They are sold out of buttermilk in my section of Brooklyn, so that meant no soda bread baking today. Instead of buttermilk scones (another thought), I tried cream scones, which are lackluster but taste very nice with strawberry rhubarb jam.
I've now made three chocolate bourbon truffle-turtle tortes in approximately two days. I don't recommend the recipe unless you own a candy thermometer. It's clearly an excellent pie, it's just difficult to get the caramel to the right consistency when you're unsure of its temperature. (A friend also told me that you're not supposed to stir it at all, which is not what this recipe says.) I tried cooking it for some hours on Friday night, but it never held together. Tonight it again took an hour, but it was much closer to real caramel. I think it is only supposed to boil for about eight minutes, but the recipe is not specific. I tried a new baker's chocolate for the top layer tonight and it didn't turn out so smoothly as chocolate chips did on Friday.
I also tried the Darn Good Chocolate Cake recipe from the Cake Doctor, which seems to have come out well. I suspect I would trust this cookbook to care for my firstborn, had I a firstborn. So darn good.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
One in 8 Million
Screenshot via Swissmiss.
One in 8 Million, brief oral histories with New Yorkers, including slideshows of black-and-white photographs. Pure magic. Thank you, New York Times online.
On the subject of Atlas
Atlas Shrugged sales are up. BookNinja suggests it's because of the economy. I think it is probably because of Bioshock.
Stop using Twitter for advertising and make your books into video games. This will generate real revenue, publishing industry, and will allow your authors/readers/players to delve further into the worlds you create.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Orphaned books
Image credit goes to Loxosceles on Flickr.
Brewster Kahle responds to the Google news. If all goes well for Google, it could have exclusive digital rights to out-of-print books. (Thanks, Dan.)
Colm Toibin
Image via The New York Times.
Interview with Colm Toibin (call-um toe-BEEN) in the Manchester Review. Definitely a fun one - starts with Vonnegut's rules of writing and some praise for Flannery O'Connor, then evolves into a nice (though mildly grumpy) interview.
What's black and white and read all over?
Image via Ranting and Raving.
Google has a $7 million ad campaign running in newspapers, among them the New York Times Review of Books and the Poetry Review in Britain. The idea is to reach out to the readers out there who are wary of the terms of GoogleBooks. Newspapers reporting this story sound gleeful.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Snow ice cream
This is kinda gross in New York, but in Kansas, it sounds great. The Kitchn suggests to serve it with dulche de leche, which I always boiled for three hours, but I guess you can make in just one. It's sweetened condensed milk boiled in a can. Might melt the snow ice cream really fast, but it's probably worth it. Mmm.
Friday, February 27, 2009
In love with A. Lincoln: new post on the Pursuit of Happiness blog
I may post every time Maira Kalman posts just to make sure you don't miss a single moment of her blog. I suggest you read her newest post while listening to Best Friends Forever.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
On the future of digital reading and writing
One of my recent columnist crushes is Roy Blount Jr., who wrote a piece about the Kindle for the NYT that states bluntly the same concern every writer has: how is the digital world going to screw us? His answer, for now, is that the rights for audio books need some sort of protection. At the present time, there is no court ruling on how digital devices may use audio rights.
A sort of poem about Born Digital projects by Stephanie Strickland. (via Silliman's blog)
ShortReads launches today. It's like GoodReads, but designed for mobile devices. The idea of using one program on any device is a good one, but I will admit that I think there are better ways to do such a thing. For example, buying directly from a publisher would put you in contact with the community that makes the books you like happen. There are ways to nurture this relationship to work to both parties' advantages. And having a distributor between the two can have disadvantages (cuts the amount the publisher and writer are making, for instance) as well as advantages (I've posted before that we don't have The Perfect book-sharing social network).
A year ago, I would have loved this. Since I tried to enter the industry, it makes me nervous. I don't want a program like this to be successful until it incorporates all of the elements it has the potential to use, because consumers will resist it and it will be even harder to win back their trust. Already the word "e-book" makes people think of the ugly first model of the Kindle, and if Authors' Guilds and writers become convinced that they're losing business to technology, the digital world will lose its most valuable readers and its most creative writers. If we're going to do this, we need to do it well. We need to sort out rights before we lose writers, and we need to add multimedia elements that enhance the reading experience, instead of reading glorified (and expensive) PDFs. Where's the excitement in that?
The Diggers
20 papayas planted in the ground for public nurturing and consumption. A piece by Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, deconstructed very intelligently In The Conversation.
Finally!
YES YES YES! Congrats to Joseph O'Neill, winner of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award! A well-deserved victory.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Re: LIVE LIKE YOU'RE IN FORBES MAGAZINE!!!
Soon the artists will all have to move to the Financial District because rent on apartments in Brooklyn is the only rent that isn't plummeting in this economy.
Since we're on the subject of eating
Unearthed an interview with Anurdha Mittal published in The Sun a few years ago. She speaks simply about why world hunger is not caused by a shortage of food. I can't believe I haven't read this sooner.
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