Bryan and I (mostly Bryan) grew some organic broccoli this fall in our garden and it is so good. Normally, I don’t like eat broccoli raw. The stuff you buy in the store always has an odd taste when eaten raw. But straight from the garden it is awesome eaten raw. So crisp and fresh with a hint of sweetness. Delish!
Here are some pics:
After many months of seeing advertisements for the Amazon Kindle every time I am at Amazon.com I finally gave in and checked out what the little device is all about, and I must say I am intrigued. Certainly not intrigued enough to drop $350 on the device, but definitely interested.
There is so much potential for this device. I think students are an untapped market for a product like this. As an undergrad I easily carried around 20lbs of books daily, and I was spending an arm & leg on those books (math & science books are weighty and pricey). I would definitely have forked over a chunck of change for a little reader like this if it could have held all of my text books. However, this is the one drawback of this book. Most of the publishers of textbooks do not yet offer ebook versions of their texts. I have a feeling this will start to change over the next 10 years or so. Just think how awesome it would be to have my entire collection of math reference books + my current pleasure reading books all in one lightweight super portable device. Gets me giddy just thinking about it. What would make it sweeter? Also being able to keep journal articles on there.
While I am thinking of the possibilities … There is this site called Feedbooks.com which has FREE downloads of thousands of classics in the Kindle format as well as other formats. Just think … grade school students could have at their finger tips all the classic books they will read for school for free on one little device. Not to metion they could have their text books on there (I am sure the technology will be worked out so that after a year, the students access to their 4th grade social studies text would expire and the “book” would be “passed on” to a student in next year’s class.) No more having to watch little 10 yrs walking around with weighted down backpacks bigger than they are.
I love books! I love technology! I love saving some trees! The only thing holding me back is that I don’t love parting with $350. I shall have to wait patiently.
I just had the most delightful dental experience. I actually walked out of the dentist’s office beaming! I have not had my teeth cleaned since I’ve been in grad school (that translates into about 3.5 years of no deep teeth cleaning). So, there was a lot of tartar build up. However, the hygienist was great. She was quick, didn’t cause much pain or discomfort and distracted me with tons of compliments. She complimented my wedding ring, my eye brows, my teeth, my dedication to wearing my retainer every night. Seriously, that is probably the best form of distraction I have ever encountered.
After such a long time of not having a professional cleaning, I was surprised to find out that I only had one tiny little occlusion in a back moral, and the dentist thought it best to wait until my next cleaning to take care of it. Sweet!!!
A couple weeks ago I heard Terry Gross interview a UC Berkeley Professor of Journalism, Michael Pollan. He wrote an open letter to the then next President Elect (I guess now the letter is directed to Obama). The letter was published in the New York Times Magazine. I just finished reading it and there is a lot of really good stuff in there. I sincerely hope that Obama and his staff take a look at the letter and consider at least some of the ideas that are put forth as a part of their overall agenda to reduce foriegn oil dependency, engergize the economy and create new green jobs. A lot of the big ideas proposed in Pollan’s letter seem to fall in line with Obama’s agenda, so I have high hopes.
If you have some time, I would recommending reading through the letter, “Farmer in Chief”, though it is rather long. If you don’t have time for that, you can listen to the Terry Gross Fresh Air interview with Michael Pollan which covers almost every topic covered in the letter.
Our garden for summer/fall 2008 was very successful. We installed a drip irrigation system on a timer this year. There was much more growth this year, and the harvests were much more bountiful. We are attributing most of this success to the drip irrigation system. Some of the problems we had this year:
We have been thinking about what we want to plant for next year. Here is what we have:
We already have some strawberry plants that will winter over and produce a crop of strawberries in the spring.
The other thing we would like to try next year is to get a rainwater collection system going.
There was this series of books that I started reading when I was in high school called the Sword of Truth Series. It was a great series, at least the first five books were; it got a little weird after that. It was a great saga about standing up and fighting for what is good and right in the world.
Sam Raimi, (executive producer of TV shows Hercules and Xena, director and producer of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness, and director of the recent Spider Man movies) is producing a TV series based on the Sword of Truth Series called Legend of the Seeker.
All I can say, is that I am so freakin’ excited. I get giddy every time I think about it. Raimi has set out to produce a weekly fantasy TV series that is movie production quality. Not only is this great for the show itself, but Raimi is raising the bar for other network television shows, especially those in the Fantasy & SciFi genre. I hope that this show is sucessful and sparks a wave of other quality, fantasy/scifi tv dramas.
The show will be broadcast on CW (at least in my area) which is a channel that we get in HD on our sexy HDTV. Hurray for high quality digital media!
If you want to see some trailers for the show, go to http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/index.html.
Has anyone else out there experienced blog spam? Email spam is bad enough, but now I am getting spam comments on my blog! These spam comments always have a link in the comment, so my guess is that they want to increase their page ranking on Google (more links from other sites to their site increases their ranking which means they move up the list of results Google returns on a search). Fortunately, all comment posts (which aren’t that many) are filtered thru me before they appear on my site. So, all such spam comments are deleted before they can cause an increase in page ranking. Muahahaha! But seriously, we are soon going to need spam filters on our blogs the way we need spam filters on our emails.
So far I have steered away from making any political commentary on this blog. I don’t see myself as one of those types of bloggers. However, after watching last nights debate, I feel compelled to make a few comments. Prior to the debate there was all this speculation about whether Gov. Palin, after some serious interview blunders, could hold her own against Sen. Biden. During the first half of the debate, I thought she did a good job holding her own, commenting on a lot of the specifics of the McCain/Palin platform on the economy and on energy (though I may not have agreed with them) and the specifics of senatorial voting records. She also did a good job at illuminating the public to what she had been working on in Alaska as governor. However, about half way through the debate, around the time when she said, “It’s so obvious that I’m a Washington outsider…,” she started veering from talking about specifics and started hammering on these vague general talking points. It was very frustrating. There were several times that Gwen Ifill asked a direct question to Gov. Palin who would responding by taking the question in an entirely different direction and end up spending most of her 90 seconds of response talking about how we had a choice on election day between higher taxes from the Democrats or reform, energy independence via more drilling at home, and winning the Iraq War from the Replubicans. Of course, she was still all smiles and small town colloquialisms, but in my mind that it not enough when Sen. Biden is still answering each question directly and describing the details of the Obama/Biden ticket.
So, after the debate (which I watched on PBS in HD … you could practically see the weave of the fabic of their suits) I watched some of the pundit commentary hosted by Jim Leher. I was shocked to find that the pundits where giving Palin such high marks. Sure, she didn’t flop, but to say that she equaled Biden?!?! Out of the seven commentators Leher had, only one pointed out Palin’s avoidence in answering several questions. I switched over the NBC and saw much of the same. Most of the commentary was that Palin did a “great job” because she did not crumble. Really? Is that the measuring stick we hold up for the potential Vice President of the United States?
Anyhow, I know that overall the VP debate probably doesn’t make a huge difference in the race. I doubt it switched anyone’s political orientation who was already decided.
One stupid little side note I have to gripe about … for the first 10 minutes of so of the debate, whenever there was a head shot of Palin you could see her eyelashes flicking against her bangs. I cannot stand it when something, even my own hair, is so close to my eye that my eyelashes touch it. Just watching it, was driving me crazy. I wanted to reach through the screen and brush her bangs to the side and make it stop. After about 10 minutes, either I stopped noticing or she adjusted her bangs when the camera was on Biden. Either way, I am a glad I didn’t see it through the entire debate.
My office mate was just commenting on wanting to make her own marinara sauce, so I thought I would post my recipe so that others might enjoy it.
Erin’s Marinara Sauce
I should say, that I don’t think the sauce is ever exactly the same each time that I make it, but here is the general idea.
2 tbsp butter or EVOO
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced (you must decide how garlicy you like your sauce, I always use at least 4)
2 28oz cans of crushed tomatoes
2 bay leaves
5-6 fresh basil leaves, shredded
4 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar or dry red wine (each gives a different flavor, both good)
salt & pepper to taste
OPTION 1: Put all the ingredients into a crock pot and set on low for 6-8 hours.
OPTION 2: Melt butter or EVOO in a large stock pot on medium high heat. Add carrot, celery & onion. Cook until soft. Add garlic. Cook until you smell the aroma of garlic and butter (or EVOO) mingling together. Add the crushed tomatoes, spices (bay leaves, basil, parsley, oregano, salt & pepper) and balsamic vinegar or red wine. Cook until starts to bubble, then reduce to medium low heat and let simmer for 1 hour covered, stirring occasionally.
Optional: Sometimes I will add some mushrooms into the sauce as well. Depends if I have any on hand when I make the sauce or not.
You could also add meat. In the past, I have added chicken that has been boiled in water spiced with Italian seasonings, salt & pepper and then hand shredded and added to the marinara.
Last night I finished reading Stardust and I have to say it was kind of a let down. The thing is, I LOVE the movie Stardust and in my opinion, the movie was better than the book. The movie is very much like The Princesss Bride in that it is a comedic, swashbuckling, adventure-romance. The book is not comedic, nor swashbuckling. It is an adventure story, but the romance minimal. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I hadn’t seen the movie. If anyone reading this hasn’t seen the movie, rent it some time soon. It is very enjoyable.
So, here is my updated list of complete books for 2008: