As you may (or may not) remember, Ash (English Major’s Narrative) and I have embarked on a project to read an Essay a Day in 2011. After we announced our grand plan last December, Vasilly (1330v) e-mailed and said she wanted to join us, which was awesome! After one month in, I thought it was time to offer an update on my progress.

I’m still trying to figure out how to fit reading essays (and, probably even more challenging) writing about essays fits into my reading routine. My first thought was to read an essay as soon as I wake up in the morning, to star my day off with some good writing as inspiration. But that hasn’t really worked because I spend too much time reading blogs in the morning and run out of time/forget about reading an essay. I also tried reading over lunch, but that habit hasn’t stuck yet. It seems like the best time to read an essay or two is right before I go to bed. An essay is a nice length to help me get drowsy, and when then end it’s easy to put the book down.

The problem with reading at night is that it doesn’t work with my other goal for the project: to post about each essay on my Tumblr as a way to keep track of my reading. I don’t want to bring my laptop to bed with me, and writing a post on my tablet is a huge pain. And writing after I finish reading wakes me up, which is not the point of reading before bed!

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Title: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Notices into Fearless Home Cooks
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: Fresh from her stint at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris (chronicled in her first memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry) author/chef Kathleen Flinn isn’t sure where her path leads. The idea for her next project comes after a chance encounter in the grocery store. Flinn notices a woman filling her cart full of processed foods. When she gets up the nerve to ask the customer about it, Flinn discovers that the customer wants to eat better, but feels overwhelmed choosing and preparing healthier options.

Lightning strike! Flinn decides her next adventure will be to set up a basic cooking school for home cooks that want to do more and cook better, but don’t have the basic skills to get started. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is an account of Flinn’s first class, and offers practical advice on everything from basic knife skills to reading recipes to developing flavors to getting the most out of every grocery dollar.

The one word I can think to describe this book is “comforting.” As a wannabe foodie myself, I think I pretty well fit the profile of most of the people in Flinn’s first class. Reading about their challenges and successes made me feel like I too could move beyond the few dishes I know how to make well to being a cook that can improvise and make a meal out of the leftovers in my fridge in no time flat.

I loved that Flinn included recipes for the dishes she taught in the class, as well as tips for how to start improvising with simple foods like dressings and marinades. It also helps that Flinn has organized the book around some of an amateur cook’s biggest challenges — What do I do with the very specific leftovers from a recipe? How can I save money cooking? What are ways to choose the best products? What does “season to taste” even mean?

This is not a book that will have much useful information for an expert cook or someone who is comfortable in the kitchen. But for those of us with limited skill but a desire to learn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School could be just the book to get started with.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Happy Sunday everyone! I’m feeling rather random today, so I think I’m going to just go with it.

I’ve been addicted to the library lately. Every time I go in to the library to return or pick up one book, I end up leaving with three more. In the last couple weeks I’ve brought home The Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction by Charles Baxter, My Fair Lazy by Jen Lancaster, Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku, Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye and Zahra’s Paradise by Amir and Kahlil. I haven’t read any of them yet, but soon I hope.

Have any of you heard of Smash Books? I just came across them this week, and now I really, really want one. Anyone have one? Worth the money?

I officially went back on a diet this week, which is not my favorite thing. I was last on a diet my last couple years of college and lost 30 pounds exercising and counting calories. I quit dieting formally when I moved to Madison, but slowly gained some weight back after I started my desk job after graduation and then some more after I moved to Morris. I finally decided to do something about it, but the first couple weeks counting calories always puts me in a mood.

I’m so, so tired of PR people sending press releases marked important with the big red exclamation point that shows up in Microsoft Outlook. There is absolutely no reason any press release needs to be marked important. None! For whatever reason, that drove me crazy this week.

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BAND — Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees — is a group organized to promote the joy of reading nonfiction. We are “advocates for nonfiction as a non-chore,” and we want you to join us. Each month, a member of BAND hosts a discussion on their blog related to nonfiction. 

The host for January’s BAND discussion is Joy (Joy’s Book Blog). Because January is a time of new beginnings when people set goals and channel hopeful energy “into communities around interests like reading 100 books in a year or training for a marathon or taking a photo every day.” Joy asks:

What book or books have you used or are you using to support a goal, resolution, or project?

This has been a tricky one for me to answer since I didn’t really set any formal resolutions for this year. I have a lot of things I’m thinking about trying to do — lose 15 pounds, do a Couch to 5K program, develop a healthier lifestyle, learn to cook better, learn to bake bread — but I haven’t quite gotten that little spark of motivation I need to seriously make any of those things happen… yet.

Perhaps I need to start reading books about how to set goals and get motivated? Or not, because that sounds boring.

The one lifestyle change I really do need to make, starting yesterday, is improved focus. For whatever reason, it’s become almost impossible for me to sit down and actually focus on the tasks I have in front of me — mainly writing — when I’m at work or at home.

I’ve become one of those people with eight or nine or ten or eleven tabs open in my browser, constantly clicking through to check Google Reader and Hootsuite and Facebook and Pinterest and Tumblr, only to get through and start the process over again less than five minutes later. It’s like I’ve turned into a information junkie, constantly clicking through my social networks for my next fix of a funny video or book review or news story. It’s ridiculous.

But honestly, I’m not sure where to start looking for books that talk about focus that will be engaging enough to read. I don’t like self-help guides, but I also don’t think the kind of narrative nonfiction I like to read about how the brain works is going to be particularly helpful either. I need books that are a combination of engaging and practical… which is tough.

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