Put on the Glasses

Over the weekend, Brian and I decided to have a day entirely consisting of Alton Brown's food. We love Alton Brown. He teaches us so many wonderful things about cooking. The first two meals, breakfast and lunch, were inspired by his latest weight-loss episode. The episode, called " Live and Let Diet ," highlighted his tricks for losing weight. I decided I wanted to try 2 of his recipes from the episode: smoothies and sardine toast. We had the smoothies for breakfast: Sorry the picture is blurry. I was in a hurry and wanted to eat it. It was delicious. I didn't follow all of his nit-picky rules and steps on making the smoothie (I just blended it like I would any other) but it still turned out great. I love the soy milk in it. I need to use more soy milk; it is delicious. The recipe is here . Next, I made his sherried sardine toast (recipe here ) for lunch. Now, don't revolt at the sight of the word sardine. Sardines are wonderful. Don't knock 'e...

Brian dropped this mug on the floor. The mug didn't break. Instead, it took a chunk out of the floor. That is my kind of coffee mug: lethal. Just so you know, it's from Fishes Eddy . We are debating buying new dishes from this store because we have broken several IKEA plates in the past month.

I easily become obsessed with things. I find a song I like and I listen to it repeatedly until I tire of it. I find a show I like on Hulu or through Netflix and I watch every single episode, as fast as possible. I find an author I like and I have to read all of their books. So, I thought I would give a list of television shows that I am obsessed with right now, as a snapshot of what I do with my spare TV time. These don't include my normal shows; these are just shows I have discovered recently. Battlestar Galactica I know, I am late in the game on this one. I've avoided it for years. Then I stumbled on a 90 minute show called Caprica on Hulu. I loved it. Turns out that it is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. Brian and I rented the first disc of season one and we are hooked. Luckily, I have downgraded my Netflix membership to 1 disc at a time. It is keeping this obsession a bit under control. Intervention Brian and I have been watching every episode we can find onli...

13 1/2 by Nevada Barr If you like John Saul, you will probably like this book. I am sick of John Saul. I went through a John Saul phase last fall and read about 5 of his books in a row. I feel like I could write a John Saul novel now because the plots became so predictable. Nevada Barr's 13 1/2 is the same contrived thriller plot. I predicted the ending within the first 50 pages and then rolled my eyes as my prediction unfolded. That being said, I read it in one night (awesome) and it wasn't dull. It was a typical thriller. If that floats your boat, read it. Sin and the Second City by Karen Abbott This is another fictionalized history that I loved. It chronicled the short but exciting existence of the Everleigh Club in Chicago, a famous brothel. This is another book I would recommend if you like history in narrative form. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut This was my second time reading this book. It was just as good the second time around. It is a science fiction novel about ...

Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem This book had a bit of a slow start. It definitely took me a while to get into it. However, once I got into the flow it was a terrific novel. It is set in Manhattan and follows Chase Insteadman, a former child actor whose fiance is stuck on a space station. He becomes obsessed with a culture critic names Perkus Tooth and most of the novel involves their antics and puzzling obsessions. The first half of the novel I wondered, "Where is this going? What is the point of this?" At some point, I let it go and enjoyed the free-flowing narrative that is a strange mixture of fact and fiction. Several times I had to Google things in the book to check to see if they actually existed. He would intertwine fiction with real New York places, people and events. For example, the weird maple syrup smell that occurred a couple of years ago and WNYC's Brian Lehrer were in the book. However, the book also talked of a strange tiger terrorizing the cit...

I love the blog The Kitchn and I try to make their recipes as often as I can. I recently tried making their pork shoulder and it came out perfectly. Their post on the recipe has excellent pictures and descriptions of what you should do and buy. It made cooking it much easier for me since I probably would have left the fat on the shoulder and hated the overly fatty sauce. The picture above shows the meat as I was browning it. Those are the vegetables before I cooked the meat in them. As usual, I neglected to take pictures of the food after I cooked it. I just get so hungry! I used wine instead of beer and stewed tomatoes instead of diced. Basically, I just found stuff in my pantry that was similar to the recipe and it worked out just fine. It was delicious meat and it made great sandwiches for leftovers.

Last night, Brian and I went to a Dave Eggers panel discussion concerning the latest issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. Above you can see the panel of Chris Ying and Dave Eggers, both editors of McSweeney's , along with Linda Miller, co-founder of Salon.com , as moderator. The new issue was done in newspaper, specifically broadside, format and called the San Francisco Panorama (that's where McSweeney's is based). If you bought it in San Francisco when it was released it would seem quite relevant. There are all of the normal components of a local newspaper: local news, advertisements for local businesses, sports and comics. The difference lies mainly in the depth of the articles, the design and the editorial choices. From listening to the panel discussion it was easy to see that Dave Eggers and his team wanted to pay homage to the craft of newspaper writing and to really explore newspaper as an art form. There are great design features, like graphs, diagrams a...

Not only is it full of books to borrow but now the Leonard branch of the Brooklyn Public Library has a free book cart! I love it. This was the last stack of books Brian and I snagged. He is very excited about the programming books. They usually cost $50 each. I find myself using the library more and more. The first time I saw the cart I thought it was a fluke but I asked the nice lady at the desk about it. The books are free and you can bring in your own books to add to the cart. I plan to do that the next time I go so that I can share books I've finished. I love the Brooklyn Public Library!

I'm trying to go "paperless." By this I mean scanning everything into my computer instead of keeping it forever. I hold onto everything: letters, greeting cards, articles that I clip from magazines. This paper is all taking up storage space and starting to get out of hand. My inspiration for starting this scanning comes from three sources: lack of storage; this post on The Lawyerist blog; and the A&E show Hoarders . I do not want to be a hoarder. My problem is that I feel guilt tossing a nice card or note. So, with some Christmas money we bought a new, cheap Canoscan scanner from Microcenter. Now I can keep it all without it taking up any more space than my computer already does. I'm only keeping hard copies of important papers, like my taxes, legal documents and bank statements. So far it is going well. I got rid of a couple of garbage bags full of paper and that is only from the area around my desk. It is time consuming to scan but I find a couple of ho...

I think I caught a cold due to lack of sleep. The cats have been conspiring to wake me up pre-dawn for their breakfast. For months, I have been sleeping peacefully with Livia out in the livingroom because the bedroom is Leela's territory. Leela, however, has learned that if she lets Livia in the bedroom, she gets breakfast early. So now I have Livia back to her old tricks in the morning, eating my hair and clawing my skin to wake me up. She even digs under the blankets to expose skin to claw. She is a diabolical cat. When I, begrudgingly, give in and get them breakfast, I promptly go back to bed. Even though I believe I will now be left alone, this is never the case. Due to one morning of confusion where Brian and I accidentally gave them breakfast twice, they persist in waking me up, trying to trick me into feeding them again. This results in very little sleep for me. Brian was kind enough to set me up with a spray bottle last night and I got much better sleep. The secon...

Tanya was kind enough to send along the pictures she took from New Year's Eve and to give me permission to post them here. She always takes better pictures than I do! Above are me and Brian on the boat. We were inside for most of the ride so it was nice and warm. Here we are when we ventured out onto the deck. From left to right that is Tanya, Katie, me, Brian and Reed. Here I am with Katie. Katie, me and Brian with Reed in the background. This is probably my favorite picture now. Tanya asked another lady on the boat to take our picture. The woman neglected the fact that there were streamers hanging down everywhere. I think it is a pretty funny picture. From left to right that's Brian, me, Jorge, Tanya, Reed and Katie. Great times! Thank, Tanya, for letting me steal your pictures!

Happy New Year's from the Copelands! I am finally feeling recovered after last night's excitement. Katie and Reed visited from Minnesota for the holiday, just as they did last year. I think this is an excellent tradition they've started! Along with Tanya and Jorge, we all took a champagne cruise around Manhattan and ate a great prix-fixe meal at Gustorganics. We toasted the New Year at Tanya and Jorge's apartment, happily avoiding the disastrous crowds at Times Square. I hope Katie and Reed had as much fun as we did! I thought it pertinent to tell everyone my resolutions this year. I figure, if I tell all of you about them, maybe I will be guilted into actually accomplishing them. So, here are my resolutions for the New Year: Start making the bed every day. I have always hated making the bed. I thought it was an exercise in futility to make a bed that you will unmake later that night. Suddenly, last week, we made the bed and it looked great! Our room looks c...