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Category Archives: Books & Cookbooks

I’ll start by announcing the winner of the Jungle Book Playset! The winner is… via Instagram is @amumreviews!

I saved my personal favorite book and playset for last. The Babylit Pride and Prejudice Playset is amazing. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books, and my favorite movies. I was first introduced to it by my Aunt who showed me the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version when I was a teenager. I love getting to introduce Gigi to it at such a young age thanks to the Babylit version. Gigi loves stories and characters and Pride and Prejudice’s varied Bennett sisters, hilarious parents, and passionate men, have already sparked hours of fun, creative play.

I had grand plans for a Pride and Prejudice themed ball, but we talked about it and Gigi chose to have a “Jane Austen Tea”.  I showed Gigi the illustrated cover of my Pride and Prejudice book, and she requested a simple pink dress and a shawl. She set up her new desk with a writing pad and pen, her play tea pot and cup, and I made Meyer Lemon and Rosemary Shortbread Cookies because they seemed like the perfect thing for a British tea party.

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To enter the giveaway and win a Pride and Prejudice Playset leave a comment! I’ll announce the winner next week! You can also enter on Instagram! Good luck!

I’ll start by announcing the winner of the Moby Dick Playset! The winner is… via comments Stacey F! Stacey, please email me at kacie@withlovekacie.com with your address!

Now, on to our Jungle Book Playset Picnic! The moment Gigi saw this box arrive in the mail she started coming up with her own ideas for a little jungle party. We zipped to the store to pick up a few simple supplies, and set up the little picnic for breakfast. I decorated with green jungle crepe paper streamers, put down a big monkey picnic blanket, had G collect her jungle-related stuffed animals, and whipped up a little jungle breakfast: bananas, little bowls of cereal, and sippy cups full of jungle juice (orange juice). G suggested jungle costumes in the form of underpants a lá Mogli and Tarzan, but we opted for monkey pajamas instead and leis.

BABYLIT JUNGLE BOOK PICNICPINBABYLIT JUNGLE BOOK PICNICPINBABYLIT JUNGLE BOOK PICNICPINBABYLIT JUNGLE BOOK PICNICPINBABYLIT JUNGLE BOOK PICNICPINTo enter the giveaway and win a Jungle Book Playset leave a comment! I’ll announce the winner when I share our Pride and Prejudice Ball next week! You can also enter on Instagram! Good luck!

GIVEAWAY CLOSED.

I’ll start by announcing the winner of the Alice in Wonderland Playset! The winner is… via Instagram @DAMEWOOD_DAYS!

Now, on to our new playset and giveaway! For the Moby Dick Playset, Gigi requested a “pirate party”. This little party was decidedly simpler than our somewhat-elaborate Alice in Wonderland Tea Party due to the fact that the kids were a bit under the weather, and while a mini-tea party menu is easy to come up with, a pirate party was a little trickier. I bought a bag of Pirate’s Booty, cut up an orange (to fight scurvy, obviously), and handed each of the girls a little apple to nibble. Gigi’s Grandma had made her a fabulous pirate costume which G happily pulled on before opening her new Moby Dick Playset. She loved discovering and repeating the characters names, and “shooting” the harpoon at the people and seagulls, somehow the whale was spared. Maybe, unlike the sailors at the center of Moby Dick, she understood that a tiny harpoon may not be the best way to hook her whale.

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To enter the giveaway and win a Moby Dick Playset leave a comment! I’ll announce the winner when I share our Jungle Book Picnic next week! You can also enter on Instagram! Good luck!

GIVEAWAY CLOSED.

We have worked with Jennifer Adams, the author of the wildly popular BabyLit Board Books in the past, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to work with her again. We are big fans of her BabyLit Board Books which include Jungle Book, The Wizard of Oz, Moby-Dick, Sense and Sensibility, Anna Karenina, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, Jabberwocky, Dracula, The Secret Garden, Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet, and my personal favorite, Pride and Prejudice. We’ve collected most of them and I give them as gifts all the time.

Any book that helps bring the classics to kids and gets them started early on a love of reading is a really incredible thing! The illustrations, by Alison Oliver, are vibrant and layered and both of the girls keep going back to these books. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Les Misérables Board Book since Gigi is completely obsessed… it would be lighter for her to carry around than her 1,232 page copy! Along with the amazing board books, BabyLit also makes four wonderful playsets: Moby-Dick, Alice in Wonderland, Pride and Prejudice, and Jungle Book (each playset also includes a copy of the book)!

Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing the fun ways we’ve introduced these playsets into our home preschool “program”, and along with each post I’ll be giving away a matching playset!

We started off with Alice in Wonderland because Gigi has been all about tea parties lately, and you know I love any opportunity to bake a cake! I took a lot of time to set up a sweet little tea party while she napped, I even got out real china! We had spent the morning making a letter E cake since that was the letter we were focusing on that week, and I pulled down my own annotated copy of Alice in Wonderland, and this wonderful book called The Other Alice, Gigi had a fabulous handed-down Alice costume, so once she woke up she slipped it on, and we had tea and cake and worked together to set up her new playset. Then, while she played with it, I read to her from my copy of Alice in Wonderland. She was only half-listneing as she played and ate, which was the whole point. It was so fun to watch her use her rich imagination to bring the characters to life while she listened to Lewis Carroll’s wonderful story.ALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINALICE IN WONDERLAND BABYLIT BOARD BOOKPINTo enter the giveaway and win an Alice in Wonderland playset leave a comment! I’ll announce the winner when I share our Moby Dick Playset “Pirate Party” next week! You can also enter on Instagram! Good luck!

GIVEAWAY CLOSED.

I met Ashley and her family about a year and a half ago, when they were visiting our town. We’ve become fast friends and I’m so glad to know her. If you read Ashley’s blog, Not Without Salt, you understand why. Ashley is genuine in her writing, creative in her approach to food, and inspiring in her photography.

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She’s the kind of food blogger who you dream might invite you over for dinner; which is exactly what she did on our following trip up to Seattle. The forecast called for chilly temperatures and rain so Ashley had cooked up a fabulous, rich vegetarian stew. Her three kids and our two quickly slipped off to play and the four of us, Ashley, Gabe, Kyle, and I sat outside in t-shirts sipping cold beer and eating our delicious wintery stew and laughing about the unpredictable nature of Seattle weather.

For Christmas my friend Ashley handed me a copy of her first cookbook, Date Night In, along with some other goodies. I sat down and read it cover to cover as quickly as I could. Date Night In is full of the kind of recipes you’d expect from Ashley: inventive, appealing, accessible, delicious… and full of beautifully written essays on the journey of love, marriage, and relationships. Ashley writes openly about her marriage to Gabe; their struggles, triumphs, and the “every days” in-between. If you’re looking for a special Valentine’s Day gift for someone you love who loves to cook, Date Night In would be at the top of my list.

DATE NIGHT IN BY ASHLEY RODRIGUEZPIN

Having date nights in is not a new concept around our house. When Gigi was about the age Lulu is now, we declared that Wednesdays would be date nights. For us that meant that I made something special for dinner and we would cozy up to play a board game or watch a movie together after the kid(s) were in bed. Until I read Ashley’s book it never occurred to me to stuff the kids full of pasta and share a special meal with just Kyle; like an actual date!

I’ve cooked so much from her book already. It’s speckled here and there with splatters of olive oil, flour, and frosting; a mark of a favorite. For Gigi’s birthday she chose an impressive, made-from-scratch Rainbow Chip Cake from Ashley’s book. Gigi chipped in (no pun intended), making the rainbow chips, and the cakes, combining the frosting, and assembling the cake. She, and I, were so proud of the final result, and since her birthday falls of New Year’s Eve we enjoyed a slice at home before taking the rest of the cake across the street to share with neighbors. You might want to make a note that the cake goes very well with champagne.

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Next up was Ashley’s Fried Chicken Sandwiches on Black Pepper Biscuits which you’ll find on page 173. I was drawn to this recipe for obvious reasons: perfect fried chicken, fluffy black pepper biscuits, grainy mustard, bright dill pickles, sweet honey! They turned out so well that I made them two days in a row and our neighbors came over two days in a row to eat with us. They declared that these sandwiches resulted in the “best meal they’d had in a long time!”

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Finally, my most often made thing from Date Night In: Hot Dates with Olive Oil and Sea Salt. These dates are so addictive. I find myself buying Medjool dates in bulk and making a few almost every afternoon while the girls nap. You simply sauté the dense, sweet dates in fruity olive oil for a few minutes, transfer them to a plate and sprinkle with flake salt. That’s it! They’re so simple, yet somehow complex and delicious and just the thing I need mid-day. I love to make these and a cup of black tea and zone out for a few minutes while eating them with my fingers. Trust me, you need to try these.

HOT DATES WITH OLIVE OIL AND SEA SALTPINHOT DATES WITH OLIVE OIL AND SEA SALTPIN

HOT DATES WITH OLIVE OIL AND SEA SALT

Ingredients.
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
4-6 Medjool dates
flake salt (such as Maldon)

Directions.
Add the olive oil to a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the dates and stir to coat. Keep the dates moving so that they don’t scorch but rather get warm and soft and blister slightly. After 3 to 4 minutes in the pan, place the hot dates on a plate and drizzle with the olive oil from the pan. Add a bit more olive oil if you’d like. Sprinkle with a pinch of flake salt. Serve immediately.

Serves 2.


PRINTABLE RECIPE.
HOT DATES WITH OLIVE OIL AND SEA SALT