I love...Monkey See

My nearest and dearest know that I spend an obscene amount of time reading blogs. So I'll be sharing some of my favorites from time to time.

One site I hit every day is NPR's Monkey See, which is the pop-culture blog from National Public Radio. It's not so much a matter of trying to keep up to date but rather to read the sublime writing of Linda Holmes (aka Miss Alli, the late lamented recapper from Television Without Pity). Linda is a brilliant, funny writer who can bring the snark like no one else and has an unabashed love for Reality TV. She's the only person other than myself who actually admits to watching Blush on Lifetime.

Girls, I give you Linda's 'Ten Surprising Wholesome Values Discovered In Old Episodes Of 'Little House On The Prairie'. Aren't you glad those weren't wasted hours?

For more Linda, visit her personal blog Things What Things.

I love...Julia Child

It's that holiday time of year, when much of our energy goes into cooking. And you just don't cook around our house without Julia's help.

Ever since it was published in 1989, our default cookbook has been The Way to Cook by Julia Child. It was a huge investment for us at the time ($50!) and a bit controversial, because the Silver Palate ladies came out with The New Basics that same year. Lukins and Russo were considered to be much more modern and their book more inclusive. But Child wrote a wonderful, easy to use book with great pictures and a good set of recipes and skills that every cook should have at hand.

This is a book for the beginner as well as the more experienced cook. The Way to Cook is written in typical Julia style...she takes a basic recipe, teaches you how to make it step by detailed step, and then expands on it. So once you know how to make a pizza dough, you go on to make calzones. Start with a roast chicken, move on to boneless stuffed turkey and designer duck. Mike uses this book for pies (see above), soups, and meat, and I've never used another pizza recipe. There's even a simplified version of the famous french bread from Mastering v. 2

So thank you Julia, for making life in the kitchen a little easier these past twenty years.

I love...LibraryThing

I absolutely adore LibraryThing. For those of you who've never heard of it, LibraryThing is an online book cataloging service. You can keep track of all your books, add comments and reviews, read what other people have to say about the books, and more. If you're socially inclined there are plenty of discussion groups to join as well. Anyone can get a free account (which allows you to catalog up to 200 books) or get a lifetime subscription for $25.

One of my life goals is to get all our books entered on LibraryThing. I figure I'm about half done (700 and counting!). This would certainly be easier if a) Mike & I quit buying so many books, and b) I wasn't such a lazy slug, but I'm working on it. You can track my progress using the link to my library on this blog.