Sassy Radish

It’s Friday again, and also, the ides of March. Quick, someone, pull out your Julius Caesar and recite the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech. And with April right around the corner, we’ve got the prologue to the Canterbury Tales to consider as well. It’s been a fairly frenetic week on my end, but I managed to cull some links that I found to be compelling. I hope you enjoy them, and I sincerely hope that your weekend holds more thrills and excitement than mine: taxes, taxes, taxes (Forrest, our resident feline CPA, is ready to help me though). But, as a treat, we get to see some out of town friends on Sunday, and I cannot wait.

Here are the links. Enjoy. And happy weekend.

Continue reading friday link love.

It’s Friday here again, which means a round of links for your reading pleasure (though some of these links won’t bring you joy). A quick note of housekeeping: I’ve been receiving a slew of email asking me to link to this product or that service on Friday’s Link Love. Please email me, by all means, and if it’s appropriate, I’ll help in any way I can, but Friday’s links aren’t to promote a good or a service, generally speaking. It’s more a collection of things I’ve been reading through the week, that I’ve wanted to share with you all.

And without further ado… the links…

Continue reading friday link love.

Here’s what a typical morning here is like these days.

6:30 AM wake up. Look at the clock, realize it’s very early still but finally, alas, it’s light out. Decide to get up and go to the gym and get back in time to have breakfast with Andrew only to realize your phone is at 15% power and will not make it through the workout.

Turn over and try to fall asleep. Realize you’re too anxious to sleep. That suddenly there is a tidal wave of all these to do’s in your head, the fact that you don’t have any meetings or “set” work to do, that you have no idea where you next paycheck is coming from, that you just put a check in the mail for rent neither you nor your husband can afford.

Toss and turn until the cat wanders over for his morning cuddle. Cuddle with the cat for ten minutes. His purrs only moderately calm you down, but mostly, what you feel is jealousy. Jealousy that you can’t ever feel this inner calm and bliss. You think to yourself, I’d do anything to feel this way if only for a day, but you know it’s not going to happen.

Check your phone once more; no new emails, no new job offers, no new job listings. The phone is now at 14%. Scratch the cat’s chin and hear him purr. Look over to your left where you husband is sleeping. Notice how he is the world’s most peaceful-looking sleeper.

Check the Instagram feed, see what dinner/cocktail/dessert everyone’s had last night. Look at cute sleeping children photos, wonder how parents do it all. Notice the phone is now at 13%. Go to Twitter, check the feed. Find a few interesting articles, but because you hate reading them on your phone, email them to yourself. Notice the phone is now at 12%. Go to Facebook and see everyone’s updates. Realize that you’re finding Facebook to be more and more of a bore, and it’s not that you don’t care about your friends updates, but that somehow Facebook has become a virtual world you don’t really feel like inhabiting. You want, simultaneously, peace and quiet and catch up with everyone, and I mean everyone, in person.

Continue reading it’s all in your head.

You, people!! Such great tips and techniques! I didn’t doubt you had it in you, but I was blown away by the sheer depth and breadth of the different tips everyone had to offer. I loved, loved, reading all of them – thank you all so much for sharing it with all of us here. I’m collating the highlights below, in case you aren’t into reading all 262 comments.

The winner, Julie, was commenter 174. Julie, can you please email me your full contact info (my email is on the About page), and I will have the America’s Test Kitchen folks send you the book right away.

And now, some of the tips highlighted here. Sorry if I didn’t mention your tip – there were so many great ones and I just tried to get a general gist here.

Continue reading “the science of good cooking” giveaway winner and kitchen tips highlights.

Happy Friday, folks! Hope your weeks were fruitful and went by fast – and that your’e ready for the weekend! But seriously, who isn’t ever ready for a few days off, right? We’re about to enter March, which means, winter is going to be soon behind us! I can’t believe two months of this year flew by already. Crazy.

If you haven’t yet, head over to the previous post and learn the scintillating (zzzzzzz….) difference between baking powder and baking soda. I’m also giving away America’s Test Kitchen, The Science of Good Cooking – leave a comment by March 3, 11:59pm sharing with all of us your favorite kitchen trick, tip, or technique and you’ll be entered to win the book. So far, the tips have been nothing short of fantastic and when the giveaway is done and decided, I’ll do a highlight of some of these to share with everyone.

And now… on to the links!

Great news: Locally-grown food is now having a national impact.

Cutest kitten in the world (save, of course, Forrest)

I know it’s cute and hipster-chic to love owls, but I’ve always loved them in real life (as opposed to a design detail) – and this article on owls proved mesmerizing. They are such amazing birds.

Real Genius in the style of M. Night Shyamalan – just genius.

Independent bookstores, including my neighborhood bookstore, are fighting Amazon’s e-book practice. I say more power to them.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s CEO has recently instituted a policy that mandates all employees come in to work and not telecommute. The Atlantic offers a great rebuttal to her mandate, most notably that working from home, can make you more productive. I couldn’t agree more. Studies have repeatedly shown that someone who endures a long commute is like to be less productive, have less time to do something like go to the gym, and get sick more often. It seems a step back in progress, not forward.

What I’m cooking this weekend.

Also, Joy made beignets and I’d like some right now.

Some craziness out of our 49th state challenging federal law. The Alaska state senate passed legislation Monday that would make it a felony for a federal official or agent to try to enforce new restrictions on gun ownership. [sigh]

RIP, Fung Wah bus. For anyone traveling between Boston and New York using a Fung Wah bus, well that time has come to and end. The Feds have shut the service down citing dated equipments (buses).

Why you can’t order cable a la carte. About a month ago, we cancelled cable. Then we were twitchy for ten days (we’re big news junkies) and reordered it again at a reduced rate. I can tell you, in all honesty, that we watch fewer than a dozen channels, and I can name the number of just one: MSNBC (which tells you how little tv I actually watch). I really wish that you could order cable challens a la carte and only pay for what you need. It seems like a win win for everybody and cable companies might make even more money getting folks who are budget minded to sign up for a humble channel offering.

We found our son in the subway. Deeply moving and poignant.

And finally, this piece on the psycho-sexual ordeal of reporting in Washington. Spot on and succinct.

And on that rather serious note, I bid you all good weekend!

Hi, friends. Today we’re going to geek out a bit. Sometimes you come here and there are stories or ramblings, but today, think of today as a mini science class. We’re going to talk about amino acids and browning and alkaline dough. I bet you can’t wait to get started.

For awhile now, I’ve been wondering about leaveners and the difference between the two. Why would you ever use baking powder instead of baking soda, and, more importantly, why would you ever use both? I’ve asked many folks this question, and gotten somewhat satisfying answers, but nothing that really made sense. I needed to delved deeper; I needed a super-geeky answer.

Enter a book to do just that, answer all my science-driven kitchen questions – Cooks’ Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking. Just the mere word “science” made me excited. The book was on my shortlist of cookbooks to purchase, but the generous (and lovely) folks over at America’s Test Kitchen, some of whom I met at the Cookbook Conference a few weeks ago, sent me a copy. And the first chapter to catch my eye, Concept 42, was appropriately titled “Two Leaveners Are Often Better than One”.

After reading through the book and thoroughly geeking out, I thought that you, readers, might benefit from a book like this on your shelves. Everyone, I think, could benefit from this book on their shelves. So I asked if they’d be willing to partner up on a giveaway, and much to my delight, they said yes!

Continue reading baking powder vs baking soda – and “the science of good cooking” giveaway!.