Back Again

Being a person who enjoys the approval of others, I was pushed away from my blog by excessive negative feedback on blogs in general. I didn't want to be perceived as "that person" who had to tell everyone every little thing about themselves. But, I missed my opportunity to share and converse about events that I find interesting. So I am back.

I will not bore you with my opinion of the economy today except to say that it is bad and I am tired of turning on the TV and radio and hearing about how bad it is. I will wear my rose colored glasses and try to remain optimistic. This mess was not created in a day and it will take time to resolve.

Moving on to more interesting things, I am still finding time to read and have been reading and pondering a work by Reginald Hill called "The Price of Butcher's Meat." It's a classic British mystery with the crusty police officer, the overbearing heiress and a huge cast of characters. The first part of the book is written in two narrative styles, the first is a series of emails from one sister to another, and the second is the recordings of the convalescing crusty cop. I enjoyed the different perspectives the two characters provided about the others in the story but there was one element of the narratives that bothered me. In the emails, the author used misspellings and poor punctuation all the time. I have to wonder why this is an acceptable literary device? My son has a teacher who sends email that are completely void of capital letters and have limited punctuation. I know that if my son turned in any assignments in this format, his grades would suffer. Have text messaging, IM, Facebook and other social networking made standard written English a thing of the past? I hope not.

One more comment on the book. I don't think I should have to wait 150 pages for a murder. I would rather have the murder earlier on, especially since the author gave little in the way of character development to the victim that would have made me feel that the murder of this person was forthcoming. I got that the victim was mean-spirited, controlling and manipulative but that, for me, was not enough cause for the murder.

I have also maintained time in my schedule cook. I am so happy that eating home-cooked meals is the new chic thing to do. I am a Recessionista and I don't even know it!

I was conned by Oprah into making sweet potato fries. I coated them with olive oil, cinnamon, sugar and salt and put them in a 450 degree oven for 20 minutes. They were very flavorfull but not crispy at all. They were simply julienned sweet potatoes. I was very disappointed until I read about the the experiences others were having with these little gems. Evidently, it turns out that sweet potatoes are too high in water to ever crisp as fries. But you can get them to crisp as thinly sliced crisps. Slice them thin, spread them evenly on a greased pan, salt them, and bake them at 200 degrees for 45 minutes. Check them for crispiness and repeat (without adding any more salt) for another 45 minutes. Homemade potato chips are very yummy. If you haven't tried it, you should.

That's all for now. Enjoy your day.