Getting on my foodie soapbox

I just returned home from grocery shopping a little while ago. I used to despise grocery shopping, but that's because I always felt so lost in a sea of endless food choices. But recently, I have come to enjoy my trips to the grocery store more and more for the simple fact that I have followed the rule of grocery shopping for healthy eating, which is to spend most of your time hanging out in the perimeter of the store where all the whole foods are rather than the inside aisles where all the processed food resides.

I usually go to the grocery store with my husband every Saturday morning and when we get there, he will go and take back the returnable bottles (Michigan has a ten cent deposit on bottles and cans) and I'll start shopping.

Every week he comes back from returning the bottles and declares, "How did I know I'd still find you in the produce section?"

Today, he repeated this routine and after hearing it week after week, over and over again, I snapped. I got snippy with him and said, "Why is that funny to you? This is where I SHOULD be spending most of my time. It means we're eating well and staying healthy."

I guess I got so defensive because eating healthy is not something worth making fun of, and it felt like he was poking fun at me. We should be giving a hard time to the people who don't bother to try to make real food, choosing instead to fill their carts with processed crap pumped full of chemicals. We should not be making fun of the people who are choosing to feed real, wholesome food to their families. That is honorable, not worthy of torment.

Roughly 50% of Americans are overweight or obese precisely because they don't spend enough time in the produce department, and you're going to make fun of me for spending most of my time there dear husband? I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong, I love my husband. But sometimes I've got to set that boy straight. And when I was done with him, he walked away with his tail between his legs. That's usually what happens when I get on my soapbox. ;)

Laini Taylor comes to Nicola's in Ann Arbor

Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor, Michigan has been hosting a lot of awesome book signings lately. Last night, author Laini Taylor only compounded the awesomeness of all the rockin' authors who have been gracing its presence.

I have been coveting Daughter of Smoke and Bone ever since I read a glowing early review of it during the summer. I never was able to snag an ARC so I immediately started reading it as soon as the finished copy arrived on my doorstep. I have been reading it extremely slowly because this school year has been so exhausting for me that I get home from work and I fall asleep before I can read two pages. Even though I wasn't able to finish the book before the signing, I was able to get into the book enough to be enchanted. Laini is such a talented writer. Her ability to manipulate language to do more than just communicate, but make it something artful and beautiful is a true gift.

I'm so happy I was able to be there and witness such talent for myself. Thanks for visiting Michigan Laini! I hope you can come again when the sequel comes out!

 



 

 

As an aside, at the event last night, I ran into awesome zombie-slayer author Carrie Harris. I met her at her book launch party for Bad Taste in Boys over the summer and she is such a hoot. Evidence of her hilarity came in the form of this "contract" she wrote out for me when I asked if she'd come visit my school. I promised I'd make her ice cream since she often declares her need for it on Twitter. When she said she'd work for ice cream, I asked if I could have that in writing. She pulled out coloring book page from her purse that I'm presuming was one of her kids' -- but given her love of all things quirky, I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually hers -- and wrote the following:

How can you just not love a person like that? I have a feeling she'll fit right in with my junior high students. :)

Giveaway winners

 

Congrats to the winners of two of my recent giveaways.

The winner of The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn was Book Snob

The Winner of Dreamland by Alyson Noel was Kathy of Ms. Martin Teaches Media

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Celebrate Banned Books Week

Celebrate your right to intellectual freedom this week by reading a banned book. Prove to book banners around the country that the only thing they do by challenging books is generate more revenue and publicity for the authors. Because, really, the only thing you do when you ban a book is incite curiosity and cause more people to read it than would have if you had just kept your mouth shut.

For parents out there, the temptation is very strong to challenge books that are against your morals and beliefs, but rather than inciting outrage and uproar, use the book as a teachable moment to talk to your children about right and wrong. Just because authors write books and teachers use them in their classrooms does not mean that we are condoning the sex, alcohol, drugs, and violence that appear in these books. Just because book characters behave in certain ways does not mean that we're asking you to see them as role models. I don't think there's a person out there who reads The Catcher in the Rye and thinks, "Wow! Holden is so cool! I want to be just like him." Ummm... no. Even my lack of sophistication at critical thinking when I was a sophomore in high school saw what a pathetic mess Holden was. So book banners, the fact that you're worried that kids will see these characters as role models regardless of what is taught to them in the classroom shows what little faith you have in teens to think critically. And the only thing you're going to do by attempting your sanctimonious disregard for the first amendment is make kids and adults alike want to read the book all the more.

Another thing that irks me about book banning, well besides the whole going against the first amendment thing, is that people who challenge books are putting pressure on schools to teach books that are clean and about benign topics. Obviously these people are asking literature teachers to teach something other than literature then because the very nature of literature is conflict. And the older students get, the more complicated conflicts become. That's just life. And it's precisely the reason why you saw Harry Potter get darker and darker as the series progressed. He was no longer a little kid at the end. The older Harry got, the darker and more complex the conflicts in those stories became because adult problems are more complicated than kid problems. When choosing books for teens, it is very difficult to find literature that isn't controversial because if you don't have conflict in a book, then, well, you don't have literature! So if that's the case dear book banners, what then do you suggest literature teachers teach in place of, well, literature?

I'm going to leave you with John Green's video from a few years ago where he discusses his frustration over people trying to ban his book, Looking for Alaska, in schools. He makes the point so much better than I do about authors having characters behave in morally reprehensible ways, not to say that it's OK, but just the opposite. Again, as I said before, just because authors are writing about it, doesn't mean they're saying to go out and do it! Have faith in your kids to be able to discern that.

In My Mailbox (47)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren, inspired by Pop Culture Junkie. The books you share do not have to be ones you actually received in the mail. They can be ones you bought at the book store, checked out at the library, or downloaded to your e-reader. The idea is just to share what's on your TBR pile for the upcoming week. 

For review:
 
Legend by Marie Lu

Purchased:
 
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
I am so excited! Laini is coming to Ann Arbor this week so I'll be able to get my copy signed!

Bought from my library's used book store:
 
Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps by Andrea Warren
Amulet: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde
The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
The Princess Plot by Kirsten Boie
A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond
Witch Child by Celia Rees
A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'Engle

What did you get in your mailbox this week?

The first step is admission...

I have a confession to make. I have the word Foodie in my blog name, but I am somewhat of a picky eater. In fact, if this were a straight-up food blog, I might be so inclined to name it The Finicky Foodie. That doesn't mean my blog name is a lie. I do consider myself a foodie. I love trying new and unusual flavor combinations and I have a great appreciation for well thought out, passionately crafted meals. I just have very strong preferences as to what my food should taste like. Actually, taste is only part of the equation. I am extremely attuned to texture with food. My husband is constantly making fun of me for this because, in his mind, if it tastes good, it is good. For me however, it can taste good, but if the texture is off-putting, I won't eat it.

Which is why I was very excited to come across this healthier type of pasta about a year ago at Whole Foods. Instead of whole wheat pasta, which I abhor for textural reasons, it's quinoa pasta.

For those of you who don't know, quinoa (pronounced KEEN-WA) is an ancient grain-like seed that is packed with protein. It looks and eats like a grain, but it is much higher up the scale of health benefits than wheat or rice.

Since I adore pasta but know its health benefits are slim to none, I have tried all different kids of pasta alternatives: whole-wheat pasta, brown rice pasta, buckwheat pasta, you name it, I've tried it. But all of them have failed to satisfy the taste and texture of semolina pasta -- until I discovered quinoa pasta.

The texture is identical to semolina pasta and the taste is pretty darn similar. The quinoa pasta is a tad bit nuttier, but all in all, if I were serving it at a dinner party, I doubt anyone would notice, let alone balk at the flavor and texture.

In fact, this pasta is so good, I often just serve it with just some garlic, olive oil, parmigano and a sprinkling of basil. I like the pasta itself to shine because it further emphasizes my elation that I found a healthier pasta alternative that doesn't make me wince at the awkward texture and/or flavor.

So I encourage you to give it a try sometime if you haven't already. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much you can't tell the difference between the healthy pasta and the less-than-healthy pasta. Mangia!

Audiobook Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

From Goodreads:

Prentisstown isn’t like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee — whose thoughts Todd can hear, too, whether he wants to or not — stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden — a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives. But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?

So just about every review I've read of this book has highly praised it and declared what an amazing story it is. I, on the other hand, found very little that I enjoyed about it. I want to state right off the bat, that doesn't mean I'm saying this is a bad book. I just found it incredibly difficult to get through. 


I'm going to start with what I liked about The Knife of Never Letting Go. The idea of The Noise I thought was so creative and like nothing I've ever encountered in a dystopia before. It's like Patrick Ness took the concept of "Big Brother" from Orwell's 1984 and amped it up tenfold. Despite the fact that I liked the concept, its execution I thought was extremely painful to get through. Virtually nothing about the New World's secrets is unearthed until the very end of the story which makes you feel like you're trudging through the plot to get to the Big Reveal at the end. For me, that was torturous. I like the plot to reveal itself bit by bit throughout the story rather than being bombarded with the whole shebang at the end.


The only thing that waiting till the end had going for it was that it kept me from abandoning the book entirely because I was determined to learn what the Big Secret was. And then once I did learn all the secrets by the end, they seemed to be too complicated for me to feel like this was a truly enlightening moment in the story. It's not like I didn't understand the secrets, but they just took my brain too long to process for me to have that moment where my eyes bug out and am amazed at what has just been revealed.

At the core of the story however, what really prevented me from enjoying it was how hopeless the whole situation felt. There is virtually NO hope to cling to whatsoever in this story. Most dystopias I've read and enjoyed had a modicum of hope to cling to, however small it may have been. While listening to the audiobook of The Knife of Never Letting Go, I felt incredibly depressed. Part of it I think was because I didn't have much faith in the main character. Yes, he was an inherently good person, but he didn't have much oomph to him. Maybe it was his ignorance that frustrated me. And it's not like that was his fault, but I just felt so frustrated to be going on this journey with him and not knowing ANYTHING about the secrets of Prentisstown.

The other thing that bothered me was the audio presentation. I did not buy Nick Podehl's performance of Todd in the slightest. What Nick sounded like to me was a refined, college educated man trying way too hard to sound like a young, illiterate 13-year-old boy and yet it was also half-hearted at the same time. Strangely enough though, I did enjoy his characterization of Todd's dog, Manchee. That was definitely the best characterization in the whole performance and the only one that felt authentic.


I know there were lots of people who loved this book and who sing its praises to the moon and back. I was just not one of those people. That doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I think it has a great deal of literary merit and there are so many amazing talking points that it would be a perfect choice for a book club or literature circle. 


Final Assessment:
Would recommend to mature readers who like a challenge and can handle the slow, torturously secretive plot.


The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
Audiobook narrator: Nick Podehl
Original Publish Date: May 5, 2008
Publisher: Candlewick
Pages: 496
Audiobook Length: 11 hours, 55 minutes
Genre: Dystopia
Audience: Young Adult