THIRSTY THURSDAY & HUNGRY HEARTS: “HOUSE OF WONDER”

Good morning!  It’s time for Thirsty Thursday & Hungry Hearts, hosted by Lexxie, at (un)Conventional Bookviews.

The idea of Thirsty Thursday and Hungry Hearts is to share a quote with food or drinks that showed up in a recent read, as well as if it’s something you think you’d like or not. Please share the title of the book it happened in, as well as the character who ate or drank the special little something you discovered between the pages of a good read. Please link up beneath, and visit other bloggers who are participating in Thirsty Thursday and Hungry Hearts as well.

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Today’s snippet is from House of Wonder, the story of a family, dysfunctional at best, but beneath it all, our MC, Jenna Parson, begins to find beauty in unexpected places, strength in unlikely people, and a future she couldn’t have imagined.  But that won’t happen until much later.

 

 

Our food offering comes from the beginning lines, as it’s about a childhood dinner which sounds interesting:

Ours were dinners of boneless chicken breasts, smeared and then baked in the congealed contents of a red and white can.  My mother would have clipped the recipe from a magazine, using sharp orange-handled scissors, the type that can slice down a length of wrapping paper like a fin through placid water.  Warren and I would sit waiting, eating our green bell pepper quarters filled with twisting orange strings of squirt cheese.  They filled the role of vegetable, the bell pepper and cheese boats, but I’d lick out just the cheese.  And then a timer would beep assertively and a steaming casserole dish would be pulled from the oven and set down in front of us.  Portions would be scooped and piled on top of our plates, and then Warren would notice a desiccated piece of rice that was stuck to his fork from three dinners ago.  His brows would draw together as he stared at it, and my mother would take the fork from his hands with a gentle tug.  “For goodness’ sake, Warren,” she’d say, scraping the fleck off with one of her long, shiny magenta fingernails.  “It’s just rice.”

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I had to laugh at this…reminders of 1950s and 60s dinners from housewives who believed that magazine recipes were the key to a perfect dinner.  Of course, the goal back then was quick dinners, and the ingredients were not what they are now.

I’m eager to read this book now…it’s been sitting on my shelf since last year.  What do you have today?  Come on by and share!

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A post for My Guilty Pleasures page.

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