The Chosen: A Review

Excellent book. Excellent story. The two books I've read by Chaim Potok have both delivered. True, at times I felt like I was reading My Name is Asher Lev again, but that's bound to happen seeing as the background of the characters is similar and some of the themes intertwine, but the author deals with such great ideas and themes that his books are superb. This story deals with two Jewish teenagers who have very different upbringings. One of the teenagers is a Hasidic Jew who is raised by his tzaddik father in silence. While the son suffers under this way of being raised, there's a point to it all and the reader comes to, or tries to, understand it. And that's in a very small nutshell. Good read. Give it a try if you haven't yet.

EQ Pick n' Roll

There's nothin' like a night of Elder's Quorum basketball for some sports entertainment. Complete with short jerseys and smack talk.
Made me want to play some basketball myself. It's been a while. At home growing up, we had a court outside on the east side of the house. We spent hours playing basketball. We'd play til it got dark outside and we could hardly see the ball. We didn't have short jerseys, but on occassion I would be wearing some short shorts. My brother called them my seventies shorts, because when I would try to defend him, they'd look all John Stockon like. We were true basketball players I tell ya.

Discontinued?!?

When at the grocery store, Jess and I like to look for deals,...heck, we love to look for deals. Jess is the best at finding them (while he's busy checking out all the mustard flavors or the latest iteration of stuffed olives); because most of the time, I just rush through the store to get the shopping task over with (I'm working on changing this mentality). Some of the deals we find are in the form of discontinued items, "33% off!" the little sign declares to us with an explanation point. So we check it out and decide. We've picked out some doozies. Paul Newman's Lime dressing looked promising (maybe it was his charming face on the bottle), but when we tasted it, we knew the discontinuation was a sound business decision.

A few days ago, however, we found a discontinued item that saddened me instead of excited me. Nature Valley Vanilla Yogurt bars.

These things are delicious! How could they be getting rid of such a product? The vanilla creates the perfect bit of sweet with the savory granola. A match destined for success, or so the execs at Nature Valley and I thought. Not so. It looks as if the strawberry and blueberry flavors are hanging on, but vanilla's gotten the boot. We bought a couple of boxes and revelled in our deal. Too bad vanilla's had to make it's exit at a little over $2 a box.

Thanks George

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
-George Bernard Shaw

Year of the Ox

The last week of January, I got to celebrate the New Year (based on the lunar calendar) with lots of friends and acquaintances. We hailed in the year of the ox with delicious food and superb traditional and non-traditional Chinese performances. At the end, we received a red envelope with candy in it to give us good luck throughout the year. Tradition says you should keep the red envelope for all of that good luck.

I'm definitely keeping the red envelope. This year's going to be a good one.

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

For Valentine's day one year, my dad bought each of us a package of chocolate covered strawberries from a chocolatier downtown. Each package contained six strawberries and man, those strawberries were delicious. Because I love to make things last and I try to savor all treats, I saved my strawberries for about a week (allowing myself to eat just one a day). This is normal for a girl who used to put all of her Halloween candy bars in a beauty case under her bed every year in order to enjoy them throughout the following months.

On the fifth or sixth day, my strawberries started to have a fizzy kind of taste. Like someone had added carbonation to them. Turns out, fresh chocolate covered strawberries should be eaten within three days or else they start to ferment.

Lesson learned: during this month of chocolate covered goodness, eat those strawberries within three days but save those chocolates for later.

photo from i.ehow.com