Post about 101 Tofu on Epinions

Hi Anne and Donna,

I added a comment on the other post but didn't know if you would go back into it to see it. I thought I would try Epinions, which is a good site for doing reviews particularly because it gives me a bit more indication of what the reaction is. There is an evaluation feature which gives reviews a grade. Helium doesn't really rate or evaluate reviews unless there is more than one per title. So far the review has been rated 'Very Helpful,' which is probably a good sign, and there is one comment on it so far that seems positive.

Hopefully there will be more to follow and that can help to shape future efforts. Next I will come up with something for Amazon and whatever other review sites. Eventually I can do more posts on Helium with indivisual recipes, which will be a great way to get more traffic because people look those up all the time, then they can refer them on to the book. When I get going I will do recipes, which I should be able to really easily as soon as I figure out my laptop cam.

And Anne, congratulations on the latest edition.

http://www.epinions.com/review/Book_101_Things_to_Do_with_Tofu_Donna_Kelly_Anne_Tegtmeier/content_428052352644

Trying my vidblogging capability

I have no idea if this is going to work so I am throwing up a silly video of Drake and Harry watching youtube.


Obviously it doesn't work quite yet, anyone know anything about how to make sure these are in the right format?

Also Cool & the Gang:

Hey I just won a writing contest on the topic of 'International Business.'

http://writing-contests.helium.com/marketingcontest/leaderboard/388?cms=channel-champions

Kind of scary because I know absolutely nothing about International Business. Hey JPH3, take a look at the one entitled 'Doing Business in Japan.' I threw it up in a half an hour and have no idea whether any of it is true. You might want to let me know because I would hate to fool anyone actually seeking business advice like I fooled the judges. It needs serious revision.

Anyway, these contests are totally hit and miss. I know a lot about hamsters but I only got second in that one this week. Maybe it is good for me not to know a certain amount about something. Point of diminishing returns, probably.

Anyway, back in the USA and glad. Tomorrow we go home to end the boys' momless revelry.

Totally Cooleo

I just discovered that the new laptop Slade just got me has a video cam! Without the hurdle of transferring video back and forth (I know it's easy I just won't do it), video blogging will be coming very soon. Or at least videos of us doing funny stuff. I got a classic one of Harry barking at other dogs on Youtube the other day.

If it's not Scottish...

Well I am winding up my trip in Edinburgh. I was lucky to get here because I took a long bus ride with some Scottish guy that had to pull over and look at the map on the way.

I liked my first two experiences staying in hostels but the last one is pretty bad. Still, 11 pounds a night can be pretty bad and still be worth it because of the exchange rate.

In a gift shop yesterday I saw a sign that said 'there will be no alcholol sales before 12:30 p.m. on Sundays. Needless to say that didn't affect my travel plans that much.

Man, I am in cool accent heaven out here. I could barely undertsand most people that I talked to. There was one hillarious incident on the bus where a bunch of rowdy scotts got on and one had a restaraunt glass full of beer that he continued to down on the drive. I wish I had videoed that.

Dem English is Wak

Or whatever my bro said in his post.

Actually they are pretty nice, but I feel like I have a sign on me everywhere that says 'I am an idiot American.' I have to admit, I can't always rule out the idiocy, and I can't ever rule out the American.

Today I went to Hampton Court Palace and it was so great I am planning to go there again tomorrow after church. They did an all day Tudor Coking demonstration where they did it in authentic costume and with authentic tools and everything and then eventually sat down to a meal like they would eat everything. Very awesome.

In the UK is wak section, the big news story today was that a mother donated her kidney to her daughter to save her and the NHCS decided the kidney would have to go to some other person, not her daughter. Isn't that like kidney harvesting, using live kidneys from healty people without their consent? Very scary. I would accept a lot of problems with the health care system to avoid the scariness factor that that has for me.

Oh, and I am staying in a HOSTEL! Like dorm style. I am quoting the info I got on check in 'If there is someone in YOUR BED, please notify reception.' I actually don't mind it. I did a few hotels to break me into things and I imagine I will do amix of this and bnb's because the dollar is so bad, everything is painfully dear. I actually like a lot of things about the hostels. I just had a two hour conversation with some guy who thought he believed all kinds of things. Showed him. Just kidding, but a good anonymous conversation is very liberating, you don't have to worry about running into them later.

UKing around

After a while trying to coordinate a trip together, Slade and I decided that it would be more merciful for me to go by myself. At least for him. I like having him along, but he just hates it. As much as I miss him I can picture the drag in his step if he were to be doing the things I am doing.

So it really doesn't make any sense for either of us to be tortured, him by sightseeing or me by not. So today I write from London, and am pretty excited about the things I have been seeing so far. Today I went to Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn that was built in the thirteenth century. Yesterday I went to Battle, the town that marks the site of the 1066 Battle of Hastings.

The great thing about going myself is that I don't have to do things that first time visitors do like the Tower of London and the changing of the guard. I can knock off the things that I want to see but no one else would.

One funny thing that happened yesterday was that I got hushed by a bobby, a London policeman, because I was audibly asking him a question while someone was protesting the Iraq war in front of parliament--with a megaphone! I certainly hope that the US government never gets to the point where the definition of free speech is not saying whatever you want to whomever you want (from the posters on the subway that remind visitors that it is not ever ok to say anything even THOUGHT to be offensive) like it should be, it involves active assistance and resources to CERTAIN people saying CERTAIN things. Speaking of Henry VIII, civil rights in the UK are headed right back there, it seems.

101 Things to do with Tofu, By Kelly and Tegtmeir

Sorry this took so long guys. And because anything I submit my own title for on Helium it takes a while to get approved, here is the text. I am thinking of adding some more categores like 'Ways to get more vegetarian protein,' etc. This took me longer than I thought it would. This dog ownership is more than I expected, and I now understand why people seem to be fairly fully occupied with it even in more normal circumstances. Bullies even good ones are high maintenance. I am also going to do some hard linking of this and other articles that I write to other review sites and vegetarian/cookbook forums, etc.

And because I can revise anything anytime, please let me know what I can change. It is just a starting point, really.

Oh, and I usually don't like to publish something until I think of something particularly clever, and I thought 'soy peas in a pod' was pretty good. Hope you enjoy it.

---------------------------

Book review: 101 things to do with tofu by Donna Kelly and Anne Tegtmeir

I am sure many of you might be thinking whoa, that's WAY too many things to do with tofu. But before having a rash reaction, it is worth at least considering how this curious curdled substance might play a bigger role in your balanced diet, whether you are a vegetarian or a hearty meat eater like myself. This book can help anyone contemplate the slightly over a hundred ways that are rumored to do just that.

In the mean time, the story of the book's authorship is great on the human interest side. Donna Kelly is a busy mom living in Provo, UT. She no longer has minor children but finds that she has quite a number of MAJOR children: they are constantly traipsing through the house with their friends and spouses in search of sustenance. Kelly is a lawyer by day job but found herself faced with a family full of recent converts to vegetarianism and needed to do something to make her kitchen more accommodating.

Anne Tegtmeir was reintroduced to Donna, her birth mom, after briefly being separated for about thirty years. But the two are like soy peas in a pod, and immediately began collaborating on things like catering weddings and this book.

One of the things that I immediately noticed about this book, which I believe is similar to the entire 101 series put out by Gibbs Smith, is that it comes with a supplemental sheer acrylic cover. This makes it perfect for messy cooks like me who always end up with cook books that end up looking like they were left out in the mud. In addition, the spiral binding is extremely handy for positioning on the counter with busy and dirty hands.

(For other Gibbs Smith books by Donna Kelly, check out '101 things to do with a tortilla,' '101 things to do with a can of soup,' '101 things to do with chicken,' and potentially about 97 other titles coming soon, I am sure.)

The cookbook contains a number of the usual substitutions for things that dairy usually comprises, like mayonnaise, salad dressing and Alfredo sauce. Even most people who think they can always sense soy a mile a way are usually fooled. The book also adds to the standard list a number of innovative recipes that wouldn't seem quite as obvious, such as tofu sloppy Joes, tofu parmigiana, and tofu tika masala. My kids especially liked the tofu breakfast burritos - by that I mean they ate them without giving any indication that they thought I had done something healthy to them.

The book has a few hidden gems as tokens of the authors' sense of humor, such as 'Rebirth by chocolate' and 'Cheesefake' (the second title apparently was a brainchild of Donna's son, Jake Kelly.

'101 things to do with tofu' is not the only labor of love in the picture, particularly for Anne Tegtmeir. She is expecting her first child in April, 2008. Her ingenuity with soy has been one of her strategies for making sure that she has had enough protein during pregnancy. And to any vegetarian, that can be a challenge. But this book can surely be a strategy for anyone to pump up the protein in their diet, vegetarian or otherwise.

All you wanted to know about castrati

...and MUCH more!

Now that I have my religiosity out of the way I will move back to my more usually irreverent topics.

http://www.helium.com/items/966213-mention-soprano-sentence-notice

*Note that this is not the most recent article, and I don't even know whether the link will work. So if you are interested in it and can only afford to read this once, please wait until tomorrow. THX

This topic began to interest me after a discussion during choir with the director about the difference between male and female voices and his observation that he had never before me heard a woman who could sing bass.

And I don't exactly sound like a MAN when I do, it is still a nice mellow female voice, I just happen to be able to sing within nearly the full range of human vocal possibility. I can't quite hit the high soprano notes or the low bass notes but I get close.

I think my ability to do it began with the fact that Jape and I used to listen to records and try to mimic them. We can each sing all of the voices to Les Mis, both the men and women. Kind of a fun thing, though neither of us is much of a performer so we don't usually do it for audiences. I should say I don't unless I am in one of my moods. My family knows it's true.

A note about this article, I am fairly sure that the phrase 'accosted by anonymous music lovers wielding knives' ocurrs only once in English or any other language, so here's your chance to find out what it could possibly mean.

Easter message

Wow, I just spent about ten minutes posting a Helium version of this post, and check out the rating! It still has typos even! I took out the Mormon parts, but I still thought it got some good ideas out there. I will probably eventually post about Mormon stuff too as I scout for more topics.

http://www.helium.com/items/969684-risen-mathew-286with-these

I hadn't planned to put off doing an Easter post until after my St. Patty's and April Fool's posts, but Easter came so early this year! And even though I still haven't had a chance to think through exactly what I am going to say, I thought I would try to at least make a first pass at it.

For those of you who have read my hopefully humorous post on the History Channel, you will know that I kind of bear a chip on my shoulder about all of the so-called biblical archaologists they have on there, mainly for the purpose of debunking Christianity. They don't have a whole lot of archaologists debunking Druidism, and I sometimes wonder why because wouldn't a religion like that be equally false in the minds of free-thinking atheist academics?

But as it often happens, criticism made in ignorance ends up being anything but.

I will explain that one if I can. Many of these pseudoscholars often take pot shots at Christ and The Gospel from a vantage point of the nonbeliever. To quote John McCain as he said one of the few funny things I have ever heard about him, "I consider it a compliment" (of criticism by Hugo Chavez).

Notably one of the criticisms I heard on the recent documentaries I watched was that Christ obviously didn't know what he was doing because he picked such incompetents, frauds and traitors as his disciples. Like he would have benefitted from some type of middle-management training: '7 Habits for the Twelve.' (They may actually have that, now...)

But this type of comment reveals that those who would debunk our beliefs have no idea what Christianity is about. Traitors, charlatans and fools are EXACTLY who Christ would likely have picked to show that he actually believed in the power of his own message of redemption.

I feel that this reality is a message of hope for all of us. As often happens, another dispensation repeated this theme. Joseph Smith didn't exactly attract the cream of the crop. People were constantly going wayward and stabbing him in the back. But whatever the downside of this motley crew, many of them were willing to leave whatever creature comforts they had to follow the early profets to their peril.

There is one more crucial detail that even pundits admit they can't explain very well. All of the wavering, denying, and decieving very interestingly came to a screeching halt: about three days after the Crucifiction. It seems very much like these very flawed men encountered something that caused them to be able to put aside their weaknesses and hasten to their own agonizing martyrdoms after the example of their Lord.

This is the hallmark I think of what I am hoping to do with my life. At some point I hope that I can put aside my foolishness and wavering and become a disciple of Christ. I hope that I can also expose myself to the knowledge and experiences that would make me more and more willing to do it.

Happy Late Easter.

We put Harry to SLEEP!

Happy April 1st everybody!



Click on this picture to get a full screen, it is totally classic bulldog. He is really sleeping--he doesn't care WHAT is going on!

And his EARS! So precious. But I am a bulldogger. Now a bulldogger blogger.

And I honestly thought that the picture combined with 'Happy April 1st' was enough to get the message across (I didn't really think I was going to 'fool' anyone), but in case anyone else wonders, Harry isn't going anywhere. Even if we have to keep him kenneled every time anyone comes over or give him the old snip snip, he will be worth it to us, he is our baby, and he's awesome.