When Life Gives you Lemons you Make Marmalade

   

Here are some more food blogs written by chefs who have published

 rangette.blogspot.com   this writer is a chef who has published a book called Delancey.  Now a lot of chefs have pictures of the food and the craft but I like seeing the actual hands used in making the dough and rolling it out and such and her blog does an excellent job of that including little baby kids helping out in the process. Now why do I say Baby Kids?  Well I like adding the word baby to any nickname of sorts to make it seem cute for instance: my baby cat, my boodoh baby, my chocolate yummy baby.

Here's another one www.thenaptimechef.com What a great name for a blog! A picture of a chef taking a nap before taking on the daunting task of cooking comes to mind. Here's a new expression she writes When Life gives you lemons you make marmalade.  Of course her blog has to be called The Naptime Chef.   What can I expect if I buy her book? Well its a how-to guide on Fitting Great Food into Family Life.  One of the greatest pictures on her blog has to be freezer friendly spaghetti.  Another of her recipes that are freezer friendly is  Not Just for the Kentucky Derby Chocolate-Pecan Pie {Powernap} This caught my attention just because the other day my nephew was trying to describe for me Kentucky Derby in his game of Taboo(a word game)

My Main Objective: Blog Search

   


I've decided to review one expat blog, plus a food writing blog.  Now its quite a combination to look for blogs in the early morning, lets say Five am but the newest place that I look for food writing blogs make it easy at www.saveur.com  And than expatsblog.com

1.www.smittenkitchen.com This blog jumped at me because it rhymes and I love poems and rhyming. The chef behind this blog is Deb Perelman who writes a book called The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.  I love this post on  Spaghetti with Chickpeas .  What an amazing combination! Its best suited to eat right before you're ready to run a marathon.  I like Perelman's overhead shots of her recipes and ingredients.  She must have an overhead drone above her while she's cooking or else a very large stool.





2.tikichris.com/ is an expat blog from London.  Now if you know anything about London you know that it has very Chic businesses.  Chris has a post called London Daily Photo: High Street and it features a post on what I presume to be clothing store with a black manikin in a white slim fitting dress.  What I love about London is that they got all these old school shops juxtaposed with neat organized merchandise.

Eat, Drink and be Merry:You May Diet

   

Veggies have made an appearance in my life but like most American dishes they are put as an aside veggies like corn, carrots and broccoli  which have been put on my plate just for the purpose of saying I ate a veggie.  Here are some great blogs that emphasize veggies versus just throwin' them on the plate

www.veggierunners.com has  a veggie feta cheese pizza.  Now I don't eat pork but would l would still like to jazz up my pizza without having to return to the boring plain cheese pizza. 

Europeans love vegetable stock and here's a great soup from Kate Ford's blog  www.thevegspace.wordpress.com called hot and sour mushroom soup .  She also has a recipe for  

Chana Masala.

www.theppk.com This is very approachable vegetarian blog by Chandra.  It has recipe called rice paper roll with red curry peanut sauce- I'm in love with peanuts more than ever after making a peanut and veggie rice dish. Chandra also has a chana-masala   recipe.  Now ever since I've been shopping at the indian market on Central in Minneapolis, I've fallen in love with any form of orange masala and I will get to the bottom of replicating the to-go dishes they have at this Indian market even if it kills me,lol. Here's one last kale recipe .

Give Me a Bell, I'm Gormless

Bung Me my Bits and Bobs

Bees Knees, Belt up and Botch me

      

 

A Bit of Blog with my Tea

I'm reading more blogs.  Let's see this one caught my attention because it has a cartoon picture of a woman flying with an umbrella. How Mary-Poppins-like. its called quintessentially-English This writer has a blog post about reminiscing on the Friends show while she's in England. Obviously she's feeling a bit homesick but I give her credit she'd been in  England for Ten Years. 

Moving forward. Here's a blog from an expat in Norway called meganstarr.com she writes a post called 8 things to love about Minsk.  Here's a flashback from the blog listed above where the previous writer was talking about her love of the show Friends and I recall an episode in Friends where the character Phoebe was in love with a man who worked in Minsk. How coincidental! Anyway, this blog has many lovely pictures of Norway and great pictures of the people if I might add.      

Opera Viva!

 

 

Opera Viva!

I went to this event the other night and learned a few things.  The event was a concert of operatic proportions featuring performances by Minnesota Opera Resident Artists. Long story short, this event was a chance for library goers to understand and learn about Opera.  The introduction told by the director contained what opera entails, including the fact that opera, in its plainest sense, is a story told in music from either a book or a play.  Most operas include love scenes, a soprano is in love with a tenor or vice versa, often times the soprano dies in the end, or the tenor dies, or all the characters die.  Most operas are energetically filled with life and love.  

Minnesota opera has done many operas one such as Hansel and Gretel opera consists of a mezzo soprano, and the witch, also a mezzo soprano, because the opera singers need to be highly experienced, the singers are often put in childlike costumes in order to fulfill the goal of Hansel and Gretel as the characters are children in the fairytale as well.  

The audience was told they could ask the singers and opera coordinators open ended questions.  That being said, these were the questions 

What was your first opera experience? A keyboard player who is also an Italian conductor for the Minnesota opera told a touching story of how his early days of opera enjoyment came when he listened to an album of a four hour long opera as a child and was immediately amazed by it, and from then on would continue to try to translate long operas in languages like German and Russian, he said he took on the hard operas first. 

What is your favorite book?  One such tenor commented "History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson.  The audience was told they could ask the singers open ended questions that could apply to all the performers. 

How long does it take to prepare for an opera performance? approximately 3-9 including three weeks on stage getting into character and rehearsing followed by a transition to the actual theatre for stage effects and occasionally for bigger performances like Grapes of Wrath it may take an additional three weeks to rehearse.  

Overall the performance was incredible and free, an opportunity for the community to enjoy the opera in their own setting.

 

 

 

 

 

"The Girl with No Shadow:A Novel" By Joanne Harris

   

 "The Girl with No Shadow: A Novel" by Joanne Harris.  This novel had a slow opening but like all things French, I thought I would give it a chance. Harris continues the story of the mother :Viane Rocher (Rosh-ay), Teenage daughter Anouk, and youngest Rossette. This is a sequel to  Harris' previous novel "Chocolat". 

 The novel starts starts getting interesting with the introduction of the character of Zowsie, who comes to work in Viane Rocher's chocolate shop.  Zowsie is a mystical character with witch like features, and when the daughter, Anouk confides into Zowsie about her personal life, revealing all of the intimate details of school life, and bullies, Zowsie uses the details to wrap a string around Anouk and tells her she can use powers to fend off bullies all the while becoming a confident young woman. 

 Readers are introduced to the life of a typical teenager, seems boring, (but oh, not quiet)   Zowsie connects with this teenager and tells her that being a freak is okay, because Zowsie is a freak herself.  She shows Anouk exactly what freaks can do, she triggers a rude, French waitress to spill her lemonade all over her customer, with a simple snap of Zowsie's fingers. 

 I enjoyed the mother's french lullaby to her baby daughter " Layla boom boom, Layla boom boom"(If I find the actual name for this song, I'm going to keep it for myself). A reader can walk away from this novel with a quiet innocence of a story and the easy culmination of French wrapped up into a small lullaby.

 But Harris uses a little too many metaphors in her novel.  She used the wind as a metaphor , for, foreshadowing problems that happen to this family.  It seems overdone.  In fact, when Viane Rocher  mentions "the black man"  periodically throughout the novel, as the father of Viane's illegitimate children (even though the father is not black).  This has an undertone of prejudice.  Why couldn't Harris just called this man, "the Man of Wind?"  Like her over use of the metaphor.