Pink House

A Positive & A Negative

I'm pausing to interject two comments here about recent happenings:

The Positive:

Have you seen the movie Julie & Julia? I went a couple of weeks ago during my mom's visit and I have to say that I LOVED it! I read the book by Julie (about her blog and cooking her way through the cookbook etc) about 3 years ago. I enjoyed the book. Then when I saw that there was a MOVIE about it - I knew I had to go. But what I didn't expect, and thought was so very clever of Director and Screenwriter Nora Ephron, is that she used Julie's book "Julie & Julia" AND Julia Child's book "My Life in France" to show the two parallel lives, and inter-mixed the two life stories in a really cool way. I was just taken by it and thought it was a great adaptation. I liked it even more than I thought I would. I thought the acting was great as well - both Meryl and Amy played their "old" and "new" parts well. Loved it. Go see it - especially if you like stories about women, and life, and food.

The Negative:

Lately, I've been seeing some of the after-effects, trickle-down-wise, of the economic downturn even more. I think some businesses and restaurants have held out and held on for some time...but lately there seems to be more finally giving up. Yesterday I heard from my mother that one of my favorite restaurants in Portland, Caprial's Westmoreland Kitchen (formerly known as Caprial's Bistro) closed. Suddenly, they closed up shop and their cool restaurant location in Sellwood/Westmoreland area of Portland is now for lease. This is sad to me. I went there many years ago, and then returned about two summers ago for a catch-up dinner with a dear old high-school friend. Then, I just took my mom there for dinner when I visited in February. I LOVED that place, the location, the decor, and their menu too. They used fresh, local, seasonal ingredients and added their gourmet twist. It was a neighborhood kind of place, the kind that I wish I lived near and could stop in more frequently. I'm really sad to hear they closed. I also learned from another friend that a restaurant I loved in NYC closed this month too. Couldn't keep making it. When I read my online newspapers, I hear about more restaurants in cities I've visited that are closing. It seems that as people's incomes are cut, dining out is just one of those easy things to cut out. Of course, it makes sense. But it's sad too - the trickle-down of all those people who worked at the restaurants also out of jobs then too. Sad.

Why I love my Kindle

As I mentioned before, for my birthday my family surprised me with a brand new Kindle. A pretty good birthday gift.

Kindle is a mini-computer (kind of) that holds digital BOOKS that you download, either by wireless from the Amazon website (Amazon is the one who makes and sells the Kindle) or by downloading it on the Amazing "Manage Your Kindle" website and then transferring it to your Kindle via a cable. For readers its a nice little treat, but a pricey one. However, the books, since they're not actually PRINTED are about 1/3 the normal price - so about $9.99 per book, and some are less. As you can see, its a good gig for Amazon, saves some trees by not having to print the book, and it's a pretty good deal for the reader too.

I first saw the Kindle on the Oprah show about a year ago. I was kind of fascinated by it and thought I wanted it, but thought it too pricey to buy for myself. So I waited. Then I heard that they came out with the Kindle II, which featured several improvements over the original. This time I was more interested because they added some features that I was interested in (an audio voice to READ the book to you). But still...I thought it was too indulgent to buy it for myself. But my older son bought one and all of his friends too, and he thought it was great. He thought that I would really like it because I do read quite a bit and I am a bit high-tech for my age. And so he talked the rest of our family into going together to get it for my birthday. What a nice surprise! THANKS guys!

While I like the feel of an actual book, and I love cover artwork, and I love to go to the bookstore and browse the stacks......there are some nice conveniences to the Kindle that I've found I like. I'm using it almost every day now for a month. (It's also quite a conversation starter - a LOT of people ask me about it when I read it on the plane, in the airport, or in the coffee shop).

Here are my FAVORITE features of the Kindle over a regular book:

1. The built-in dictionary is SO EASY to use!The first book I read on it had a fairly advanced vocabulary. You know those words that you come across when reading, and you think, "Hhmm. There's that word again. Seen it before. Don't really know what it means, but I can guess in context." and so you just go on reading? I mean no one actually stops reading, puts down the book, and looks it up in the dictionary, do they? It would take too long and interrupt the flow of the story. But, on the Kindle this is so easy. I have been looking up about one word per page and can do so in a few seconds. You use move a tiny cursor wand with your thumb to where the word on the page is, pause about a 1/2 second and the definition pops up. You read it, and then push "back" button with your thumb and the pop-up dictionary disappears. I would like to think that my vocabulary has improved significantly in a month from looking up the meaning of so many words (but I wouldn't want to take a test to prove it). My only suggestion here to the Amazon Kindle people is to add another button in the dictionary to have a voice correctly PRONOUNCE the word. I would really like that as I always struggle to figure out the pronunciation of unfamiliar words. Then I think I may feel comfortable actually using the word in speech. 
2. You can change the size of the TEXT!   This is a really handy feature that I use all the time. You just set your preferences to the size of type that feels most comfortable to you ( I think I went up only one size) and for me that was to be able to read it without my reading glasses! Perfect for us middle-agers! Here again, the screen is a little dark and you do need to be in daylight or sit by a lamp to read. I like to read in bed or laying on the couch (where the screen is facing away from the light) and it would be nice to have the screen illuminated just a bit to see it in the dark.
3. It saves your place in the book! This is really nice when you just pick it up and turn it on (takes about 2 seconds) and its already at the page you where left it. Kind of like a paper bookmark I suppose. :)  If you want to switch books (I usually read one fiction and one non-fiction at the same period of time) then you just touch the "menu" button and will list your books and you click on the one you want.  This bookmark feature is nice, but I find it a bit problematic when you reading and want to flip back a few pages to check a chart (in non-fiction) or remind yourself who a certain character is (fiction). I haven't figured out this one yet.
4. Portable!This is perhaps one of the best things. It's so light and slim. I can slide it into my purse or briefcase and you don't even know it's there. I remember hauling around the "World Without End" Ken Follet tomb I read last year and it was like lugging a suitcase around...heavy and cumbersome. Also, for those of us who have trouble deciding which book to take on a trip, and usually pack two or three just to be "safe", this is a godsend. On this last trip to Chicago, I bravely put my Kindle in my purse and got on the plane. I felt reassured that I had several books loaded on it that I wanted to read and wouldn't run out of reading material on the 4 day trip (ha!). I did buy a big city newspaper in the airport hub, but that's my treat to myself anyway. But I didn't buy a single magazine in that tempting Hudson News store because I reminded myself that I already was carrying 8 books around in my Kindle.
5. You can press a little button and highlight sections and then click in the menu to read through a listing of all the highlighted sections. Cool, just like underlining in your book. It would be nice to be able to hook up a little cord and PRINT that out on your computer! Could you work on that, Kindle people?
6. The Kindle is FLAT and lays flat. Even with the covers that they sell (highly recommended) you can simply fold it back and set the Kindle on something, a table, your pillow, the exercise bike at the gym, and it stay OPEN. If you tried this with a real book, it would flap shut of course. So this is really cool with the Kindle.
7. Privacy! You know how when you're reading a book in a public place and people look at the cover to see what you're reading? I don't like that. Not that I'm reading anything naughty. But I just like my privacy. Maybe I don't want everyone on the plane to know I'm reading a health book on menopause. I like the Kindle for this too, because it looks kind of "smart" but you could seriously be reading a kid's joke book and someone would think you're reading a legal brief. I just like that no one can "judge a book (or you) by its cover"!

There are still more features that I haven't tried yet and haven't figured out. Still learning.

Additional suggestions for Kindle R & D:

• Please make the speaking voice more "friendly" and human! There are so many people (including low-vision people) or people who like to knit and would like to plug their earphones into that Kindle and LISTEN to their book. I would love this feature. Because maybe one day I'd listen to my book and one day I'd read it...you know, a change up.
• Please make it easier to scroll BACK to find retrieved info, and then return in only ONE PUSH back to where you were. This is a problem for me right now.
• Please add a feature that shows the REAL cover of the book - like a little icon maybe? In color please? Perhaps this is on the new Kindle D that just came out (but that's way too expensive!)
• Please give us a PRINTED COPY OF THE USER'S GUIDE!!! I HATE that I have to open up a digital version of it and try to find how to do something. I just want to thumb through a little booklet and find the answer......

And just to proof how really portable the Kindle is...I even took it golfing! Real story is that I sprained my ankle and wasn't sure I'd be able to do the entire 18 holes. So I popped the Kindle in my bag for insurance, then when I got tired I just propped up my ankle and read the Kindle why the husband finished his round. I was content to wait, and no pages flapping in the wind....perfect!

Italian Wedding Soup

(I finally uploaded a month's worth of photos, so here we go sorting through them for the next several posts.)

A few weeks ago I made Ina Garten's (Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and TV shows) Italian Wedding Soup. It turned out great. It's from her latest book: Back to Basics. I've always liked Italian Wedding Soup (yes, even the kind from a can) and yet, I'd never tried to make it from scratch. Her recipe caught my eye especially because she uses ground chicken (rather than beef or pork) for the meatballs.

So I gathered the ingredients and on one of our spring snow days (so many this year!) had some fun in the kitchen cooking this up. I'm not going to post her recipe her because if you'd really like to know it you can just buy her cookbook (I believe in honoring copyrights) or perhaps see if its on her recipes on Food TV Network's website. Or her website?

Anyway, I changed up a few things like usual - in this one I didn't find ground chicken or chicken sausage at the grocery store and so I substituted ground turkey and sweet Italian sausage instead (You use these for the meatball mixture). They turned out really well - I'll use the meatball recipe again.

I also used fresh mushroom instead of carrots and used fresh kale instead of fresh spinach as the recipe calls for. I didn't have fresh dill either. I used orzo for the pasta in the soup. So it seems I had to change the recipe quite a bit perhaps.

I really like her method of BAKING the meatballs on parchment paper rather than frying them. You use a small cookie scoop to form them. They turned out great. The meatballs were quit lean but still tasty. My baking sheet of meatballs look exactly like the photo in the cookbook too!

When serving, I put four meatballs in the bottom of the soup bowl and ladled the soup on top of them. Then I sprinkled grated Pecorino Romano on top of that. Very tasty! 

The Big Read, The Reading List, & Being Well Read

I recently learned about a cool effort to bring the American culture back to realizing the benefits of reading. And no, it's not Kindle. It's called The Big Read. I'll not go on and on about it except to say that I think it's a cool idea and I was thinking of what an impact it could have on our American teenagers in public school if they learned to appreciate these classics more. For that matter, adults too. Just think if we as a nation spent 1/2 the time reading from this list as we did watching sports on TV. You have to reason that we'd be a bit more intelligent. Check out the website here: The Big Read

Anyway, that got me to thinking about my own reading list. Every year since graduating from college I make myself a reading list for the year. Geeky? Perhaps so. But a list is just a small set of goals which you intend to do and that you write down to remind yourself and then you actually try to do it. The list reminds you of your intentions during the year (you know we all forget what we thought about yesterday, let alone a few months before). And my Annual Reading List keeps me moving forward which is something that I need in my life. To move forward.

I used to have a mix of fiction and non-fiction on each year's list. But then I realized that I read fiction more by whim...what I see on the table at Costco that strikes my fancy, or because the cover of a book catches my eye at Barnes & Noble, or because I read about a good book on someone's blog, or because a friend just finished reading something and loved it so much that she can't stop talking about it. Those are the fiction books that I just read "for fun". Like Pillars of the Earth and its sequel, World Without End by Ken Follet (LOVED them!). But in the past...five years ago or so, I only listed the non-fiction books that I intend to read on my Annual Reading List. These are the ones that make me feel like I'm still learning something, that my brain hasn't atrophied quite yet. And usually these have some sort of theme - some reflection of what I'm wanting to learn more about at a particular time. And I make myself a little checklist to cross off as I finish each one. It feels like an accomplishment that way.

And on a side note - when my two sons were growing up, I had a reading list for them each summer. I know they'll remember that. But I didn't require what they read, only that they read, and I gave them a list with blanks that they could fill in (title, number of pages, fiction or non-fiction) and when they reached their goal (usually # of books or # of pages), there was a reward at the end. They didn't begrudge it either -- it gave a bit of structure to their summer and there was still plenty of time for all sorts of other fun things. And their minds didn't turn to jello watching cartoons day after day.

Speaking of young people reading, I recently had a student return from a college tour and interview where she was asked, "Tell me about the last 3 books you've read outside of school". And she was so caught off guard that she couldn't think of single one. (I've now added this to my list of interview preparation for students). But it made me think of how many of our teenagers spend hours and hours watching reality TV and movies and yet haven't cracked a book outside of the classroom. So sad. And we wonder why our country's education is lagging. If you were asked that question by someone,would you be able to give an answer?

My personal reading list this particular year came about because of my work with students. I was explaining what a "liberal arts education" meant to a young gal one day and starting thinking about my own liberal arts education 25 years ago. When I research colleges, I'm always reading the description of what each college has determined are their core subjects of what they want their graduates to study. I started thinking about that term "life long learning" and how so many of us give up "studying" and intentional learning after college and graduate school, and spend way too many hours watching TV. So this year my list is mostly about re-learning the liberal arts - meaning an overview of all subject matters - and especially updates over the past 25 years. So I found some topical books, made my list, figured out what I had to read each month to complete the list by year's end, and now I'm progressively making my check marks. I guess that's what they call life-long learning. Check.