Watch this incredibly charming animated short film about a young man who gets whisked away to be the care taker in a home full of magical books while you can….
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris LessMore
[Edited on March 2, 2012… the free full version of the film is no longer available. You can see a little trailer for it here, though. And you can buy it from iTunes for $1.99.]
Filed under Big screen, little screen, Book crave, the interwebs
It’s been 17 days since The David left for his mountain climbing expedition and 14 since the last time we spoke on the phone. There are still (at least)* 14 more days to go.
And it sucks.
I am wallowing in a big sadly fug.
There are plenty of activities on my dance card, and I had thought that that would see me through alright, but I’m starting to wish that I didn’t have any of those things to do so I could just curl up at home and suffer quietly, alone.
Here’s a list of what seems like the best possible way to get through the remaining forever:
1. Potato chips (varying flavors)
2. 9 or 10 hours of sleeping a night
3. Samoas
4. Special Edition Samoas Ice Cream
5. Pyjama pants
So, it’s going well, right?
*There’s a once a day satellite uploaded audio cast from the group on this expedition and the last one made it sound like they might not be coming back on time.
Filed under Family, Friends and other Humans, The David
The box of vegetables that’s delivered to my door every other week is a daunting prospect of consumption when there are two eaters. At the moment, I am 11 days in to a 25 day bout of life sans The David (who is somewhere between 15 and 17,000 feet up on Mount Acancagua in Argentina, and also probably not dead.)
So only one eater will be consuming:
4 humongous leeks
1 bunch of dinosaur kale
1 bunch of chard
1 bunch of collard greens
2 stems of broccoli
1 romanesco (that’s the neato spirally one)
1 green leaf lettuce
4 little endives
1 bunch of celery
A bag full of baby bok choy
I read once that fats are an important part of our diet, not only because we need them for proper very scientific functioning, but also because they make things like vegetables taste good and us more likely to eat them.
Exactly right, sez I.
So most likely, much of the leafy green things will get chopped and then sautéed up in a bit of bacon fat and then mixed up with the crunched up bacony bits. But how many days of bacony greens are we talking here? 4? 5?
Yikes.
And the leeks?
Man. I like leeks fine, but this is leekier than I feel the ordinary girl is expected to get.
If you’ve got any great recipes or cooking recommendations for this lot, please share!
Also, come over and eat some?
Filed under Foodery, Uncategorized
I admit it. I get silly amounts of happy over some goofy stuff.
For example, my tupperware pleases me to no end. But it’s not just any tupperware, it’s Portionware!
The Portionware containers are marked with the exact volume of each vessel, so that you can control your portion sizes! How very mindful, no?
Given that I don’t really know if I should have a 2 cup serving or a 1 cup serving of whatever it is I’m toting around for lunch today, I’m not so invested in this aspect.
But the pretty pretty nesting rainbow colors! Whee!
If such a thing interests you, keep an eye out for a deal. I got mine from Bloomspot and Fab.com.
I may be silly with my monies, but thirty bucks for tupperware is goofy, even for me.
Filed under Shopping
if you were loving Downton Abbey and need a little more WWI era British aristoacracy in your life
then try The House at Riverton by Kate Morton.
I know, I know. Television ≠ books. But still. You gotta take it where you can get it.
Filed under Big screen, little screen, Book crave
1. I was 13 when I had my first kiss. It was at a dance during summer camp. His name was Matt. After summer camp was over, we had a brief period of exchanged letters. In one of these, he sent me a drawing he had done especially for me of The Predator.
2. High school was a time for much unrequited love. I didn’t go to prom (though I desperately wanted to) and except for item #1, there was no kissing. Perhaps one day I will scan and post some pictures from this era to help illustrate the teenage woes.
3. In the beginning times of The David, there was an afternoon when we were talking about how we felt about one another. We were both dancing around saying “I love you” for the first time, so instead I told him that he gave me a welling in my heart. Ever since, “having a welling” has been one of our things.
Filed under Little Facts
I made an obscene amount of wheatberry salad for my lunches this week. But I may be eating it for the rest of the month if it doesn’t disintegrate into sludge.
wheatberry salad with kale, fennel, hazelnuts and orange
Does this picture give you a sense of the epic proportions of this salad?
I started out mixing things in my largest glass mixing bowl. But had to resort to the bad mama-jama salad bowl to finish.
It’s chock full of good, seasonal, good-for-you ingredients, though… there’s no such thing as too much of it. And it’s pretty awesome.
Wheatberries are hardy little buggers, so this salad really should hold up. You can change up the ingredients to reflect what you like best, or what’s in season, but it’s generally easy to put together and once you’ve created a vat of it, it’s a happy little lunch.
look at all the goodness!
What Goes In
2 cups of dried wheatberries (you can find in the bulk section of Whole Foods)
2 bunches of dinosaur kale (that’s the nubbly, pebbly one – what a dinosaur hide might look like)
2 oranges, zest the rinds and then cut up segments of both
1 cup of hazelnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped in the food processor
1 bulb of fennel, cut into eighths and then thinly sliced
1/8th of a red onion, thinly sliced
6 ounces of goat cheese
1/4 cup of white wine or champagne vinegar
1/4 cup of olive oil
salt and pepper
What to do
– Cook the wheatberries – it takes kind of a long time. Berries and about 8 cups of water go into a medium pot. Bring to a boil and then cover and reduce to simmer. Give it about 45 minutes to an hour. Keep an eye out and make sure you don’t run out of water. The wheatberries are done when they are chewy, but should not be too hard. But you decide how done you like them.
– Chop up kale. I was feeling meticulous and I removed the ribs of the kale, but you could potentially leave them in.
– If you’re not familiar with segmenting citrus, you may want to skip this element and maybe just squeeze the juice as a part of the dressing. Segmenting citrus can be messy and is a pain in the tuchis, but is something that a Maggie will do anyway. But definitely use the orange zest!
– Thinly slice your fennel and the red onion.
– Toast the hazelnuts if they came raw, and give the hazelnuts a chop chop in the processor. Other nuts would also totally work.
– Start dumping stuff in the biggest bowl you have. Break up the goat cheese into little globs and start mixing. The cheese should start to break up and turn into more of a coating than little separate cheese bits.
– Add your vinegar and oil, salt and pepper, and mix. Taste it and add more salt. Taste some more, reflect, and add more seasoning if you need to.
Oakland has this thing, the first Friday of every month – a bunch of art galleries stay open from 6 to 9 pm, the main drag is closed to car traffic, a bunch of food venders set up booths, and all of the cool kids from 5 counties come swarming to cluster, smoke, and compare spectacles.
Even though this has been going on for almost 8 years, I’m about a decade too old and I have perfect vision, so I didn’t know about Oakland Art Murmur until just recently when I went to meet some friends there for the first time.
I wanted to escape the throngs almost as soon as I finished eating my street cart sausage, but am so glad we prevailed enough to push our way into the gallery displaying Jenn Shifflet‘s paintings, because I can’t stop thinking about them.
Falling into Place
I love the dreamy, ethereal quality of her work, and the way they feel like they could be a landscape from some faraway planet or an underwater depth. Primordial ooze or the light and reflections of an otherworldly atmosphere. I love the fuzzy bokeh and the strange, sharply clear little details of plants or swirls of constellations or microorganisms.
And oh, do I love these colors. These blues and greens speak the exact language of my little Maggie soul.
Wishing on the Wind
Dreaming in Turquoise
Anicca
Adrift
(Doesn’t this last one look like what Monet might have seen if he were holding his breath underwater looking up at his water lilies?)
I love that these paintings make me feel like closing my eyes to further bask in the soothing quiet, but that I need to keep them open to keep looking.
I love that Jenn was kind enough to share some of her images with me, so that I could write about and share them.
And I love that she’s making me think about something I like about being in my mid-thirties… being old enough to consider buying art that doesn’t get attached to the wall with tacks.
Filed under I like you, Nifty things
The content director here asked me if I’d be interested in helping out with the Blurb blog and, of course, I’m all “More blogging! Hoot!”
And then a few days later she’s specifically asking me if I can have a book of the week post ready to go in a few days time.
So, have at it! Write a blog post! I can do that. Sort of.
It’s actually much harder to do for reals, but I’m sure it was good for me.
Funnily enough amongst the zillions of books from the past week, there was a book of official ALT photos and that’s the one I got to choose and write about.
photos of the mini-parties
So now I’m a real private blogger. A blogger for money. I’ll do what you want me to do.
Filed under Hi ho, the interwebs
margaret edith 