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Domesticity, and 2 related book reviews



Like everyone else, I have become even more domestic during this strange period in our lives. We have always made our own bread, and our own pasta. I've always had a couple of plants around. In the last three months though - I brought in my outdoor plant, because of the renos and it thrived. Then one day when I was sad, I went to Pop Wilder and bought this little beauty, but Princess Daisy kept trying to eat it. So planted some grass for her.
Did you know you can grow grass hydoponically? Easy as.

 When NetGalley had both The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook by Lucy Vaserfirer and Houseplant Party by Lisa Eldred Steinkopf I said "yes please" pretty fast, even though I knew it meant I would be dealing with the nightmare that is Adobe Digital Editions. Which turned out not to be a problem, since NetGalley now has it's own app and it works much better for me.

 Houseplant Party is a lovely book. fairly simple, so perfect for a relatively inexperienced  "plant parent" like me. It has lovely pictures, and would, in paper form, make a great gift. it gave me a bit more confidence around my plant care. If I have one criticism it is that it is a bit too Instagram ready and a bit too apolitical - at one point the book mentions GMO plants and that it's illegal to sell clippings from them and I squirmed at the idea of a corporation being able to own a plant in that sense, but pretty plants and decorating your house is the point of this book, not tearing down capitalism and starting the revolution. 

The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook  is also a very pretty book. the first half is divided into thirds, with one third each dedicated to each of the main types of pasta machines. After that it's sauces and fillings. Yum. It is a bit odd having an instruction book where there are whole chapters that are are irrelevant to my kind of pasta maker (I use a Phillips machine) but this is a pretty, useful and tasty book. 


Both these books had useful information, but were also a lovely journey into a tidy, plant filled, delicious home based life.

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