Organic Granny

Vegan Baked Beans.   When I was a kid, and oblivious to a lifestyle that didn't include dairy, eggs, and chunks of animal flesh, I absolutely loved Pork 'n' Beans from a can.  My mother was a 'modern' 50s mother-- she didn't waste time with baking bread or canning or such.  There were so many other things to do, more interesting than slaving over a hot stove.  We did have a large electric frying pan that contained some sort of 'goulash' every day at lunch time.  Usually the base item was hamburger (there really are 101 ways to serve hamburger).   As a young adult university student, and later, as a young wife and mother in the 70s, I came across Diet for a Small Planet by Francis Moore Lappe.   I relished the lovely vegetarian recipes, mostly swimming in cheese or containing eggs-- ovo-lacto vegetarian.  But it was at that time that I let go of the old myths around needing to eat animal products to be healthy.  By and by, over the years, my husband

Stop What You Are Doing And Read This! by Carmen Callil My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was deeply into a detective-mystery novel when my husband ruptured my thrall (twice!) to suggest that I might want to read this book of essays on the power and joy of reading literature. I was irritated and made rude dismissive gestures. However... I ran out of something to read and decided to pick this up. I apologized to my husband for my unspoken assumptions. This slim and quickly read book contains eleven essays by twelve esteemed writers talking about their individual love stories around reading. It was a little like stepping back into an English Lit class at University nearly 50 years ago, but, really, a great pleasure to have the rich experiences and rewards of books and reading reiterated in a time when the electronic media would sometime make "old school" literature and literary pursuits seem outdated and without value in a changing world. Not so. Since reading this book m