The following are available for donation to a loving home.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Harvey
The Hang-ups F5000 Inversion Table Instructional Video (riveting watching - truly!)
Ashtanga Yoga “Short Forms” with David Swenson
Danby/Simplicity Air Conditioner Installation Guide
How The Grinch Stole Christmas!
A Christmas Story
Black & Decker All-in-One Automatic Breadmaker Instructional Video
Aminaniacs: Animaniacs Stew
Animaniacs Sing-a-long (includes Yakko’s World!!!! )
Animaniacs: The Warners Escape
Animaniacs: Helloooo, Holidays!
Larry and Willy: Remove the tinfoil from your head and return to the mother ship!
The Seventh Seal
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Pulp Fiction
Four Weddings and A Funeral
Buns of Steel
Legs of Steel
Arms & Abs of Steel (note - Kara is not representative of the effectiveness of the “_____ of Steel” videos - apparently you actually had to ‘watch’ and ‘follow’ them for them to have any value)

Why does DeliciousLibrary (and therefore Amazon) keep thinking that all John Grisham books are either “SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color Link Cable” or “[DVD] Three Stooges (Animated) Volume 1 from Television Classics”?

That aside, here’s the (initial) list of books we’re getting rid of. Keep in mind that these are both Bill’s & mine, as well as gradually accumulated books from various family members for whom we acted as storage lockers. Also, we’re getting rid of these ones. So don’t think you can get some sort of special insight into us from this list. Also? :P (defensive much, Kara?)

If you see some you’d like, let us know.

Women and Education: Second Edition , A. McLaren
Five Little Pigs , Agatha Christie
Dumb Witness , Agatha Christie
L’Étranger , Albert Camus
Brave New World Revisited , Aldous Huxley
Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
After Many a Summer , Aldous Huxley
The Gulag Archipelago , Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Complete Plays of Aristophanes , Aristophanes
The South Beach Diet: The Delicious, Doctor-Designed, Foolproof Plan , Arthur Agatston M.D.
Focus , Arthur Miller
Strindberg: Five Plays , August Strindberg
The Fountainhead , Ayn Rand
Juggling for the Complete Klutz , B C Rimbeaux
Mister Sandman: A novel , Barbara Gowdy
Waiting for Godot , Beckett
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East , Bernard Lewis
Body for Life , Bill Phillips
Plays from a Contemporary American Theater , Brooks ; Editor McNamara
All the President’s Men , Carl Bernstein
Broca’s Brain , Carl Sagan
How to catch bottomfish , Charlie White
If He Hollers Let Him Go , Chester B. Himes
Ecstasy Is a New Frequency , Chris Griscom
Plays , Christopher Fry
Gardeners of God , Colette Gouvion
SO LONG & THANKS FOR ALL FISH , Crown
Individual Medley : How To Swim Butterfly, Backcrawl, Breast Stroke and Freestyle , D (Coach of the medal Winning 1976 Canadian Olympic Swim Team) Snelling
The Da Vinci Code , Dan Brown
Microserfs , Douglas Coupland
Life After God , Douglas Coupland
City of glass: Douglas Coupland’s Vancouver , Douglas Coupland
METAMAGICAL THEMAS , Douglas Hofstadter
To Sir With Love , E.R. Braithwaite
Cyrano de Bergerac , Edmond Rostand
Inspecting The Vaults , Eric Mccormack
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal , Eric Schlosser
Modern Classics Rhinoceros Chairs Lesson , Eugene Ionesco
LIEH-TZU , Eva Wong
Penguin Classics Poor Folks And Other Stories , Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Penguin Classics Crime And Punishment , Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Book Of Guys , Garrison Keillor
The Sound Reinforcement Handbook (Paperback) , Gary Davis/ Ralph Jones
The ecstasy of Rita Joe and other plays , George Ryga
The roaring girl: Stories , Greg Hollingshead
The Homecoming , Harold Pinter
Birthday Party , Harold Pinter
Homecoming , Harold Pinter
Bridget Jones’s Diary , Helen Fielding
Ibsen Four Major Plays , Henrik Ibsen
Penguin Classics Dolls House And Other Plays , Henrik Ibsen
MAGISTER LUDI , Hermann Hesse
Apocalypse Wow: A Memoir for the End of Time , James Finn Garner
Nature’s Chaos , James Gleick/ Eliot Porter
The Celestine Prophecy , James Redfield
Wines Of Spain , Jan Read
Penguin Classics Misanthrope Tartuffe And Other Plays , Jean Moliere
Nausea , Jean Sartre
The Coffin Dancer , Jeffery Deaver
A Time to Kill , John Grisham
The Runaway Jury , John Grisham
The Partner , John Grisham
The Summons , John Grisham
The King of Torts , John Grisham
The Client , John Grisham
The Affluent Society , John Kenneth Galbraith
Smiley’s People , John Le Carre
Look Back in Anger , John Osborne
Entertainer , John Osborne
Sachertorte Algorithm And Other Antidotes To Comp , John Shore
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster , Jon Krakauer
Drawing birds , Joy Postle
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea , Jules Verne
The beauty of friendship (Hallmark editions) , Kahlil Gibran
A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran , Kahlil Gibran/ Martin L. Wolf
Fables Of Brunswick Avenue , Katherine Govier
Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Balance Point , Kathy Tyers
Impro , Keith Johnstone
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five , Kurt, Jr. Vonnegut
Alice: Through the Looking Glass: And What Alice Found There , Lewis Carroll
The Stone Angel , Margaret Laurence
Stallion Gate , Martin Cruz Smith
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary , Merriam-Webster
Puzzled Programmers: 15 Mind-Boggling Story Puzzles to Test Your Programming Prowess : Solutions in Basic, Pascal, and C , Michael Wiesenberg
Cryptonomicon , Neal Stephenson
American Gods , Neil Gaiman
Being Digital , Nicholas Negroponte
High Fidelity , Nick Hornby
The Presidential Papers of Norman Mailer , Norman Mailer
Quotations from Chairman Zalm , Osborne
Day in the Death of Joe Egg , Peter Nichols
Portnoy’s Complaint , Philip Roth
Anthology of Roman Drama , Philip W. Harsh
Myst: The Book of Ti’Ana , Rand Miller/ David Wingrove
The Donnelly Album: The Complete and Authentic Account of Canada’s Famous Feuding Family , Ray Fazakas
Regulators , Richard Bachman
Richard Hittleman’s Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan , Richard Hittleman
The Cobra Event , Richard Preston
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Robert Pirsig
Les enfants du bonhomme dans la lune: Contes , Roch Carrier
The Wine Book , Rosalind Cooper
The Deviant’s Advantage: How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets , Ryan Mathews/ Watts Wacker
Happy Days , Samuel Beckett
Penguin Classics Herzog , Saul Bellow
Secrets Of Yoga , Simon Fielding
Who Moved My Cheese , Spencer Johnson
Dark Tower 03 Waste Lands , Stephen King
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything , Steven Levitt/ Stephen J. Dubner
Cocktail Party , T Eliot
Murder In The Cathedral , T Eliot
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats , T.S. Eliot
Slaves of New York , Tama Janowitz
Real Thing , Tom Stoppard
Sky high: Stories from Saskatchewan , Ursell Geoffrey
CIA: THE CULT OF INTELLIGENCE, THE , Victor Marchetti
Medieval Mysteries, Moralities and Interludes , Vincent F. Hopper
Anger-Free: Ten Basic Steps to Managing Your Anger , W. Doyle Gentry
According to Jake and the Kid , W.O. Mitchell
Ebola , William Dr Close
Signet Classics Taming Of The Shrew , William Shakespeare
Signet Classics Othello , William Shakespeare
MAN CALLED INTREPID , William Stevenson
Side Effects , Woody Allen
Without Feathers , Woody Allen
When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
The Pentagon Papers

thinking:
* man, gwyneth paltrow looks fabulous.
* but her nose sure looks big.
* and .. wtf .. she’s actually acting!
* oh. It’s Claire Danes.

>Thursday was to be the first official day of the new cook through project. In the interest of efficiency (project progress-wise) I had decided to make both an entree and an appetizer from the book. The menu was Aloo Tiki (Maurya, p113) and Five Spice-roasted Duck Breast with Shiitake Mushroom and Wilted Spinach Salad with Blackberry Balsamic Syrup (Bishop’s, p32) [I love fancy restaurant menu items - they generally give you a full ingredient list that allows you to do a decent replica at home]

I hadn’t actually picked up all the ingredients ahead of time so I stopped off at Granville Island on the way home from work to get the duck, the blackberry vinegar and the potatoes. I had gone out the day before to try to find the vinegar & duck, but was unlucky at Capers, Market Meats and 7Seas (obviously 7Seas wouldn’t have the duck, but they might have had the vinegar. They didn’t.)

However, Granville Island always has duck, and I had scoped out the online shop of Edible BC ahead of time, so I was hopeful of the blackberry vinegar. And yay! they had some in stock!

So I picked up my duck for 3 people, yukon gold potatoes vinegar and hopped back on the scooter to start preparing dinner before our friend Bill (not myBill, otherBill) arrived.

First off, the potatoes needed to be boiled in their skins until they could be mashed. That sounded time-consuming so it was first (I can’t believe I felt the need to take a picture of boiling potatoes, but that’s what ya get with mild OCD.)

[pause for a week]

Right. So… I got sidetracked & didn’t finish writing this up while it was fresh in my mind, but I do at least have more photos to post.

Right. Potatoes:

Next: Blackberry syrup (how cool is the colour of the ceramic element in this photo? I assure you that this is not the real colour of it. Sadly):

In the delightful All-Clad saucier Bill bought me as a birthday present last year :)

But do I have ground coriander? I do not. However, I do have a small mortar & pestle (gift from my brother) and coriander seeds!

[I am nothing if not resourceful. OK, I’m definitely more resourceful than I am prepared.]

One must toast/fry one’s spices in order to make them more flavourful.

Peas! (I just realized that I didn’t write up the peas story yet! Off to Granville Island and found fresh peas at the first produce place near the car. I figured “I’ll get them peas on the way out”. But when I returned, post-duck&vinegar, there was some guy there buying all the peas. He was sorting through them, but he had three large bags full of them and ended up picking up ones he had previously discarded. Pea-hoarding! I gave up & decided to go with frozen peas, but there was a bag of day-old peas at the till, so I managed to beat him to those, allowing fresh peas for me & mine.

Sear that duck:

and then stick it in the oven:

aaaaand rest:

Saute the shiitakes (which, of course, I forgot & had to send Bill back to GI for) .

and the spinach

and plate

Note the poor quality of the photo and the relative emptiness of the plate. Had I planned better I could have made the tiki aloo as a side instead of an appetizer, but then of course, we would have all starved before the duck was ready.

The food was … ok but not great. Too much seasoning on the duck (a classic failing of mine) and I don’t think I liked the aloo tiki at all (would have been better deep fried, and with a hell of a lot more salt). But still, done!

I shant be trying to do two recipes from the same book again in a single meal - instead, I shall select appropriate meal items to match the single book item.

Right, belated but at least complete. Unlike the UI design due tomorrow… :(

Looks like Nixon was right after all…

ok, how have none of the posts I’ve read so far (last 45 minutes or so) on Phoenix finding ice on mars used the title Ice, Ice, Baby?

How could China possibly launch an anti-trust probe against Microsoft? Isn’t the basis of an anti-trust complaint that someone has blocked free markets? And isn’t China kind of, oh, I don’t know.. _communist_?

(not that I think there’s anything inherently wrong with communism or socialism as economic paradigms, just that if you’re going with communism, maybe complaining about impeding capitalist market-driven realities isn’t your strongest gambit)

As mentioned, it’s Day 0 because Bill was cooking instead of me, but it’s excellent practice for me to start the posting process. I’ve spent more time in iPhoto & Flickr today than I have over the past year. I’m not a big photo type, mostly because of the amount of time required to ‘deal with’ photos, but it’s interesting that I finally have a project that I’m willing to spent that kind of time on!

Right. I don’t have the page number (and it really doesn’t matter - the book is organized alphabetically by the restaurant that submitted the recipe, with a random access index by recipe type). Here’s the recipe he made:

(the full photo set is available at this link if you’re interested, but there’s a lot of photographic cruft in there that I’m leaving out of the summary posts.)

He apparently spent 2 hours sourcing ingredients, and then I forced him to remember which bit was from where. Despite the fact that we know what each other is talking about, we don’t have the right names for places yet - I’m planning to head down there to create a photo map later this week:

• halibut was from the salmon shop (or whatever it’s called, across from oyama sausage) - they said they only had precut 8oz fillets instead of 6oz so he got a ‘big 8oz (10oz)’ fillet to cut in half)
• spot prawns were from the fishy shop at the southwest corner of the market. I’ve actually never shopped at that place and have no idea what it’s called.
• asparagus, garlic and shallots from northern of the two grocers in the middle column. Despite the two being nearly identical, I somehow always prefer the south bunch.
• after having no luck at finding dried porcinis at Choices, Granville Island or Safeway, he found them at the New Apple Farm Market on 4th (across from Safeway). One of our favourite places, and always with great prices & a surprising amount of selection of goods!
• fresh cremini (brown button :)) mushrooms from Capers
• the romano & herb gnocci is from the Italian deli at the north/centre part of the market across from Ancient Grains (Zara’s?)
• the yam gnocci is from the Italian deli at the south end across from Oyama (Duso’s?)

By the time I got home, he’d already prepped the spot prawn skewers as appetizers

as well as the prawn oil and the halibut.

(for those of you who didn’t know, I totally won the ‘guy’ lottery :))

After some fancy BBQing of the prawns, the asparagus and the halibut, it was time to plate:

In case it’s not clear, I had nothing to do with any of this.
[Also, despite appearances, no peanut butter was used in the preparation of this meal]

Are you hungry? I’m hungry:

And complimented by:

Day 1 of the cook-through starts tomorrow, with a dinner guest and some duck! Hopefully I’ll be slightly less tardy in posting.

Weird. I’ll be chuffed if I can remember filling out this meme, but here tis & my answers.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (does relation by marriage count? I assume not)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers (not sure I know what this means, but I can guess. And if I’m guessing right, then no.)
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. (I could go either way on this. Intellectuals and ex-hippies don’t get much positive press these days, but articulate, bright students do.)
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18. (of interest, it wasn’t co-signed; it was just mine)
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs. (Scholarships sure do help, however)
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18. (no, but I started buying all my own clothes when I got a job at age 15)
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them. (nope. bought my own car at 15 - stupid, really, since I couldn’t drive it for 6 more months)
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house. Sometimes. Sometimes a townhouse.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child. (2 kids, different genders)
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. (teenage girl, paid for it myself like the clothes & the car)
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up. (does the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon count? it shouldn’t - it was free)
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family. (Never knew the numbers, but knew money was tight sometimes. Certainly didn’t feel free to play with the thermostat)