An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 by Rick AtkinsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars A very good history of the campaign in northern Africa. Rick Atkinson does a great job of tracking this portion of World War II from the high command of Eisenhower down to the front line of battle. …
This is my first attempt at posting a book report from GoodReads.com. Let’s see how it works out. Postcards by Annie ProulxMy rating: 4 of 5 stars After finishing The Shipping News I knew I had to read another Annie Proulx book. The protagonist of this story, Loyal Blood, is quite different from Quoyle, the …
Stormy weather is soup weather. I dusted off an old favorite: Hearty Minnestrone. You can find the original on the Cooks Illustrated web site. I blogged about this back in November 2011. I’m updating now because I got a new external flash for my camera and this was the first time I used it in …
Less that a week before snowpocalypse we had a warmish, sunny day. Here are some pictures from along the regular route Carla and I take on our walk. This greenhouse used to be nestled up against a big green space. A big development is going in; just to the left of the picture are graded roads …
The biggest benefit of commuting on the bus is the time I have to read; I get about 90 minutes of reading time each day. Add that to my semi-retirement and I set a personal best for books read last year. My goal since 2009 has been to read at least 8 books per year …
Back in January I skillet roasted a chicken in my venerable cast iron skillet. The chicken was fantastic but it generated a lot of smoke in kitchen. The oven continued to smoke when we cooked something else in it later in the week. Clearly something needed to be done. Skillet roasted chicken. I had been …
Since I semi-retired last spring I switched from driving to work to taking the bus. Getting to work and home is very convenient; there is an express bus that runs in the mornings and evenings. But our local transit agency, Trimet get real bungled up when snow hits. I don’t blame Trimet; this area just …