Category: Reading

Read, Eat, Drink: Food Rules, Better Sandwiches, and a Ginger Caipirinha

by Maria

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Aaron Carroll Food Rules

We all want to eat healthy, and we all want to eat delicious food. Which is why we all tend to have  our own, sometimes quirky, ideas about how to do just that.  Paleo, raw, vegan, vegetarian, Atkins, pescatarian–they’re all ways to help us put order to the sometimes random process of getting edible things into our pieholes. (And making sure we’re not eating too much pie!)

So here are 7 rules I agree with from Aaron Carroll of The Upshot, for your reading pleasure. I like that they’re sane, fairly unrestrictive, and very cognizant of the fact that having a cocktail and a hoagie once in awhile isn’t going to do you in. (More on that below.)

My favorite one?

7. Eat with other people, especially people you care about, as often as possible. This has benefits even outside those of nutrition. It will make you more likely to cook. It will most likely make you eat more slowly. It will also make you happy.

Good food, just like a good book, should make you feel good. Some things are that simple.

Eat:

The Sandwich Bar Primi

It is one of life’s nagging mysteries: Why is a sandwich you order at a restaurant so invariably and intensely better than a sandwich you make at home?

These are the questions that keep me up at night. It’s a universally felt pain that sandwiches made by someone else are, and will always be, superior to that mash of bread and deli and refrigerator scraps you threw together last night.

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Read, Eat, Drink: A Land Library, Pancake Muffins, and a Book on Bourbon

by Maria

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Rocky Mountain Land Library

Two things I love: books and nature. You too? Then you’ll get as excited as I did over hearing about The Rocky Mountain Land Library, which was profiled in the New York Times yesterday. As the reporter writes:

The project is striking in its ambition: a sprawling research institution situated on a ranch at 10,000 feet above sea level, outfitted with 32,000 volumes, many of them about the Rocky Mountain region, plus artists’ studios, dormitories and a dining hall — a place for academics, birders, hikers and others to study and savor the West.

It is the sort of endeavor undertaken by a deep-pocketed politician or chief executive, perhaps a Bloomberg or a Buffett. But the project, called the Rocky Mountain Land Library, has instead two booksellers as its founders.

I love the idea of residential libraries—who wouldn’t want a getaway that involves long walks, long reading sessions, and wide views? Read more about the project here!

Eat:

Pancake Muffins

It was Jarrett’s birthday this past weekend, and he got spoiled big-time with this breakfast tray of mini breakfast sandwich sliders (with homemade turkey sausage patties!) and pancake muffins.

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Read, Eat, Drink: What No One Tells You About Publishing, Pesto Bread in a Jar, Dealer’s Choice Cocktails

by Maria

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If you haven’t already seen Curtis Sittenfeld’s list 24 Things No One Tells You About Publishing, scurry on over there and soak it up. Every single item on the list is absolutely, 100% true. And even better, it spurred Scott Berkun to write his own list of the 28 (Better) Things No One Tells You About Publishing, which is a bit more focused on the act of publishing rather than the craft of writing.

Between those two lists, you have 52 nuggets of truth about the way publishing really works!

Eat:

Oh boy, do I have a good one for you today. Do you like easy, delicious, impressive, and simple recipes? Of course you do. We all do. Unless you’re Martha. In that case, try this recipe for a five-layer pastel cake that takes over 3 hours.

The rest of us: let’s enjoy this delicious Pesto Bread in a Jar recipe from Sweet Paul Magazine.

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Read, Eat, Drink: Overcoming Distraction, Homemade Ravioli, and a Sage Cocktail

by Maria

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Last week I was thinking about the themes that ran through my list of the 9 Books That Will Make You a Better Writer, and I realized that one of the things that attracted me to those particular books was the way many of the authors dealt with the issue of writing and mental fortitude. The two are so intertwined and so crucial to success. As Betsey Lerner writes in The Forest for the Trees, “There is no stage of the writing process that doesn’t challenge every aspect of a writer’s personality. How well writers deal with those challenges can be critical to their survival.”

As I wrote about here, procrastination is one of the biggest mental roadblocks that holds writers back from creating books and building audiences. It’s a lesson we have to learn again and again–how to step away from all the noise and create space for productivity. I love that Leo Babuata of Zen Habits is so honest and helpful about this–he calls himself a distraction addict, and I think it’s safe to say that most of us are just as hooked on pop-up windows and scrolling news streams as he is. As he writes:

Distractions, of course, are often about the fear of missing out. We can’t possibly take part in every cool thing that everyone else is doing, but we also don’t want to miss out on any of it. So we look online for what’s going on, what other people are doing and saying, what’s hot. None of that actually matters. What matters is being content, doing things that make people’s lives better, learning, being compassionate, helping. So let’s let go of what we’re missing out on, and focus on the difference we want to make in the world.

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