You would not think a reader such as I could get out of the habit. You would not think anything could come between me and that feeling of turning the next page, eager to see what might happen to the nearly-blind boy who cocks his head at the shadows standing before him. You'd think I would love an author who planted me right there in that West Virginia town where I could feel the charge in the air of the oncoming storm, where I could taste the slice of birthday cake, where I could sit in on the arguments during a slow afternoon at the town diner.
But I don't know. A lot got in the way.
Busy life, maybe? Don't tell me I'm not all that busy compared to you. I already know it. Still, life has me by the tail. Every time I turn around, the laundry/dishes/groceries that just got done have to be done again. And people must be listened to and not ignored in favor of finding out what happened in some fictional West Virginia town.
Too much excitement killed the reading, maybe? Who needs book romance when we've got the real thing going on right under our noses, and the party in question appears on Facebook, where I can check out his mission pictures, his last birthday cake, his goofball friends. Don't make me admit how much time I spend at this--oh my!
And speaking of drama, what can I care about some half-blind boy when very real drama escalates all around me? We're talking election time, people. I like my guy, but does anybody else like him? Do enough anybody elses like him? Instead of opening some library book, I'm staring at my favorite news magazines and political blogs.
And speaking of blogs, I'm addicted to them. If the choice is between the nearly-blind boy and what Mormons think of the new missionary ages, I'm over at the place where Mormon moms and dads are saying, "Wow, this changes everything."
Yep, blogs are a big culprit. They are like intravenous feeding, a constant supply of new and interesting information. Except when there are no new posts. And then it's like "Whaa? Where's my instant gratification???" When I get in this state, it's hard to remember that I already have something to read. It's called a book, remember?
So I just kept putting off the nearly-blind boy until the library wanted the book back. Not to worry though, his story was available through electronic checkout. There it was, on my phone, easy reading to take along while the pharmacy counted my pills, not to mention how handy it was when the husband wanted the bedroom lights off for the night. But somehow, electronic reading never felt as urgent as a real book that had to be driven back to the return slot.
But what finally killed it off was a long and detailed cow patty that just wouldn't let up. It circled round and round poetically, as if we couldn't get the point that the neighbor kid has been hankering for the nearly-blind boy's sister all these years. Really, just send them behind the garage, leaving out all the anatomical details thank you, and we'll get the picture, yes we will.
I think what we had on our hands here was simply a dull book. Yep, that'll kill off a reading habit.
Since discarding this lemon, I've read two more books in less than a week. One was only a middling challenge to work through and the other, I couldn't leave alone. It kept me up late last night, leaving me an addled, unproductive mess today. Oh, but it was worth it.
Now, being addled and unproductive, the only thing I could manage to cook today was Hot Spiced Cider. I had bigger ambitions, but too bad for them.
I never found orange extract or whole allspice, but it hardly mattered because a certain young fellow at my house tonight loved this stuff, and it's been hard to get him to eat anything but candy or chips for months now.
We'll talk about those two books next time. But gotta get to bed now, so tomorrow is not such a loser day like today was.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
On Going Places
Let's talk going places.
I think I got into the habit early. My dad left home twice a day to deliver his eggs and if I could talk him in to taking me along, it was a glorious reprieve from chores and boredom.
When I got married, my husband would suit up for a trip to the hardware store and Wal-Mart. I was always ready to ride along. (My fascination with the hardware store died pretty early, though I'm still up for a Wal-Mart run or two).
On today's Finished Book Pile we have stories of people going places. Mack in Ron Carlson's Signal heads out on a camping trip in the Wyoming mountains.
Upon his father's death, Mack inherited his family's Wyoming ranch. Before long, the ranch was in trouble. It threatens to slip right out of his hands unless he can come up with a few thousand dollars. Mack turns to shady dealings hoping to raise the money that will fix his troubles.
In fact, there's more to this camping trip than admiring nature. Mack is up to something suspicious out there in the wilderness. He brings his ex-wife along; I don't know why, unless it's to provide a damsel-in-distress element. But they hike deep into the range lands, turn a corner and -- uh-oh! -- run into the downside of shady dealings.
Next up, we have The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, a story that unfolds over a road trip from Manitoba (?) to Twenty-Nine Palms, California.
The blurb on the jacket promised a story of almost unbearable quirkiness, but I liked the characters right away. The narrator is a slacker girl returning from Paris to care for her sister's children. The waiflike sister has been in and out of mental hospitals her entire life.
So Miss Slacker, the niece and the nephew set out on a road trip to find the childrens' father.
By the time my bookmark moved to the meaty middle of the book, some of that quirkiness wore on my nerves. The purple-haired niece is almost a cartoon, witty beyond what any 11-year-old could sustain, never mind her strange upbringing. And the slacker girl--bless her heart for all the times she's come to her sister's aid--is too slackardly to finish many of her sentences. The author tries to paint a portrait of two children in pain, but for many, many miles of their road trip, the quirks clutter the picture.
In the end, however, I was glad I stuck with it.
Plenty of language cow patties.
Last up, we have a story that goes nowhere. Bloodroot by Amy Greene is set in Appalachia. Normally, I'm all over books about Appalachia. It's one of my favorite road-trip destinations and, if I can't get there in person, a juicy book about mountain people will hold me over.
The story never gets off the ground until about a hundred pages in and even then, every character, every scene feels contrived. That the book garnered gushing reviews leaves me baffled. I gave up on it just this afternoon, and petted my new kitten instead.
As for your recipe, you can try STIR-FRY CHICKEN FAJITAS:
5 TB vegetable oil
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/8 tsp. cayenne
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
1 large red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 large yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 large green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 tsp. pepper
1. In a glass dish, mix together 2 TB oil, the lime juice, cumin and cayenne. Add chicken and toss to coat completely with marinade. Marinate chicken in refrigerator 1 to 2 hours for extra flavor, it time allows.
2. In a wok or skillet, heat 1 TB oil until very hot. Add chicken with marinade and stir-fry over high heat until chicken is white throughout, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove to a plate.
3. Add remaining 2 TB oil to wok and heat until very hot. Add peppers, onion, and garlic; stir-fry until crisp-tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Return chicken to wok and season with pepper. Toss until heated through, about 1 minute. Serves 6 @ 235 cals/serving, not counting the tortillas, cheese, sour cream, and other stuff you'll probably add to this.
From 365 Easy One-Dish Meals by Natalie Haughton.
This dish qualifies as going-places food because I prepared it for the crowd at a family reunion a decade or so ago. And family reunions are most certainly a road trip for our household. In fact, they are too much road trip. We have ditched the car for the plane. I weep for those book characters above who trudged their way from Manitoba to California, in a sick and coughing van to boot, covering scenery that makes me grateful for jet planes, despite what a hassle flying has turned out to be.
And now I leave you. I'm off to check tomorrow's weather. May it not ruin the little Cincinnati road trip I've got all planned out, complete with pizza and ice cream, Pandora on the car stereo and walks in hilly neighborhoods.
I think I got into the habit early. My dad left home twice a day to deliver his eggs and if I could talk him in to taking me along, it was a glorious reprieve from chores and boredom.
When I got married, my husband would suit up for a trip to the hardware store and Wal-Mart. I was always ready to ride along. (My fascination with the hardware store died pretty early, though I'm still up for a Wal-Mart run or two).
On today's Finished Book Pile we have stories of people going places. Mack in Ron Carlson's Signal heads out on a camping trip in the Wyoming mountains.
Upon his father's death, Mack inherited his family's Wyoming ranch. Before long, the ranch was in trouble. It threatens to slip right out of his hands unless he can come up with a few thousand dollars. Mack turns to shady dealings hoping to raise the money that will fix his troubles.
In fact, there's more to this camping trip than admiring nature. Mack is up to something suspicious out there in the wilderness. He brings his ex-wife along; I don't know why, unless it's to provide a damsel-in-distress element. But they hike deep into the range lands, turn a corner and -- uh-oh! -- run into the downside of shady dealings.
Next up, we have The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews, a story that unfolds over a road trip from Manitoba (?) to Twenty-Nine Palms, California.
The blurb on the jacket promised a story of almost unbearable quirkiness, but I liked the characters right away. The narrator is a slacker girl returning from Paris to care for her sister's children. The waiflike sister has been in and out of mental hospitals her entire life.
So Miss Slacker, the niece and the nephew set out on a road trip to find the childrens' father.
By the time my bookmark moved to the meaty middle of the book, some of that quirkiness wore on my nerves. The purple-haired niece is almost a cartoon, witty beyond what any 11-year-old could sustain, never mind her strange upbringing. And the slacker girl--bless her heart for all the times she's come to her sister's aid--is too slackardly to finish many of her sentences. The author tries to paint a portrait of two children in pain, but for many, many miles of their road trip, the quirks clutter the picture.
In the end, however, I was glad I stuck with it.
Plenty of language cow patties.
Last up, we have a story that goes nowhere. Bloodroot by Amy Greene is set in Appalachia. Normally, I'm all over books about Appalachia. It's one of my favorite road-trip destinations and, if I can't get there in person, a juicy book about mountain people will hold me over.
The story never gets off the ground until about a hundred pages in and even then, every character, every scene feels contrived. That the book garnered gushing reviews leaves me baffled. I gave up on it just this afternoon, and petted my new kitten instead.
As for your recipe, you can try STIR-FRY CHICKEN FAJITAS:
5 TB vegetable oil
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/8 tsp. cayenne
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
1 large red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 large yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1 large green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 onion, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 tsp. pepper
1. In a glass dish, mix together 2 TB oil, the lime juice, cumin and cayenne. Add chicken and toss to coat completely with marinade. Marinate chicken in refrigerator 1 to 2 hours for extra flavor, it time allows.
2. In a wok or skillet, heat 1 TB oil until very hot. Add chicken with marinade and stir-fry over high heat until chicken is white throughout, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove to a plate.
3. Add remaining 2 TB oil to wok and heat until very hot. Add peppers, onion, and garlic; stir-fry until crisp-tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Return chicken to wok and season with pepper. Toss until heated through, about 1 minute. Serves 6 @ 235 cals/serving, not counting the tortillas, cheese, sour cream, and other stuff you'll probably add to this.
From 365 Easy One-Dish Meals by Natalie Haughton.
This dish qualifies as going-places food because I prepared it for the crowd at a family reunion a decade or so ago. And family reunions are most certainly a road trip for our household. In fact, they are too much road trip. We have ditched the car for the plane. I weep for those book characters above who trudged their way from Manitoba to California, in a sick and coughing van to boot, covering scenery that makes me grateful for jet planes, despite what a hassle flying has turned out to be.
And now I leave you. I'm off to check tomorrow's weather. May it not ruin the little Cincinnati road trip I've got all planned out, complete with pizza and ice cream, Pandora on the car stereo and walks in hilly neighborhoods.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Une Boulette de Vache en Français est Encore Une Galette de Vache.
I don't know about you and your smart phone, but I've gotten awfully app-happy with mine. This week, my new on-phone toy was Google Translate.
I was forced into it, you might say, while reading Tim Gautreaux's The Missing. His main character is Louisiana Cajun, apt to break in to his French at any moment. I finally got tired of missing out on these little story bits and hunted around for the translator.
Over there at Google they have made mighty big strides at undoing Babel's babble. And thanks to a few oft-repeated lines in Gautreaux's book, I can now say a couple French phrases without any of their help at all.
Unfortunately, these phrases are not fit for polite company.
Anyway, Missing is a book with a lot of side trips. You'll get some battlefields right after World War I. You'll get some Mississippi River boat and the wild, boat-bashing dance parties thereon. You'll get some darkly degenerate backwoods folks. You'll get a little girl stolen from her parents. We wind up to the big moment when the missing-girl storyline resolves itself, and then the book goes on for another seventy pages or so, which is as deflating as wolfing down your cupcake in the middle of dinner, then turning back to the green beans.
Maybe Gautreaux isn't the master of plotting, but if you don't mind the side trips, many with delightful dialogue, you'll have yourself a middling good time.
Not to mention equipping yourself with some fine French insults. Cow patties indeed!
Next up on the Finished Book Pile, we have The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow. At first, it's vague, with wispy hints of the event that ignites the story. If the reader can battle through all this vagueness, not to mention the many, many characters Durrow throws in before the reader knows what to do with them--if you can hold on, the story eventually tightens up, and you will get your bearings. I loved the peek into the tangled life of a bi-racial girl. As for the final third, some of those vague threads from the beginning tied up together and made me catch my breath just a little. Just a little.
Lotta cow patties in this one, too. But I thought the bi-racial stuff was quite illuminating.
As for your recipe, how about a little Vegetable Chicken Medley?
For such an near-instant dish, it turns out to be not terribly instant at all. You need to plan ahead and have cooked chicken on hand (we ate grilled chicken a couple days before, throwing a couple extra pieces on the fire). And you can't hurry brown rice. So you might as well set it in its pot, park yourself near the kitchen and pick up a good book. Tell anybody who hassles you that you are tending to something important and can't get away right now.
Say it nicely. No French insults, OK?
I was forced into it, you might say, while reading Tim Gautreaux's The Missing. His main character is Louisiana Cajun, apt to break in to his French at any moment. I finally got tired of missing out on these little story bits and hunted around for the translator.
Over there at Google they have made mighty big strides at undoing Babel's babble. And thanks to a few oft-repeated lines in Gautreaux's book, I can now say a couple French phrases without any of their help at all.
Unfortunately, these phrases are not fit for polite company.
Anyway, Missing is a book with a lot of side trips. You'll get some battlefields right after World War I. You'll get some Mississippi River boat and the wild, boat-bashing dance parties thereon. You'll get some darkly degenerate backwoods folks. You'll get a little girl stolen from her parents. We wind up to the big moment when the missing-girl storyline resolves itself, and then the book goes on for another seventy pages or so, which is as deflating as wolfing down your cupcake in the middle of dinner, then turning back to the green beans.
Maybe Gautreaux isn't the master of plotting, but if you don't mind the side trips, many with delightful dialogue, you'll have yourself a middling good time.
Not to mention equipping yourself with some fine French insults. Cow patties indeed!
Next up on the Finished Book Pile, we have The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow. At first, it's vague, with wispy hints of the event that ignites the story. If the reader can battle through all this vagueness, not to mention the many, many characters Durrow throws in before the reader knows what to do with them--if you can hold on, the story eventually tightens up, and you will get your bearings. I loved the peek into the tangled life of a bi-racial girl. As for the final third, some of those vague threads from the beginning tied up together and made me catch my breath just a little. Just a little.
Lotta cow patties in this one, too. But I thought the bi-racial stuff was quite illuminating.
As for your recipe, how about a little Vegetable Chicken Medley?
For such an near-instant dish, it turns out to be not terribly instant at all. You need to plan ahead and have cooked chicken on hand (we ate grilled chicken a couple days before, throwing a couple extra pieces on the fire). And you can't hurry brown rice. So you might as well set it in its pot, park yourself near the kitchen and pick up a good book. Tell anybody who hassles you that you are tending to something important and can't get away right now.
Say it nicely. No French insults, OK?
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Posing as a Locavore
Do I get credit for buying local when I bring home a bag of sweet corn foisted on me by a neighbor?
All I was trying to do was take a walk, but I rounded the last corner and there the young man stood, blinking at a truck bed full of ripened ears. "My parents grow this not far from here and I said I could take a dozen or so. But Mom brought me all this."
I took pity on him. "I could take a half dozen."
He gave me a huge bag, proving that over-giving in hard-wired in that clan.
I'm just gonna take locavore credit for it anyway, so I can join in the vibe of Doug Fine's Farewell, My Subaru It's a quick read, a classic fish-out-of-water account of a Long Island-born boy who decides to live off the land.
He buys a ranch in New Mexico and, from the sound of things, I'll bet the sellers snickered quietly when they walked away with Fine's money.
He busies himself buying a pair of goats, installing solar panels and hunting down used fry oil for his retrofitted truck. He starts raising chickens--amazingly easy (until he learns about coyotes).
There are floods, but no famine. There are girlfriends. There is surely a mighty big checkbook somewhere to pay for all this set-up.
Fine's goal was to enjoy all the perks of his cell-phone-carrying, movie-watching, ice-cream-eating life without hurting Mother Earth. I had fun, even if he didn't really convert me.
Next up, Screen Plays by David Cohen is a collection of his Script Magazine interviews with with screen writers. It's a fascinating look into the writing process. When adapting a novel, what do you leave in? What do you take out? Do you add characters that never appeared in the book? How do you take pages of talky narrative and turn it into scenes?
Cohen's book covers twenty-five movies, only one of which I might have seen. Some of them were hits. Others simply baffled audiences. Some of the screenwriters, I might add, were baffling. To read about a man defending the humanity and relevance of his NC-17-rated screenplay is to witness an expert round of self-justification.
However, once you have hawked up that part and gotten it out of your system, perhaps you will be hungry for:
Blue-Ribbon Beef Nachos
Sadly, I do not have the ingredients to make this tonight. Nor does this qualify as locavore eating, but I already admitted I was a poser, didn't I?
All I was trying to do was take a walk, but I rounded the last corner and there the young man stood, blinking at a truck bed full of ripened ears. "My parents grow this not far from here and I said I could take a dozen or so. But Mom brought me all this."
I took pity on him. "I could take a half dozen."
He gave me a huge bag, proving that over-giving in hard-wired in that clan.
I'm just gonna take locavore credit for it anyway, so I can join in the vibe of Doug Fine's Farewell, My Subaru It's a quick read, a classic fish-out-of-water account of a Long Island-born boy who decides to live off the land.
He buys a ranch in New Mexico and, from the sound of things, I'll bet the sellers snickered quietly when they walked away with Fine's money.
He busies himself buying a pair of goats, installing solar panels and hunting down used fry oil for his retrofitted truck. He starts raising chickens--amazingly easy (until he learns about coyotes).
There are floods, but no famine. There are girlfriends. There is surely a mighty big checkbook somewhere to pay for all this set-up.
Fine's goal was to enjoy all the perks of his cell-phone-carrying, movie-watching, ice-cream-eating life without hurting Mother Earth. I had fun, even if he didn't really convert me.
Next up, Screen Plays by David Cohen is a collection of his Script Magazine interviews with with screen writers. It's a fascinating look into the writing process. When adapting a novel, what do you leave in? What do you take out? Do you add characters that never appeared in the book? How do you take pages of talky narrative and turn it into scenes?
Cohen's book covers twenty-five movies, only one of which I might have seen. Some of them were hits. Others simply baffled audiences. Some of the screenwriters, I might add, were baffling. To read about a man defending the humanity and relevance of his NC-17-rated screenplay is to witness an expert round of self-justification.
However, once you have hawked up that part and gotten it out of your system, perhaps you will be hungry for:
Blue-Ribbon Beef Nachos
Sadly, I do not have the ingredients to make this tonight. Nor does this qualify as locavore eating, but I already admitted I was a poser, didn't I?
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Wait for the Movie
You are a graffiti artist. The city is on to your tricks and sends crews out to clean up your artwork, almost by the next morning. Nearly all the walls in your city neighborhood have now been declared, by city ordinance, off-limits.
You wake up one morning, go out on the street and see a stunning new work of graffiti on one of the forbidden walls. Upon closer examination, you discover that it is an advertisement for Tylenol. Who did this and why did they get away with it? And does Tylenol think they can fool you this way?
Anne Elizabeth Moore's Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity is all about how marketing execs find new ways to sneak their messages into your world. Or, more specifically, into Moore's world. She belongs to the original punk movement. Over there in punk-world, they have vowed to live with integrity, free from the influence of corporations. Oh, but those clever people at Nike, Tylenol and Toyota--they have their ways!
This is a book that would make a riveting documentary. Or a week of documentaries, given all the material Moore covers in here. But it's a tough read, especially since, unlike the author, my integrity isn't all that offended.
May I, instead, recommend to you the park bench where I read one of Moore's chapters? It was in Cincinnati. It overlooked a deep bend in the Ohio River. Teenagers, day tourists and limping grandmothers came and went while I fought my way through Moore's indignant prose.
One man parked himself two benches away and studied, with his binoculars, everything from the sailboat masts upriver to the toy houses on the Kentucky side. Then four giggling girls approached him. Would he please be in a quick little video with them? They all lined up and did a choo-choo train dance while a mom recorded it. Then he returned to his seat, smiling, and said, "I haven't moved like that in years."
So, nice park. Just take a better book.
And it wouldn't hurt to bring along a couple of these:
Double Chip Cookies
You wake up one morning, go out on the street and see a stunning new work of graffiti on one of the forbidden walls. Upon closer examination, you discover that it is an advertisement for Tylenol. Who did this and why did they get away with it? And does Tylenol think they can fool you this way?
Anne Elizabeth Moore's Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity is all about how marketing execs find new ways to sneak their messages into your world. Or, more specifically, into Moore's world. She belongs to the original punk movement. Over there in punk-world, they have vowed to live with integrity, free from the influence of corporations. Oh, but those clever people at Nike, Tylenol and Toyota--they have their ways!
This is a book that would make a riveting documentary. Or a week of documentaries, given all the material Moore covers in here. But it's a tough read, especially since, unlike the author, my integrity isn't all that offended.
May I, instead, recommend to you the park bench where I read one of Moore's chapters? It was in Cincinnati. It overlooked a deep bend in the Ohio River. Teenagers, day tourists and limping grandmothers came and went while I fought my way through Moore's indignant prose.
One man parked himself two benches away and studied, with his binoculars, everything from the sailboat masts upriver to the toy houses on the Kentucky side. Then four giggling girls approached him. Would he please be in a quick little video with them? They all lined up and did a choo-choo train dance while a mom recorded it. Then he returned to his seat, smiling, and said, "I haven't moved like that in years."
So, nice park. Just take a better book.
And it wouldn't hurt to bring along a couple of these:
Double Chip Cookies
Friday, July 13, 2012
Playing with Matches
The grass is a sickly yellow. The shrunken edges of our pond reveal grassy banks that usually remain well hidden. The weeds have taken over every lawn along my walking routes.
Given this droughty state of things, we have been warned not to play with matches around here, or fireworks, or any other sparky things.
I'm on board with this, having recently seen pictures of Colorado cars fleeing in front of a wall of orange flame.
I'm especially on board after reading John Pipkin's Woodsburner, a fictionalized treatment of a real event.
It concerns Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame. A year before he went into the woods to commune with the flora and fauna, he set them afire one dry and windy April day. He merely wanted to cook a chowder. But the flames outmaneuvered him in short order and rushed towards the town of Concord, Massachusetts.
Pipkin brings Thoreau and three or four other characters to life. There is a preacher addled by opium (his chapters were slow-going for me), a bookseller who hopes to expand his empire and a Scandinavian farm hand. Cow patties aplenty.
As for your recipe, we went all out for fruit salads recently, snapping up blueberries and strawberries and eating them this way and that. You can start with the more healthful version:
Poppy Seed Fruit Salad
Next, you can try something a little more sugared up. Since it features marshmallows, it is, in my mind, a very Mormon salad:
Marshmallow Fruit Salad
Given this droughty state of things, we have been warned not to play with matches around here, or fireworks, or any other sparky things.
I'm on board with this, having recently seen pictures of Colorado cars fleeing in front of a wall of orange flame.
I'm especially on board after reading John Pipkin's Woodsburner, a fictionalized treatment of a real event.
It concerns Henry David Thoreau, of Walden Pond fame. A year before he went into the woods to commune with the flora and fauna, he set them afire one dry and windy April day. He merely wanted to cook a chowder. But the flames outmaneuvered him in short order and rushed towards the town of Concord, Massachusetts.
Pipkin brings Thoreau and three or four other characters to life. There is a preacher addled by opium (his chapters were slow-going for me), a bookseller who hopes to expand his empire and a Scandinavian farm hand. Cow patties aplenty.
As for your recipe, we went all out for fruit salads recently, snapping up blueberries and strawberries and eating them this way and that. You can start with the more healthful version:
Poppy Seed Fruit Salad
Next, you can try something a little more sugared up. Since it features marshmallows, it is, in my mind, a very Mormon salad:
Marshmallow Fruit Salad
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Great Undertakings
Sometimes, if you think you're not due to die soon, and you can summon the energy and concentration, you embark upon a Great Undertaking.
Great Undertakings are projects that you can't conquer in a day. Or a week. It could be raising a child from diapers to driver's license. It could be shepherding a constitutional amendment through ratification. It could be cutting out a valley with only a glacier for a tool.
Or it could be reading Alice Schroeder's The Snowball, all 800-something pages of it.
Schroeder's biography of financier Warren Buffett portrays his precocious childhood wherein he often sat on his front porch, writing down license plate numbers of cars turning at a nearby corner. Should a crime ever be committed down that street, Warren believed he could hand over numbers and help the police solve the case.
Warren exhibited the same ambition when he landed in the hospital with appendicitis. His doting aunt gave the bored boy a fingerprinting kit and he went about fingerprinting all the nuns in the hospital, just in case they, too, slipped off the straight and narrow way.
Warren's quirky hobbies taught him the art of handicapping, of reading probabilities. This came in quite handy when he grew up, for Warren decided to make a million dollars by age 35. Since he didn't care much for manual labor, he invested in the stock market. Warren met his goal and, like a movie buff who can't stop reaching into the popcorn bucket, just kept on going. The man simply can't help himself. The money keeps rolling in, somewhere in the hundreds of billions by now.
I patiently waded through a few too many pages of financial arcana in hopes of getting the scoop on Warren's personal life. Let's just say that, were he your neighbor, his marital status would have you gossiping over the fence. How in the world did all the parties agree to the arrangement? What made each of them say, "Yep, I'm OK with that"?
After such marathon reading, I rewarded myself with Diana Lopez' Confetti Girl. It's a middle schooler story with a Latino flavor. It's quick, it's lightweight, it's got a likable heroine and her crazy socks.
As for your recipe, we glorified our hot dogs this week with a tasty Coney Island Sauce.
This recipe celebrates my recent week in Detroit where, every suburb I drove through had a "koney island"-type restaurant, leading me to believe that a lot of Michigan people landed there from the East Coast and they miss the old neighborhoods.
Great Undertakings are projects that you can't conquer in a day. Or a week. It could be raising a child from diapers to driver's license. It could be shepherding a constitutional amendment through ratification. It could be cutting out a valley with only a glacier for a tool.
Or it could be reading Alice Schroeder's The Snowball, all 800-something pages of it.
Schroeder's biography of financier Warren Buffett portrays his precocious childhood wherein he often sat on his front porch, writing down license plate numbers of cars turning at a nearby corner. Should a crime ever be committed down that street, Warren believed he could hand over numbers and help the police solve the case.
Warren exhibited the same ambition when he landed in the hospital with appendicitis. His doting aunt gave the bored boy a fingerprinting kit and he went about fingerprinting all the nuns in the hospital, just in case they, too, slipped off the straight and narrow way.
Warren's quirky hobbies taught him the art of handicapping, of reading probabilities. This came in quite handy when he grew up, for Warren decided to make a million dollars by age 35. Since he didn't care much for manual labor, he invested in the stock market. Warren met his goal and, like a movie buff who can't stop reaching into the popcorn bucket, just kept on going. The man simply can't help himself. The money keeps rolling in, somewhere in the hundreds of billions by now.
I patiently waded through a few too many pages of financial arcana in hopes of getting the scoop on Warren's personal life. Let's just say that, were he your neighbor, his marital status would have you gossiping over the fence. How in the world did all the parties agree to the arrangement? What made each of them say, "Yep, I'm OK with that"?
After such marathon reading, I rewarded myself with Diana Lopez' Confetti Girl. It's a middle schooler story with a Latino flavor. It's quick, it's lightweight, it's got a likable heroine and her crazy socks.
As for your recipe, we glorified our hot dogs this week with a tasty Coney Island Sauce.
This recipe celebrates my recent week in Detroit where, every suburb I drove through had a "koney island"-type restaurant, leading me to believe that a lot of Michigan people landed there from the East Coast and they miss the old neighborhoods.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)