What's the Ratio?

I woke up yesterday and while sipping my morning tea, I decided that I wanted some biscuits. They are one of my favorite things to eat, but I don't make them very often, because of calories. Those concerns got overridden because I remembered Ryan's ratio of work/deliciousness.

When he was first learning to cook, he saw the process in a slightly different way. First, he made a judgement of the work involved. Was this simply mixing in water, like making Jello? Were there multiple complicated steps involved, or were you required to make something before you could proceed further to make the final product? And then there was that all-important deliciousness factor. How good did it taste? He found himself preparing things with a relatively low work/deliciousness ratio. Pancakes are good, but the work involved is minimal, even from scratch. French toast is even better - really delicious, but there's nothing difficult about soaking bread in an egg mixture and frying.

Pasta sauce has a few more ingredients, but the work involved is just a bit more chopping, and it's made in the same pan. Pad thai gets a lot more complicated with procuring out of the ordinary ingredients, a lot more prep, and good timing during preparation.Yes, it's delicious, but the work:deliciousness approaches 8/9, and it's really easy to order from a good Thai restaurant. Lemon meringue pie is another good example of high work, but also a high deliciousness factor. The worst would be a dish with high work but low deliciousness. I can't even think of an example, probably because I would probably not even consider making such a dish. Chicken liver souffle?

I determined that biscuits had a 2/8 work/deliciousness ratio and I could always feed the extras to the birds, so I made them. They were quite tasty and comforting. Now I'm looking forward to dinner over the weekend with hamburgers on the grill (2/9) and potato salad (3/9). I do hope your work is light and deliciousness high this weekend!

Three on Thursday

Joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday, today with Three Books. I haven't written about books for a long time, except randomly on Unraveled Wednesdays, so it's high time. Here are the last three books I've read and one bonus.

1. The Things They Carried  
My review - 3 stars

The brother of an acquaintance is in the Reserves, but has recently been sent to Fort Dix, then on to TX, then to the Middle East for two years. With the current saber-rattling around Iran, I think of him every day. And of course, every soldier that the US has placed in harm's way is someone to somebody, so this book stood out to me during a recent perusal of library books. I also thought Memorial Day weekend would be a good time to finally read it. Its raw tales of friendship, soldiering, what those soldiers carried, and what they did are at times hard to read. This book didn't change the way I feel about Vietnam, but I don't think it's possible to make sense of the terror, destruction, and loss of war. Mainly I was reminded of how very young these young men were and how heavy the things were that they carried, both the physical battle armor and those things that were carried within.

2.  The Bright Hour
My review - 5 stars

That is Morning. To cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Bright Hour is a beautifully written book that I will place alongside Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. Nina Riggs has written the story of the stages of her life, and while it is sad, poignant, and filled with cancer and death, that is ultimately not what the book is about. Instead, Nina writes about "how to distill what matters most to each of us in life in order to navigate our way toward the edge of it in a meaningful and satisfying way." That makes this a valuable and luminous book, and one that I think might be able to ease my own fears of death.

I am reminded of an image...that living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more -- sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.

3.  We Need to Talk
My review - 3 stars

If you have an iota of common sense, you can probably guess much of what Celeste Headlee recommends in We Need to Talk: Listen more and talk less. She does elaborate on this point, telling us not to multitask, don't repeat yourself, don't pontificate, be brief, etc. These are all important points, as is the overall premise that conversation skills are important. I'm just not sure there is enough here to fill a whole book. Watch the TED talk and see what you think.

4.  Inland
My review - 5 stars

(I debated not including this book because it won't be published until August 13th, but it's so good that I wanted to give you a chance to place an early hold at the library!)

Inland is a western, but a new and exciting kind (to me, anyway). Think News of the World or The Son, with non-stereotypical characters, exquisitely descriptive settings, and almost fantasy-like plot lines. Obreht writes beautiful sentences that you will marvel at, but her writing never fails to tell a terrific story. 

In the midst of a drought in the Arizona Territories in 1893, we meet Nora, an independent frontierswoman, and Lurie, a former outlaw. Nora is waiting for her husband and sons to return to the parched homestead, while her youngest son is convinced that there is a mysterious beast prowling about. Lurie is haunted by the ghosts of his past who want him to take an epic journey. Nora’s story is told in one long, hot day, while Lurie’s takes place over decades. Their intersection is the perfect combination of magic and realism. 

While the book is densely written, required my attention, and I had to start again from the beginning after I stopped reading for a few days, once I read about the U.S. Army’s camel corps and understood that both Nora and Lurie speak to the dead, it was one of the best books I’ve read in quite a while. Read to the very end and you will be rewarded.

How about you? Read anything good (or even not so good)? Let me know!

Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with just a bit of an unraveled feeling. I was on the porch chatting with John on the phone (he's in MD, I'm in NJ) last night when my phone starting beeping with a tornado warning. My neighbor said there was a tornado on the ground a few miles from here, and I should head to the basement.

So I did, taking my Hitchhiker with me. 

I sat on an upturned bucket in the doorway. This is on top of a huge stone in the foundation of our old house and I figured the timbers had stood for almost 200 years, so it was probably a reasonably safe place.

The wind blew, the rain and hail flew, but the storm was over before I knit three rows. I don't think we had a tornado here in my neighborhood, and luckily not even any water in the basement. 

I did take a look around before I headed back upstairs and spied a strange sight: 

I have no idea how or why this dead snake was there, but I removed it with a shovel. I guess if the worst thing you get from a tornado warning is a dead baby garter snake, things are good. Our weather predictions are the same for this afternoon and tonight, so now I've put a real chair down there, along with some water, snacks, and no dead garter snakes. I may be knitting in real comfort this evening!

On a completely different note, I read a wonderful book, and highly recommend it, but only if you're in the right frame of mind. It's The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs. She has written the story of the stages of her life, and while it is sad, poignant, and filled with cancer and death, that is ultimately not what the book is about. Instead, Nina writes about "how to distill what matters most to each of us in life in order to navigate our way toward the edge of it in a meaningful and satisfying way." That makes this a valuable and luminous book, and one that I think might be able to ease my own fears of death. 

What are you making and reading this week?

Balance in May

This last Tuesday of the month is time to talk about my progress with my one little word. As I explore the ups and downs of balance, I've learned a few new things about balance this month. 

One of the things I've learned is that balance includes plenty of gratitude. Honore was kind, thoughtful, and generous and sent me this lovely reminder. Justin thought it would useful in several ways, both when I was feeling out of kilter or off balance:

and a beautiful sign when I had gotten myself back into balance. 

Either way, I love it and thank you, Honore, for your help in my quest to achieve balance!

I've been practicing meditation daily as a way to maintain a sense of balance, and this has been helpful, but I've also begun feeling and listening to my breath throughout the day whenever I want to let go of mounting stress and focus on mindfulness. Poetry, stillness, gratitude, meditation, and breathing are all going a long way towards helping me find my own best ways of being balanced. 

Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with a small glimpse of something I've been waiting for. Can you see it?

How about here? I've pretty much run out of yellow on the blank, and the yarn is gradually transitioning towards green. It's gradual, but that is exactly how I hoped it would be. Hopefully you'll be seeing much more green next week. 

In reading, I've finished All the Ever Afters and enjoyed it very much. It's a fairy tale retelling from the point of view of Cinderella's stepmother. Sometimes fairy tales are retold with lots of romance to appeal to a more young adult audience, but that was not the case here at all. I found this book to be a wonderful combination of a good story, beautiful language (I learned a few new words!), and a departure from simple characterizations. Cinderella's stepmother is often portrayed as simply evil, without a shred of decency, but in this book we learn about Agnes' life, the hardships she endured, and most importantly, how she learned to make the best of her situation. In making choices that furthered her interests and those of her daughters, it may have seemed she was sometimes acting in an evil way, but I think this book showed her as having more than one dimension. Just like in real life, she was neither all good nor all bad, but simply a person willing to work hard and make the most of herself. Class, feminism, the importance of physical beauty, it's all there, along with pox, consumption, back-breaking laundry from dawn to dusk, and manorial life. You'll have to read this for yourself to see if it ends happily ever after (but I highly recommend that you do). 

What are you making and reading this week?

Time Talking

Rail delay scarf

There have been plenty of examples of knitting being used for data representation - the Sky Scarf for looking to the sky and knitting the weather, Temperature Scarf for documenting the daily temperature during a given time period, Mood Scarf for knitting your mood, Scoreboard for recording points scored by your favorite football team, and even a rail delay scarf knit by a German commuter. This one seems especially helpful, as it helped the knitter deal with her frustration, and she also sold the scarf and raised $8650 for a German charity that provides assistance to people at train stations.

But here is a new one - a shawl being knit by Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Mayor Sue Montgomery that shows how often women and men speak at city council meetings. 

Even though city council is made up of 31 females and 34 males, Ms. Montgomery estimates that so far her shawl is 75% red for males with just a few bits of green for women. She explains this by saying "The women are much more efficient, stand up, make their point, sit down. Men like to hear themselves talk. What can I say?" 

The mayor knits because it helps her concentrate, but said that long speeches where points are repeated decrease the efficiency of council meetings, and make them less accessible to the public. "Frankly, it's quite boring," she said.

Sue Montgomery says that she is aware this is a generalization, and that not all men on council tend to use up blocks of time pontificating, but "There's a handful of men who take up a lot of space." I think we have all run into those men; congratulations to Sue Montgomery for calling attention to this gender disparity (and good luck weaving in her ends and blocking).

Sometimes Monday ...

... is a day for some floral appreciation!

For decades, I've been buying flowers for my Mother-in-law for Mother's Day, and I've always had a wonderful time doing it. This year I was a bit sad not to have any mothers to buy flowers for, so last weekend I went to the nursery and hit the jackpot. (I'm a mother, after all!)

I love fuchsias and found this one with huge buds and big, beautiful blooms. But wait, there's more!

My sister-in-law has her grandmother's bougainvillea, and I've always been envious. Now I've got one of my own.

I was thrilled to find this pot that had plants with both hot pink and apricot bracts.

These make me quite happy, and I hope your week is off to a beautifully blooming start.