The great Leslie Nielsen has died. I will remember him best as Frank Drebbin of "Police Squad." He made us all laugh.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Morning After
I imagine by now you've read lots of "what I have to be thankful for" posts. I am sure they've been inspiring, moving, touching.
But I have the best reason to be thankful. Ready?
a) I did not cook.
and
b) I still got leftovers!
Come on, does that rule or what? Is it not every mother's dream? No cooking. Not a finger lifted. No dislocating my shoulder lugging a frozen turkey home from the store, no splashing brine all over myself trying to tenderize the thing, no going cross-eyed trying to evaluate a million different recipes for stuffing.
Yes, dear reader, we were guests at someone else's table this year. Now. Ready for the best part?
OUR HOSTESS DIDN'T COOK, EITHER.
She ordered dinner from Byerley's. I realize she did this entirely on her own, but I like to think I was the inspiration for this. A few years ago I discovered the secret to holiday peace was to order the food pre-cooked from the grocery store. You might not get Grandma's recipe for apple pie or your cousin's fabulous stuffing, but do you really need perfection at the holidays?
You do not. You need sanity. You need peace. You need your shoulder blades to stay where they're supposed to be.
The first time I ordered a dinner I think it was Easter. Imagine my joy when I found out I could order it for Christmas. And imagine my disappointment when I found out the store only offered this incredible deal at major holidays. I then contemplated ordering six Easter dinners at once and freezing them to eat over the next few months, but I ran out of freezer room.
I'm not sure when my aversion to cooking set in, but it was fairly recently. I used to love the cookbook aisle at the Barnes and Noble. I loved browsing food magazines, especially when I was feeling a little hungry. But somewhere along the way I just ran out of enthusiasm. It got so I had to drag myself into the kitchen. Then half the time all I could do was pull a couple of takeout menus out of the drawer.
Maybe cooking was more fun before we had to start watching our calories. There's a joy in butter, and don't get me started on sugar and shortening.
But now. Health, fat, the threat of the scale. Food is just not fun any more.
And if food has lost its fun, well, cooking doesn't have a prayer.
But I have the best reason to be thankful. Ready?
a) I did not cook.
and
b) I still got leftovers!
Come on, does that rule or what? Is it not every mother's dream? No cooking. Not a finger lifted. No dislocating my shoulder lugging a frozen turkey home from the store, no splashing brine all over myself trying to tenderize the thing, no going cross-eyed trying to evaluate a million different recipes for stuffing.
Yes, dear reader, we were guests at someone else's table this year. Now. Ready for the best part?
OUR HOSTESS DIDN'T COOK, EITHER.
She ordered dinner from Byerley's. I realize she did this entirely on her own, but I like to think I was the inspiration for this. A few years ago I discovered the secret to holiday peace was to order the food pre-cooked from the grocery store. You might not get Grandma's recipe for apple pie or your cousin's fabulous stuffing, but do you really need perfection at the holidays?
You do not. You need sanity. You need peace. You need your shoulder blades to stay where they're supposed to be.
The first time I ordered a dinner I think it was Easter. Imagine my joy when I found out I could order it for Christmas. And imagine my disappointment when I found out the store only offered this incredible deal at major holidays. I then contemplated ordering six Easter dinners at once and freezing them to eat over the next few months, but I ran out of freezer room.
I'm not sure when my aversion to cooking set in, but it was fairly recently. I used to love the cookbook aisle at the Barnes and Noble. I loved browsing food magazines, especially when I was feeling a little hungry. But somewhere along the way I just ran out of enthusiasm. It got so I had to drag myself into the kitchen. Then half the time all I could do was pull a couple of takeout menus out of the drawer.
Maybe cooking was more fun before we had to start watching our calories. There's a joy in butter, and don't get me started on sugar and shortening.
But now. Health, fat, the threat of the scale. Food is just not fun any more.
And if food has lost its fun, well, cooking doesn't have a prayer.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Another One of Those Lists
I found this at Happy Catholic. You're supposed to note the ones you've read and (separately) the ones you've read parts of.
So let's see. I've read 1,3,5,7,8,10,11, 12 (I think), 13,16,18,20,22,,25,29,32-38,41,45,46,48,49,54,57,59,61.62,66,68, 70-73,75, 76,80,81, 87,92,95 and 98.
I am currently reading #79.
I"ve read parts of:
2,4,6,9,14,15,21,24,27,39,,31,40,42,43,47, 63,83,85,89,91,and 94.
Taking this quiz I realize I don't have a lot of patience for Russians or Frenchmen.
Hey, it passes the time.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (but I"m working on it)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (This is NOT a classic and is mean spirited enough to make it never become one in my book ... stick to his history-ish books, not the travel guides)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
So let's see. I've read 1,3,5,7,8,10,11, 12 (I think), 13,16,18,20,22,,25,29,32-38,41,45,46,48,49,54,57,59,61.62,66,68, 70-73,75, 76,80,81, 87,92,95 and 98.
I am currently reading #79.
I"ve read parts of:
2,4,6,9,14,15,21,24,27,39,,31,40,42,43,47, 63,83,85,89,91,and 94.
Taking this quiz I realize I don't have a lot of patience for Russians or Frenchmen.
Hey, it passes the time.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (but I"m working on it)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (This is NOT a classic and is mean spirited enough to make it never become one in my book ... stick to his history-ish books, not the travel guides)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Sunday, November 21, 2010
First Fall!
I just fell on the ice. Right outside my back door. I was going to step outside with the dogs-- they like a little company when I put them out in the morning- and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back with a worried labrador in my face.
And so it begins, another Minnesota winter. Back in New York the fall leaves are still on the trees. We have already had our first snowstorm, two weeks ago. The snow is still on the ground, in that unattractive rocky gray ice form it gets after a few days. Lovely.
I try to get enthusiastic about winter, I really do. I check out the price of high-tech snowshoes in Costco. I read up on the latest in cold weather gear. I even flip through all the L.L. Bean Winter catalogs. Anybody want to buy some scented firewood? I know where you can get some, cheap.
But no. I look at the snow and the ice and the outdoor thermometer and I want to move to the tropics. or just stay inside.
Which, given how my day started, would probably have been the best course of action.
And so it begins, another Minnesota winter. Back in New York the fall leaves are still on the trees. We have already had our first snowstorm, two weeks ago. The snow is still on the ground, in that unattractive rocky gray ice form it gets after a few days. Lovely.
I try to get enthusiastic about winter, I really do. I check out the price of high-tech snowshoes in Costco. I read up on the latest in cold weather gear. I even flip through all the L.L. Bean Winter catalogs. Anybody want to buy some scented firewood? I know where you can get some, cheap.
But no. I look at the snow and the ice and the outdoor thermometer and I want to move to the tropics. or just stay inside.
Which, given how my day started, would probably have been the best course of action.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)