five faves

It’s been difficult to schedule time together to work on the book translation project, so it has slowed down a little bit. Lately, I have come across some interesting books at the library.

  • Food 52. I took the book, Food 52: Genius recipes home from the library. I like the simplicity of some of the recipes. One that I have been making often using my homemade wine vinegar is Eggs with Wine Vinegar.
    • Homemade red wine vinegar – Put all the ingredients in a jar, leave it in a dark place and wait for about 2 months type of recipe. There are lots of instructions available on how to do this. This is the recipe I used from the blog, The Meaning of Pie, where I first encountered the idea.
  • Send Forth the  Healing Sun, a book about a neurosurgeon who teaches brain surgery in Tanzania and starts Madaktari, an NGO that focuses on training medical personnel in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Another chance discovery at the library was this bookwhich I opened to this page…
    This lesson ends with the suggestion,

    “once you have gotten to know a good majority of your demons, organize a dance party”
  • Tacos. Homemade fish tacos on puffy taco shells which my daughter insisted on making so we made this together and black bean tacos, and black bean and spaghetti squash tacos from this book, by Deb Perelman, creator of the Smitten Kitchen website and cookbook. I’ve been making homemade Slow-cooker Cuban black beans following Nigella Lawson’s recipe in Feel Good Food. I make a half batch in a tiny 1.5 quart slow cooker by combining:
    • 1¼ cups dried black beans, 1  Tbsp cumin, some black pepper, 1 bay leaf, about a teaspoon of salt and the following chopped vegetables: 1 onion, I pepper, 1 chile pepper, 3 cloves garlic. Add enough water to cover by about 1 inch and cook until they are done. Did you know you don’t have to soak your black beans?
  • Get Plucky with the Ukulele, another fun book I found at the library –  starts with a list of ukulele players who you may not have known to be ukulele players. There are so many amazing ukulele resources on-line, lots of it free, but once you find someone you like, there are lessons for a reasonable fee.  These are just a few of the gazillion resources out there.
      • Ukulele underground – lots of lessons here. I got a 3 months subscription for Christmas.
      • Incredible ukulele player, Jake Shimbukuro shares a version of “Something” by George Harrison that you can play with just one finger.
      • the first youtube ukulele video I watched, was by Cynthia Lin
      • my son showed me the video below, by amazing Canadian ukulele player and teacher, James Hill, and said you could learn to play like this… It may take a while, or several lifetimes

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