jbaum's blog

The Schick Quattro for women ad is really terrifying if you've read or seen the movie "The Ruins".

I got to this site from jessamyn's post about a library wedding, but the steampunk wedding is such a great idea. I hadn't heard of steampunk, but having read Gibson's "The Difference Engine" and Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", I should have guessed that there might be a fan community out there.

Kate and I saw the Sopranos Bada Bing Cherry flavored ice cream Chipwich yesterday, although we did not buy it. The best (worst?) thing about it is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the Sopranos, other than being pink inside.

Eye

If you've seen me lately you may have noticed that I was wearing my glasses. I've been wearing contacts for most of my adult life in public and it's really unusual to see me wearing them. On Halloween this year, I got this annoying case of dry eye that doesn't seem to be clearing up. It ruined my Halloween and has changed my look to ultra-librarian. Oh, and I can't cry, which sounds like it could be kind of poetical. I am getting used to the glasses now and started to take flax seed oil, which is supposed to help. Actually, I'm kind of digging the flax seed oil, even though the tablespoon a day feels very old-fashioned.

I saw Paul Karason, the man who turned blue recently by ingesting and spreading colloidal silver on his skin, in front of the giant Christmas tree at Rockefeller center today. He was smoking a cigarette, so I question that this was a health treatment that went awry and not a publicity stunt, especially since it was so well publicized when it happened to a woman in the '90s.

On my lunch break a few weeks ago I saw what I think is a great egret hanging out near the Bronx River behind the ABC Carpet and Home outlet. I only had my cell phone camera to work with and I somehow managed to only get a picture of the trees and my finger. The great egret and the snowy egret, which looks similar but with a little feather mohawk, are native to the Bronx River, but I think they usually prefer the part near the Botanic Gardens to the part near the expressway. I think I read a NYT article about how they are in Central Park more now when they would usually be in Florida at this time of year.

Update: Great NYT article about South Brother Island as a bird sanctuary and egret haven.

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(In no particular order...)

Ani Phyo's site of raw recipes and her show got picked up by BoingBoing, where I discovered her site. She has some amazing looking recipes and this weekend Kate and I made the raw donut holes. They were crazy good and super easy and I can't wait to make some more. They made me want to try her other recipes and her line of SmartMonkey raw food bars. After hearing about "popcorn lung" all week, this recipe will make you wonder whether the world really needs buttery flavoring.

I saw the new film for "The Jane Austen Book Club" and while I read the book that the movie is based on, I've never been a big Austen fan. My friend from college has always been a devotee, but not me. I've started reading Sense and Sensibility and I'm giving it another try. I also wasn't a big Maria Bello fan, but she was really good in this movie, although freakishly tan. I watched "Shattered" with her afterwards, but I don't think that movie did anyone any favors.

My friend, Clarissa, who we just visited in Chicago and her husband have a great band, Catsplash, that has a really addictive sound. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

Lauren's breaking out the 8-bit intarsia knitting madness. And I quote, "check it".

As a librarian, I don't usually like to use Wikipedia as my source, but gosh darn it if they don't have interesting articles sometimes, especially on new or unusual things. They have a great article on Wolfberries, often marketed as Goji Berries. If you live in the US or the UK, these little guys have been heavily marketed to you, with all kinds of claims. They've been native to the UK for hundreds of years, but they're marketed as Tibetan or Himalayan. They're supposed to be super high in protein and Vitamin C. However, they're only 12 percent protein by mass, comparable to most other fruits and less than legumes (Soybean sprouts are 54% of calories from protein and even lemons are 16% calories from protein, according to Marilyn Diamond, quoting "Nutritive Value of American Foods in Common Units" U.S.D.A. Agriculture Handbook No. 456), unless my units are wonky. They are really tasty and give you a boost, and they are used in Chinese teas and soups, but I found one site that was selling goji juice for $50 a liter. I just bought some dried fruit with gojis from Himalania, with nary a goji to be found, just some sad cranberries. Depending on your perspective, the controversy on superfoods in the UK is either about the government preventing new businesses from bringing foods like gojis to the masses or the government trying to keep people from being swindled. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. If you feel like you can't escape them then just do what Kate and I do -- chase each other around the house singing "Goji berries! bouncing here and there and everywhere!"

Our knitting circle has been having some interesting discussions about "local" cuisine. One knitter's husband was interested in some cookbook about squirrels, sparrows and other urban game. While this is totally not my boat, I have been reading about raw vegans using dandelion greens from their backyards. I love this idea and I swear I've seen dandelion greens for sale at the market. They're everywhere and mostly considered a nuisance, but are really high in calcium. Kate says they're too bitter for her taste, but you can always load up on salad dressing. So, I came home from work one day having picked some and some mulberries from a nearby tree. Kate was horrified. Having grown up in New York, she naturally distrusts anything that may have grown in the ground or from a tree. She convinced me to throw out the dandelion greens because of not knowing what pesticides might have been involved and because of the complete lack of mosquitos in the area due to the West Nile scare a few years ago. She said I could eat one mulberry and if I survived the night I could have another one. I used to eat a ton of the things as a kid, but she doubted my ability to recognize plant life. Needless to say, I survived the mulberries, but remembered that they aren't very tasty. I still might make a pie. We bought a chive plant at the New York Botanical Gardens and placed it high above the cat's reach. We haven't killed it yet (we both have black thumbs) and have been enjoying fresh chives. The cat knows it's up there and might get neck strain since he a.) loves to eat plant life (he even eats cacti!) and b.) loves to chew on anything long and string-like (see the cat er saga on tooboo.wordpress.com).

All of this reminds me of the scene in the Omnivore's Dilemma where Michael Pollan picks a wild mushroom and then ends up throwing it away because of his mother's voice in his head telling him it was probably poisonous. That scene really irked me, almost more than the scene where he slaughtered his own pig and was able to distance himself from it later and eat it.

I'm still interested in this urban foraging thing, especially now that our kitchen is ripped out. We have no backyard and I'd love to do some raw food sprouting, but like I said, black thumbs. There's supposedly a nature walk in Inwood Hill Park (this one?), which is practically our backyard where an expert shows you which plants really are edible.

Dandelion green videos:
Salad Freaks Out Raw Vegan Chef
Shazzie's SuperFoods are for Real Pt.1 Free and Local
Raw Food Diet goes Wild

This happened awhile ago already, but I got bogged down in the morass of financial management homework. Our friend Alex picked me up at work in his little eco-mobile (his Parks department natural gas car) and we went to Frattelli's Pizza Cafe (Kate was stuck in a meeting). I had the amazing broccoli rabe hero, which is not on the menu, but well-known to those who are in the know (by that, I mean me). Alex had the same thing, but with some kind of meat (chicken?). I think he liked it, but I don't know if he's as obsessed with broccoli rabe as I am, ever since its resurgence after the spinach scare.