Bite by Bite: Nourishments & Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

   

I have a lot of cookbooks in my TBR, and there is nothing my husband loves more than for me to cook. To inspire me, I took photos with 24 cookbooks I have and I've prescheduled one post a month for the next two years. I'll plan to link up with In My Kitchen, hosted by Sherry's Pickings, and Weekend Cooking, hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader (and Baker). To further inspire me, I've created a Cooking/Baking Challenge for me for 2026 in which I read and bake from and post about one cookbook a month.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil shares the foods of her life, food by food, bite by bite, and, in the process, tells the stories of her life. 

Some of the foods are exotic to me and I've never seen these: Pawpaw, lumpia, bangus, lychee, jackfruit, mangosteen, kaong, gyro, leche flan, halo-halo.

Some of the foods are foods I have heard of, but I've never cooked or baked with: Mango, mint, crawfish, gyro. 

Some of the foods are foods I have cooked with once: Risotto.

Some of the foods are foods I use often: Rice, pineapple, cinnamon, blackberries, vanilla, black pepper, apples, bing cherry, Concord grape, maple syrup, butter, waffles, sugarcane, coconut.

Some of the foods are so familiar to me that I actually grow them in my yard and cook with them all the time: Tomato, onion, watermelon, pecan, figs, potato.

Here's a recipe I make that uses several of these foods. You can choose to leave out any of the ingredients you don't like.

My Mom's Homemade Granola

Oats     Coconut     Sesame seeds

Sunflower seeds     Pecans     Walnuts

Vanilla     Cherries (dried)     Cinnamon

Maple syrup     Almonds (sliced)     Honey

Oil     Cranberries     Raisins

Mix together oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pecans, walnuts, almonds in a huge pot. Add oil and honey and vanilla and maple syrup and cinnamon and stir well. Put onto rimmed cookie sheets and bake at 325 degrees F for about an hour, turning and stirring several times to get a nice brown bake. Put the baked mix into storage containers and add in cranberries and raisins and cherries. Granola can be frozen. 

My mom would collect and refill our granola storage container every year as her Christmas gift to us. Even though she passed away fifteen years ago, I can still see my mom's faded blue letters: Deb and Jim's Granola Jar. Every time I make granola, I think of my mom.

Be a part of the friendly In My Kitchen (IMK) community by adding your post at Sherry's Pickings each month - everybody welcome!  We'd love to have you visit.  Tell us about your kitchen (and kitchen garden) happenings over the past month.  Dishes you've cooked, preserves you've made, herbs and veg. in your garden, kitchen gadgets, and goings-on.  And one curveball is welcome - whatever you fancy; no need to be kitchen-related. The link is open from the first of the month to midnight on the thirteenth of the month, every month.

Weekend Cooking was created by Beth Fish Reads and is now hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader (and Baker). It is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. For more information, see the welcome post.  

For more photos, link up at Wordless Wednesday, Comedy Plus, Messymimi's Meanderings, Keith's Ramblings, Image-in-ing, Soul and Mind and So On, Wild Bird Wednesday, and My Corner of the World.

Goals for 2026

Talk less; listen more. I know I say this every year, but I'm practicing it this year. Really. I am.

Duolingo. A friend included me in her paid version of this app, and now I'm amping up my language practice. I'm focusing on Spanish and French. 

Sci fi and fantasy. I want to read more of science fiction and fantasy. Please share some titles I should read.

Barre. Power pump. Step. I'm trying some new classes at our rec center. I've loved everything I've tried so far.

Write each day. Ten minutes.

Blog at least once a week. My seventeenth year. Host a weekly gathering, welcome to all, The Sunday Salon. 

Nature. Learn more about it. Get out in it. Share it with others.

Reading/blogging challenges. I went a little overboard with these. 2026 Challenges: Nonfiction Reader Challenge. Back to the Classics Challenge. Nick's Chapter-a-Day Tolstoy Challenge. Speccy Fiction Challenge. Japanese Literature Challenge. Nature Reading Challenge. Creativity Reading Challenge. Happiness Reading Challenge. Immigration Reading Challenge. Contemplative Reading Project. A-Z Blogging Challenge. Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Mount TBR Reading Challenge. Library Love Challenge. Baking/Cooking Challenge. My Perpetual Challenges: 1001 Children's Books, Classics Club. 

I shall continue to work to promote happiness and kindness and education and truth and gratitude and the common good in the world. How exactly shall I do this? I don't know, but I hope to figure it out each day.

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.       

The Sunday Salon: Our Hibiscus Blooms!

I am happy you joined us at the Sunday Salon. Welcome!

What is the Sunday Salon? The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's a good opportunity to visit other blogs and join in conversations there. 

What I Read Last Week:

Congratulations, By the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness by George Saunders (Nonfiction)

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (Fiction; Japanese Literature Challenge; Novella)

What I'm Reading Now:

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (Fiction)

On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Children's)

The Adventures of Cipollino by Gianni Rodari (Picture Book)

What I Posted Last Week Here at Readerbuzz:

The Sunday Salon: My Dad Turns 99 (!)

Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2026

My Year in Books for 2026: Meme

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

Salman Rushdie at Inprint in Houston.

Good Thing #2:

Grandkids Annie, 10, and Wyatt, 6, play 

their first basketball games of the season.

Good Thing #3:

First time our hibiscus has bloomed.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below. 

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

Today's Featured Book: 

Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

Genre: Translated Fiction

Published: 1988

Page Count: 164 pages

Why Now? Japanese Literature Challenge

Summary: 

Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen is an enchantingly original and deeply affecting book that tells about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the life of a free-spirited young woman in contemporary Japan. Mikage is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikaga is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart. 

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen.

Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen, p. 1. Kindle Edition. 

Mikage's grandmother dies, and she is all alone in the world. Her friend Yoichi invites Mikage to come stay with him and his mother. Together the three of them cook and eat and talk and heal. And then death strikes again.

This novella is a story of grief and found families and the power of relationships and cooking to heal. Like many of the stories I've read that were originally written in Japanese, there is an element of surrealism in the tale, dreams that feel like reality, reality that feels like dreams, and a mysterious power that can be found in good food and people and nature.

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

It looked to me like the kitchen had not been used in quite a while. It was somewhat dirty and dark. I began to clean. I scrubbed the sink with scouring powder, wiped off the burners, washed the dishes, sharpened the knives. I washed and bleached all the dish towels, and while watching them go round and round in the dryer I realized that I had become calmer.

Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen, p. 56. Kindle Edition. 

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

Is there a book or series so precious to you that you wouldn’t want it adapted for screen, fearing it might be ruined? If it did happen, would you still find yourself watching it? (submitted by Mark @ Carstairs Considers)

I wish my favorite books would never be adapted for screen. Something is always lost.

My Year in Books for 2026: Meme

 

Anne at My Head is Full of Books was looking at old posts and she stumbled upon this one, an old meme, My Year in Books, from 2017. Thinking it was pretty fun and creative, she decided to do it again. She created a list last year and had a lot of fun with it. So I decided to join in, too. Why not?

My Year in Books

Rules?

• Answer the questions with titles from books you read in 2025. (Some may end up being silly, others may seem overly serious.)   
• The goal is to have fun. 
• Participate by copying the questions below. Erasing my answers and inserting you own.  
• Once you've created your post, link it below so others can see it, then visit others' posts to see how they answered the questions.
• Spread the word. Let's see if we can make this a thing again this year!

Questions:

In high school I was: On the Hippie Trail (Rick Steves)

People might be surprised: How to Be Perfect (Michael Schur)

I will never be: Dealing with Dragons (Patricia C. Wrede)

My fantasy job is: The Happy Writer (Marissa Meyer)

At the end of a long day I need: Room for Everyone (Naaz Khan)

I hate it: Paris in Ruins (Sebastian Smee)

Wish I had: 100 Unforgettable Dresses (Hal Rubenstein)

My family reunions are: Exquisite (Suzanne Blade)

At a party you’d find me: Under the Eye of Big Bird (Hirami Kawakami)

I’ve never been to: Howl's Moving Castle (Diane Wynne Jones)

A happy day includes: Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Motto I live by: The Common Good (Robert Reich)

On my bucket list is: Le Road Trip (Vivian Swift)

In my next life, I want to have: Rome and a Villa (Eleanor Clark)

Don't take your titles too seriously or judge the actual plot line of the book in your answers. Have fun with this.

Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2026

I've got my eye on these books...

Fiction:

Vigil by George Saunders (January 27, 2026)

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (May 5, 2026)

Whistler by Ann Patchett (June 2, 2026)

Life: A Love Story by Elizabeth Berg (March 17, 2026)

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (February 17, 2026)

Dear Debbie by Frida McFadden (January 27, 2026)

The Shippers by Katherine Center (May 19, 2026) 

Nonfiction:

Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken (December 2, 2025)

The People Can Fly: American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time by Joshua Bennett (February 3, 2026)

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (March 3, 2026)

The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams (March 3, 2026)

Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry by Ada Limón (April 7, 2026)

The Future is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon (April 14, 2026)

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.