Pages

Sunday, January 22, 2012

01/22/12

This post is in effort to remember what I've been filling my time with lately.

Reading:
Bossypants by Tina Fey. The Wichita Public Library is having their annual Adult Winter Reading Program and they are encouraging staff to get involved. This means reading from a variety of genre, including things I don’t normally read. I just finished this last week for the non-fiction category.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. This is for the classics category as well as my resolution to read 5 classics this year. Hopefully I can finish it. I haven’t really read much Austen but since I’ve been steeping myself in historical British things maybe I can stay focused.
A variety of cookbooks and gardening books. I can’t help bringing them home, but often barely glance at them until it’s time to return them. But I am ever hopeful they will inspire me.

Listening to:
Playlists- Matt Hamer and the Ramshackle Sound. Matt’s a friend who just came out with his first CD and it’s pretty great. I’m also pretty attached to my “Folksy” playlist which includes the Civil Wars, Mumford and Sons, Fleet Foxes, and Aaron Lee Martin.
Podcasts- Joy the Baker. Joy and Tracy from Shutterbean.com discuss “all the unimportant important things” and very little about food, but definitely a fun listen.
We’re About to be Friends. Joy the Baker’s other podcast which doesn’t update weekly, but actually is normally about food is a good kitchen listen.
NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.
WNYC’s Radio Lab.
Audiobook- A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie R. King. This is the second book about Sherlock Holmes’ female apprentice Mary Russell and is pretty enjoyable so far.

Watching:
Downton Abbey. It took me awhile to make time for it, but I’ve been hearing great things about it for months. Finally we started watching it and we just finished the first season (Netflix) this afternoon. Thankfully PBS is putting season 2 online so hopefully we can keep up. It has wonderful characters and beautiful settings and compelling stories that we just couldn’t stop watching.
Star Trek: The Next Generation. Brian and I started this awhile ago, after he finally caught an episode that did not bore him. We are near the end of the 5th season and return to it whenever we’re not in the middle of something.
Murdock Mysteries. I often end up watching something in the afternoons after work. I just caught up on Inspector Lewis and have watched a lot of Midsomer Murders and can’t seem to tear myself away from mysteries. I thought maybe I couldn’t tear myself away from British shows, but I think Downton filled that gap. So I turned to Murdock Mysteries, which is almost British as it takes place in Toronto. It’s rather steampunk-y and a bit cheesy, but at least it’s only an hour.

Cooking and Baking:
I’ve been keeping track of what we’ve been eating lately and it’s been nice to see lots of eating at home. Most of the meals haven’t been too exciting, but they are happening. Baking is not happening as much, but it’s definitely more exciting. Last weekend I made Brownies from scratch which was a first, and I added some cinnamon, since they we accompanying tacos. Friday I made these yummy Blood Orange Crostatas (the pictures with the recipe link are beautiful), except I used mostly whole wheat flour and had cream cheese on hand so I substituted that for the mascarpone.

Discussing:
Topics of discussion lately have ranged from reasonable and unreasonable Non-Compete forms, healthy eating, church hunting, and hopes for the new Sherlock season (it doesn’t air on PBS until May! no spoilers please, since it’s done in the UK).

And now I'm off to go attempt a quinoa salad.

No comments: