and it truly is an awesome club and I am happy that she is getting the recognition she deserves. Way to go Stac!

Tuesday night was Book Club...yet another great gathering. I love going to Kari Ann's house. She has the cutest house and I love looking around trying to get decorating ideas. We all brought food to share and she did the cutest thing...I am totally stealing this idea. She did a hot chocolate bar. She had marshmallows, whipped cream, peppermints and all different flavored syrups. It was SO good...and such a cute idea.

The book we read for January was:



I absolutely LOVE this book!! I highly highly recommend it. It is the perfect gift to give a friend/sister/mother or to buy for yourself to read and re-read. It is also a really quick read which is a nice little bonus. If you want a really professional review read Lucy's. (I really think Lucy should become a book critic). But here's what I thought about it...this was my second time reading the book. The first time I read it I was around 18 and getting ready to leave for college. My mom had read it and really liked it and had suggested I read it. (She has always had two copies of this book...one she kept at home and one she kept at her office). I read it and liked it and even took notes and wrote down favorite quotes from it. (I actually found my old franklin planner and the notes that I took...it was really fun to read). When I read it at 18 my parents were in the process of getting divorced, my family was moving from Kansas City to Houston, and I was getting ready to leave for BYU. Most of the quotes I wrote down were about separation.

"Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done...life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before" Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I also had a few that I wrote down about trying to figure out who I was and how I mattered to the world.

"...When one is a stranger to one's self then one is a estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others". Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I remember crying on my bed, while reading the book, thinking...Anne Morrow Lindbergh really GETS me. Reading it again at 34 it was a like a whole different book and this time I was laughing reading it thinking...Anne Morrow Lindbergh really GETS me.

She compares the different phases of a woman's life to different sea shells. I loved the analogy of the oyster shell. That would be the married/raising a family stage. She describes it as very ordinary looking...rather lumpy...embedded on a rock...with things attached to it. She talks about how it reminded her of a house full of children, toys and bikes everywhere, with friends spilling out, noisy, messy and chaotic. That sounds so familiar!! She talks about how women's lives are so full of responsiblities, meals to be made, housecleaning, kids to be taken care of, pets, hobbies, friends, children's friends, activities, children's activites, committees and husbands that women rarely take any time for themselves to be renewed. So that quote that I wrote down when I was 18 about being a stranger to one's self means something totally different at 34.

I also really liked how she described the different stages of marriage. My favorite quote from this read-through was:

"Love isn't gazing at each other...it is standing side by side and looking in the same direction"

I think this book has had such appeal and longevity because it is full of universal truths. We, women, are more alike than we are different and that it even transcends time and generations. I can't wait to read the book when I'm 50 and again at 80 and see if Anne Morrow Lindbergh still GETS me...somehow I think she will.