Saturday, April 17, 2010

BREATHING ROOM, BY SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS

I've been avoiding this one for a couple of weeks, even though it's the only SEP I could find to reread since I finished Dream a Little Dream earlier this month. As I recall, I enjoyed it the first time I read it, but the She-God in the story was a bit unsettling. Since I was in the mood for an SEP kind of story, I bit the bullet and re-read it. This time I enjoyed it without qualifications. The God plot didn't bother me a bit, and I was carried away for a couple of hours to the sunny fields and vineyards of Tuscany. How could I go wrong?

I feel like I haven't been reading much lately, but I've been listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire when I'm in the car. I'm on tape 4 of 12. Jim Dale really does a marvelous job reading the Potter books, and he deserves every award he's received for his work.

I've been skimming lots of magazines lately, and my recipe book has taken up chunks of my time. I love reading recipes and seeing how the same ingredients can be combined in so many different ways with so many different results, give or take a spice or two. It's funny how I know just from reading a recipe whether I'd even want to try making it.

I watched Julie & Julia the other night and found the idea of working my way through a cookbook more than a little daunting, until I realized that I sort of plan to do something similar with my own recipe book. What I find perplexing is how Julie got such a following on her blog--as far as I know, I have two readers and several who come here just to post junk and ads. How do you get hundreds of people interested in your online musings?

My cookbook project will likely begin in May. Now that my husband has a job and we can see an end to the days of being broke and living paycheck to paycheck, I can focus on planning my menus for the week, using my crockpot, doing a bit of baking, and just expanding my list of go-to recipes. I'll probably post the recipes I try, so you foodies out there, plan to chime in with advice and share your cooking adventures.

And in the words of Isabel Favor, Embrace the Chaos...and BREATHE!

1 comment:

Jenny said...

Jen over at Conversion Diary posted once about how to attract more traffic to your blog. You could check that out. Or you can win a give-away and have hundreds of people show up for one day. After that, you are back to your normal stats!