I'm Just Here For The Food

Alton Brown

Yes, I read a cookbook straight through. Well, to be honest I skimmed some of the recipes a little but I read all the sidebars, theory, and practical application stuff. Including how to build a roasting oven out of firebrick in your carport. (A carport? Must be a southern thing…) Even the kids got into this one. C has been reading it almost as thoroughly as me, and S wants to check out pictures of the exploding guy every other day. Anyone should know that my respect and enthusiasm for AB knows no bounds, but even given my prejudice, this was really, really good.

(the exploding guy pic)

I’ve been debating whether I’m going to include a post for every little thing I read – because I tend to pick up a lot of how-to stuff that I skim through, plus house porn (as small hands terms it) that I just get for the pictures. I don’t know, I might do a month-end summary with brief notes. I want to keep my momentum going, account for everything, but not get bogged down in my reading because I don’t know what I’ll say on the reading blog….

Speaking of porn… let’s do a “quickie” entry on For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn (not the Berman and Berman one by the same title, which I’ve also read… for work!) OK, no, that’s a much-too-salacious way to start talking about what was really a pretty inoffensive little book. It’s a “what your husband wished he could tell you, but is afraid to because it would probably be followed by the worst kind of ‘discussion,’ including tears and maybe sleeping on the couch for a few weeks” type of book. I picked it up one day in Kmart, while C was flipping through the magazine rack and read a chunk of it, then found it at the library and finished it off. Somehow I missed the heavy religious slant while thumbing through in Kmart, so I found the author’s recommendation to “sit down and pray before reading on” at the beginning of one particular chapter to be a bit disconcerting. But really, I kind of enjoyed reading this one. It points out what the male gender finds important in a relationship and is very soothing about saying yes, it’s probably different from what you find important but that’s ok – that doesn’t mean either of you are wrong. As for my segue up above – the author does seem to be a little preoccupied with the issue of pornography. She includes a rather atrocious excerpt from her novel at the end of the book – about a Christian husband dealing with “temptation” (i.e. internet porn sites and strip clubs). That was off-putting.

I tend to have a proclivity for picking up books that probably worry J. The above would be one. Also The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver. Then there was the time I was reading Listening to Prozac (Peter Kramer) and Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy (by David Burns -- required for a psych class I had in nursing school). That prompted an “is everything ok?” talk. Things are ok – I just read everything. And I hear about so many problems at work that if I weren’t interested in reading about problems too, I’d be at a disadvantage…