It Started with a Journal

OK, I've been to my 3rd and final HPB, where I found 3 more food-related books that were on my various wish lists, yay! They were: Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme (written by Dorie Greenspan), Chef, Interrupted: Delicious Chefs' Recipes That You Can Actually Make at Home (written by Melissa Clark), and Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food (written by Jane and Michael Stern).

I started reading Two for the Road immediately, and I am completely hooked. Jane and Michael Stern are the authors of Roadfood, which is a "coast-to-coast guide to 700 of the best barbecue joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners, and much, much more." I haven't read it myself, though I've heard of it (I'm waiting for it to come up on PBS or finding it at a used bookstore). Two for the Road is the behind the scenes stuff of them writing that book, and it's funny and engaging, not to mention fascinating, at least for a foodie. But it's more than just about the food they eat, though that is a big part -- it's about their way of life, and how they came to do what they do (they've been at it for almost 40 years now). Tidbit: They eat twelve meals a day. TWELVE MEALS. And it's not like they order a bunch of stuff and only eat a tiny bits of it...they actually eat their meals. They admit to waning by the third or fourth breakfast and not finishing, but that's because they've actually already eaten full meals. O.o Seriously, they're like hobbits. Anyway, I'd love to take a trip sometime to visit all the places they've noted as being great, because I love the kind of food they're talking about too.

Re: Christian Bale. I don't give a hoot. I guarantee if someone were recording me at various points in my life, they'd hear a blow up like that multiple times. Maybe it was overboard, especially someone listening in cold. But maybe if you took your work that seriously, and you were having a horrible day, and some asswipe can't do their job properly and ruins your day even more, or some other sequence of events, you'd take it out on them. Maybe you wouldn't. But I know I would be a total hypocrite to call him out on it, when I could totally see myself doing something similar, given certain circumstances. So yeah.

Some of you may know that I'm a big fan of Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series. Well, they made it into a movie, which was released only in Britain. It was directed by Gurinder Chadha, who directed Bend It Like Beckham, which I loved. So it was especially disappointing that the Georgia movie (titled "Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging," which is slightly changed, in a lame way, from the title of the first book) was a pale shell of what it should/could have been. It was essentially as if someone -- in this case, GC -- went through the book(s) and picked out some defining characters/events, then pieced together a movie from it. On the surface things pretty much follow the book (though there are also differences; some significant, some not), but the spirit, some indefinable something, is just not there.

And now, some pictures! I finally got my Chinese New Year Bearista from Starbucks Asia. :D Also, I was up early enough to catch the sunrise this morning, and I took some photos. They're not good; I'll say that in advance. They were taken around my neighborhood while I was walking Talis, so there's not any pretty scenery and there are ugly power lines and such. However, the COLORS of the sky are so pretty, and that's what should be paid attention to. :-)

( Bearista + Sunrise! )