top 10, plus 100 notable books of the year (per nytimes)

Feeling ambitious? Check out the books the New York Times rates as the most notable books of the year. I thought I was doing pretty well with my book-reading over the past year, but the only one I've read from this list is What is the What and I couldn't even finish because it was making me cry so much. (No, I haven't read the last Harry Potter book yet--I'm waiting until I can get it from the library.)

A hundred books is a lot. Maybe this list, dubbed as "The 10 Best Books of 2007" by the Times is a little more manageable. Although I must admit that the titles seem a bit daunting. And depressing! Whatever happened to funny books? Or books that stir the imagination? Is it that they don't have a lesson to offer? I just finished The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and I'm looking for a upper? Any suggestions?

stealth veggies

This is a term we kick around a lot at EatingWell. Our readers are often looking for favorite family meals made healthier, so we developed a bunch of tasty, healthy recipes that have extra veggies hidden inside! It's great for lowering fat and sneaking veggies into kids' meals—sometimes you can't even tell the difference!

The idea of "stealth veggies" is a little funny. I mean, the whole idea of learning to eating healthier is learning to appreciate and crave those ingredients that are good for you—and learning to mistrust those ingredients or foods that are detrimental. It's definitely a learning process. If kids think they're just eating mac & cheese, rather than mac & cheese with spinach, then left to their own devices, they'll probably just eat plain old mac & cheese. Cause they just don't know any better.

Still there's something so satisfying about eating a meal that tastes naughty—but really isn't! And though I don't have any kids, I'm often trying to get Colin to eat healthier foods. Recently, I made Southwestern Cheese Paninis (glorified grilled cheeses) for him and some of his chicken-wings-eating friends and none of them could believe they were actually healthful and made up of mostly veggies. They loved them! Healthful or not, it's one of my favorite quick dinner recipes. I always double the amount of carrots and zucchini, because I love them. And the trick is finding a good bread that stands up to the moisture. (I like honey oat.)

So, if you like to play this game of hide the spinach under the cheese, here are some other "stealth veggies" recipes to try:

• Southwestern Cheese Panini
• Hamburger Buddy
• Updated Mac & Cheese
• EatingWell's Pepperoni Pizza

tons of photos from the weekend

We took lots of photos over the weekend—in Katonah for Thanksgiving and then in New York. Here are some of my faves. If you're feeling ambitious, you can see the full lot here.

visiting spencer & courtney

It's always so much fun visiting our friends Courtney and Spencer in New York. They like to show us a good time. And they like to do the same kinds of things we like to do when we have the day off—like eating yummy meals at nice restaurants, walking around and going into shops, and having dance parties in the living room.

We took the train in yesterday from Katonah, dropped our bags off at their place on St. Mark's Place in the East Village and went to grab lunch at Jane. I got an arugula salad with dried cranberries, roasted pumpkin seeds and blue cheese and a glass of viognier. It was the perfect Saturday afternoon lunch. They have really good french fries at that restaurant—they cook them with rosemary, just like my mom's roasted potatoes.

After lunch we walked around, went into shops, waited in the bathroom line for 25 minutes at Starbucks. Yeah, that's right, 25 minutes. Checked out some more shops and then stopped in for a drink at Lolita—a chill bar with some pretty snazzy light fixtures and a good soundtrack. They were playing Arcade Fire the whole time we were there. We were totally into it.

We came home for a while. Had some drinks. Courtney told us about her new exciting job. Spencer and Colin played music. We danced a little. And then went out. We sort of forgot about dinner. So before bed we got pizza slices at Strombolis. It was the perfect New York night.

This morning Colin and I got up and walked to the Porto Rico coffee shop a couple blocks away. It's very small. Only a couple of people can fit in there at the same time, because the whole back of the shop is taken up by big burlap bags full of coffee beans. The place has got charm. Last time we were there it was pouring buckets and buckets. But today the skies were bright blue and clear, so we sat on the bench outside the shop, drank our coffee, and watched the styley people walk by.

One guy carried a boom box that was blasting rap music. It seemed a little early for that. Col said, "I bet he pressed play right when he woke up." (The guy was totally jamming.) I said, "Maybe he never turned it off from last night."

A gorgeous French couple ducked into the coffee shop. I always get a funny feeling in my tummy when I hear people speak French. The woman had a great outfit on. A guy in rollerblades skidded to a stop right in front of us and dashed in to get a pastry for breakfast. (I'm liking this coffee shop more and more). Rollerblade man dashed out as quickly as he dashed in and almost got hit by a car as he rolled into the street. A woman was buying a bagfull of chocolate-covered espresso beans for her daughter who was going off to school. There were more people, but I'm too tired to write about it.

We got brunch with Spencer and Courtney and then we went into a second-floor toy shop called Toy Tokyo. Colin bought four more metal robots to add to his collection. We'll need another shelf to hold them all now.

We're back at the apartment. Courtney's reading in the bedroom. Colin and Spencer are watching Return of the Jedi. And I'm at my computer. We're eating skittles to take the edge off breakfast. And that's that for now. Maybe I'll just take a little nap...

lazy day

When you're going and going and going all of the time, it's hard to take a day for yourself and do nothing—without any guilt. Afterall, there's always something you should be doing. If it's not work, it's laundry. If it's not laundry, it's stitching sweaters or polishing shoes or returning phone calls.

That's the beauty of going away for a few days. When you're away from home, those chores simply don't exist.

Today I had rice pudding and coffee for lunch at the local diner in town. It was heavenly. (No guilt!) And then I spent the rest of the afternoon dorking out on my computer and looking at old pictures from my blog. I put a Flickr slideshow on my homepage. Check it out.