Just finished a lovely “stay-cation” style weekend in Santa Cruz! Lots of fun bits to comment on, but here are some cute, quick ones: Santa Cruz is so very relaxing and beautiful! We’re such geeks, though. Here we are in the town of sun, surf, and the famous Boardwalk… and we get seduced by the…
It was my unwittingly noticing this damaging issue — the fear and/or greed which underlies bigotry and violent interpersonal aggression — which caused my first faint, initial attempts at bringing down my internal walls: I slowly became aware of “what has happened in many parts of the world where knowledge is kept secret from the…
The usual choice of US citizens in a foreign country to isolate themselves in the American military compound (which my family chose not to do) meant there was a good possibility that the people we interacted with had never before met Americans, and possibly would not after we left either. My father informed his children…
Alice Walker’s 2006 book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light in A Time of Darkness is a collection of essays and presentations she has made over the previous decade. I quote extensively from her book throughout this review, since there were many things she wrote which I very much enjoyed,…
Today I’ll share a small batch of recipes, I think — but first a quick note: I really like the Zatarain’s Creole food! It’s surprisingly tasty to me, and the boxes make it easy to make. So far I’ve tried the Red Beans & Rice and the Dirty Rice Mix (to both of which I…
In 2010 Wangari Maathai wrote Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. Not only is this book more recent than her 2003 volume regarding the Green Belt Movement, but in this one she also specifically addresses her thoughts on spirituality within the Movement. She lists the four core values of the…
Of necessity during my doctoral studies, I’ve learned to be glib with conceptually complex, multi-syllabic terms. It is a personal quirk, however, that I only use such terms when I am quite sure of what they mean — especially since I’ve been on the receiving end of supposedly academic conversations where I was highly dubious…
So as I mentioned yesterday, the birthday dinner included homemade Italian cream sodas, and I promised to share the recipe today, with my notes below it. I’m also very pleased that I remembered to catch the recipe’s URL too this time! Here it is, and check out her lovely photos too: Italian Cream Sodas Holiday…
So it was a dear friend’s birthday over the weekend, and I wanted to try making something tasty just for him at this week’s Monday Night Gaming Horde (hereafter known as the infelicitous sounding MNGH). He’d let drop — after much prompting — that he kinda liked pierogies? So I went and looked them up….
I have found a wonderful new/old cookbook! I think it was originally written in 1960 or so. The author, Peg Bracken, got sick of all the recipe books written by male chefs which deliriously caroled in incessant glee about how much fun it was for women to slave over a hot oven all day —…