Throwin' In the Trowel

Books Read in 2010

2010-01-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

1. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
2. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
3. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
4. Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
5. Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
6. What is the What, Dave Eggers
7. Lush Life, Richard Price
8. Dogs Behaving Badly, Dr. Nicholas Dodman
9. A Member of the Family, Cesar Millan

10. Reaching the Animal Mind, Karen Pryor

11. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

12. What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell

Favorites bolded.

Books Read in 2009

2009-01-07T06:18:00.000-08:00

1. Plain Truth, Jodi Picoult
2. The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks
3. Trying Neaira, Debra Hamel
4. Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
5. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
6. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
7. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote
8. Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall
9. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
10. Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance, Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini
11. On Writing, Stephen King
12. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
13. Fables, Vol. 1-2, Bill Willingham

14. Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
15. Year One, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli
16. Batman: The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
17. Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
18. Animals Make Us Human, Temple Grandin

19. The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins

20. Batman: Arkham Asylum, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean

21. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl
22. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

23. Saving Grace, Jonathan Kozol
24. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
25. In the Woods, Tana French
26. The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
27. The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
28. Where I'm Calling From, Raymond Carver
29. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman
30. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History, Art Spiegelman
31. World War Z, Max Brooks
32. The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
33. The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
34. The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
35. The Walking Dead, Vol. 1-7, Robert Kirkman
36. Light in August, William Faulkner
37. The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood
38. Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy

Favorites bolded.

Food Ethics Meet Poor College Student

2008-07-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

In the beginning of May, in the death-grip of finals, I decided to make a major lifestyle change. After reading Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I came to the realization that I could no longer ignore the way I felt about where my food came from, and went from a girl who ate meat whenever she got the chance to a kind of pseudo-vegan.
I found I could no longer justify eating meat or animal products that were not obtained humanely, and made the switch to free-range meat. I don’t include “free-range” products from grocery stores, like Whole Foods, simply because I feel that label is not telling the whole truth. The problem with making this switch is that I can rarely afford the free-range meats and other animal products at the Union Square Greenmarket, and so I ended up as a sort-of-vegan by default.

So let's detail how this process works for me.

1. Meats and animal products must be humanely raised, free range, preferably organic.
2. Eat local.
3. Eat fresh.

But most importantly -
4. Do the best you can.

What do I mean by that? I can't always abide by my own creed. For one, I never want people to feel uncomfortable because of the way I choose to eat. If I am out with friends and there is no vegan option, I do the best I can. Also, I need to have yogurt every morning because of a chronic health problem (probiotics have done great things for my urinary tract!). I try to buy it from the Greenmarket when I can afford it, but $7 is a lot for a container of yogurt. Otherwise I go organic, like Stonyfield's.
Sometimes there is a conflict in the rules. In trying to be careful about the meat I eat, I turn to vegan options in the freezer and find even less fresh options there - they are riddled with ingredient names that even a person who has taken organic chemistry, like me, can't identify.
And sometimes I have to give in. Like that meal above, with the slices of fresh mozzarella. Or a certain carton of Ben & Jerry's frozen yogurt that always makes its way into my freezer. When I go to New Jersey do I turn my nose up at a fat sandwich made with Steak'Ums and mozzarella sticks? Oh, hell no.

It may not be a perfect way of eating, but I'm proud of the changes I've made in my life. Not only do I feel like a socially conscious eater, I also feel a hell of a lot healthier. And there's nothing imperfect about that.

Yearly Book Lists

2008-07-23T13:12:00.001-07:00

In an effort to keep a clean side bar, listing will be done here from now on.

Books read in:

Summer Again!

2008-05-19T13:18:00.001-07:00

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T20:35:00.001-07:00

Tiny Sunday Breakfast

2008-03-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Local quail eggs on cocktail-sized rye toast

The Selfish Gene

2008-02-29T01:36:00.000-08:00

2. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

This was an interesting read, especially after having taken a genetics course last semester. We covered much of the material that Dawkins presents, so several parts were difficult for me to "reread." This is a must-read for anyone interested in science, and Dawkins presents it in a way that is easy to understand for people who do not have a background in science.
I really found Dawkins's political and religious asides amusing, though I could see how someone could find them annoying or offensive.

Books Read in 2008

2008-01-03T18:51:00.000-08:00

1. The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
2. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
3. The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
4. The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
5. The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan
6. Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman
7. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller
8. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
9. The Watchmen, Alan Moore
10. Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin
11. In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
12. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
13. A Perfect Harmony, Roger Caras
14. Franny and Zooey, JD Salinger
15. Dress Your Family In Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
16. A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
17. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
18. Beloved, Toni Morrison
19. The Princess Bride, William Goldman
20. Candide, Voltaire
21. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
22. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
23. Lost and Found, Carolyn Parkhurst
24. The Boleyn Inheritance, Philippa Gregory
25. The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
26. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
27. Stiff, Mary Roach
28. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss

29. Woman and Nature, Susan Griffin
30. Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
31. Moral Disorder, Margaret Atwood
32. Wilderness Tips, Margaret Atwood
33. Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
34. Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Frank Miller
35. 100 Selected Poems, e.e. cummings
36. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
37. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, Burroway and Stuckey-French
38. Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
39. A Mercy, Toni Morrison
40. Three Junes, Julia Glass

Favorites bolded.

Veterinary Medicine in Homesteading and Small Farms

2007-12-16T06:21:00.000-08:00

Things have been absolutely crazy for me lately. Schoolwork has absorbed most of my time, and my Community Service committee obligations have taken up the rest. It's been great - we've done the Breast Cancer Walk, trick-or-treating with an inner city public school, and the Giving Tree - but I am ready to go home and rest for a few days. I miss my family and my dogs, but I am only a few days away from seeing them all! And I have some tasty desserts planned to photograph and post (and eat!).

Anyway, here is the real reason why I posted. I need your help. Some of you may have been redirected through a Yahoo! Group, or I may have posted specifically on your blog asking for input. I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to let me know your opinion about the topic below.

I am a junior at Fordham University in New York City, as some of you may know. I am currently working towards a Natural Science degree, with a pre-veterinary concentration. I plan on applying to several veterinary schools this coming fall and have been fine-tuning my career plans. Ever since interning in the farmyard area at the Beardsley Zoo this summer, I have grown very interested in working with large animals – specifically livestock.

I know that I have two clear options if I do decide on large animal medicine. There is factory farming (particularly dairy industry, they are desperate for veterinarians) or there is private practice with small farms and pets. I am personally against factory farming, and have been working very hard to eat as local as possible and make conscientious food choices. What I would really like to do is go into private practice, but I have been told by my advisors and professors that this isn’t a wise choice.

I know that there is a certain practicality when it comes to farming. It is not like caring for a house pet – where every little ailment rushes you to the vet. I would like to know how often you utilize your local vet, and for what. Do you think there is a demand for private, large animal veterinarians in your area? Any opinion you have on this matter would help me a whole lot.

You can e-mail me privately (cpenrod19@yahoo.com) if you wish, or comment below.

Thanks so much!

2007-09-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

The lack of updates is due to the fact that I am back at school and the workload has been absolutely insane. Now I know why they recommend juniors to take only four courses a semester. I am taking five courses, plus a lab course for organic chemistry.

Organic chemistry will be a bit of work, but I am doing very well in the class for now (acing all the quizzes!) and I actually like the content of the course. I enjoy drawing chemical structures and naming them, but don't tell anyone.
British Contemporary Fiction is wonderful, but reading a book a week on top of all of my other homework is tough, to say the least. Genetics is where I am having a problem. Despite keeping up with the homework, I am having trouble understanding a lot of the course material. I am thinking I will have to go to the professor for extra help - something I have never had to do before.

Besides this, I joined the Residential Hall Association and was elected as an upperclassmen representative. I plan to run more community service programs through RHA - like the Light the Night walk that I am running right now. You can donate a dollar or two to our team by clicking the link.

It's funny - I eat more locally in the middle of Manhattan than I do at home in Connecticut. Every Wednesday morning I go to the Union Square Greenmarket for groceries. I bought a whole chicken from the Tamarack Hollow Farm stand a couple weeks ago, and it was the most delicious meat I have ever tasted. I roasted it over French fingerlings, shallots, and carrots (all from the greenmarket), with a blackberry sauce. Tamarack makes a mean kielbasa, too.

Books #23-24

2007-09-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

23. The Quiet American, Graham Greene

I read this for my British Contemporary Fiction class. It was a quick read - luckily, as I had less than a week to read it. I enjoyed it, though it is not something I would have picked up on my own. Greene has a great style - very much like the reporter that the narrator is, but with some great war imagery and witty asides.
I love the fact that Bush quoted this book for all of the wrong reasons.

24. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe

This was another book for my British Contemporary Fiction course. Arthur, the main character, is a twenty-one year old living in the "excess" of working-class post-war Britain. He makes more money than his parents would have ever dreamed, working at a bicycle factory, and spends it on booze and fancy clothes. The novel was a fairly quick read and it followed Arthur's many misadventures with women, drinking, and fighting.
I loved the way this was narrated - often in a working-class voice very similar to Arthur's, but with beautifully literary interludes. Arthur is a fun character to follow, even if he isn't always the nicest of guys.

Book #22

2007-09-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

22. Transformations, Anne Sexton

This was a quick little read, and I loved it. Sexton does a wonderful job of "transforming" seventeen of the Grimm fairy tales into quirky, dark poetry. She leaves them as they are, but fleshes out characters or offers different points of view, and relates the tales to pop culture. One of my favorite examples of this was how she compared Cinderella and Prince Charming to the Bobbsey Twins.
The preface by Vonnegut is great, too.

Book #21

2007-09-04T15:43:00.000-07:00

21. Zoo Tails, Oliver Graham-Jones

I was very excited to read this book, as I just finished up a summer internship at the Beardsley Zoo. I thought it would be an appropriate closing to an amazing experience. I was wrong. The only thing that holds this book together is that Graham-Jones's stories have the potential to be interesting. Graham-Jones is not a good writer, and most of the book was occupied with "I invented this, I invented that" without indulging in the processes of invention.
I really regret having purchased this book - but I couldn't find it in any library. I guess I know why now.

Gourmet Meal

2007-08-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

If you were a full course meal what would you be?

soup: A gumbo - with okra, sausage, and fresh crab. Just spicy enough to kick you in the tongue, but not overwhelming.
salad: Caprese - made with a garden grown Brandywine, garden grown basil, and homemade mozzarella.
meat: Barbeque ribs. This a hands-on experience, people.
dessert: Strawberry shortcake. Simple, but absolutely delicious.

and what complimentary beverage would you be?
A glass of Jack.

Book #20

2007-08-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

20. Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver

I have owned this book for years, and despite how much I loved Bean Trees and Kingsolver, I never got around to reading it. What a mistake. There are a lot of great characters in this novel - some of my favorite ones were minor characters, such as Jax. As is usual with Kingsolver, the theme of love and family runs deep in this novel. She really has a talent for connecting seemingly random people in her novels, and I love it.

This is probably the last book I will get to read before school starts. I have eight books for my Contemporary British Fiction class. They all look wonderful.

Book #19

2007-08-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

19. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I forgot how wonderful Fitzgerald is. I read The Great Gatsby my junior year of high school, and loved it. Fitzgerald's prose is absolutely beautiful. This novel is not nearly as good as Gatsby, in my opinion, but interesting all the same. Dick's downward spiral was almost physically painful for me to read - that is how emotive his work is.

For Those Remaining

2007-08-24T17:53:00.001-07:00

Imagine you are on your deathbed. Recommend to those who remain in your life...

1) One book to read.
Steinbeck's East of Eden.
2) One movie to watch.
Breakfast at Tiffany's.
3) One food to eat.
A black bean burrito from Burrito Box.
4) One place to go.
Pennsylvanian woods. Beautiful.
5) One life lesson to leave behind.
"There's no use trying," she said, "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

2007-08-24T16:31:00.001-07:00

Okay. I admit it. I feed him from time to time. I sneak him little piles of cracked corn out the back of the barn door. And now he waits for me every morning. But I can't resist him (even now that he has molted his showy train) - he comes when you whistle! Clearly I am not the only one giving him treats on the sly.

I call him Iago. I am pretty sure he loves the name.

A Good Hair Day

2007-08-22T13:16:00.001-07:00

Grouchy Pickles.

I am really dreading going back to school. I miss my friends, I kind of miss the City - but I sure don't miss organic chemistry or genetics and I don't think I ever will. This is going to be a hard semester for me. I am sure I can pull it off, but I just don't know how well I can pull it off.

Also, when I leave for school I am going to miss the Zoo. Especially the crabby cutie up top - Pickles, our resident North American porcupine.

My 'Little Fingers' eggplants are doing okay. I think. Actually, I am really not sure. Only one of the six plants flowered, and now it has three 2-inch long eggplants on it. The eggplants haven't grown much more than this in the past week. There are really little 'Little Fingers.' Is that it? Is this as big as they get? What the heck do I make with 2-inch eggplants?

No Better Way to Stay Cool

2007-08-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

Hampton and Jodey, cooling off in the wet sand.

Book #18

2007-08-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

18. Rant: The Oral Autobiography of Buster Casey, Chuck Palahniuk

Okay. I really like Palahniuk. Fight Club is legendary in my eyes, and not just because it was the cause of those bloody shirtless Brad Pitt scenes. I loved Invisible Monsters. And I really enjoyed the greater part of this book - until it started to turn into a sci-fi novel. Buster Casey is a bizarre and strangely lovable character, and I was just so disappointed by how this book ended. I actually groaned. It seemed a hell of a lot less inventive than it could have been.

I don't know why I am so turned off by his books when he takes a bizarre storyline and makes it too bizarre for me to follow. Not that I don't understand it, but I just can no longer get into the story. It was the same way with Diary (ugh) and the very end of Choke. I don't know. I guess it's just me.

Book #17

2007-08-14T19:23:00.000-07:00

17. Freakonomics, Steven Levitt

I really enjoyed this book. Packed full of quirky information and told like a story. Levitt uses this information to guide readers to a new way of thinking - and I plan on looking at "conventional wisdom" just a little bit closer now. Definitely recommended - you may not agree with what he has to say, but it is a great tool in learning how to think outside the box.

2007-08-14T04:17:00.001-07:00

We are now rolling in tomatoes. With the power of hindsight, I now see that planting six cherry tomato plants was a bit of an overkill. If I had a food dryer, that would be one thing. The Golden Beauties are just that - beautiful. I was worried that they wouldn't have too great of a taste, but they are much better than any store-bought tomato I have had. My only issue is that they don't produce much. Besides the three tomatoes I have pulled off the plant, I only see two or three more ripening.

Eggplants are budding and growing! I think all of that heat we had in the past couple weeks gave them a nice push in the right direction. Since then they have really taken off.

In other news, I had a badly ingrown toenail that got infected - the doctor was nervous that if I had left it unattended for much longer that it would have gone septic. It's all taken care of now, but is still too swollen to fit in a shoe. I guess that means that I have today off?

Our guinea hogs at the Beardsley Zoo have gotten so big (the one to the right is Jodey - named after the stuffed pig in Amityville Horror)! Every weekend I am amazed at how much they have grown. These guys are such good-natured pigs, and so damn smart. We feed them separately, and they know exactly where they need to go. They went on their first walks around the visitors and they were extremely well-behaved, allowing the kids to pet them, hug them, and, of course, rub their bellies. The kids absolutely loved them.

This past weekend I got to put on waders and hop in the duck pond to help corral the ducks/geese. They get weighed once a month, and we also had to de-worm them. Is it just me or is duck crap the worst smelling crap there is? I felt like I smelled all day long.

Book #16

2007-08-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

16. World on Fire, Amy Chua

I really had to drag myself through this book for the past month. I have been very busy with work, my turtles, and my internship at the zoo - so it may not entirely be the book's fault. However, for the first half of the book I would get bored/depressed every chapter or two and have to put it down. It picked up in the last part and finally began to catch my attention. Chua has a lot of interesting things to say, but she buried a lot of this in case after case of violence and corruption.

My fifteenth book, in case you are wondering was the final chapter of the Harry Potter series, The Deathly Hallows. I read it in one eight-hour sitting, and emerged exhausted but satisfied. There were little nuances in the book that bothered me, but they really aren't worth picking over. No formal "review" of this one, because you can find them all over the place.

Real update this week. I promise.

Back home and back to work

2007-07-15T17:12:00.000-07:00

We got home in the middle of the day yesterday, and I keep wishing that we could go back. The hiking trails there were splendid - we went to Trough Creek Park twice last week and there was tons of cool stuff to see. Waterfalls, mountain views, mountain laurel in bloom, and a really old cemetery.

Z did a good job watering almost everything while we were away. He just seems to have a problem with potted plants. I don't know if he forgets to water them when he housesits, but the zinnias and my mom's favorite hanging plant were bone dry. He also pummeled holes in my raised rows by putting the hose head on "jet," instead of "shower." Oh well. No red tomatoes in the garden yet, but some big green ones. I don't even have flowers on any of the eleven eggplants. What is up with that?

Any idea what this little guy is? Love those spots. We found him in Trough Creek on one of the trails, dead.

Book #14

2007-07-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

14. The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman

This book was on my Summer Reading List as a blatant attempt to better educate myself about a world I mostly ignore. I also very rarely read non-fiction, so this was also a chance to read more of it.

I thought I would have to wade through this, because the subject matter was of very minimal interest to me. I was pleasantly surprised. It was packed with information, but not at all overwhelming. The way Friedman organized the book allowed for people like me (with no background knowledge) to easily sort through his theories and ideas. I loved his thesis - that the world is going to experience flattening (and already is) whether America likes it or not, and the key is whether or not we will adapt and how we will adapt. The anecdotes were lovely, and the book really helped me to achieve one of my goals this summer.

Vacation Ramblings

2007-07-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

We passed by Penn State for a moment on the way here -
it was painful, like ripping off a particularly sticky Band-Aid, only to find there is no scab left to pick at.

Am I the only one who loves the scenery that comes along with long car rides through the countryside? I am enamored with rolls of hay, tiny spears of corn, and flecks of livestock on hills of velvet green.

There is no fishing ($26 for a license that only lasts three days) and no boat (Uncle Bruce gone - and resident canoes for $10 an hour). This is surely not our beloved cabins, with its small buoyed corral for swimming and the concrete bottom to hold in the shipped-in sand.

But fresh lake water! Sun on my shoulders! The lovely freedom of mid-day naps! No barking (human or otherwise)!

My parents worry I will drown when I swim early in the morning, slipping out of the safety of the corral and into the danger of boats. It's not the boats they fear - they see me gasping and coughing water as I push myself to the next thin white marker.
They tell me not to swim so far - I plan to swim farther. I love cutting through the clear water with fine, rapid strokes - or lazily pushing back water underneath the surface like a frog, watching sunfish dash out in front of me.

Today we spent hours in a water park that only had three slides (four, as advertised, if you count a twin slide as a separate ride). Minigolf, Pip, and sprinklers.

The rest of the week - cavern exploring, Amish markets, hiking, and more of the lake.

My playlist: Lucinda Williams, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Neko Case, Joshua Radin, Josh Ritter, Joanna Newsom, Iron & Wine, and Johnny Cash. Perfect.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

2007-06-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Made this for Father's Day. Recipe here. Topped with hot fudge and peanut brittle. Delicious.

Book #13

2007-06-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

13. Home to Big Stone Gap, Adriana Trigiani

This was everything I would hope for in a guilty pleasure read. I am inexplicably drawn to Big Stone Gap and the characters that Trigiani has placed in it. I love the rural setting, and the quirky people. The romance and family dynamics are sweet and often very true to life. What a great ending (is it?) to Ave Maria's little series.
My only complaint would be the recipe interruptions. I thought this was a structural mistake - it really threw me off. The recipes would have been much more appreciated in an appendix at the end of the novel.

Book #12

2007-06-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

12. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Last summer I read Rand's The Fountainhead. It was one of the only books I read that summer, but I loved the way Rand wrote. Her characters were so real to me. I fell in love with Dominique and Howard. When I told someone how much I had loved the book, they demanded that I read Atlas Shrugged.
I am so glad that I did. I think Rand's heavy philosophical content puts a lot of people off. Yes, there is a speech that is over fifty pages long. But it isn't all that bad because - get this - what Rand is presenting through the story makes sense. And even if you don't buy into her philosophy, you should at least acknowledge her genius with words. Highly, highly recommended.

Next up is not a novel on my Summer Reading List, but a guilty-pleasure snag. No one told me Trigiani had come out with something new. That means Home to Big Stone Gap is next. Should be a quick, enjoyable read.

It's a Girl!

2007-06-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

Interning at the Beardsley Zoo has its advantages - despite spending a good portion of the day shoveling manure of some sort. One such advantage? The teensiest, most adorable baby goat in the world. One of the San Clementes in the Farmyard (the area where I work) gave birth Friday afternoon to a sweet little girl. I snapped some pictures on Sunday. She appears healthy, and is eating real well.
I am pretty sure that I am madly in love with every little bit of her - from her soft floppy ears to her wiggly little tail.

On Sunday, a visitor came up to me while I was cleaning up the duck pond area. He politely asked me what the bison ate, and stated how surprised he was at their size. He looked at me very skeptically when I told him that they grazed on the grass in their exhibit, as well as eating hay and a grain diet. He then asked if I was sure that they didn't get fed meat ("steaks") - how else could they get that large? At least it was a learning experience for him.

snacklets for me?

well, it sure isn't steak - the melon will have to do.

Grilled Chicken.

2007-06-07T15:56:00.001-07:00

We had this chicken for dinner last night - and it was as close to chicken-perfection as I have ever had. We used bone-in chicken breasts, with the skin. The skin really helped to keep the chicken moist and tender. I made my own simple herb rub, with fresh herbs from my garden. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I have used the sage in my garden, though I have been planting it for years.

Please excuse the really rudimentary measurements.

Basic Chicken Herb Rub:

approx. 6-7 fresh sage leaves, roughly chopped
approx. a palmful of fresh rosemary leaves, roughly chopped
6-8 garlic cloves, minced
approx. 1/3 c. olive oil
freshly ground pepper to taste, approx. 1 1/2 tsp.
salt to taste, approx. 1 1/2 tsp.

I whisk it all together, and then used my fingers to rub it all over the chicken breasts - don't forget to rub it underneath the skin! This really cooks in the flavor. I grilled the chicken over indirect for most of the time, and then turned the heat up for the last few minutes to get that beautiful, crispy golden skin.

Vegetables at a Stand Still.

2007-06-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Everything in the garden is alive, and looks fairly healthy. But it doesn't really look like it has grown. Normally, the tomato plants have already grown an inch or two, and the eggplants have leafed out. The lettuce look puny. I am going to blame it on the odd, almost-chilly weather we have had for the past few days.

I need to get a shade cloth for those lettuce. If temperatures start acting accordingly, they will need one soon.

My very first strawberry plants. I need to get some clean straw to lay in the containers, but I have no idea where to get such a small amount of straw. I don't think the zoo even has straw anymore - it is too warm for bedding now - but I will try asking them. The plants are beginning to send out runners. The woman at the nursery told me to bury the runners (?) but I haven't found any information about this online. I had a berry or two growing (wonderfully well, I might add), but I clipped them off so the plant could focus on getting bigger. Anyone know anything about strawberry plants?

I ordered a bunch of used books on Amazon.com throughout the week, including: Hemphill's Spice and Herb Bible, Schneider's The Improvisational Cook, Bubel's The New Seed Starter's Handbook, and Smith's Your Backyard Herb Garden. Can't wait for them to arrive!

And now, what's in (or is almost in) bloom today:

Pretty peonies - still waiting for them to burst open.

I love salvia. Anything purple or spire-like is delightful. Not too many bees in the bee garden (I should be PC and call it a pollinator garden) yet.

Vegetable Garden In the Ground!

2007-05-28T12:40:00.000-07:00

I was finally able to get the veggies into the garden today. I know, it's really late, but they are already pretty big plants. I just hope they produce before I have to leave for school. This is the first year that I have planted in raised rows (gasp!) and the garden looks much cleaner. It also leaves a lot more space, it seems.

In the garden I planted:

12 Summer Bibb lettuces
12 Ruby Red lettuces
6 Rosa Bianca eggplants
6 Little Fingers eggplants
6 cherry tomatoes
6 Roma tomatoes
6 Beefsteak tomatoes
2 Brandywine tomatoes
2 Golden Beauty tomatoes
EDIT: also 2 mystery squash/gourd-like seedlings (something I planted last year and can't remember)

I have two everlasting strawberries to put in large pots yet. They are already sending out runners, and I have been clipping off blossoms to promote plant growth. Pictures will be up later this week.

What's Growing 5/19/07

2007-05-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

I am finally home! The past few days have been extremely busy - full of unpacking, gardening, and driving to and fro. And they have also been cloudy and full of rain, which is great for the plants but makes me pout. The rain stopped up some time last night, so I was able to snap some pictures of what is growing in the various gardens.

Columbine - Rocky Mountain, I think - in my mother's perennial "driveway" bed. Gorgeous flowers.

Viola - also in the perennial garden.

Phlox - in the bee garden.

Lilacs. God, they smell wonderful. I love walking by our bush.

Chives - in the herb garden. Everything blooming seems to be purple. That's alright! Purple and green are my most favorite colors! The herb garden is an absolute mess. Besides the chives, all that is managing to poke through is spearmint, citronella, spearmint, and more spearmint. I was stupid to plant it in there - I guess now I know why mint is infamous for taking over. I think it has killed my perennial oregano. I will actually cry if it has. Check out the damage:

I don't look forward to pulling all of that out. Though I do have some lime green pots that would be perfect to transfer the some of the survivors to.

Book #11

2007-05-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

11. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver

First of all, I love Barbara Kingsolver. She is one of my top two favorite authors, and I have been waiting a long time for her to come out with another fiction novel - instead, I got this. I am not complaining. This is a non-fiction book, detailing the year in which Kingsolver and her family decided to eat local, and raise most of their food on their own, small Virginia farm.
I think Animal, Vegetable, Miracle really exemplifies how great of a writer Kingsolver is - she handles big issues like factory-farmed meat, GM produce, and global warming with tact. She avoids being preachy, and instead offers the pros and cons of eating locally - and anyone can see that the pros greatly outweigh the cons. The book definitely opened my eyes to a few things about our food culture, and reinforced many of my already established "food morals." What's really great about the book is that it offers practical advice for eating locally, including recipes and harvesting techniques.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who eats food, or knows anyone who eats food.

Wanted Cookbooks:

2007-05-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

What to Drink with What You Eat, Dornenburg and Page
Bread Matters, Andrew Whitley
The Filipino-American Kitchen, Jennifer Aranas
Williams-Sonoma New Healthy Kitchen: Desserts, Annabel Langbein
Modern Classics: Books 1 and 2, Donna Hay
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child
Jamie’s Italy, Jamie Oliver
Bread for Breakfast, Beth Hensperger
The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, Ina Garten
Panini, Bruschetta, Crostini, Viana La Place
The Cook and the Gardener, Amanda Hesser
The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, Jennifer Appel
The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller
The Zuni Café Cookbook, Judy Rodgers
The Sweet Life, Kate Zuckerman
Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic, Editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine
Super Natural Cooking, Heidi Swanson
Amy’s Bread, Amy Scherber, Toy Kim Dupree
Local Flavors, Deborah Madison
Baking: From My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan

Any suggestions?

Book #10

2007-05-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

10. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

Absolutely fantastic! What a great story, and an interesting peek into the circus life during the Great Depression. This is the first novel in a while that has genuinely moved me - to horror, thinking about growing old like the main character, and to tears (though I won't spoil that bit).
I highly recommend this.

I was going to start my summer reading list, but Barnes and Noble sent me a coupon for Kingsolver's new non-fiction book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I will be starting that as soon as I finish this post!

Book #9

2007-04-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

9. Middlemarch, George Eliot

Wow. I loved this book! It was tough to get through some times - provincial politics of the 1800's don't interest me too much - the novel was terribly well written. Eliot's humor is so quick-witted and refreshing that the novel feels much more modern than it is.
I originally read it because I had read somewhere that it was Barbara Kingsolver's favorite novel of all time. Kingsolver is probably my favorite author besides Steinbeck - so I had to read Middlemarch. I am so glad that I did.

One of my favorite quotes:
"'Oh, you dear good father!' cried Mary, putting her hands around her father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed. 'I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world.'
'Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better.'
'Impossible,' said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; 'husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.'"

Must Be Nice to Be a Bear...

2007-04-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

I feel like that sometimes, too. Becca and I went to the Bronx Zoo today after our chem lab final, and spent the day wishing we were animals so that we didn't have to take finals.

My favorite exhibit was the African wild dogs. Beautiful dogs, and much more active than many of the other animals in the other exhibit.

Score!

2007-04-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

I should be studying for my chem lab final - it's tomorrow morning - but I am too distracted by the gorgeous weather and my new purchase. Becca needed to go to Barnes and Noble, and we were both craving Mister Softee, so I walked with her. I picked up this little treat:

I have been craving sweet tea - and can't wait to get home from school and make a big pitcher of it. Oh, did I mention that it is an autographed copy?

Let's go Mets!

2007-04-22T16:38:00.000-07:00

My roommate is from Queens and was raised a Mets fan. She cried herself to sleep when they lost their chance at the Series last fall. Now she interns in their productions department, and dreams about marrying David Wright.

I happen to benefit from this deal - she gets free tickets to games. We didn't know this, though, and bought cheap ($9) seats for the Mets vs. Braves game last Friday. The seats were actually not too bad - we were right behind home plate. There were some obnoxious Braves fans behind us - and the Mets not performing as usual didn't help - but the game was a lot of fun!
Especially the surprise she had for us!

Finally - my name in big lights in New York City.

Turtle Portraits

2007-04-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

It is so dreary outside, but I guess I should be glad that it is not snowing.
Here are some pictures from this past Monday of the baby turtles. Uzi was looking much better. I really hope he pulls through.

There is Uzi, my Chinatown RES, hanging out in his warm and cozy Turtle-Pedialyte. He ate one of the sticks, so I am not too nervous about him. Eating is a great indicator of health.

And there's Thompson, the RES/Florida Cooter hybrid, taking a big bite of cuttlebone. I take off the hard backing, break into baby-turtle-sized chunks, and toss it in the tank. The babies gobble it up, and it provides them with much-needed calcium. The cuttlebone is a lot less messy than that powdered calcium that you can coat their food with - and the powder often dispersed into the water. This way, I know they are getting the calcium.

I miss my babies. My last exam is on May 15th, but it seems like it is months away.

Book Review #8

2007-04-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat

Yet another book for my Literature in Society class. This was the first novel that everyone in the class seemed to unanimously love. At times it was a bit disturbing - the "testing" of the daughters, for one. These are things that teachers never talk about in history or high school sociology classes. I loved Danticat's writing style. It was very vivid, without bogging the reader down with verbose descriptions. Highly recommended.

Grandma's Favorite

2007-04-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

My family is primarily Irish and Polish. It is safe to say that we are potato people. We love potatoes. Can't get enough of 'em. We like them as our main course, as salads, as side dishes (of course!), and even as dessert. Pierogi, a Polish potatoey dumpling, are a staple holiday dish. My great-grandmother and grandmother have both been making them for years, and I hope to learn how next Christmas.

We like potatoes. Gnocchi are also made of potatoes. Are you following me? My grandmother loves gnocchi. I have been given the task of making them for her birthday. My first gnocchi dish was potato gnocchi with cheese, which my family quickly devoured. It was a bit too heavy for me, though, and when Grandma's birthday came around this year, I decided to try something a little different. The Food Network, and Mario Batali, provided me with the perfect recipe. These gnocchi are not made with potato ( :( ), but are just as delicious as any potato gnocchi I have ever eaten, and sit a little lighter in my stomach. My grandmother loved them so much that she told all of her sisters about them, and now I have to spend a day cooking the gnocchi and sausage for them.

I finally got around to making the gnocchi last night for my roommates. I bought a large loaf of freshly baked bread from Whole Foods, and popped it in the oven for a few minutes on 350F to warm it a bit. The bread is essential to this dish - you need it to sop up all that sauce and pile on the tomato chunks. I meant to take some pictures, but Becca and Amanda started eating before I could do so. A testament to its deliciousosity?

I omit the fennel bulb usually, simply because our local supermarket in Connecticut does not have it too often. To make up for this, I use sausages made with fennel. Chelsea Market has a cute little Italian market where the sausages are fresh and handmade (according to the sign, of course) and terribly affordable. Frozen sausage from the supermarket works just as well, I am not ashamed to say.

How does one cite recipes? It seems to be general etiquette to only post recipes which are original or altered, and link online recipes or mention the cookbooks. However, unless I own the cookbook, I tend to lose the source of recipes - be they magazines or websites or borrowed books. I would like to have recipes available for my use on this blog, and also want to give credit where it is due.

Ricotta Gnocchi with Sausage and Fennel
Original recipe by Mario Batali, only very minimally altered
Serves 4

Gnocchi:

32 oz. whole milk ricotta or 1.5 lb fresh goat milk ricotta
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, or as needed
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves or 1 tsp dried
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Place the ricotta in a fine sieve over a bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 8 hours, or overnight. In a medium-sized bowl, stir the drained ricotta, 1 cup of the flour, the eggs, parsley, salt, pepper and nutmeg together gently but thoroughly until a soft dough forms, adding a little more of the flour if the dough is sticky when poked. Forming the gnocchi: dip 2 tablespoons in cool water. Using 1 spoon, scoop up a heaping tablespoon of the ricotta mixture and use the other spoon to form it into a smooth, pointed oval. (Alternatively, you can roll the mixture into balls with well-floured hands, using about 2 tablespoons ricotta mixture for each ball.) Place the gnocchi on a baking sheet lined with a lightly-floured kitchen towel.

Tomato Sauce:

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 Spanish onion, chopped in 1/4 inch dice
4 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves, or 1 tablespoon dried
2 (28-ounce) cans peeled whole tomatoes, crushed by hand and juices reserved
Salt, to taste

In a 3-quart saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and light golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes. Add the thyme and cook 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes and juice and bring to a boil, stirring often. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes until as thick as hot cereal. Season with salt and serve. This sauce holds 1 week in the refrigerator or up to 6 months in the freezer. Yield: 4 cups

2 pounds Italian sausage, removed from casing and crumbled
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted and ground
1 tablespoon red chile flakes
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 bulb fennel, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely diced
1 rib celery, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
2 cups basic tomato sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Ricotta gnocchi
Pecorino Romano, grated

In a heavy-bottomed pan, cook the sausage over high heat until it begins to brown in its own fat. Add half of the fennel seeds and chile flakes. Remove the sausage from the pan when cooked through and add the onions, fennel, carrots, celery and garlic. Cook the vegetables until they're well browned and return the sausage to the pan. Add the tomato sauce and remaining fennel seeds and chile flakes. Simmer 1/2 hour, until vegetables and sausage are very tender. Season well with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, bring 6 quarts of water to a boil and add 2 tablespoons salt. Gently slip as many gnocchi at a time as will float freely into a pot of boiling water, stirring gently with a wooden spoon as you do. Cook until the gnocchi rise to the surface, about 7 minutes. (Test 1 for doneness by cutting into the center; the gnocchi should be the same color and consistency all the way through.) Scoop them out with a wire skimmer as soon as they are cooked. Drain and add to the pan with the hot ragu, tossing gently 1 minute to coat. Top with Pecorino Romano and serve immediately.

Happy Easter!

2007-04-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have been cooking and baking non-stop since Friday night. Dad decided to pick up three different kinds of seafood - cod, salmon, and frozen shrimp - for Good Friday. I cooked them all in different ways, and I liked the shrimp best. I fried the cod, baked the salmon in a soy-ginger marinade, and sauteed the shrimp in lemon juice and red pepper with broccoli. We made our own french fries, too!

For Easter, I baked a chocolate Babka, red velvet cupcakes, and a cheesecake. According to the family, everything came out delicious. It was my first time baking a bread, and I didn't realize how much work it was. Allowing for time to rise, and pounding down the dough, took up a great amount of time. I also had to bake a sponge cake to use for crumbs in the bread's filling. I used a basic sponge cake recipe from Bittman's How to Cook Everything. The recipe for the Babka was adapted from the chocolate Babka served at Mrs. London's, and was in the March 2007 issue of Saveur. It was quite different from the Babka bread that we normally eat for breakfast on Easter Sunday. The Babka that my aunt bakes for us is more of a toast-and-butter bread that happens to come with a streusel-ish topping. The chocolate Babka was definitely a dessert. It was moist, but still very airy. My grandmother proclaimed it a new staple of our Easter celebration.

The red velvet cupcakes were, well, very red. After seeing all of those red velvet cakes in the Daring Bakers' blogs, I wanted to try my hand at the brightly colored confections. Using the recipe posted at Veronica's Test Kitchen, I made twenty-four heavy cupcakes. I altered the icing recipe a smidge by adding red candy crystals. The authentic recipes called for nuts in the icing, but one of my cousins has a severe allergy. I wanted the crunch of the nuts, but wanted to avoid the severe allergic reaction. And the crystals turned the icing (which was to die for) a pretty pastel pink. My little girl cousins loved the cupcakes - and the boys disregarded the pink frosting and called the cupcakes Blood Muffins.

Chocolate Babka
From Saveur, March 2007
Makes 2 loaves

2 7-gram packages active dry yeast
1/2 c. milk
1 3/4 c. plus 2/3 c. flour
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp plus a pinch of salt
1 tsp each finely grated orange zest and lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
7 egg yolks plus 1 egg white and 1 egg
15 1/2 tbsp butter (11 1/2 tbsp melted, 4 tbsp diced and chilled)
1/3 c. almond paste (broken in pieces)
2 c. sponge cake crumbs
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 c. raisins, plumped in boiling water and drained
1 1/2 tbsp dark rum
1/2 lb chocolate, melted and kept warm

1. Whisk together yeast and milk in bowl of a standing mixer until dissolved. Add 3/4 c. flour and beat on slow speed with paddle attachment; increase speed to medium high and beat for 3 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a very warm spot until doubled in volume, about 1 hour. Add 1 1/3 c. flour, 1/2 c. sugar, 1/2 tbsp salt, zests, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and yolks to dough. Beat on slow speed to combine; increase speed to medium and mix until dough pulls away from paddle, then increase to high and beat for 2 minutes. Reduce to low and drizzle in 8 tbsp butter in 3 batches, waiting between additions until it's absorbed; beat until combined. Increase to high; beat for 3 minutes more. Cover bowl and let rise in a very warm spot until doubled in volume, about 2 hours. Punch down dough with floured hands; turn out onto a parchment paper-lined sheet pan dusted with flour; dust top of dough with flour. Slip pan into a garbage bag and tie tightly; chill overnight.

2. Beat almond paste and egg white in a bowl with an electric mixer until combined. Add crumbs, 1/2 tbsp melted butter, and 1/4 c. water; beat until combined. Cover and set filling aside. Stir together remaining flour, 1/4 c. sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon in a bowl. Add diced butter and remaining vanilla, beat just until crumbly. Cover and chill streusel. Grease two 2 1/4" x 4" x 8" loaf pans with a little of the remaining melted butter. Combine raisins and rum in a bowl; then combine remaining sugar and cinnamon in another bowl. Whisk together remaining salt, 1 egg, and 2 tsp water in a bowl to make an egg wash.

3. Halve chilled dough. On a floured surface, roll out each dough piece to 6" x 14" rectangle (long sides parallel you). Brush with egg wash; divide and spread half of the filling over each, leaving a 1" margin around edges. Spread 1/4 c. chocolate over each (reserve remaining chocolate); sprinkle with the raisin mixture and cinnamon-sugar mixture. Press raisins and filling into dough. Roll each dough half into a tight jelly roll; press to seal bottom and sides. Gently roll each jelly roll into a 20"-long piece. Fold each in half lengthwise and twist each twice. Place each twisted roll in a prepared pan, seam side down and ends tucked under. Brush tops and sides with the remaining melted butter; sprinkle with two-thirds of the streusel (reserve remaining streusel), gently pressing it in. Let rise in a very warm spot until doubled in volume, about 2 hours.

4. Heat oven to 350F. Sprinkle loaves with remaining streusel and bake until golden brown and cooked through, about 45 minutes. Let cool. Drizzle with remaining chocolate and let set.

Spring Cleaning

2007-04-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

It is so gray outside. How depressing. The clouds look like they would love to drop some snow, but I doubt that will happen.
After spending far too long grocery shopping with my father, I finally got out in the backyard to start raking up the mess that the beds have become.
Not much is growing yet, but it has been so cold here lately that I don't blame the perennials for wanting to stay underground.

I raked out the leaves and last year's mulch from my bee garden and my mother's flower bed. I spread compost thickly over these beds - but didn't get much further with the huge trash can of compost that Dad had picked up from the dump. I may do some more in the vegetable garden tomorrow or on Monday - but I don't like pulling up the mulch and leaves unless I have something to replace it. Leaving the soil bare for the month left of school is not in the soil's best interest. I would much rather leave it to do until I get home for the summer.

The butterfly garden (shown above) is looking especially dismal - and I know that it is going to be a mess in a month. I see the daylilies poking through the soil, and the butterfly bush is starting to bud, but those are the only plants that I can recognize. Last summer, two women donated a ton of perennials to me - including black-eyed Susans, mums, coreopsis, and a ton of other plants that I don't know too well. I hope it all comes up again this year, and is recognizable before I have to start weeding.
The one leafy thing growing in the garden that I can identify - Shasta daisies in the bee garden.

Uzi's sick

2007-04-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today was mostly spent with awful-smelling water all the way up to my elbows. I went to the high school to clean my turtles' tanks, and found them in terrible condition. I am disappointed, and a little angry, that they were allowed to get this way - but I shouldn't expect other people to be cleaning my animals' homes.

Little Uzi, my red-eared slider, is very, very sick. He has what is clearly a respiratory infection - gasping, bubbling at the mouth, extreme lethargy. I think it is due to a broken tank heater (which no one bothered to let me know about - or check). The high school turns off its heat over the weekends to save money, and without something heating up the water at night (the heat lamps are on timers), it can get frigid. The filthy water probably didn't help any.

There isn't much I can do for him. The only real option is a vet visit and antibiotics - which I definitely cannot afford. I am pretty sure that for a baby turtle of his size, there isn't much the vet could do anyway. So - I emptied the tank, scrubbed it all out, got the filter working again (maybe this is why the water was so gross?), moved a heater that works into the tank and bumped the water temperature to 80, and let Uzi soak in a warm vitamin-rich solution. I am sure he hasn't been eating, so the turtle-Pedialyte will help him. Hopefully he will pull through.

Recipe for Turtle-Pedialyte

1 quart water
1/4 c. orange juice (I use the Calcium kind for an extra boost)
1 tsp sea salt

Bring the water to a boil, and then stir in orange juice and salt. Let solution cool to about 80, and allow turtle to soak in solution - remove turtle before solution cools completely. With a little turtle as weak as Uzi, I had to make sure the solution was shallow enough so that he wouldn't drown.

Summer To Do List

2007-04-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

I will be home in Connecticut by tomorrow night - and a large trash can full of compost awaits me. I cannot wait to get home and start prepping the gardens for May.

In the meantime, I have a list of various things to accomplish over the summer -

Read 30 books.
Finish work on the butterfly garden - add a birdbath, etc.
Build a fire pit.
Build a compost pile.
Learn to bake bread.
Learn about wines.
Finish Uzi/Thompson's tank.
Move goldfish into 30-gallon.
Set up betta tank.
Walk with Brody every day - he could stand to lose about five pounds.
Set aside at least $2000 in the bank.
Spend some time at the beach at least once a week.
Purchase a digital camera of my own - preferably the Nikon Coolpix S10.

It may seem like a lot of things to accomplish - but I have four months of freedom from school, with only work and my Beardsley Zoo internship to get in the way. I cannot wait for this school year to be over and done with.

2007-03-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

NYT articles for your consideration:

Who Killed Fido? We All Did
How Many Scientists?

This is partly why I am choosing to go local this summer for veggies and fruits. I am looking for the New Haven CSA chapter, and registering as soon as I can. Fresh, organic, locally grown produce is not bad for only $14 a week.

Turtle Tank Construction

2007-03-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

Last summer I purchased a 225-gallon tank for $200. The woman who had owned it previously had kept prairie dogs in it, so the tank smelled like rodent, and a lot of the aquarium sealant had been chewed away at. The tank came on a stand about 2 inches off the ground with eight heavy duty wheels. A top had been constructed for the tank in two halves, each with a thick chicken-wire type screen.

The tank is roughly 6 ft long x 2 ft high x 1.5 ft wide. Essentially, a glass coffin. I used it this year for my Eastern Painted, Shelley, until we could construct a pond for her outside to live in year-round. Unfortunately, Shelley was lost due to an accident (read: murder) with chemicals in the Biology lab she was being housed in while I was away at school.

The babies will be going in it this summer, after it is cleaned and redesigned. As you can see from above, the tank was kind of bare. Shelley only had three legs, so it was hard for her to maneuver in crowded spaces. Also, over the course of this year, all eight wheels have cracked/shattered, and the tank has had to be resealed. The wooden "stand" is currently being supported by strategically placed bricks.

The plan is to build a heavy-duty stand for the tank. This tank weighs roughly a ton when filled with water, and still feels like it weighs a ton even when it is empty. I have gotten basic blue prints from this website. The stand would look something like the one to the left (that is a 180-gallon), except I am toying with staining the wood rather than painting it. I also want to create a lip around the top of the stand that covers the bottom inch or two of the tank, as well as the piece of styrofoam that will be underneath it.

Once the stand is complete, I will also do an above-tank basking area modeled off of
this basking spot. I am not yet sure how I am going to work the heat/UVA/UVB lighting. The babies are currently basking under a mercury vapor bulb (which combines heat and UVA/UVB), but the bulbs are $80 a piece. When I need to replace them, I often don't have that kind of cash. It will probably be easier to somehow install a UV strip, and have a heat lamp next to it, as I have done with Remington.

Of course, pictures will be posted as progress occurs.

Book Reviews #4-#7

2007-03-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

4. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
I usually do not read YA fiction - but I had never read this as a kid (how?). It was sitting on my bookshelf when I went home one weekend - probably something my brothers read - so I breezed through it. Considering its targeted audience, this was a great read. What a fun way to get kids interested in science and vocabulary! This series will definitely be on my children's book shelves.

5. Passing, Nella Larsen
This was required reading for my Literature in Society course (a combined pluralism and English course). However, I read the book in entirety and really enjoyed it, so I am putting it on the list.
The novel concentrates on two light-skinned black women in the 1920's, who participate in the act of "passing" - moving around white society as though they are white. One of the women, Clare, has left behind her heritage completely, marrying a white man who is terribly racist. Irene, on the other hand, passes only for convenience.
Having never heard the term passing, this novel was an eyeopener. Larsen dealt with the act of passing seriously, without making the novel weighty. I highly recommend this book.

6. Shoot the Moon, Billie Letts
A quick, light read (took me one night) to take my mind off the midterms I had just finished. It was fairly predictable - but I guess that's what you have to expect from fluff reading. The book is about a young man who comes to a tiny Oklahoma town to find his mother and discovers that his mother was killed when he was a baby, and he had been abducted. Small town conflicts abound as the man comes closer to finding his mother's killer.

7. No-No Boy, John Okada
Wow. This was another book read for my Literature in Society course. It is about a young Japanese-American (this term is hotly discussed through out the book, but for simplicity's sake, I will use it) man who rejected the U.S. government's draft for WWII, and was sentenced to two years in prison. Though Ichiro spends two years in an internment camp before his jail sentence, this time is not really discussed. Instead, it focuses on the effect of the draft, and the war in general, on the Japanese community in post-war America.
The author, John Okada, is apparently the first Asian-American novelist. His writing is strong and gritty, and I loved it.
I never really learned too much about the Japanese during WWII, besides a brief paragraph in my high school history book that mentioned the internment camps, so this novel really blew me away. I highly recommend it.

Planet Earth

2007-03-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

If you aren't watching Planet Earth, you should probably catch up on the last three episodes and start watching.
It's beautifully done - besides the odd commercial cuts - and features a lot of never-before-seen shots of animals.

For instance, the producers were able to capture a birds-eye-view of an African Cape dog hunt, showing the strategy of the dogs. They also showed a snow leopard hunting for her cub.

Sigourney Weaver narrates the show, and quite well I might add.

Perhaps seeing all of these rare, gorgeous shots of nature will help to entice people to get moving and start helping out the environment on a grander scale.

Planet Earth is on Sundays, 8 pm EST.

Where is Spring?

2007-03-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a wonderfully warm vacation in Punta Gorda, Florida to find New England blanketed in snow and ice. The vegetable garden is practically an ice skating rink!

Well, I guess I will have to wait until I get back over Easter break to get some work done in the backyard. My father will be going to the town dump the Friday before I come home to pick up several tubs of compost. I am debating whether I should use the compost in the vegetable garden, seeing as I really don't know what it's made up of.

I will be spreading it in the butterfly garden and my mother's flower beds, though. It is amazingly rich and I have seen it do wonders to the tough soil that we have in the front of the house.

A sample also needs to be collected from the veggie garden and sent to UConn's soil testing lab. Hopefully, all I will need to do is make some soil adjustments and my tomatoes will stop becoming dalmatians halfway through the summer.

Books Read in 2007

2007-03-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

1. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
2. The Prestige, Christopher Priest
3. Ceremony, Leslie Silko
4. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
5. Passing, Nella Larsen
6. Shoot the Moon, Billie Letts
7. No-No Boy, John Okada
8. Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat
9. Middlemarch, George Eliot
10. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
11. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver
12. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
13. Home to Big Stone Gap, Adriana Trigiani
14. The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman
15. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
16. World on Fire, Amy Chua
17. Freakonomics, Steven Levitt
18. Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, Chuck Palahniuk
19. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver
21. Zoo Tails, Oliver Graham-Jones
22. Transformations, Anne Sexton
23. The Quiet American, Graham Greene
24. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Alan Sillitoe
25. Waterland, Graham Swift
26. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker
27. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter
28. King Leopold's Ghost, Adam Hochschild
29. Reading in the Dark, Seamus Deane
30. Brick Lane, Monica Ali
31. A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah
32. The Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman
33. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
34. Blindness, Jose Saramago
35. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
36. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

Favorites bolded.

Books Read in 2006

2007-03-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

1) Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
2) Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
3) Pretty Birds, Scott Simon
4) Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
5) Son of a Witch, Gregory Maguire
6) Lucky, Alice Sebold
7) Big Stone Gap, Adriana Trigiani
8) Big Cherry Holler, Adriana Trigiani
9) Sula, Toni Morrison
10) A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
11) Letters Home, Sylvia Plath
12) Milk Glass Moon, Adriana Trigiani
13) The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
14) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
15) 1984, George Orwell
16) Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood
17) Tar Baby, Toni Morrison
18) Within Arm's Reach, Ann Napolitano
19) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
20) The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd
21) Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
22) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
23) Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck
24) The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
25) A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
26) The Queen of the Big Time, Adriana Trigiani
27) Little Earthquakes, Jennifer Weiner
28) Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner
29) Angels in America, Tony Kushner
30) Antigone, Anouilh
31) Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso
32) Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
33) All Aunt Hagar's Children, Edward P. Jones
34) The Pact, Jodi Picoult
35) Zoo Story, Edward Albee
36) True West, Sam Shepard
37) The Boy Not Taken, Jennifer Weiner

Favorites bolded.

To Be Read List

2007-03-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Memoirs of a Muse, Lara Vapnyar
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Douglas Adams
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer: A Novel, Sena Jeter Naslund
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter, Adeline Yen Mah
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: as told to Alex Haley
A Man, Oriana Fallaci
Letter to a Child Never Born, Oriana Fallaci
This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, Eric Schlosser
Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman, Candace Serena Falk
The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler
Remix: reading + composing culture, Catherine G. Latterell
Capote, a biography, Clarke
The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue
My Life and Other Unfinished Business, Dolly Parton
A Scattering of Jades, Alexander C. Irvine
The Ginger Tree, Oswald Wynd
True to Form, Elizabeth Berg
Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
The Fall of a Sparrow, Robert Hellenga
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Niels Lhyne, Jens Peter Jacobsen
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, Laurie Garrett
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin
The Singing Tree, Kate Seredy
The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
The House of Spirits, Isabel Allende
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
Palace Walk, Najib Mahfuz
The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Dune, Frank Herbert
Beautiful Bodies, Laura Shaine Cunningham
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Jasper Fforde's series
The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
Shopgirl, Steve Martin
Waiting, Ha Jin
Speaking With the Angel, edited by Nick Hornby
Not All Tarts Are Apple, Pip Granger
The Widow Ginger, Pip Granger
Mysterious Skin, Scott Heim
Light in August, William Faulkner
1776, William McCullough
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Plague Dogs, Richard Adams
The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst
Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg
For the Love of Books: 115 Celebrated Writers on the Books They Love Most, Schwartz
Prey, Michael Crichton
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, Michael Pollan
The Grass Harp, Truman Capote
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
White Noise, Don DeLillo
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Lust for Life, Irving Stone
Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Ulysses, James Joyce
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre
Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Less than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, Cormac Mccarthy
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, Daniel Quinn
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Magus, John Fowles
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee, Charles J. Shields
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler
Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
I Claudius, Robert Graves
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
Native Son, Richard Wright
Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
U.S.A., John Dos Passos
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
The Wings of a Dove, Henry James
The Ambassadors, Henry James
The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
The Golden Bowl, Henry James
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
Howards End, E.M. Forster
Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan
Istanbul: Memories and the City, Orhan Pamuk
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kai Bird
The Places in Between, Rory Stewart
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery, D. T. Max
When Madeline Was Young, Jane Hamilton
Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette, Sena Jeter Naslund
Cross-X, Joe Miller
Unbowed, Wangari Maathai
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson
Leap Days: Chronicles of a Midlife Move, Katherine Lanpher
Sold, Patricia McCormick
The Sense of Paper, Taylor Holden
On Agate Hill, Lee Smith
Educating Esme, Esme Raji Codell
Seize the Time, Bobby Seale
A Language Older Than Words, Derrick Jensen
The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, Daniel Quinn
My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine, Margaret Starbird
Stupid White Men: ...And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!, Michael Moore
Anger, Thich Nhat Hanh
Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Crescent, Diana Abu-Jaber
The Creative Journal: The Art of Finding Yourself, Lucia Cappacchione
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
The Plague, Albert Camus
Growth of the Soil, Knut Hamsun
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare
I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon
Stealing Buddha's Dinner, Bich Minh Nguyen
All God's Children, Rene Denfeld
Petropolis, Anya Ulinich
Waiting for Daisy, Peggy Orenstein
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott
Measure of a Man, Sidney Poiter
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
The Seventeen Traditions, Ralph Nader
Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant, Daniel Tammet
Dog Years: A Memoir, Mark Doty
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson and David Relin
Mississippi Sissy, Kevin Sessums
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack Obama
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Dennis T. Avery
God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, Victor J. Stenger
Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease, Sharon Moalem and Jonathan Prince
Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats, Steve Ettlinger
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo
The Templar Legacy, Steve Berry
Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult
Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire, Ruth Downie
The Terror, Dan Simmons
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts, Milan Kundera
At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches, Susan Sontang
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, Simon Schama
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips
The Occupation, Patrick Cockburn
The Girls Who Went Away, Ann Fessler
The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan
The Liar's Club, Mary Karr
Cherry, Mary Karr
We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
A Thousand Days in Venice, Marlena de Blasi
Girls of Tender Age, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
The Kindness of Strangers, Katrina Kittle
Halfway House, Katharine Noel
The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai, John Tayman
Jesus Land: A Memoir, Julia Scheeres
To Buy or Not to Buy Organic, Cindy Burke
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, Atul Gawande
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, Atul Gawande
The Foreign Student, Susan Choi
American Woman, Susan Choi
The Tempest, Shakespeare
Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It, Michael Ableman
What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
Heat, Bill Buford
The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, Anthony Bourdain
Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
My Life in France, Julia Child
O Taste and See, Garrison and Hermsen
Much Depends on Dinner, Margaret Visser
Best Food Writing 2006, Holly Hughes
Spice: The History of a Temptation, Jack Turner
Will Write for Food, Dianne Jacob
Beautiful Swimmers, William W. Warner
A History of the World in 6 Glasses, Tom Standage
The Food of the Gods, H.G. Wells
Hunger: An Unnatural History, Sharman Apt Russell
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
Riddled with Life, Marlene Zuk
The United States of Arugula, David Kamp
Kabul Beauty School, Deborah Rodriguez
The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, Thomas McNamee
Climbing the Mango Trees, Madhur Jaffrey
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
What Was She Thinking?, Zoe Heller
Nerve Damage, Peter Abrahams
The Sweet Breathing of Plants, ed. Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson
Trawler, Redmond O'Hanlon
How to Pick a Peach, Russ Parsons
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
The Sexual Life of Catherine M., Catherine Millet
Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O'Neill
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Ed. Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Abhorsen Trilogy, Garth Nix
Backyard Giants, Susan Warren
Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, Scribner
The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
Falling Through the Earth, Danielle Trussoni
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright
Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick
The Gathering, Anne Enright
Self Help, Edward Docx
The Welsh Girl, Peter Ho Davies
Gifted, Nikita Lalwani
What Was Lost, Catherine O'Flynn
The Gift of Rain, Tan Twan Eng
Winnie & Wolf, A.N. Wilson
Darkmans, Nicola Barker
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Animal's People, Indra Sinha
Last Orders, Graham Swift
The Sea, John Banville
Children of Men, P.D. James
His Dark Materials Illuminated, Millicent Lenz
Lyra's Oxford, Phillip Pullman
A Country Year, Sue Hubbell
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, Charlotte Mosley
Zeroville, Steve Erickson
Proust was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer
Cheating at Canasta, William Trevor
A Time to Keep Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor
Little Heathens, Mildred Armstrong Kalish
The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross
The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, Linda Colley
Man Gone Down, Michael Thomas
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp, Gwen Roland
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer and Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
Wonderful Life, Stephen Jay Gould
Life After God, Douglas Coupland
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis
Native Son, Richard Wight
Supertoys Last All Summer Long, Brian W. Aldiss
Bradbury Stories, Ray Bradbury
Robot Visions, Isaac Asimov
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Jacob Grimm
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Our Velocity, Dave Eggers
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin
The Mating Mind, Geoffrey Miller
The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers, Sarah-Kate Lynch
Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro
Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer
Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein
Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson
The Two Kinds of Decay, Sarah Manguso
Stitches, David Small
Ratio, Michael Ruhlman
Fordlandia, Greg Grandin
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
This is Where I Leave You, Jonathan Tropper
Fat of the Land, Langdon Cook
Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand
Beyond Backpacking, Ray Jardine
Bringing it to the Table, Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan
The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, Daniel Paul Schreber
A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn
The Art of Eating, MFK Fisher
The Gastronomical Me, MFK Fisher
Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout

The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead

A Little Introduction

2007-03-18T09:41:00.001-07:00

Hello reader!

My name is Casey, and I am a soon-to-be twenty year old girl. I am at the end of my sophomore year at Fordham University at Lincoln Center - a university that is a block away from New York City's Central Park and neighbor to the Metropolitan Opera.

When not at school, I live at home with my parents and two little brothers in southern Connecticut, fifteen minutes from New Haven and less than five minutes from the beach. My bedroom has a gorgeous view of the Farm River, and its surrounding marsh - which butts against our property.

I am a Natural Science major, with hopes of completing Environmental Science and English minors. The ultimate goal is veterinary medicine - though I haven't narrowed down what specific veterinary field I want to go into just yet.

The love of my life is my long-haired miniature dachshund, Brody. My three turtles (Uzi, Thompson, and Remington) come in close behind him.

Most of my friends are not interested in two of my favorite activities - cooking (unless, of course, I am cooking for them) and gardening. So, I have turned to the web for garden- and foodie-talk.

Hopefully, I will be able to document my successes and mistakes in both of these areas on this blog to help me improve. Maybe I'll make some friends along the way as well!