>Week(end) Links

>Another week is coming to a close and that means it’s time for another post with random links and thoughts from me. I think of you all as an extended circle of friends and there are always a bunch of interesting (to me, anyway) tidbits that I want to share with you. So this is the time when I do that.

I’ve gotten a few e-mails and comments from people who aren’t happy with this practice, which makes me a laugh a little, but if you’re one of them, all I can say is um, come during the week for “real posts.” And come here on the weekend if you’d like some light entertainment and ideas that I can’t really write an entire post about. Make sense?

Anyway.

I made a couple of dishes this week that I would totally recommend to anyone.

First off, we’re trying to watch our budget right now and boneless pork chops were deeply discounted at Kroger (and they’re always inexpensive), so I made this family favorite from Allrecipes.com: Tonkatsu, which is an Asian-style Pork Chop. It sounds a lot more exotic than it is and just ignore the picture used in the recipe, because mine look NOTHING like that when I’m done. It is a really easy, fairly quick way to make pork chops that are absolutely delicious and it useds panko, an extra crispy breading that Progresso is now making- which means you can actually find it in your regular old grocery store! Try panko if you haven’t already, and I bet you’ll be as addicted to it as I am. It makes for a MUCH crispier coating, without adding extra calories. I’m totally going to use panko the next time I do fish and chips.

Um. Okay. I got a little too excited about panko there and now I’m feeling like a loser.

Last night, I made this Couscous chicken salad and WOW. It’s delicious and incredibly healthy, with fresh basil, tomatoes, chickpeas, and green onions. Make it the day before you plan to eat it and let it sit overnight for a real treat. A few notes- Sherry vinegar is hard to find, but you can pour a 1/4 cup of cooking sherry, remove a tablespoonful, and add a tablespoon of red wine vinegar to recreate the flavor. I might use a little more of the “sherry vinegar” I made in this recipe the next time I make it, as well as a little more olive oil. Just be prepared to add it to taste when you’re putting the salad together.

Are you still with me?

Tonight, I’m making Old Bay Shrimp Salad, and wrapping it in tortillas with lettuce. I love this shrimp salad and you can do a lot of different things with it, like eat it with crackers or inside a pita. We’re trying to diet a bit around here, hence the light dishes this week.

I found this AMAZING craft this morning and now I’m a little upset that the kids and I are visiting my parents next week during fall break and won’t have time to make this for Halloween. So will one or two of you make it please? I am seriously going to make this an annual tradition, starting next year. What a FABULOUS idea to get your kids involved in the annual raking-of-the-leaves day! And it’s so easy!

And this isn’t a link, but remember how I wrote that post about Punky reading? It continues to be one of the highlights of my life, because we are reading seven or eight books a day when she gets home (at her request) and now that she’s figured out the “code,” the kid is learning between 5 and 10 new words a day- and retaining them! If you have a child at this age, a few things are really working well for me. I read her a picture book or two each day (and I try to check out books at the library in advance that coincide with her weekly kindergarten theme), we read at least one easy reader book a day that she can read mostly to me, and at night, I read a more advanced book to her. We just finished Ramona the Pest and started on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, at her request. The more advanced books are really advancing her vocabulary, since we stop and talk about what the bigger words mean when we encounter them.

We’re going to start a weekly reading night at Starbucks, in which her older sister and I take her for “coffee” and read for an hour, while Hubs watches Bruiser at home. We used to do this with the older girls and they loved it, so my 16-year-old now is very excited about continuing the tradition with her little sister.

Another thing that’s been a big hit with her are her “snack stories.” I put her snack in a lunch bag each morning so that she doesn’t confuse it with her lunch, and I’ve started writing a sentence-long story on the outside and drawing a picture, using words that she knows. It’s a highlight of her day. Each morning, she requests a friend to be in the story with her, and then at snacktime, she and her friends have their snack and read the snack story together. I try to put in an easy new word for her to sound out whenever I can, and after school we talk about the story and whether she was able to figure out all the words. I’ve been dying to share this idea with you all since it’s working so well for us.

For those of you in Nashville, TPAC’s AMAZING Family Field Trip series continues on Halloween afternoon with a staging of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” Here’s a blurb about it.

Innovative black light staging is the backdrop for the live puppet adaptation of Eric Carle’s delightful children’s books – Little Cloud, The Mixed-up Chameleon and the beloved title story, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. “[This] performance is stunningly beautiful! I was mesmerized by the tempo, colors, voice, movements, music.” -Eric Carle (author)

I can’t say enough good things about this series. We went to see “Jason and the Argonauts” last weekend, put on by two Scottish actors and it was out of this world innovative and spectacular. Punky absolutely loved it. The tickets for this series are way more affordable than regular TPAC performances, so that families can go and enjoy them. Also, they’re asking that kids come to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in costume, because there will be trick-or-treating afterward.

And that’s it. If you made it to the end of this post, just WOW. Feel free to add in the comments your own tips and ideas that you’ve been wanting to share with someone. That’ll make this conversation a little less one-sided! Ha.

And have a great weekend. Hope the weather’s a little better where you are than it is here!