My husband and I were visiting my sister at her home in New York last winter. While I had known for some time that she had turned into an incredible bread baker, my husband was experiencing the fruit of her labors for the first time. While he was was blissfully savoring his fourth or fifth piece of just-out-of-the-oven sourdough, my husband absently asked, “Why don’t you bake like your sister?”

I have to admit, I contemplated throwing the remainder of the loaf at his head while yelling, “Why don’t YOU bake like my sister?!” I resisted, but explained snarkily that working full time, volunteering several hours a week, and keeping house for His Royal Highness did not leave endless hours to devote to mixing, kneading, and rising.

When I mentioned this to my sister, she told me that baking bread was “easy” and “took no time at all.” I later learned that she was at least exaggerating, if not outright lying on both counts, but for the moment, I began thinking that I could give this home baker thing a shot and said as much.

Upon arriving home from our stay with my sister, I mostly forgot about the bread and our conversation until a big box arrived from Amazon. I opened it to find a banneton (yes, I had to look up what that was for), a book, assorted bread baking tools, and a note that read, “So you can bake like me. Or at least try. Love, Jessi.”

This got my competitive juices flowing, and I dove into the book with enthusiasm. “The Bread Bible” by Rose Levy Beranbaum is all anyone could ever want from a cookbook and more. It turns out, there are as many ways to make bread as there are stars in the sky, and this book seeks to familiarize readers with many of them. Within the first few pages, I learned that my kitchen was woefully lacking ingredients and equipment. Once this was rectified by a good trip to the grocery store and another to Sur La table, I got to work.

I found that kneading, even with my trusty Kitchenaid mixer, was a little too daunting. So I went searching for recipes with no kneading involved. Jim Lehey’s “My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No- Knead Method” cookbook provided the perfect solution. According to this acclaimed baker, you mix flour, a small amount of yeast, salt, and water in a bowl and just leave it for 18 hours. Come back almost a  day later, toss the thing in a really hot cast iron pot and bake- voila, bread!  

I was skeptical at first. My loaf may have missed its mark as I was tipping it into the hot dutch oven that served as its cooking vessel. Despite having been coerced into place with several wooden spoons after having landed on a hot oven rack (pro-tip: take your cast iron pot all the way out of the oven before trying to tip your unbaked loaf into it), it actually looked ok, if a bit…rustic.

I cut through that crunchy crust and into the chewy crumb, slathered it with butter, and my husband and I took our first bites. As he said was, “This is the best bread I have ever eaten.” That’s all it took to send me into a baking frenzy.

I swiftly conquered my fear of kneading (although I still go back to Jim Lahey’s Basic No-Knead white bread and No Knead Italian Strecca recipes regularly) and moved on to making challah, Parker House rolls, bagels, ciabatta, pretzels, pizza dough, popovers, and almost every kind of artisan loaf you can think of. My counters are lined with flour containers and my cookbook shelf is at capacity.  

Last spring, I scoured the Friends of the Library book sale for any bread baking book I could get my hands on. It turns out, the 1960’s edition of the “New York Times Cookbook” has a host of great recipes- just don’t expect details. For example, the Cuban bread that I forced my coworkers to test last week, instructed me to bake in a “hot” oven until “done”. Even without a specified baking time or temperature, it turned out fine and I got a serious confidence boost knowing that my knowledge of bread baking allowed me to correctly interpret these vague instructions.

That said, I have still not ventured into the strange and perilous land of sourdough and not everything I have made has been a hit. Come to find out, peanut butter bagels are only amazing if you have four legs, a wagging tail, and a wet nose. Also, the time I excitedly told my husband, “I will make the bread of your people!”, referring to his Swedish ancestry, I probably should have noted that Swedish Limpa bread contains anise and fennel. We both hate anise and fennel, and as such, we hate Swedish Limpa bread.

For the most part, we have not bought bread at a store in months (although I simply refuse to make hot dog rolls from scratch) and I love trying out new recipes from books old and new. Most of all, I love sharing recipes with my sister. While she is still the CEO of Sourdough, I am fairly certain that I can now bake like not only my sister, but like Rose Levvy Beranbaum, Jim Lahey, Mark Bittman, and any number of great bakers, at least in a small way.

Allison Palmgren is the Technology Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Alli’s column in the August 18, 2016 issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

Growing up, my family was not a puzzling one; to clarify, we did not do jigsaw puzzles. Of course, we had small puzzle toys for our family of four children when we were young but I don’t remember doing jigsaw puzzles with my family or friends as a young child or teen.

I think I must have first fallen in love with jigsaws when my children were babies – when I had very short or very long stretches of time on my hands between their naps or after their bedtimes. We lived in Ireland at the time and the toy shops in Cork and Dublin were filled with wonderful European puzzles of rich scenes and thousands of pieces and they captivated me.

My puzzling bug hit hard over the next few decades and for the past thirty-five years, with few interruptions, there has usually been a jigsaw puzzle set up in my home. I’ve always received jigsaw puzzles as gifts from my families and friends who are aware of my hobby. Everyone who visits can rely on spending time with me chatting over a puzzle because Gerry and I always have a puzzle in the works on our family room coffee table. It sits on a spinning puzzle board with a removable acrylic cover that protects it from a grandchild’s tiny hands, spills from drinking glasses, and crumbs of cheese and crackers. We have an entire closet shelf devoted to jigsaw puzzles that we think we might do again or ones that lie in wait to be unwrapped and the box’s contents spilled. Or sometimes, we simply save the horribly challenging ones to share with friends whose lives we want to make difficult.

The history of the jigsaw puzzle is a relatively recent one; it’s only three hundred years old. In Anne Williams book, The Jigsaw Puzzle – Piecing Together a History (2004), she writes that jigsaw puzzles were first created in the mid-1700s as an educational tool for children. Ms. Williams is an economics professor at Bates College in Maine but is also a puzzle collector and puzzle historian.

Berkshire Puzzles, a company in Northampton, Massachusetts (they create handcrafted wooden puzzles) also attributes the first puzzles to cartographer John Spilsbury. Spilsbury created these learning tools by cutting up a wooden map of Great Britain with a jigsaw so that children could learn their geography. (Today, Spilsbury is also an online company that uses the cartographer’s name to offer puzzles of every type for sale.)

In the early 1900s, the jigsaw puzzle craze found its way from Europe and across the Atlantic to Salem, Massachusetts. That is where Parker Brothers began creating puzzles for the wealthy adult population who loved working puzzles, most often pictures of landscape and famous art. Game maker Milton Bradley soon joined the fun and during the Great Depression puzzles took off when they were first manufactured and mass-produced using die cuts and cardboard instead of the traditional wood and jigsaw machinery. They had become affordable to the common family.

The Consolidated Paper Company in Somerville, Massachusetts produced weekly Perfect Picture Puzzles for middle and lower class families. In Master Pieces: The Art History of Jigsaw Puzzles by Chris McCann (1999), the author refers to the Great Depression puzzling craze in the 1930s as the Great Puzzle Panic. Jigsaw puzzles, pieced by a multitude of American families, created the perfect, cheap family entertainment during a difficult time. And, back in the box, the puzzle could be taken out again and again. A radio and a puzzle made up the family together time.

Puzzles are now created by so many companies you can search for hours on the internet for both the companies that sell them and companies that make them. My favorite puzzlemaker is Eric Dowdle Folkart Puzzles and one reason is that the company will send you a new puzzle if you are missing a piece. All Dowdle puzzles are wonderfully artistic and depict scenes from across the USA and the world. The majority of Dowdle puzzles are 500 and 1000 pieces and are moderately difficult to complete. Other great puzzle companies are Ravensburger and Heye in Germany and White Mountain Puzzles and Master Pieces in the United States. The Puzzle Warehouse online store carries puzzles made by 80 manufacturers.

1000-piece puzzles are a perfect size to work on at the dining room table, a folding card table, or some larger coffee tables. The Puzzle Warehouse boasts that Ravensburger currently has the record of making the largest puzzle – at 32,256 pieces it measures 17 by 6 feet when completed. Their 32,000-piece puzzle of New York City will set you back about $300 or about a penny each piece.

Wooden puzzles are still crafted by companies like Berkshire Puzzle in New Hampshire and others. You can have your own puzzle made by companies who will take your high resolution photographs and make them into puzzles of various sizes. Jigsaws are made two-sided or three-dimensional. A traditionalist, I still like my puzzles flat, one-sided, and with no particular mystery to its construction.

So, what does this have to do with your library here in Norwood?

This past winter, we added a wonderful spinning puzzle board that sits in a corner on the second floor. Not only do we have dozens of puzzles to lend (once we find out all the pieces are intact), but we have an ongoing puzzle for patrons to complete. We have received donations of puzzles and purchased some for the library. We’ve even had a puzzle-share with the Morse Institute (the public library in neighboring Natick.)

Do people really come to the library to work on jigsaw puzzles? You bet they do. Sometimes visitors to the puzzle table complete a 1000-piece puzzle in a single day. Puzzlers come for different reasons – to get out of the house, to meet friends after work, to spend a few moments in quiet solitude, or to exercise their brains. It is becoming commonly believed that jigsaw puzzle-making may help to offset the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia. They also come for different seasons – to enjoy the cozy warmth or the cool air conditioning on the library’s second floor.

Stop by the library and work on our current ongoing puzzle or browse our collection of jigsaw puzzles to check out. It’s always something new at the library!

Charlotte Canelli is the library director of the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Charlotte’s column in the June 30, 2016 issue of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.

“Laissez les bon temps rouler!”

Or, if your Cajun is a little rusty, “let the good times roll!” This phrase captures the joie de vivre, or joy of living, carefree attitude characterizing the culture of New Orleans. Known as Nollins or Nawlins, NOLA, The Crescent City, The Big Easy, The City that Care Forgot, and Mardi Gras City, New Orleans is truly unique.

I had the great pleasure of visiting NOLA this past spring. Whether your interest lies with cuisine, music, history, folklore, nature, art and architecture, or vice, there is something for everyone in New Orleans. The number of attractions and pastimes is almost overwhelming; I spent a week in New Orleans and only saw a fraction of what the city has to offer. Luckily, NOLA is such a popular tourist destination that there are lots of guidebooks and websites to help you plan your trip.

Firstly, I advise that you prepare yourself for a culture shock. The culture of NOLA is a very far cry from our New England Puritan roots. Massachusetts was settled by English colonists, while Louisiana was largely settled by the French and Spanish. New Orleans has historically had its own unique Creole dialect, and even as recent as 50 years ago, there were lifelong residents who exclusively spoke French. In addition, New Orleans is influenced by Southern hospitality culture and the slower pace of life necessitated by a hot climate.

The daily rhythm of the city was a shock to this New Englander: the middle of the day is so hot that few people venture outside until the sun starts to set, and then the city comes alive. NOLA is known for its vibrant nightlife, and as a result, many businesses are open late and do not even open until 10:00 am or later. Mind you, I was visiting in May, and while the weather was sunny, in the 80s, and quite humid, I was assured by every native local I met that New Orleans was actually cool and pleasant compared to the temperatures and humidity levels of August and September. As a Northerner, I advise visiting in early- or mid-spring.

As I said, there are many resources available for tourists, but I’ll discuss the guidebooks I found most helpful. I’m not the sort of traveler who likes to account for every minute of time in a rigid itinerary, but rather I identify some things I’d like to see and do at some point, and let the journey take me from there; I didn’t start looking at guidebooks until a week before departure, and didn’t plan in earnest until I was at the airport. Even so, I had a full and rewarding trip.

I recommend “New Orleans: a Lonely Planet City Guide” as a general guide. It offers detailed maps of sections of the city with points of interest, and is a good way to help get your bearings and learn about the city in broad strokes. I used it daily to plot my route. “Discovering Vintage New Orleans” by Bonnye E. Stuart was hands down the book I found most valuable for finding unique attractions, including the Beauregard-Keyes House and the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum in the French Quarter, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum and Museum of the American Cocktail in Central City, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 and Commander’s Palace restaurant in the Garden District, and the Camellia Grill in Audubon.

Another great resource for finding out-of-the way attractions is “New Orleans: The Underground Guide” by Michael Patrick Welch with Brian Boyles. While this book does cover sites in the more touristy areas of the city, it is perfect for the traveler who wants to get out into other neighborhoods and live like a local.

If you know you want to focus your visit around music or food, pick up copies of “Hear Dat New Orleans” and “Eat Dat New Orleans.” Two words for music fans to remember: Frenchman Street. I heard five different genres of music in a single evening, and only paid a cover charge to see Kermit Ruffins, a jazz musician being hailed as the new Louis Armstrong. Speaking of jazz, I didn’t actually like jazz before my trip. New Orleans taught me there are many varieties of jazz, and the music is alive and growing. If you’re not a jazz fan, give it a try in New Orleans: you just might be surprised.

No matter what you decide to do in NOLA, there are a few practicalities to keep in mind. NOLA hosts many festivals year round, and can be fantastic free, authentic New Orleans entertainment. Be aware that there are a high number of muggings in NOLA, so plan accordingly. Don’t pay for anything in NOLA without looking for coupons online first – there are TONS.

Also, you can’t visit NOLA without being conscious of Hurricane Katrina. The city was forever changed by that disaster, and tensions still run high around Katrina and the aftermath. Many buildings were never rebuilt or repaired, and outside of the French Quarter, vacant buildings (including vacant skyscrapers and malls) are a common sight.

There’s no way I can capture in a single article the vibrant spirit and unique mixing of cultures of New Orleans and its people. Regardless of which name you call it, the city is a truly special, indomitable place.

Liz Reed is an Adult and Information Services Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood, Massachusetts. Read Liz’s column in the August 4, 2016 edition of the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin.