Created a Blurb account this evening. Trying it (and the BookSmart app) out as we speak. I'll be very impressed if I can make a great looking photo book using photos from my Flickr account. The more I read on Blurb, the more excited I get. Not only can you print photo books, but you can print cookbooks, poetry books, regular books, and you can even print your blog (odd but cool).
About a month ago, I ordered the 4-quart Cuisinart Slow Cooker (CSC-400) for a pretty sweet price -- Thank You Sogeti Employee Appreciation!!! I made my first roast a couple weeks ago. Standard carrot + potato + onion + garlic + roast + cream of mushroom soup. It was good. I even took the time to brown the roast before slow cooking it.
While I was waiting to pick up Monkey from the vet last Tuesday, I browsed our new local Borders and picked up "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. 350 slow cooker recipes. There must be a couple good ones I can find. ;-)
I picked up just over 2 pounds of organic beef stew meat from Whole Foods for a recipe from a different book (of which I can't remember which one). Regardless, I was determined to cook the stew meat tonight. I found a recipe called Estofado in my NYMSC Cookbook after work and thought it sounded pretty darn good.
Slow Cooker: Medium or Large round
Setting and Cook Time: Low for 6 to 8 hours
Before it got too late, I ran to Whole Foods to pick up some red wine and red wine vinegar. Ended up with a Whole Foods 365 Trackers Crossing, South Eastern Australia Shiraz for $5.99. Super cheap red wine for cooking. Not bad at all. I used the last of our Arriba! Medium tomatillo salsa. Sorry Sweetie!!! I'll get more!!! :-D
Turned on Groove Salad and went to work. It smells delicious...I'm glad I ate before I began this one.
Note: I find that most user-submitted recipe photos look disgusting. The recipe may sound good, but if the picture looks nasty, it's generally a bit of a food-turn-off.
... by Richard Bach, copyright 1984.
"War. We spend so much money on killing and destruction! We justify it by calling it Defense, by spreading fear and hatred of other people, countries we don't like. If they try a government we don't approve of, and if they're weak enough, we smash them. Self-determination's for us, not them.
"What kind of example is that? How much do we reach out in kindness and understanding to other people? How much do we spend on peace?"
In no way whatsoever is this quote any glimpse into the message of the book... I just thought it was rather timely.
I read my first Richard Bach book, One, during my senior year of high school. I remembered his name while roaming through a local Half Price Books (my absolute favorite book store) recently and decided to pick up a copy of a few of his other books. Written inside The Bridge Across Forever, on the first blank page, was the following note penned in cursive:
2-14-1985
To Neda, my best friend, my wife, my lover, and very soon a mother,
"The Bridge across Forever" could very easily be the name of our love story, a bridge that covers a vast time period and many different paths of our relationship.
I have mixed feelings about this Valentine's Day, like we should take a rain check, it has not been a planned day, but it is one that is full of love for you.
Michael
Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology
by James D. Mauseth
(3rd Edition, Hardcover)
Even though I'm temporarily out of school, I'm still buying textbooks. Making my own venture into a subject I've had a lot of interest in since childhood, I thought I should start from the beginning and refresh my basic understanding of botany.
Check it out at Amazon
Memoirs of a Geisha
by Arthur Golden
I want to see the movie, especially now that I know it has Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi, but want to read the book first.
Inside cover:
An alluring tour de force that has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers all over the world, Memoirs of a Geisha is a brilliant debut novel told with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism as the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. We enter with her into a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and here love is scorned as illusion.
Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when , as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. As her tale unfolds, we see the decadent heart of Gion - the geisha district of Kyoto - with its marvelous teahouses and theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples, and artist' streets. And we witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner writs; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. But as World War II erupts and the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri, with little money and even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms.
Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuance and vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers.
An extraordinary story, a contemporary classic, and a dazzling literary achievement of empathy and grace by an extraordinary new writer.
Check it out at Barnes & Noble
The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
One of Amazon's "If you like this..." recommendations. Sounded like a good story, so picked up a cheap used copy.
Inside cover:
Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory - the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, ad sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, whoa cts as her "stand-in mother."
When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina - a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.
There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.
The Secret Life of Bees has a rare wisdom about life - about mothers and daughters and the women in our lives who become our true mothers. A remarkable story about the divine power of women and the transforming power of love, this is a stunning debut whose rich, assured, irresistible voice gathers us up and doesn't let us go, not for a moment. It is the kind of novel that women share with each other and that mothers will hand down to their daughters for years to come.
Check it out at Barnes & Noble
The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living
by Fritjof Capra
Another Half Price Books score. Every once in a while, I'll pick up a book almost randomly, with an interesting cover and under an interesting subject.
Inside cover:
"Recent scientific discoveries indicate that all of life - from teh level of the most primitive cells to that of human societies, corporations and nation states, even the global economy - is organized along the same basic patterns and principles: the network. In The Hidden Connections Fritjof Capra has developed a unified, systemic understanding that integrates the biological, cognitive and social dimensions of life and demonstrates how life at all levels is inextricably interlinked by complex networks.
As the new century unfolds, there are two developments which will have a defining impact on the future of humanity. Both have to do with networks and both involve radically new technologies. One is the rise of global capitalism, which is concerned with electronic networks of financial and informational flows; the other the creation of sustainable communities based on ecological literacy and the practice of ecodesign, concerned with ecological networks of energy and material flows. The goal of the global economy is to maximize the wealth and power of its elites; whilst the goal of ecodesign is to maximize the sustainability of the web of life.
These two movements are currently set on a collision course. Whereas every member of a living network contributes and maintains the whole global capitalism is based on the principle that money-making should take precedence over all other values, which creates not just great armies of the excluded, but an economic, social and cultural environment which is not life enhancing but life degrading - in both a social and an ecological sense. The great challenge of the twenty-first century will be to change the value system currently underlying the global economy to one compatible with the demands of human dignity and ecological sustainability.
Demonstrating conclusively how closely humans are connected with the fabric of life, Capra makes it clear that it is imperative to organize the world according to a set of values and beliefs not solely driven by the economic imperative, not merely for the wellbeing of human organizations, but to ensure the survival and sustainability of humanity itself."
Check it out at Barnes & Noble
Tree: A New Vision of The American Forest
by James Balog
This book is a good 12" x 16" hunk of gorgeous, fold out photos of trees. Some of the photos are at least 48" long when unfolded. A good portion of them are pieced together photos which look incredible and give the overall picture a very neat effect. The photo on the cover is done in this way. I saw this for sale at Barnes & Noble when I went to pick up a bird identification book a while back. It was $50 at the store but I found it half off online that evening. Yay for book discounts!!!
Check it out at Barnes & Noble
(Taken from bn.com)
