Category: books

Val Walker at Kennebooks

by Karen, posted in books, education, family, friends, good grief

Val Walker came to Kennebooks to talk about her new book The Art of Comforting. This author’s talk started off feeling like a course in sociology, as

Val Walker

she described different models of counseling (companioning, relational….), but then it quickly became more personal, as she related some examples of comforting from occasions in her own life when she’d needed it.

She explored the question of what it means when someone says they are “there for you”, and what that shape that might take as a comforting act for another. Sometimes, just sitting with someone and letting them “feel their feelings” is all that is required.

Val thinks that to be an effective comforter, one must “let go of the outcome” (this phrase will be familiar to you yogis out there :)).  One will not always know if her comforting efforts have been helpful, and it is not necessary to know. The fact that effort was made is enough.

After the talk, Val offered to take questions from the audience, however it was a rainy night, and many of those present had traveled a fair distance to see her, and they were anxious to head home, so she graciously changed course and immediately proceeded to signing books.

As a side note, Kennebooks always puts put coffee (the coffee is good!) and cookies (the cookies are good too!) for all of their book signings, as well as water and tea. They are always enjoyable and who knows? You may even learn something new!

Conscious eating, Part 3

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, fitness, restaurants

So, now that more weeks have passed and I have totally not given the Women, Food, and God  (by Geneen Roth) approach a passing thought until today, I decided to recommit to some of the strategies I have learned along the weight loss way.

  1. Drink 16 oz of water before every meal. This can be excessive, and at times make you feel like tossing your cookies before you even get to eat them, so modify accordingly. If you can only choke down a half a cup, go for it! It’s better than nothing. The theory is that it will make you feel fuller sooner, thereby displacing some of the food that you presumably would have consumed if not for the presence of the water in your gut. Seems like it’s worth a shot.
  2. Green tea. I am down to only a cup per day, two at most. Green tea is tricky because it has caffeine, and blood thinning properties (just to mention, there are other side effects as well)… it may interact with aspirin, the NSAIDs, coumadin, and so forth. . . but just in case it does contribute to weight loss, a little may be better than none.
  3. Throw out the first bite of your cookie/cupcake/whoopie pie/muffin/miscellaneous baked good of your choice. This is from One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer. I’m definitely still trying to work up the courage to try this one.
  4. Check online before you go out to eat to scope out the menu; get tips from WebMD or Weight Watchers on healthy (or at least less bad) choices.
  5. Oh, yeah: that smaller plate thing. Ever hear the saying that “work expands to fill the allotted time”? Well, I think that this rule applies to food too: the amount of food you (think it’s reasonable to) consume will expand to fill the allotted plate/bowl size.

Question to ponder: Does doing the Happy Dance (a la Snoopy) burn off the equivalent of whoopie pie that I just ate?

Book Club at Mekong Thai

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, friends, quest for the best, restaurants

This month’s meeting was at Mekong Thai in Wells. The six of us met there at 6pm and were given a nice table by the windows, which they opened to give us some fresh air (a 65 degree evening in Maine in late October? Booyah!).

Susan is a quick study!

The wait staff was lovely, solicitous, and helpful. Lemon for your water? Sure! Another piece of lemon? No problem! A straw? Okay, at this point even I was getting annoyed with me, but not the waitress…she cheerfully went back to get me another straw.
And not only did she produce the straw, but when some of us expressed interest in the decorative way the straw was presented, she came back to the table with a fresh straw, paper intact, and taught us how to make one ourselves! My friend Susan was actually able to reproduce the effect, so our waitress was a good teacher, having transferred the skill to another in less than 5 minutes.

The great service was evident in other small ways as well, like when I was given a small container of peanut sauce (instead of scraping what remained of my used condiment in the bowl on my plate) to go with my leftovers that I had doggie bagged.

The food was great too. I had checked online for healthy Thai food choices (when eating out) beforehand, and easily found plenty of choices within this framework. I chose the Tom Yum soup with chicken, which was excellent, as was the chicken satay with peanut sauce. The free salad was a nice bonus; it had a mildly spicy peach colored dressing that was great.

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Why am I talking so much about the food, and so little about the book? Well, you may have guessed this: the book was…distressing. None of us liked it much. What was interesting though is that (as Shannon pointed out), we seem to have a much better, involved discussion about books that we don’t like than about books that we do like.

When we met to talk about The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, we didn’t have much to say, other than that it was a good book.  When we met to discuss Lowboy by John Wray, we were all talking over each other, interrupting each other, and in general making a big commotion in the small, otherwise pretty quiet, restaurant.

Hmmm, maybe this should be a go-to destination for book clubs?

Tess Gerritsen at Kennebooks

by Karen, posted in books, local fun
Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen came to speak at Kennebooks last week. If you aren’t familiar with her work, you are missing out. She is a local author, from Cape Elizabeth. She currently writes predominantly murder mysteries, often with a medical theme (hey, she is a doctor, after all!). She started out her career by writing romances…she certainly has range. 🙂

Rather than reading from her newest novel Ice Cold, she decided to talk about how she writes, as well as answer audience questions.

She hears about a story, either from present news or from history, and if she is still thinking of it a couple of weeks later, then “I know what my next book is about!”.  One idea that fascinated her and later became a book was this: What must it be like to wake up in a body bag? After hearing about an instance of this actually happening, Ms. Gerritsen did some research and discovered a facility in which this was a common occurrence…and a book was born.

Ms. Gerritsen also had advice for other writers on getting their first book published.

  1. First: write your book (or in my case, finish writing it)! She writes her first draft longhand, the second draft is typed…then she will do 4-5 (or even up to 8) drafts total before it’s ready for submission.
  2. Make sure your book is the best that it can be and is in perfect condition before you submit the manuscript.
  3. Get a literary agent. She believes it is very important in today’s market to have a literary agent to represent you and to sell your book.

One thing she mentioned is that she doesn’t let anyone read her manuscript before sending it to her publisher (including her husband!).  Other writers, for example, Stephen King, say that they count on their spouses to be their first readers and sometimes will incorporate their suggestions into their writing.

She also talked about how she develops her characters, and how she often doesn’t know how the book is going to turn out, so she doesn’t ever edit her first draft. Writing it longhand helps her to resist this urge to edit (legal pads are not conducive to cutting and pasting!). In one book that she wrote, the main character was a man until midway through the book, when she realized that it wasn’t working and changed him into a woman, which solved all of the problems she had been having with it.

🙂

Bottom line: finish writing your book!!!

Girls’ Night

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, local fun, restaurants, tweens

On the (rare) days when the male members of the family are off at work, but the females have the day off, we have a Girls’ Night. Today, Girls’ Nights started early, at 7:24AM. The men were out for the day so the females were left to  our own pursuits. This is what my daughter and I did today:

  1. Breakfast: Cream of wheat for Izzy and egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for me. OJ and coffee, respectively.
  2. Met up with friends at Cafe Perfecto in Kennebunk. We split a gingerbread muffin. We ate it too quickly to photograph it. It was goooooooooooooooooooooooooood. 🙂
  3. Next, browsing at Kennebooks. We bought some cards, some books, and a really cool mushroom shaped eraser with the sharpener built right in. 

    Coolest mushroom eraser/sharpener ever!
  4. Home for lunch: PB&H on homemade bread for me; grilled cheese and bacon on whole wheat bread for Iz. Then she caught up with a friend on the phone, while I caught up on the laundry, chicken tasks, and dishes. Yay.
  5. Next, North Berwick Farmers Market. My friend Rebecca was there so we got to visit a bit. Lucky for us, it was the day of their Pie Contest, and we got to try a piece of the winning pie, baked by a 9 year old girl; very impressive. Besides pie, we got some fudge, some granola, herbs to mix with oil for bread-dipping, oatmeal coconut cookies…hmmm, seems like something is missing. What is it? Oh! The (token healthy food that was the excuse for going to the farmers market) apple! I ate that at the next stop.
  6. Izzy had a riding lesson and I spent the time in the car catching up on the last 2 days of newspapers that I hadn’t gotten to yet.
  7. At 6Pm, lesson over, we headed to Johnson’s Seafood and Steak. This is our new favorite restaurant, partly because it’s right on the way home after riding, but mostly because of the pumpkin cheesecake. OMG. It’s worth going just for that.
  8. Finally, home for a movie night. We watched The Clique. Izzy had seen it before and wanted to watch it again with me. Great mother-daughter movie.

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That’s it.  She’s gone to bed; I’m getting ready to. We had a great day. 🙂

These are a few of my fa-vor-ite B’s~revised

by Karen, posted in books, family, health
Drakes Island Beach

When you have to schedule a not-so-fun medical or dental procedure on your day off, it can be hard not to look at the day as a total loss. If I can schedule it for earlier in the day rather than later, that helps some; at least I don’t spend the whole day with a root canal hanging over my head. Just get up; get the kid off to school, go to the appointment, then when it’s over, the rest of the day (such as it is, depending on your pain and/or anxiety threshold) is your own.

Shortly after it was over, I thought of some positive things on which to focus my attention:

  1. Beach: I went to the beach to sit and look at the ocean for the extra 20 minutes I had between dropping off child at school and getting to appointment.
  2. Books: I stopped off at Nonesuch Books, newly located in Biddeford (next to Best Buy), to “be with the books” for a half an hour. Just because I could. Also, buy a present (for someone else). I bought some cute little horse magnetic book clips for someone…(reference said child who loves horses above). Nonesuch has (besides books, magazines, newspapers) a lot of gifty-type things…good for stocking stuffers, I’m thinking.
  3. Breakfast: Pumpkin Muffin from Tim Horton’s. The best pumpkin muffin in Southern Maine thus far (and I have
    Tim Horton's Pumpkin Muffin

    been doing my homework). 

  4. Bed. Fear (of medical procedures) is exhausting. 🙂
  5. Best root canal ever! After thinking it through, I realized that this was true; Tina Kell at Dental Specialists of Maine is the best endodontist ever!
  6. Oh yes: the most important B of all: my husband BILL! Bill, who took me to my appointment, who took me to see the ocean, who brought me to be with the books, who took me to get my pumpkin muffin (…I think that I’ll skip over the bed part…)…thank you, Bill, for making a difficult day so much better than it might have been.

“The true creator may be recognized by his ability to always find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.”~ Igor Stravinsky 

Sometimes I have to look hard, but the good moments are usually there.

Baking bread

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, books
Bread!

 

Years ago I had tried baking bread from scratch. It was a many-houred affair, what with the kneading, and the punching down, and the multiple rises (unless you’re making beer bread, but that’s another story)…well, I discovered that this is not the only way to make bread at home.  A coworker told me about a book that explained a different approach. http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ is the author’s website, and you can even find a video of the process (if you search around a little) there. 

Well, I’ve never looked back. I’ve been making bread this way now for more than a year and it’s fantastic. There are several different recipes (there’s even a second book now, recently released by them and a third book in the works) in the first book as well as on the website, but even if you only make the basic recipe boule, I predict that you will be happy. My niece Ariana loves it so much that every time she visits me (or I visit her!) I have a bread freshly baked, ready to give her. 

The book is:  Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. 

Have any of you heard of this book? Have you tried the recipes?

Eat, Pray, Love

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, italian, movies, no fear
Eat, Pray, Love promotional poster

 

Eat, Pray, Love came to theaters in movie form on August 13, 2010.  If you read the book by Elizabeth Gilbert (published by Viking in February 2006) like I did, you may have been eagerly anticipating the release of this movie. I know I certainly was.  

Then I saw a trailer for the movie, and noticed who had been cast to play Elizabeth Gilbert: Julia Roberts, who is one of my least favorite actresses. It’s not just because she basically has one character that she plays over and over; hey, I do like Meg Ryan. I usually do end up liking movies that JR is in though…  

 So, I reluctantly resigned myself to seeing it even though Julia was playing the lead character and therefore would most likely be on the screen a lot of the time (hello? it’s a memoir; told from the first person point of view). I went with a friend so that it wouldn’t be a totally lost Sunday afternoon…at least I would get to spend time with a friend sans children for a few hours.  

So, need I say it more plainly? My expectations were low. I thoroughly enjoyed the coming attractions (3 more good-to-see-with-a-friend movies to watch for) so I was in a good mood when the feature finally started.   

I am happy to report that the book was great, but the movie was also perfectly fine! It was not a total waste of two hours and thirteen minutes (plus travel time) after all! Of course, I love all things that have to do with Italy so it helped that the first country visited in the story was Italy.  

Also, the other actors in the film were all appealing, interesting, and (a side benefit) some were pretty easy on the eyes. 🙂 

Verdict: worth seeing.

Conscious eating (WF&G week 2)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, education, family, health

There I was,  in week 2. Here is what I’ve learned:  conscious eating is hard. Applying those 7 principles is hard.

 Regarding principle #3:  It is very hard to not do another blessed thing when you are eating, ever. Plus, I totally miss reading while I’m eating if I am eating alone. Regarding principle #2:  It also is hard for me to always sit down while eating. I sit down for 10 hours (plus commuting time) every day that I go to work, so I always stand while I am eating on my lunch breaks.  Regarding principle #4: It’s not always possible to tell if it’s my body or my mind that wants the tiramisu.

I know now why author Geneen Roth gives workshops about how to eat consciously: I’m guessing that few, if any, people would stick with it if they didn’t have the structure imposed upon them by another (structure that they had to pay for; money motivates).

I briefly entertained the idea of applying the “80/20” rule to conscious eating, but decided that it sort of demeaned it. I mean, I could have lived with it if I eliminated numbers 2, 3 and 4….

So, bottom line is this: week 2 was a bust.

WF&G 7 guidelines: Week One

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, health, italian

Okay, so what I’m learning with applying the WF&G (Women Food and God by Geneen Roth) 7 guidelines is that I’m in trouble right away (for example, I am trying to figure out ways to sync the guidelines with the Weight Watchers Points system…and somehow, I think that is not the author’s intent…). It is also actually harder to follow all of the guidelines on workdays.

  1. Eating when I was hungry seemed like a “no-brainer’, but if it is true that what I’m hungry for (often) isn’t food, then I really had to stop to consider if I was hungry. This is diametrically opposed to: it’s 12:30; time for lunch! I decided to try to use a scale of 0-10, with “0” being not hungry and “10” being stomach growling non-stop. I would try to eat at the 4-5-6 range.
  2. Not eating in the car? OMG! Does this include Altoids? Tictacs? Gum? Does downing a McD’s caramel frappe comprise an act of eating?
  3. Eat without distractions….this is the hardest one for me. It was a total wake up call too; I had no idea how often I was doing other things while I eat, for one thing. The worst thing though, is that I love to read while I eat, something I’ve been doing since childhood. (Sob!). Plus, on a workday, I often eat breakfast on the way to the gym. It was hard to wait till I arrived at work to eat. Will have to rethink that one.
  4. “Eat what your body wants” I also thought was going to be easy, but here’s the thing: I found out how often what my body is asking for is at odds with what my mind thinks is appropriate. (Example: my body wants a pizza, not a 3 point Weight Watchers meal).
  5. This one isn’t too hard at this point (eating till satisfied).
  6. Not eating anything that I wouldn’t eat “in full view of others” is also not hard for me.
  7. This one: “Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure”… No problemo! I am Italian, after all!

For now, I’ve decided that gum does not count as food/eating; Altoids and Tictacs might count, but for this week they don’t. Non-caloric beverages (water, black coffee or tea) will not count; caloried ones will (so long frappe). One week down, three to go. Is anyone else working with these guidelines? How’s it going?