thoughts to blog

New Food Books

As part of my 2010 adventure into improving my cooking skills… I have acquired (through presents) 4 new books:

• Knife Skills Illustrated - a recommendation from some local foodies in the area, because I have good knives but I still slice myself every time I use them!
• Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking - a hot new recommendation from the Twitter land… teaches you how to cook using ratios for simple recipes and bases… it’s all about scaling (for my developer nerds)!
• The Foodie Handbook: The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy - a mix of eating, cooking, and shopping for foodies.
• Classic Indian Cooking - a well reviewed book that mixes recipes with technique and explanation…

With this wonderful set, I’m going to attempt to hone my skills… and start diving into a realm which I love to eat, but have no concept of how to cook… Indian…

Wish me luck!

a long way gone

I finished A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah today while at the ENT…

I’m still trying to process the book, as it is one of those that you read and it moves your neurons. It’s also one of those books that makes you want to travel to foreign countries (or strike up something similar here) and rescue children in bad situations.

It’s a fast read… only a few hundred pages and is incredibly interesting. It’s a memoir about Ishmael’s life growing up as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. Very detailed and very personal. Loved it.

The Devil in the White City

Just got done reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.

A true story about two gentleman, one being an architect in charge of carrying the US through it’s turn of a World Fair, and the other being a serial killer.

I won’t give away any more important plot information but there were a few things that made this book a page turner:

• It’s a non-fiction based on true stories.
• Real dialog and written communication were interjected into the story
• The two main characters were very well developed.
• Lots of highs and lows in the plot lines.
• The visuals created by this book really allowed you to get a sense of what they were seeing.

I give it a 9 out of 10. Historically it worked very well and the story told seemed like it could be a straight up movie.