Cookbook Collection

Let's  call this a series. This post was originally published 15 September 2011 at folioleaves.wordpress.com.

A while ago I started my collection of cookbooks. It's not much yet. But I am proud of it. I particularly like 19th century English cookbooks, but I think it will be a while before I really am in a position to start collecting those. So, for the present my cookbooks are early-mid 20th century.

I find it absolutely fascinating to see how different (and yet the same) cooking practices and recipes were. I also think it is fascinating to watch the evolution of the cookbook over the centuries. I'm hoping that I can share more of my cookbook fascination with you over the ensuing months and years.

The beginnings of my little collection

 

Kool-aid--Did you know it's useful for more than just drinking?

Let's call this a series. This post was originally published 18 October 2011 at folioleaves.wordpress.com.

I have been waiting for a reason to dye paper for a while and due to some recent events (that I may or may not ever tell you about) I finally had a good reason to do it. So on Saturday I popped by Giant on my way home from errand-running and purchased the "dye". I had decided that I wanted to dye my paper red and I had thought of the perfect thing that I hoped would make the same kind of red on paper that it made on my mom's carpet when I was kid (It was my brother's fault--not mine). Kool-aid.

By the time I had actually started the dying process I'd realized that really my paper was going to be more pink than red and I was ok with that. And the light baby-girl pink that I ended up with I think will look fantastic in my next book. Though oddly enough the Kool-aid did turn my hands about the shade of red I had been hoping for on my paper.

 

Stowaway Magazine

Let's call this a series. This post was orginally published 22 September 2011 at folioleaves.wordpress.com.

Here is another super old post from the other blog that we're reposting here. Note to the world: I worked for Stowaway in the Fall of 2010--on the Winter 2011 issue.

About a year ago I worked on the staff of the a publication called Stowaway. It is a student produced magazine that is the culminating project in the editing minor at Brigham Young University. It is a fantastic project and I am thrilled that I had a chance to work on the Winter 2011 issue. My work was in design, but I also wrote several articles and provided a little of the photography throughout the magazine.
Yesterday I discovered that Stowaway has lately received several national publication awards. Check out the article here.

What should we do with abandoned warehouses?

I thought this was a very interesting idea--actually a pretty fabulous idea. Why not turn an old Walmart into a library? What could be better than a Walmart's worth of books?

http://inhabitat.com/msr-architecture-transforms-an-abandoned-wal-mart-into-a-sparkling-public-library/

 

Sometimes my life is pretty awesome

Recently I found myself with some extra time and I was catching up on some of backlog blog reading. I hadn't read very many articles before I found that I was feeling a little down on myself. Many of my friends are having lots of big life changes right now (like buying homes, or having kids, or getting married) and I felt a little left out--especially since it had been a fairly stressful week for me anyways. So, I thought I'd write a post about how awesome my life is. Because, let's face it. It's pretty awesome.

This summer, I worked two part time jobs. But since they are pretty flexible, I've been able to take time off to visit Chicago (for ALA), Maine (camping with Melanie), New Hampshire (to visit a friend), Rockport, MA (for kicks and giggles--and to try lobster), and Rhode Island (drove a friend to the airport). I'm in the middle of finding a third roommate (which is actually super stressful) for the new apartment that I'm moving into in the fall--which I found nearly all by myself. I have done all the leg work for the new place and even successfully navigated realtors and brokers and such.

I live in Boston, where there is always tons of stuff to do. Granted, many of my exciting plans have been rained out this summer (Shakespeare on the Common, Rear Window on the side of the Harbor Hotel), but hey, I'm no weather god.

As a library student I get all kinds of exciting opportunities to do cool things like work in two awesome libraries and have a *hopefully* awesome internship in the fall. I'm also helping the senior missionary couple in my ward to reestablish a lending library for the Institute library in our church building. I get to basically build a library from scratch (ok, maybe not quite from scratch--most of the books are already catalogued--but practically).

I've started shopping around to buy my first suit. And I'm pretty excited about what I've seen so far. I had an excellent experience with the sales lady today who knew way more than I did about the way the clothes were supposed to fit. There is something super refreshing about having a sales lady look at the skirt you have on (that you thought fit well) and say "that looks a little big, let me bring you a smaller size." And then you put on the smaller size and lo and behold, it fits way better.

What makes your life awesome?

Quotes of the day

For a brief period of time I thought that having a quote of the day would be a nice thing for that other website. Clearly it didn't last too long, but here are some lovely quotes.

--We'll call it a series.

"It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will." —L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

 

"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation." --Walter Cronkite

 

"A University is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. The library is the University." --Shelby Foote

Oh yeah, my daily quotations lasted real long...
 

Belonging vs. Fitting In

A while back I read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. It was a pretty good book, though not as life changing as Susan Cain's Quiet. Nevertheless Brown made some interesting points. One thing inparticular that I liked where the responses (p. 232) that a bunch of 8th graders gave her to the difference between belonging and fitting in:

"Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you. Fitting in is being somewhere where you really want to be, but they don't care one way or the other."

"Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else."

"I get to be me if I belong. I have to be like you to fit in."

I think they got it right. Do you belong or do you fit in?

National Book Festival

Welcome to part two of our "series." This a post from when I went to the National Book Festival back in 2011:

I went into the District on Saturday and headed the National Book Festival--2 days where the nation (or the DC Metro area at least) celebrates books. When I heard about the festival I thought to myself , "I like festivals, I love books, this seems like the perfect way to spend an afternoon." It was amazing. And I got a cool earth friendly bag. I can't wait to go again next year.

We'll call it a "series"

Posting in "series" seems to be all the rage these days in the blogosphere. So, it seems appropriate that I join the trend in my sometimes I post and sometimes I don't sort of way. And truly, my series is more of a series of re-posts than anything.

A number of years ago I started a wordpress blog because I'd heard that wordpress was pretty cool and I felt the need to have separate blogs for food and for books and for everything else. I still think that wordpress is pretty cool, but I've realized that one blog is really almost more than I handle.

Last year for one of my classes I took my wordpress blog and completely redid it so that it now functions as an online portfolio. Feel free to visit it and check out the cool things I do (or not, whatever). When I revamped that blog I kept all the blog posts that I had posted in their own neat little tab. All the posts were book related and were pretty interesting. I've since decided that they don't really go with the rest of the content of my website, but since they are interesting and kind of cool I've decided to repost them here so that you all can enjoy them.

As a disclaimer. When it seems like super old news, that's because it is.

To kick this series off I present to you:

A reference desk made entirely out of used books!

And there are even more photos of this desk here.

Book dominos

I watched this video today and thought it was pretty awesome. I will admit though that I watched it on a computer without sound, so I have no idea what kind of explanation/audio the video has. I'm sure something informative. But it's still a cool movie. Way to go Seattle!

More Gardening Tales

I commited the number one gardening crime this weekend. I pulled my tomato plants up by their roots to see if they were growing. Now you all can gasp and sputter and wonder why I would commite such a heinous (and obviously stupid) crime. Well, I had some (questionably) good reasons for digging up my plants.

My tomato plants were grown from seed by someone else. And they had been grown in some kind of peat-y thing that had a sort of fabric-y thing surrounding the roots (which made them super easy to transport) and I'm sure is the best way to grow seedlings. For whatever reason it didn't occur to me that the fabric-y thing would be a problem for the roots, so when I planted them, I just planted them as they were.

A week or so after I planted my tomatoes I was attempting to repot a couple of my indoor plants and one I was trying to split one of them into two pots I discovered, among other things, that it was planted in styrofoam (this is a story for another day). While I was trying in vain to split the two halves of the plant I broke up the roots and generally gave the plant a good shock. I figured I'd killed it. But it sprang back better than ever in less than a day. I've never seen that plant look so good--which was fabulous when I gave it to a friend for a house warming gift. (Apparently I've become one of those people who has plants and gives them as gifts and stuff--this caught me by surprise. Almost as much as when I discovered that I'm one of those people who actually really likes vegetables.)

And then not long ago I was reading a blog post about planting/designing pots for your front porch and it talked about the importance of making sure you break the roots up and such when you repot things. This seemed to jive with my experience with repotting my own plants. And seemed like a good explanation for why my tomatoes after having been in my garden for a couple weeks are no bigger than they were when I planted and if anything looked worse.

So, I decided the only thing to do was to pull them up and take off that fabric-y stuff I should have taken off originally. And I did (and you know, pretty much none of them had any roots that had poked through the fabric-y stuff). Sadly, I can't say that they've since grown amazingly or even look any better. But maybe when the sun comes out they'll grow?

Tomato plants

As I mentioned in my last post, I recently became the owner of four little tomato seedlings. Last weekend (when it was stiflingly hot outside) I planted my little plants in my garden. And then today I put tomato stakes in too.

Getting the tomato stakes was quite the ordeal. I have a friend who had offered them to me a while back and for a number of reasons I hadn't picked them up yet. Yesterday this friend moved out of state and told me to just go behind his house and get them out of his garden. So I did. I wasn't prepared for what I found. I had figured they'd be a couple feet tall (like the ones my parents have) and so riding my bike there on my way to work in a dress and heels would be fine. Nope. These tomato stakes are about four feet tall and were still tied to the remnants of last years tomatoes. I quickly realized that there was no way I could get these stakes home on my bike after work. Some quick thinking though found me a solution. I called up my roommate and arranged to drop them by her work on my way and she'd bring them home with her. I'm pretty sure I looked a sight riding across the JFK St. bridge on my bike, in my dress, wearing heels, and hauling three large pointy tomato stakes. One other biker did compliment me on my self-defense-resourcefulness. No one was going to mess with me...He had a point.

Tomato Stakes almost as big as my bike

Moral of the story: Don't try to haul tomato stakes on a bicycle. Get someone with a car to pick them up.

But at least now with my giant stakes my tomato plants can grow to be huge.

Heels anybody?

Quick update

I feel like things are pretty same ole' same ole' here and that consequently I have little to write about. But at the same time I definitely have had some interesting things happen in the last couple weeks that I keep meaning to write good posts about. Clearly that isn't going to happen today, so here are some one (ish) liners about what I've been up to.

I got about a wardrobe's worth of clothes for free from a good friend's attic. They're amazing. They're clothes that are my size and my style.

I watched the parade for my town over Memorial Day and got lost in Mt. Auburn Cemetery (which is easier to do than you'd think)

I had some really good fish. It was so good that my leftovers were still amazing. That's how moist it was.

I rescued a 7-speed bike from my basement. It's pretty cool.

I worked on my own bike and learned how to true wheels. Yeah, I felt empowered.

I took an awesome book repair class. It involved ripping pages out of books (which is surprisingly satisfying) and then putting them back in.

I made samosas. I got lazy though and baked them instead of frying them. I should have fried them.

I started reading Zero Waste Home. It's fantastic. I can't wait to finish it. 

I became the owner of 4 baby tomato plants. And spent an hour getting my hands dirty today weeding what will soon be my very own garden.

Bathroom inspiration

Remember last week when Melanie posted pictures of her bathroom? Well, I was a little bit inspired. The apartment (/house) that I live in is old. Very old (though compared to some apartments around Boston it's just a baby since it hasn't quite reached centenarian status yet). And because it's old, it's also dingy. About every time I have a break from school I do some deep cleaning and a couple weeks ago that resulted in me spending several  hours cleaning my bathroom. And for about 10 hours it looked great. Though the dinginess doesn't go away. Now I'm not ambitious enough that I painted my bathroom, or even hung pictures in it, but I did get a new shower curtain. And I think it's an improvement.

Bay State Bike Week

This week is Bay State Bike Week!! As part of the festivities there have been a number of free breakfasts. With a little planning I'm pretty sure I could get free breakfast nearly every day this week. I haven't quite managed to arrange my schedule to take advantage of all of them, but this morning I headed over to Broadway Bicycle School before work and had some delicious free pancakes. They were good. And something that I liked even more was that they were served on real plates, with real silverware and real cups. And you know it didn't seem to be that big of a deal to have to wash the plates before they could be used again. And it seriously reduced the amount of trash generated by this event.

One of the other great perks of this event was that Mass Bikes was there giving free mini tune ups. Nothing big, mostly just lubing chains and pumping tires, but the guy was super helpful and explained some things to me that I should get adjusted on my bike (my new-old bike--a story for another day), and it was great. My tires were super low and so riding since he filled them up has been wonderful.

I love that I live in a place that has such a strong bike culture. And it was great to get to spend a quarter of an hour in the company of people who think that bicycling is important.

Giving back

I had a pretty exciting weekend this past weekend. I gave back to my community. A couple weeks ago there was supposed to be a community wide service project to clean up the Charles River. This is an annual event, but owing to shootings and what not it got pushed back a week. This was very fortunate for me because the delay made it so that I could go (my classes being over and such). My ward got up a group together and we were assigned a section of the river to clean up. We spent a couple hours and collected tons of trash. It was fun, and it felt good to do something to help my community.

And then on Sunday I was lucky enough to participate in a choral concert at Trinity Church. The music director at Trinity Church decided last week that he wanted to put together a community-wide concert to help bring peace back into our community after our recent tragedies. The concert was called "A Song of Peace" and featured about a dozen different choirs from around the area that each sang one or two pieces and then they all joined together to sing one piece at the end. It was cool. The ward choir for one of the other wards in my stake was invited to participate, and they extended the invitation to other members of the stake. We sang "Come, Come Ye Saints." It was really cool to sing in that church. The concert was wonderful and very much invited the Spirit. 

I'm very grateful to have had the opportunity to give something back to my community this weekend. It was wonderful.

Life Plans

A little over a year ago my bishop gave a talk in sacrament meeting where he outlined for goals for our ward (congregation). One of those goals was for each of us to create a plan for ourselves. From what I remember he specifically talked about a one year plan. At the time I remember sitting down one day and establishing that one year from then I'd still be in school. In other words my plan was to keep doing what I was doing. Plan made? check. So I kind of checked that off my list and every time my bishop has mentioned making a plan since then I haven't paid too much attention, I mean I'd already done it.

A month or two ago I met with my bishop about something else and he asked me about my three year plan. I thought really hard, and decided that my three year plan was only as developed as my ability to do the math to add three to my age. He encouraged me to work on it. On my way home that day I was thinking "wait a minute, where did a three year plan come from? Last I remember it was a one year plan!" And then I realized that it didn't matter what he'd said back then, because either way I'd already lived out my one year plan.

So, now I'm working on a three year plan. Except, I can't even begin to fathom where I'll be in three years. I mean, I want to have gainful employment (read: a full time job), but I don't really know in what field of librarianship. And I don't really know where (read: where ever someone offers me said full-time job). This week I think my struggle is in trying to understand the difference between a plan and goals. I feel like making specific goals is dumb because a lot of what will impact my life three years from now is semi out of my control (I don't get to decide if/when I'll be offered a job). I think the other thing that worries me is that if I make specific goals then I feel like I'm limiting myself somehow--like if something totally different (and better) came along then I'd feel guilty to abandoning my goals or something. I don't know why this is such a struggle for me.

What do you think? Do you have three- or five- or ten- year plan for yourself? How did you go about making it?

National DEAR Day

Happy Drop Everything And Read Day.

http://www.dropeverythingandread.com/NationalDEARday.html

Go read something. :)

Mansfield Park

Today I worked on watching the 1999 version of Mansfield Park. It has a pretty all-star cast, including: Frances O'Connor (The Importance of Being Earnest), Jonny Lee Miller (Emma--2009), and Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey). I haven't quite finished it, but I've read the book and I've seen other adaptations and so I'm pretty sure I know how it ends. I definitely would say that I enjoyed it more than the other film version I've seen (the 1983 version), though it isn't as true to the novel (or at least what I remember of the novel). Several major plot points were quite different. For example Fanny's brother isn't in this version at all. And Sir Thomas doesn't seem to particularly care for Fanny here, whereas I could've sworn that he kind liked her in the book. But it still is very good. I especially like Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund. He makes such a fantastic Mr. Knightly, and he did just as well with Edmund.

I still have yet to see the recent 2007 version, so I can't comment on that one. Apparently I'm a couple decades behind on this Austen adaptation. (I just love Persuasion and Emma so much...).

Crossing the Red Sea--a logistical nightmare

Last night we watched The Prince of Egypt. For whatever reason I'd never seen it all the way through the before. It's really good. I enjoyed it. It struck me though when they were crossing the Red Sea just how miraculous that is. One of the guys we were watching with made the comment that it had only recently hit him that the Israelites crossed on dry ground, not on muddy ground, or slightly damp ground, but dry ground. That's pretty amazing. That made me think for a minute. Sure I've always known it was dry ground, but I guess I'd never thought of it as actually being dry, I guess I'd always assumed that there were still puddles and stuff around. This kind of got me thinking and then it struck me how big the Red Sea is.

I've always read the story and kind of assumed that they crossed the sea and it took them just a few minutes or hours or something, but the Red Sea is huge. At its widest point its over 200 miles wide and at its narrowest its around 16 miles (I can't remember where I found that fact, but somewhere on the internet). Now I feel like it's pretty safe to assume that they didn't cross at the widest part, but they probably didn't cross at the narrowest part either.

Just as a comparison. According the National Oregon Trail Center a good day traveling for the pioneers was 18-20 miles. And I don't remember for sure, but I imagine that pioneer companies were probably 600 or so people, maybe more, but I don't think much more than a thousand (I found this chart, which seems to support my assumption pretty well).

Back to the Israelites. According to Exodus 12:37 the Israelites numbered 600,000 men on foot, (besides women, children, the elderly, etc.). So if you figure that all the men on foot were your adult aged men then they probably all had wives, and probably a couple kids. And then you include some elderly people and the Israelite nation could very easily be around 2 million people. That is so many people. That's like the population of Houston.

So, lets say the Israelites cross at a narrow-ish part of the Red Sea where it's about 50 miles across. Now if the pioneers were doing that it would probably take them a little less than 3 days (at the rate of 18 miles a day). But that's only 600 ish people. One Wikipedia estimate said that 2 million people marching 10 abreast would make a line 150 miles long (not including sheep and animals, etc). Suddenly this is sounding an awful lot like one of those horrid story problems from elementary school math.

I tried to figure out how long it would take, but I wouldn't be surprised  I'm pretty sure I didn't do it quite right, because really who is good story problems? But I think the first person who crossed the Red Sea would have been about 9 days ahead of the last person to cross (a line 150 miles long divided by 18 miles per day equals a little more than 8 days--so I rounded up). And then you account for the 3 days it took him to cross and we're looking at the better part of 2 weeks to cross the Red Sea. When it was parted. On dry land.

The whole thing kind of blows my mind. You read the account or listen to the story and you kind of think, ok that took like 20 minutes, or maybe the whole night (which is what The Prince of Egypt implies). But no, it seems very possible to me that they were camping in the Red Sea, for several weeks. It was a good reminder for me of the awesome power of Heavenly Father. He can do anything, even keep the Red Sea parted for two weeks.