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My latest (potentially useless) past-time is browsing music on iTunes. It generally only lasts a handful of minutes before I get bored and turn my attention to something more beneficial. But when I am there, I am looking for the unexpected. At a swing dance, I like the standard vintage tunes, etc, but I love it when the DJ pulls out something really unexpected, sometimes a totally unheard of artist, or perhaps one you are familiar with, but one you never would have thought of dancing to. I always enjoy those moments. So I’m looking for those songs. Fresh artists, not to replace the standards, but to enhance. I’ll start with a genre or perhaps an artist and I will begin looking through related songs and albums. And usually I’ll click through the “New and Noteworthy” section of Jazz music on iTunes. Oftentimes the search is fruitless. But sometimes I stumble across someone I really like, enough that I am willing to purchase a whole album.
I’ve never heard of Melody Gardot. Google tells me this is silly, as she has a website, several albums and a tour. iTunes assures me that this is okay by putting her in the “New and Noteworthy” section, so I’m not too concerned.
What I have learned is that she is a peer (twentysomething). She has four albums. And her voice is gorgeous. Incredibly smooth. Here is a MySpace link (gasp!) to some of her music. I wouldn’t say purchase the album solely on my recommendation but it is certainly worth checking out. I’m definitely enjoying it.
Tantalizing, no?
Buffalo Chicken Fingers
Cut 2ish chicken breasts into strips; coat in crumb mixture (1 cup crushed soda crackers, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper); dip in eggs (beaten); coat again in crumb mixture; fry in 1/4 cup oil for 4 mins (flip halfway); remove to baking sheet; bake for 10 mins at 450º F; remove to platter; drizzle in sauce (2 tbsp melted butter, 6 tbsp hot pepper or buffalo wing sauce); eat delicious food.
Yum!
I am currently reading a book entitled unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why it Matters by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.
It is a book that has me heartbroken and compassionate and angry and inspired all at the same time. This book is the culmination of a research project commissioned by Lyons, founder of Fermi Project, and headed up by Kinnaman, president of The Barna Group, a research firm “focused on the intersection of faith and culture”.
This research was begun to determine how our generation (twentysomethings and those several years older and several years younger) currently perceives Christianity.
I am only through the first two chapters and already I see a perception that is not far off from what I had come to assume, one that shows that Christianity has gone off track.
There is an old song that goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love”. That should be convicting to the Church today, because, according to this research, the Church and Christians — we — are not being known for love, either of each other, or of those outside of the faith.
The entire New Testament is based on two principles: Truth soaked in Love. Everything that Jesus did was motivated by these principles and in everything the early Church did, they strived to likewise live these out. Somewhere in recent Church history, we lost the element of Love and began focusing primarily, almost solely, on Truth. And now today, there is a movement of Christianity that, in an attempt to rectify past wrongs, focuses primarily on Love, fearing to bring Truth to light.
I had long believed that we were perceived negatively and it is heartbreaking to read the truth of it on paper. It isn’t even the negative perception I struggle with. There will always be people who disagree with what I believe. It is why we are perceived negatively. It seems to be often because of hurt.
Christians aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. But we also struggle to admit when we are wrong. We struggle to accept people as they are. I don’t think it’s just a Christian thing. It’s a people thing. But a Christian is a Christ-follower, and based on that title, our model of how to live is Jesus Christ. He accepted people exactly as they were. He called a tax collector (considered the scourge of that society) to be in his closest circle of followers. He accepted the sacrifice of a “woman who had lived a sinful life” (here). He was present when a woman caught in the act of adultery was dragged into the street to be stoned and he released her. He convicted those wishing to stone her such that they all finally walked away without a single stone being thrown. And then, as if he didn’t know exactly what had happened, he turned to the woman and asked, “Where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she responded.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” he said. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
(here)
What a man! What a God!
And what a mess we have made of portraying Him to the world around us.
Regardless of faith, it is an interesting book thus far and I’m finding it to be a good read. I may or may not post more as I progress through the book, but for those interested, the upcoming chapters cover the following perceptions people have of Christians:
Hypocritical;
Only interested in “getting you saved!”;
Antihomosexual;
Sheltered;
Too political; and
Judgmental
I will, at the very least, post when I am finished, in case anyone is interested in reading it.
from Steph at sugerbuzz
As promised (on Twitter), here are some pictures of yesterday’s cooking adventures.
For this recipe, you’ll need fresh basil, spinach leaves, cherry or grape tomatoes, bacon, pasta and cheese. I’m not specific about the last three items because you can choose whatever kind of bacon you’d prefer (turkey, reduced salt, regular, whatevs), whatever kind of pasta you’d like (I chose fusilli), and whatever kind of cheese (the recipe called for Parmesan, but I chose Gruyère 
After not using it last time around, I decided I wanted to give it a try. Very good. I enjoyed it.)
You’ll want to chop 3 cups of spinach leaves, chiffonade 1/2 cup of basil leaves and cut in half 2 cups worth of tomatoes.
Set some water boiling for the pasta,
And cook the bacon. Once the bacon is cooked and the pasta water is boiling, you’ll want to throw the pasta in: 1 and 1/2 cups worth.
As the pasta is cooking, wilt the spinach. I’m not 100% sure how to do this, but I shifted as best I could. I put the chopped spinach in a different pot (yes, there are four on the elements. I only used three. But I’d like to cite this picture as the (hopefully) only reason my mom doesn’t like me taking over her kitchen. Oh wait, no, this
and the pots and pans are hopefully the only reasons.) Then I added just a splash of water (enough to keep the spinach from burning) and set the pot over very low heat. I left it there until the pasta was ready.
Drain the pasta and allow its pot to cool a little bit. Place the oil in the pot (I used canola oil and added garlic salt to taste; the friend from whom I got the recipe agrees on this step. Garlic-flavoured olive oil is expensive and smells strongly of garlic, but doesn’t taste of it as much.) Then add the pasta back in, along with the bacon (chopped into bits) and toss together.
Add in the spinach (if there is left over water in the bottom of the spinach pot, be sure it isn’t added to the pasta), the basil, the tomatoes, and if the pot/ingredients have cooled a lot, place it over low heat. The final step is adding the cheese and you want it to melt into the rest.
Ooh, looks so good! Just need to add the cheese.
Mm, finished product! Yummy!
We didn’t have any leftovers.
After cooking notes? I would just add more cheese. I thought the flavour of the Gruyère was delish, but wasn’t prominent enough. I wouldn’t add a lot more, but maybe 1/2 a cup instead of 1/3.
I promised a report of the meal I made after the super busy/fun weekend with my friends was done, so here it is. I made scalloped potatoes and chicken tenders for dinner Friday night. Sounds simple/boring, but seriously? De-lic-ous.
The recipe for scalloped potatoes was passed on to me and can be found here.
The chicken tenders I made based on a recipe I found on the same website, but I modified it for what we had in the pantry. Unfortunately, I didn’t take pictures of the process or the finished product, so that will have to be saved for next time! For now, I give you the recipe for the breading I used.
1 cup crushed soda crackers
2 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Combine the above in a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat two eggs.
I used three chicken breasts, but might recommend less. I found I was thin on breading by the end.
Using one strip at a time, coat in breading, dip in the eggs and then coat again.
In a large skillet, heat 1/4 cup of oil over medium heat. Place the coated chicken strips in the oil and cook for 5 or 6 minutes each side.
Things I would change for next time? Less cayenne pepper. They were quite spicy. Deliciously spicy, but a touch too spicy for the audience I made them for. Also, they ended up being too crisped. I would keep a better eye on the cooking process next time.
The scalloped potatoes turned out perfectly. The only change I made for that recipe was to use a mixture of Parmesan, cheddar and mozzarella instead of Gruyère, in part because that is what my recipe-sharer suggested, in part because it was cheaper that way. (Parmesan was cheaper than Gruyère, and when I brought it home, I discovered the cheddar and mozzarella we already had, so decided to mix them).
Despite the substitutions, the meal was delicious. The flavour and texture were incredible and it was just one of those very satisfying meals. It always feels like such an accomplishment to try making something you never have before and for it to end up tasting so good.
Bravo. It is exactly as Cameron Schaefer writes here: Life’s about choices. A refreshing reminder.
A friend asked if I was satisfied with my iPod touch. He is thinking of purchasing one. I told him that, yes, I most certainly was. And here are some of the reasons why:
- Calendar: My iPod touch calendar happily syncs with the calendar on my MacBook, requiring no set-up. Any alerts that I ask it to make on my iPod will carry over to the computer. For example, a couple of weeks ago, it was a friend’s birthday. I had already entered it into my iPod calendar. I didn’t check that calendar in the morning, but when I turned on my computer, iCal popped a reminder on my screen so that I could remember to wish this friend a happy birthday.
- Photos: I love that you can transfer photos to the iPod. I have a folder on my computer with pictures specifically for the touch. You can use them as wallpaper for when you turn on your touch, you can scroll through them easily, and you can assign them to contacts. The images display quite well on the screen and rotate depending on the orientation you hold your touch.
- Contacts: It has a very intuitive input interface. It pops up a keyboard, one that changes slightly depending on what you are entering. In the Safari browser, for example, when you are typing in a web address, there is a “.com” key that isn’t there for other instances. It is easy to enter contact information, and Contacts are also something you can sync with your computer. I have become (un)fortunately dependent on my iPod touch in a very short period mostly because of this. I have been to my University town many times this summer and have found myself in need of a phone number almost every time, a phone number that, conveniently enough, was stored on my iPod.
- Notes: As a writer this application is great. It, again, has the very user-friendly keyboard and it is very easy to punch in quick reminders, transient thoughts, shopping lists, to do lists, directions, etc.
- Maps: I haven’t been terribly impressed with the Maps application, mostly because the one convenient feature of it (“where are you?”) never seems to work. Theoretically, when you are connected to the internet, you can hit that button and it will find your location, making it really easy to hit the “Directions” button and get directions from your current location to your destination, wherever that may be. As we have established, it never seems to work for me. Also, I’ve found the screen too small to easily read the map. [Later edit: Just recently I was out walking with a friend when she suddenly stopped. "Wait, are we going in the right direction?" she asked and started rifling through her purse. "I don't have my map here," she said. "Ooh, wait!" I exclaimed and grabbed for my iPod. I didn't try the "where am I?" function, but I did search for an open wireless network, and finding one, I clicked to the Waterloo area in the maps application, found the major street we were beside and confirmed that we were, in fact, going in the wrong direction. We turned around, got back on track and were saved from many minutes of indecision by something so convenient as a handheld, WiFi capable device. ]
- Clock: Nerd that I am, I’ve been using this religiously as my alarm clock. I like it. It is easy to set several alarms for different days and different times. You can create a seemingly endless amount of alarms for whatever purposes you may have.
- Music: This is an iPod, after all. I should probably talk about my experience with its music playing capabilities. As expected, Apple has created a very aesthetically pleasing viewing experience for the music. When held normally, you can scroll through your choice of song, album, artist, genre, etc., the same categories as in iTunes. When you turn it sideways, you can scroll through albums in the iTunes Cover Flow view. When you tap an album cover, it flips over and lists the songs on the back. You can then tap one to start it playing.
Basically, I thoroughly enjoy the iPod touch, and I have found many more uses for it beyond just listening to music. It’s become my personal organizer . And all of this is before the purchase of the App Store. I haven’t even tried any of those additions yet. They will, no doubt, increase the iPod’s ability to entertain with games and further methods of distraction.
I’ve been asked a few times by friends what Twitter actually is. It is only fair, since I harp so often about no one reading my twitter page, to actually explain a little bit of what Twitter is. There is a video here, which does a fairly good job of it, but I will also do my best to articulate what it is (Mike, Matty, Dad, feel free to weigh in with your own explanations of it).
Twitter is what is known as a microblog. I tried to find a nice definition online, but I couldn’t find one I liked (granted, I didn’t look very hard). But a microblog is essentially like this blog, except it consists of shorter and more frequent posts. So rather than posting several paragraphs once a day or every few days, an author might post a couple of sentences several times a day. To read it in order, you would read it the same way as a blog: the most recent posts are at the top, so the further down you go, the further back in time you go.
One thing that is incredibly cool about Twitter and makes it completely unique from a blog is the “home” page. When you sign up for Twitter, you have the option to begin “following” other Twitter users, and they have the option to follow you (naturally, you can control your privacy settings). So when you log onto Twitter, it goes to your home page, which updates every time one of the people you are following makes a new post.
This is a capture of my Twitter home page. At the top, you can see the space for me to write “What I am doing” or whatever else I feel like posting about. Also notice the number “140″ above that box. Twitter limits you to only 140 characters per post. It becomes an interesting challenge getting your point across in a limited space. And you can see below the box posts of some of the people I follow: Felicia Day of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and The Guild, Dr. Horrible himself, Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness, The Pioneer Woman, and Mike Purvis. Every time they “tweet” something, it is added to this page for me to read, and every time I write something, it is added on my page and on the home pages of the people who follow me.
It is a fun way to keep in touch with people that you know, and to read about what they are up to (which is often what we most want to hear anyway), and it is also fun to follow people you don’t necessarily know who tend to be writing for a wide audience of people they don’t know either (ie, evskeys, Wil Wheaton).
If Twitter is something that interests you, you should check it out! Play with it a little, start following people and you’ll quickly figure out how it works. And if you start an account, make sure you go to my page and click the little “follow” link beneath my picture, so I’ll know you’ve signed up and so I can follow you back.
Because I have a lot of friends who are married or who soon will be, an answer to the question why.
I follow a lot of blogs. All of them amuse, interest and, in most cases , educate me. They make me think and on many occasions, I have wanted to share what I’ve read, but it doesn’t always happen. Either I forget, or I have something else in mind I want to blog about. I also don’t want the total number of posts I write about other blogs to exceed the number of original posts I have .
This blog isn’t one that I follow all that closely, but I subscribed to it, mostly because of the way Hayden Tompkins, the author, uses language. So while I don’t follow this blog closely, there are some posts that just reach out and grab me. Like the one I linked to above.
Obviously, I don’t necessarily agree with or subscribe to all of what is written in the article, but I think that some wonderful points are made. It is certainly worth reading and considering what the application for your own life might be (single or married, because, after all, the call to love is a universal one, not just reserved for those doe-eyed, soon-to-be-married or already-there types).
Tell me what you think! Or drop a line over at Persistent Illusion. Actually, no, no “or”. It has to be “and”. If you leave a comment there, then you should be thinking, “And I’ll leave one at Faith, Hope and Love as well, because I know how much Tara wants to read what I have to say.”
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