Latinísimo by Sandra Gutierrez

My on line cookbook group is cooking out of this book this month, and I am surprised by a number of things about it. The first is that I did not know this book had been published--it is a relatively comprehensive cookbook covering all 21 Latin countries in the Americas. That is both its strength and its weakness. Do you need to own it? I would say yes--I have been going to Central and South America since I was a child, and I have been an avid home cook for almost 50 years and there were many things that I learned about the region and the cuisine from reading this book. There is a lot of information about the differences in cuisine across the region, including the kinds of peppers and what you can do with them that are worth the price of admission. The downside is that while it is almost unliftable in weight, it lacks depth into any particular cuisine--that it unsurprising, but this is not the be all and end all of Latin American cooking--rather it is an excellent starting point and one that should be explored. It is available on used book sites for under $10 and well worth it.

Libs Elliott and Rebel Tech Quilting

What an amazing quilter, and I recently heard her speak about her process for design. Libs Elliott is a quilt artist renowned for blending computer algorithms with traditional crafts. Her random generator design uses Processing—an open-source coding language—to algorithmically randomize geometric shapes, block rotations, and color palettes.

The Generative Process that she uses, which is open source code, is something that she took our guild behind the curtain and showed how it could work for us. First there are Algorithmic Layouts: The code randomizes variables like block orientation, color distribution, and scale. It outputs endless unique compositions, which she then filters and selects for her designs. Each design is unique--it can be saved as a PDF (which she does, thousands of times over), but once you click on it again, it is not coming back. You can add a lot of elements, like how much of each color you want represented, and and what elements to add, and how much rotation you want, but then it is randome. Then comes the Human Element: Once a digital pattern is finalized, she uses it as a precise map to cut and sew fabric, introducing beautiful "human" imperfections into the mathematically driven design. She may use only a small portion of the pattern to make a quilt, and she may change things, it is really more of a starting place than the destination, but it is so cool. Now I have to get this pattern and see for myself.

Say You'll Remember Me by Abby Jimenez

I have read several of this author's romance novels and have very much enjoyed them. This one less so. It is not because of the serious content, which is family members dealing with early dementia. It is more the 'love at second sight' aspect that seems off. Samantha meets Xavier when she takes her rescue kitten in for veterinary care. is bedside manner puts her off, but when she raises an impossible amount of money for the surgery her kitten requires, she does warm to him. Unfortunately, even though they shared a perfect first date, it’s obvious to Samantha that she can’t pursue a relationship as she’s bound for home to help take care of her ailing mother. Xavier refuses to let any obstacles get in the way of their happiness, try as he might. He isn’t ready to let go of her just yet. The thing that seems off is that he has had a childhood that lacks support and affection, and yet he dives into the relationship with Samantha with both feet. The build up to change and a traditional romance ending was enough to convince me to try the second book in the series, so I would give this a one thumb up.

A Private Life (2026)

I watched this on a plane en rout home from a very restful vacation. I had just had a joint replacement in my dominant arm, which was boring and painful and a little scary because there was so much I could not do that is important to me. I could not cook, write, or sew, and it was hard to type. While I love to read and watch movies, when that is all you can do it quickly wears thin. So the trip was as much about getting out of my house as it was about exploring a new place, and it was very successful indeed. This is is a 2025 French mystery thriller Jodie Foster in her first French-language acting role. She plays renowned and vaguely arrogant psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, who has an old school psychoanalytic approach to the profession, complete with the couch. When she is informed that her patient Paula has taken her own life, she refuses to accept the official ruling. Convinced that foul play is involved, Lilian launches her own quirky, private investigation into the circumstances of Paula's death. Along the way, she enlists the reluctant help of her affectionate ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), and navigates the absurdities of her own unraveling personal and professional life. It is odd, slightly bizarre and completely out of step with modern psychiatry but in the end, I enjoyed it.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

This is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection, and I am slowly but surely reading quite a few of them--she has a penchant for thrillers, which I do not share, but this one is sort of borderline in that category. It is set in the near future in a remote place that is largely uninhabited. As a result the characters only interact with each other, because there is no one else there. Dominic Salt and his three children live at Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica that is disappearing because of climate change and rising oceans. Here is the world’s largest seed bank, and while Shearwater was once full of researchers, it’s now just the Salts. And soon they will be leaving as well--largely abandoing the seeds they put there to preserve them for the future. But everything changes when, after a terrible storm, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. The Salts help nurse the woman, Rowan, back to health. And while the family is used to being on their own, they start to form a connection with Rowen. They all have secrets that gradually reveal themselves, and while this sort of literary thriller is not my usual fare, I enjoyed this.

La Relais de la Poste, La Wantzenau, France

We ate on the patio at this one star Michelin restaurant for my birthday-- the nice thing about it, besides that it was a beautiful day and the patio is spacious, is that we were the only North Americans in the place and all the tables were occupied. They say that the chef and his team offer precise cuisine, elegant presentation, a discerning selection of locally sourced ingredients, and creative, flavorful dishes.

We couldn't agree more. I love the spring foods--aspagagus, spring peas, rhubarb, strawberries are all some of my favorites, and in this land locked region, the fish is from the river or the lake. I never quite got it before, but the terroir is finally something that I can taste--took years, decades really--before I really felt I knew the difference. We in the US have come to that party late, which left us with no sense of it, but as tariffs in the US rise, gas prices rise, and the availability of food that travels becomes less affordable, maybe the silver lining is that we develop the ability to grow and appreciate our own. This is a restaurant well worth going to celebrate, and they will talk about where they source their food, some of it from across the street.

Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

I read this for two reasons--one is that it fullfills a Goodreads challenge, and while I do not knock myself out getting these badges, I have found that I have enjoyed the pursuit of them. I chose this particular book because I have never read anything by this author, and she is a favorite of a number of my friends on Goodreads, especially those who read in this genre more regularly than I do, and I have to say that while I won't be pursuing this authors whole catalogue, I did enjoy it. Here is the story--Lifestyle blogger Hollis Shaw is struggling a bit. She has become a social media phenomenon, but at the expense of her family--both her husband and her teenaged daughter see her prioritizing her number of clicks over either of them, and while she protests this is not a fair characterization of her priorities, where she puts both her time and effort would be contrary to that. She really is pretty impressed with herself. When she tragically loses her husband in a car accident, she finds herself struggling to move forward. He daughter pulls back further, and she has trouble connecting with her friends to get support--she does have a connection with one of her on-line followers, who she pours her heart out to, feels better for it, then gets ghosted by her. Seeking comfort and a fresh start, she decides to host a "Five-Star Weekend" at her Nantucket home--this is defined as a weekend with people from four different periods of your life and yourself--the hook being that no one necessarily knows anyone but you. She invites a diverse group of women representing different eras of her life: her childhood best friend, her college roommate, a close friend from her thirties, and a mysterious blog follower who ghosted her. It is a weekend full of surprises and it ends up someplace very different than wheree it started.

The Choral (2026)

My spouse and I watched this on a transatlantic flight because he is very fond of Ralph Fiennes and we both enjoyed this quiet yet thoughtful movie. It focuses on a choral society that attempts to perform The Dream of Gerontius (which I did not love) for their community against the backdrop of World War I, hits its notes with aplomb. However, it might have benefited from a creative vibrato that would have added more layers to its boilerplate narrative. Still, it’s a tune about the impotence of art making in the midst of crisis that bears repeating, as the world that’s all too eager to sacrifice the arts on the altar of productivity and progress. Sound familiar? Well, while there are echoes of that in our life today, the movie is grounded in thr setting of a different era. Set in the fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, in 1916, the era is brought to life with meticulous detail: schoolboys ride their bikes recklessly throughout the town, aristocrats cover their balding scalps with top hats, while steam from the nearby industrial mills wafts through the cobblestone streets. There’s a veneer of normalcy, although the regularity pokes at a more somber truth: the town is in mourning at the toll of the war, which has taken many of their men and left behind grieving families. The young men of the town wait with bated breath to see whether they’ll receive the call to conscription, leaving the rest of the citizens caught in a sort of limbo. It’s hard to go about one’s daily life when the people you’re in community with can be taken at any moment--it is also easy to see the differences in class at this time, something that WWI took a big bite out of in England.

More Than Enough by Anna Quindlen

Well I have to say that this is more about the people within than the story it tells, which is not to say that there isn't a story here, there is, and the people are largely likeable and good. Polly Goodman is the center of this story. She is an English teacher at a private high school, a job she loves, and she has a group of close friends she has known a long time. After a brief marriage to a charismatic bad man, she’s found love with a good one: a large-animal veterinarian who makes adorable cameos on the Bronx Zoo’s social media platforms. She wants to have a baby but it is not happening for her. Her father is getting more cognitively impaired and her mother, a judge who takes that job quite seriously, is brusque and difficult. Then, added in to the mix she takes a DNA test and finds that she has a match with a relative unknown to her. This starts a slow but interesting thread about who in her nuclear family has a secret, and how to handle it. The best part of this book is the character development. There is a lot going on in a relatively short novel and I really enjoyed wending my way to the end.

Restaurant A L'Etoile, Boersch, France

This is a Michelin noted restaurant, and here is what they have to say about it: Tucked away in a small Alsace village on the Mont Sainte Odile road, this traditional hostelry, opened in 1920, is today run by the fourth generation. A warm welcome and honest, homely recipes, starring market-fresh produce and a slate menu.

The menu changes daily and is written on a slate board--so it is short and fresh. I am not a fan of offal, but if you are, about 1/3 of the menu consists of that, and but all of it is more French leaning than the traditional Alsatian food we had in some places we ate on this trip. I had a whole trout, very simply prepared by poaching it whole and then serving with browned butter with slivered almonds. My spouse had veal tonnato that was possibly the best version of that dish we have ever had. Overall it was very reasonably priced and deliciously prepared food--the menu is limited but varied, and I would recommend it.