What I’ve Been Reading/Doing/Eating

It’s been a shorter than normal summer for me, but I have managed to pack in a lot of enjoyable downtimes before the school year craziness cranks up again soon.  Here’s what I’ve been up to this summer:

READING

I am so glad to have been able to read several great books.  I much prefer nonfiction books, but I did end up reading way more fiction than I thought I would. I purchased and read these and enjoyed them very much:

 The Days of Noah, The Complete Box Set: A Novel of the End Times in America The Days of Elijah (4 Book Series) Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi

The Days of Noah trilogy by Mark Goodwin– Mark Goodwin is a Christian fiction writer and I listen to his podcast. I finally got around to giving his books a try and I am so glad I did! Prepping, or what I like to refer to as preparedness for anything, fascinates me and it’s something I firmly believe in. This book examines what can happen if modern conspiracies play into Biblical prophecy. I was completely hooked with the first book and ended up purchasing the rest of the trilogy. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this sort of thing.

The Days of Elijah trilogy by Mark Goodwin– I won’t spoil the first series I mentioned above, but some of the characters spill into this series and continues the rest of the story.  I was so pleased with the first books that I just HAD to have these, too.  I’m almost finished with the last book in this series, and I also think it was well worth the read.

Dispatches From Pluto by Richard Grant– I’ve seen this book in many different bookstores around our great state of Mississippi, but I finally decided to break down and buy this book after reading a short article about it the author wrote for another publication I read online.  I am so glad I gave this book a chance.  It was very interesting to read about my home, the Mississippi Delta, as told through the eyes of a British man.  So often the only stories about the South are written by Southerners and recycle the same stories of poverty, racism, and cultural heritage.  From Amazon:

Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. Dispatches from Pluto—winner of the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize—is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining.  On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters—blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta’s lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families—and good reasons for hope.

And so once again, being completely enamored with Grant’s book above, I had to delve into another one of his books.

The Deepest South of All- True Stories From Natchez, Mississippi– Again, leave it to a British man to give me, a native Mississippian, an amazing history lesson on life in past and present Natchez, Mississippi.

Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and cotton. Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91% of the vote.

Much as John Berendt did for Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the hit podcast S-Town did for Woodstock, Alabama, so Richard Grant does for Natchez in The Deepest South of All. With humor and insight, he depicts a strange, eccentric town with an unforgettable cast of characters. There’s Buzz Harper, a six-food-five gay antique dealer famous for swanning around in a mink coat with a uniformed manservant and a very short German bodybuilder. There’s Ginger Hyland, “The Lioness,” who owns 500 antique eyewash cups and decorates 168 Christmas trees with her jewelry collection. And there’s Nellie Jackson, a Cadillac-driving brothel madam who became an FBI informant about the KKK before being burned alive by one of her customers. Interwoven through these stories is the more somber and largely forgotten account of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a West African prince who was enslaved in Natchez and became a cause célèbre in the 1820s, eventually gaining his freedom and returning to Africa.

I’m telling you, all of these books were so good I didn’t want them to end.

DOING:

 Cereal Container Storage Set – Airtight Food Storage Containers, Kitchen & Pantry Organization, Labels, Spoon Set & Pen, Great for Flour – BPA-Free Dispenser Keepers (101.4oz) – Chef’s Path Round – 60

Organizing has been a huge activity for me this summer. I’ve spent a lot of time in our kitchen and pantry getting things orderly. My favorite purchase so far has been these plastic cereal storage containers. I put everything in them…beans, rice, spaghetti noodles, etc.  It has made storing them so much better and I know they are well-sealed and protected.

I freshened up our dining room table with this cute tasseled tablecloth.  I think it’s so cute and just what our dining room needed.

EATING:

I’ve had more time to cook and we have also visited a couple of our favorite restaurants and some new to us places as well.  Here are my favorites this summer:

My weekly treat is this Bacon Wrapped Salmon with roasted vegetables and brown butter vinaigrette from Uncle Jo’s.  It is absolutely perfect every single time and if you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, it’s worth the visit!

My favorite place we visited for the first time was Juicy Seafood when we made a day trip to Southaven, Mississippi a couple of weeks ago.  The seafood is out of this world! You can order it with your choice of seasoning and heat level if you like your seafood spicy.  It was absolutely delicious and we can’t wait to go back again!  Hubby and I both ordered the lobster/shrimp/crab legs combo special.

Another local lunch favorite is The Warehouse.  They have the best BLT dip and the pizza is pretty great as well!

I also tried out a new “takery” here in town called Our Delta Table.   They have fresh entrees daily that are so good and portioned just right.  I tried the chicken salad on this particular day and enjoyed it so much.

And my absolute favorite breakfast food that I’ve been making on the regular….french toast!

I have a couple of weeks left at home and there are still more projects I want to tackle. We have had the electrician in today to repair some lights in our kitchen and I am now waiting on the carpet cleaners to get here to have our carpet freshened up downstairs. How have you stayed busy this summer?