Author Archives: Theryn

Papaya Salad

Papaya SaladAn experiment. Made off the top of my head. (We wanted green papaya salad but shockingly! the IGA doesn’t have unripe papayas 😉 Will have to look elsewhere…)

So the salad is just papaya, green onions, and cilantro. A less-ripe papaya would’ve been good. This one was really soft. The dressing is fish sauce, lime juice, sambal oelek, sugar, ginger, and a little oil. All measurements approximate, because >cough< I don’t actually measure.

  • 1 papaya, cubed
  • 3 green onions, sliced
  • cilantro (handful, chopped coarsely)
  • 2 tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 tbsp lime juice
  • 1/2 tbsp sambal oelek
  • 1/2 tbsp canola oil
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • grated ginger

More new food photos at Flickr!

Cool News

Bald eagles make comeback on Catalina Island

AVALON, California (AP) — Two bald eagles have hatched in the wild on Santa Catalina Island for the first time since chemical contamination there wiped out the majestic birds decades ago, conservation officials said.

Biologists spotted the first eaglet Saturday and the second one Sunday, according to Catalina Island Conservancy officials. The eggs had been laid in a cliffside nest on the 76 square-mile island located off Los Angeles County.

Three Cheers and a Tiger!

The Spring Three Cheers and Tiger Writing Contest opens in just a few hours!

The 3 Cheers contest challenges you to write a complete short story in just 48 hours. The spring contest has a mystery theme. This year’s contest opens at 5PM ET Friday, March 23 with the topic and word limit posted at Just the Place for a Snark.

It’s a great way to spend a rainy weekend! Why not give it a try?

Full Contest Rules.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Grrrrr!

8: The Journal Project

The Journal Project: Dialogues and Conversations Inside Women’s Studies edited by Dana Putnam, Dorothy Kidd, Elaine Dornan & Patty Moore

The Journal Project

This was another VPL Booksale find. It’s a collection of journal entries from Women’s Studies classes at Langara College.

I found it interesting from a public/private space perspective. On the one hand, the journals were kept as a class assignment (for completion marks, not grades); the entries were written with the understanding that the instructor would read them. On the other hand, the idea of publishing them as an anthology came after the fact, so a wider audience was not anticipated. In this sense, I guess you could say they were more comparable to letters than to traditional diary entries in that the writers knew for certain that at least one person would be reading their words.

One thing that I found problematic with the selection of pieces is that the majority of them seemed to be written by women who had suffered physical/sexual/emotional abuse. My difficulty with this is that emphasizing worst-case scenarios makes it easy for those women who have not experienced such extreme discrimination to distance themselves and deny that there’s a problem with patriarchy. But just because you haven’t personally been abused or no one’s ever told you that you’re stupid or you’ve never faced extreme poverty (or whatever) doesn’t mean that there aren’t systemic problems with society. I would have liked to have seen more pieces like the one by the woman who was told that she couldn’t be the “head of household” because she was a SAHM. That’s the kind of systemic discrimination that you’ll probably never even be aware exists until it happens to you. It will never be a cause du jour. Yet, it’s addressing those kinds of issues, the ones that seem trivial (but aren’t), that leads to real change.

The Journal Project was published in 1995. The journals were traditional paper notebooks. It was interesting, in the context of my research, to read what they thought journals had the power to do.

[J]ournal writing itself assists social change. When our thoughts are spoken or recorded, they become part of the revolution. Writing it down is powerful and dangerous. –Dana Putnam

I wonder if any of the women are still journaling. I wonder if any of them are blogging.

5, er 10, Reasons Why I Blog

  1. For my #1 Fan.
  2. Writing posts is more productive (for a writer) than endlessly tweaking site design (which is what I mostly did with my old Web 1.0 website).
  3. I’m optimistic that this blog is more interesting than the aforementioned old website.
  4. Even sporadic journal entries add up over time. Who knows? It might turn into… something. Or not. As the case may be. It’s the possibility that’s intriguing.
  5. It encourages me to write more than I would otherwise.
  6. It’s good practice for figuring out what I am and am not comfortable writing about.
  7. It’s satisfying to keep track of the books I read and taking photos of the food I make entertains me. (The flower photos are an homage to Georgia O’Keeffe and Imogen Cunningham.)
  8. It’s far easier to write one interesting blog entry than it is to write 5 or 6 interesting emails. So if I owe you an email, here’s something for you to read whilst I procrastinate.
  9. People (relatives) who don’t know me that well (read: at all) could perhaps get to know me better should they ever express a desire to do so.
  10. I’m writing my thesis on blogging, so I’d be a big ignoramus/hypocrite if I did not have one myself. 😀

Inspired by Erin & Debbie.

7: Grasshopper

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine

Grasshopper

I picked this up at Pulpfiction Books, a cool new/used bookstore at Main & Broadway.

Once upon a time, I was in a writing class where the instructor insisted that only murder was high stakes enough for mysteries & suspense novels. It was a silly thing to say and I recall scoffing when she said it. This memory resurfaced as I finished Grasshopper and contemplated what I would write about it. I was going to say that there’s no murder in Grasshopper, but technically there is. However, it’s just a mcguffin.

The reviews at Amazon are mixed. Some people hated this book. A lot said it wasn’t a “typical” Barbara Vine book. I’m not sure what they were expecting. None of the BV books I’ve read would be what I’d call typical mysteries. They’re more “regular” stories with suspenseful elements to them. Which is why I like them. I was tired of formulaic whodunnits. The people who seemed most disappointed seemed to expect a “shocking twist” ending. I guess it would be a let down if that’s what you expected.

BV’s books tend to be dark, psychological explorations, rather than thrillers. I think she’s interested in what motivates people to do the things they do. This one, I think, was less dark than others I’ve read, perhaps because it was clear from the outset that the ending would be a (mostly) happy one. The ending doesn’t tie up all the loose ends, though, which is good.

It definitely kept me turning the pages and, when I got to the last page, I experienced that little pang of sadness that you do when you’ve become attached to the characters in a book and you have to let them go. That kind of surprised me because none of the characters were particularly likable. But I suppose that was precisely it; their unpleasant qualities made them seem like real human beings and I got used to them being around.

So, to sum up: no murder(s) to speak of and no particularly likable characters. And yet, I quite enjoyed it.

They’re baaaack!

Back in the fall, Eden asked what I was going to do in the winter when there were no flowers to photograph. I guess the answer to that was: “Take photos of food!” But the flowers are back, baby! 😉

Crocuses

First flower photo of the year. And no worries for those who prefer edibles. I think I’m hooked on food photography.