third time's a charm

I
just
want
to
say
that
I
really
like
using
triple-milled French soap.

What'cha readin'?

In the past few months, I've perused or am still perusing, the following titles:

A Thousand Splendid Suns (book club selection)

A Perfect Red (recommended by and on loan from a friend)

The Old Iron Road (recommended by and on loan from another friend)

The Nasty Bits (a Christmas wish list fulfillment!)

A New Earth: Awakening Your Life's Purpose (recommended by and on loan from yet another friend)

Art History for DUMMIES (library book)

The best american magazine writing 2008 (library book)

Three Cups of Tea - (this month's book club selection)

The entire set of Jane Austen novels - (a Christmas gift, via BN classics)

wallpaper PROJECTS - (soon to be released coooooool crafty book)(You may consider this a shameless plug as well)

'Too many books, not nearly enough time' rings so true for me.

I've also become the world's s-l-o-w-e-s-t reader, which frustrates me no end as I am faced with enticing titles at the public library, bookstore or the well-stocked book shelf of a friend or family member.

Worse yet, my ability to remember anything is fast going going gone.
How quickly I forget something just read.
F'rinstance: Which countries vied for the secrets of cochineal, exactly when were the Fauves creating excitement in the art realm and what the heck happened at the end of 'A Thousand Splendid Suns', anyway?

No matter.
I still enjoy the reads and the pleasurable AHA! moments derived from books.
Pity it fades so quickly from my memory though...

So - what about you?
What'cha readin'?

(image of glasses on book from http://osc3.redirection.com.ru/)

Latest food addiction!

... from Trader Joe's ...
CRANBERRY WALNUT BREAD.
thick slices.
served plain.
or buttered.
or with TJ's cranberry spread.

After the first day: toasted.
Don't forget the butter.

Oooooh, wouldn't this make gooood french toast, though?!?
Buttered, of course - and with a generous drizzle of
Trader Joe's real maple 'syrple'.

Food.
Glorious food.
Glorious Trader Joe's.

What's not to love?

came across this pic

circa 1976...
and just had to post it...

Laughter in a can

We all love a good laugh.
From quiet chuckles to loud guffaws.
Laughter is good for the heart and for the soul
Doubled over laughter, tears in eyes - is really quite the elixir for so many ills, yes?

AKA Canned Laughter AKA Laugh Track, etc. is not.

Curmudgeon post for the day: Why do some sit-coms still use canned laughter?
Don't the producers of comedy shows know we know when to enjoy a clever line? We DO know, don't we? Did we ever, do we still - need to be prompted to laugh? Has not canned laughter run its course, seen its day, done its irritating best and should now be permanently retired?

It was on TV's 'Home Improvement' that I first noted just how distracting a laugh track can be. Now if that ain't canned laughter, the audience was pumped with nitrous oxide and/or silly pills. The show is good enough without the laff prompts. Even so, I stopped watching altogether due to the excessive laugh-track-to-dialog ratio. Now I'll never know how Tim the Toolman fared out with his lovely wife Jill and their boys-to-men sons...

Earlier this week, I again attempted to view a contemporary sitcom and couldn't get through the episode for all the hardyharhar fake laughs.

There is an argument to keep Pavlovian canned laughter an integral part of the presentation of comedy shows. I suppose that's so viewers never have to wonder if the show is actually funny or not. Ya hear laughing, it must be good, right?

If laugh tracks are deemed OK for the small screen, why not for the big screen? Don't moviegoers also need help with when to giggle chuckle guffaw?
Hmmmm. Laugh tracks at the movies. Imagine that. Pretty scary.

P.S. Given my druthers, I prefer TV sitcoms utilize a studio audience during tapings. Yet what of the announcement beforehand when it is: 'Filmed before a 'Live studio audience'? Like, instead of a Dead studio audience? Don't you find that just plain silly? Doesn't it make you want to laugh out loud?

Photo: Laughing audience in a Manhattan night club,
Yale Joel (Life Magazine staff photographer), 1952.

ZAP!

It must be the consistently San Francisco-style chill of outside temps this week. For what follows is yet another post on What Once Was + What I Find Comforting.

Last week, I waxed poetic on butter: comfort food. Today it's electricity: comfort? Well, yes, when it's zapping through a soft blankie.

An ELECTRIC blanket - which somehow somewhere along the way got morphed into the gentler automatic blanket.

Over time (and a more sophisticated/sensitive consumer base?), I suppose marketing departments of electric blankets figured that alluding to all that electrical current pulsing through fabric intended as bedding was not altogether the most attractive way to sell the beast. Shades of fire-in-the-hole.

Anyways.
ELECTRIC <<>> Automatic. Same difference.
It's still about coils of wire running through layers of soft material, with a control to set the high-low intensity of heat.
It's still about WARM.

End of last year, when temps began to drop into true winter digits (for California), I began to obsess on getting and staying toasty this season without needing to resort to pushing up the thermostat (consequently, the propane bill).

Checking out store / online sales, I wisely made purchases of a down bathrobe, fleece lined slippers, as well as a down vest (yes, to wear indoors!). Finally, I succumbed to something that did not require one's own body temp to warm up the material first before basking in the comfort of a maintained heat.

Yup.
Aforementioned automatic blanket. This baby promised insta-warmth at the touch of a button. I didn't get it for the bed. Rather, I picked out a twin-sized one with the intention of using it for cozy days and nights on the couch. Reading, knitting and whiling away many a chilly hour as a Winter Couch Spud was the extent of my seasonal goals. Admittedly, once it gets cold, I am reduced to life's less productive, decidedly slothier, pursuits.

Before the purchase of this automatic blankie, the first and only time I'd ever used one was as a young teen. The family-of-origin's San Francisco flat didn't have a reliable heat source, save for a big roaring portable gas furnace which Dad rigged up in the middle of the hallway. That sucker fairly blazed. Even so, because of the length of the flat, the bedrooms remained cold. Truth be known, this gas heater only warmed the immediate space in front of it.

After suffering through one too many consistently cold nights (or was it the whining of the kids?), Mom and Dad finally got the family a couple of ELECTRIC blankets. If memory serves me, we rotated using two blankets - I seem to remember a pale blue one with dual controls...

...at any rate, when it got to be my turn, with a bit of electricity humming through my covers, I discovered the delight of actually sleeping warm for some nights during those cold winter months. What a concept!

Cheap thrills!
For one who grew up in old, unheated San Francisco housing - a real treat may be something that others take for granted - like being warm. This may also explain why camping never really appealed to me. As a kid, I often wore extra sweaters, even a jacket to bed. Why would anyone in their right mind purposely go out and sleep on the hard ground or out in the open air cold when a soft comfortable bed and heated room INDOORS is an option?!?

While we're commiserating, ditto for dining alfresco, unless the outside temp is perfect and there is absolutely no breeze to speak of. When you can dine away from the elements, why take your food to eat outside in the chill and wind, all the while attracting bugs to share your meal?!?

Big city gal talking here. Big city gal who too often slept in a frigidly cold room. Big city gal who does not like her meal to get chilled or blown about by the infamous San Francisco wind. Big city gal who does not enjoy bugs going after her food.

Oh.
Note that I have digressed. And how. Too much information?
Well then.
Back to the topic at hand...

Fondest memory of that first ELECTRIC blanket: without fail, if I fell asleep with the setting at #4, I would dream of the Beatles.

No kidding.

all you ever wanted to know (and more) about...

...butter.

Yum.

Not just on popcorn, but to enhance the flavour and/or palatability of so many other foods.

A big taste treat (there were many, to be sure) when I was a kid - was to
(1) steam slices of white bread until piping hot, soft and pliable
(2) smear one side of the bread over a cube of butter
(3) sprinkle granulated sugar on the buttered side
(4) eat it while the whole thing is still warm
(5) make another one. Or two.

Mock cinnamon roll variation: add a dash of ground cinnamon and roll the whole slice up before popping into your mouth. One or two quick bites and proceed to making more.

Mmmmmmmm. Yessssssssssss.

I learned at an early age that butter offers irresistible taste and even an oddly comforting texture. But is it good for you? It is, after all, just another form of damnable animal fat. In an attempt to counter butter health issues, I once (but just once) as an adult - made a conscious effort not to add butter to any of my food. That commitment to health lasted almost 12 months.

Guess what.
I lost weight that year.
I felt better.
Less draggy. Less heavy. Less - buttered.
Dang!

Then I took a trip to Germany and frequented many eateries. Butter (and heavy cream!) is used with abundance in German cuisine, and so immensely flavourfully that I happily fell (rather, jumped) off the No Butter Wagon. That was just too easy.
(I washed it all down with German beer...gosh but German beer is good...).

I loves me some buttah.
Is there no getting around it?

As you ponder the good and bad of rendered milk fat,
allow me to pose another butter question to you, my wee readership:
SALTED or UNSALTED?

(BTW, WebExhibits ~~~
what an informative website!)
Whilst you're considering the butter question,
and since we're still
in the middle of the
Chinese New Year of the Ox festivities,
let's all get a bit more info on CNY, why don't we?