Sad to say, I have never felt that there's always room for Jell-O. It's OK once or twice a year, but I'm not a huge fan (and I won't even touch anything in aspic..eew!). But that was before I saw Jellymongers: glow-in-the dark jelly, titanic jelly, flaming jelly, by the world's foremost purveyors Bompas & Parr. Starting out with a general overview of jellymaking techniques - proper molds, calculating volumes and using sugar syrups for the fullest flavor - Bompas & Parr then gently take the reader into the wonderful world of technicolor desserts. Cherry jelly, lemon jelly, rhubarb & rosé jelly, even pineapple jelly (yes, it can be done!) are clearly explained. Then comes the fun.
1. Hollowed-out clementine oranges, filled with multiple thin layers of blancmange (white) and clementine jelly (orange), then cut into gorgeous sections.
2. Clear champagne jelly, with brightly-colored summer berries suspended in the shape
3. Vodka jelly that has been flavored and colored with Skittles®
4. Black cherry jelly pyramids topped with pure gold tips (apparently, gold leaf will just 'pass through')
5. Gin & tonic jellies that glow in the dark (under a black light)
6. An aphrodisiac jelly that you really have to see to appreciate....
You'll never look at a packet of plain gelatin in the same way.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Input, please
As part of my preparation for submitting my yearly magazine order, I've been looking at our circulation statistics. And, as usual, the results have been absolutely fascinating (for me at least...I'm a bibliometrics geek). The top 5 magazines for 2010 (based on average circulations per issue):
The big shocker for me though is how unpopular Sports Illustrated is: 1.75 checkouts per issue. That's a worse rate than Alaska Business Monthly! Why don't people read our copies of Sports Illustrated? Are they already subscribers? Does the magazine take too long to arrive here in the library's mail? Do people prefer to get their sports news from television or the Internet? Is there a better sports magazine?
I ask these questions because we have already cancelled subscriptions to The Sporting News and ESPN Magazine due to lack of patron interest...I would love to hear from blog readers why sports magazines seem to be so wildly unpopular. Please take a second to complete our little survey off to the right.
Thanks!
- National Geographic (17)
- Military History (15.2)
- Guns & Ammo (14.9)
- Mother Earth News (12)
- Discover (11.3)
The big shocker for me though is how unpopular Sports Illustrated is: 1.75 checkouts per issue. That's a worse rate than Alaska Business Monthly! Why don't people read our copies of Sports Illustrated? Are they already subscribers? Does the magazine take too long to arrive here in the library's mail? Do people prefer to get their sports news from television or the Internet? Is there a better sports magazine?
I ask these questions because we have already cancelled subscriptions to The Sporting News and ESPN Magazine due to lack of patron interest...I would love to hear from blog readers why sports magazines seem to be so wildly unpopular. Please take a second to complete our little survey off to the right.
Thanks!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Cook-o-rama
If you ever wondered just what types of cookbooks the library has on the shelves, our recent selection of NEW cookbooks will give you a pretty good overview of the cookery collection.
Ethnic: Authentic Cuban Cuisine, by Martha Cortina. Not gourmet, fusion cuisine...this is real family cooking from a Cuban expatriate.
Scandinavian Classic Baking by Patricia Sinclair. Traditional Scandinavian favorites, dressed up with lots of nuts and fruit.
Healthy: The Essential Diabetes Cookbook, by Antony Worrall Thompson. Pulls in flavors from around the world, for a new take on diabetic recipes.
Gluten-free cookies : from shortbreads to Snickerdoodles, brownies to biscotti : 50 recipes for cookies you crave, by Luane Kohnke. She provides a gluten-free flour recipe and helpful information for those new to gluten-free cooking.
Trendy: In the green kitchen : techniques to learn by heart, by Alice Waters. Chef Waters has been around so long I hate to call her 'trendy', but this cookbook is all about appreciating the new slow-food movement.
Specialty: Serve yourself : nightly adventures in cooking for one, by Joe Yonan. Just because you're single, that doesn't mean you have to eat Top Ramen while you're standing in front of the sink.
Easy: Almost Homemade, by Catherine Cassidy. Make interesting and elaborate meals using a base of convenience and processed foods.
Ethnic: Authentic Cuban Cuisine, by Martha Cortina. Not gourmet, fusion cuisine...this is real family cooking from a Cuban expatriate.
Scandinavian Classic Baking by Patricia Sinclair. Traditional Scandinavian favorites, dressed up with lots of nuts and fruit.
Healthy: The Essential Diabetes Cookbook, by Antony Worrall Thompson. Pulls in flavors from around the world, for a new take on diabetic recipes.
Gluten-free cookies : from shortbreads to Snickerdoodles, brownies to biscotti : 50 recipes for cookies you crave, by Luane Kohnke. She provides a gluten-free flour recipe and helpful information for those new to gluten-free cooking.
Trendy: In the green kitchen : techniques to learn by heart, by Alice Waters. Chef Waters has been around so long I hate to call her 'trendy', but this cookbook is all about appreciating the new slow-food movement.
Specialty: Serve yourself : nightly adventures in cooking for one, by Joe Yonan. Just because you're single, that doesn't mean you have to eat Top Ramen while you're standing in front of the sink.
Easy: Almost Homemade, by Catherine Cassidy. Make interesting and elaborate meals using a base of convenience and processed foods.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Your Playaway fix
Our latest quarterly shipment of Playaway audiobooks is here and on the shelf! For those of you who love these little grab-n-go gems, we have some of the biggest names in fiction to entertain you:
- Jasper Fforde has added to his fantasy/mystery/time travel/humorous fiction series with One of Our Thursdays is Missing. There's trouble in BookWorld, but where is detective Thursday Next?
- W.E.B. Griffin brings espionage adventure to the fore with The Outlaws, the latest Presidential Agent novel. Covert agent Charlie Castillo has to track down biological agents and avert a worldwide catastrophe.
- Donna Leon's 20th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery is Drawing Conclusions. Fans of Leon will love this latest installment, which focuses on the death of a widow who was sheltering abused women in her home.
- Alexander McCall Smith finally celebrates the wedding of Grace Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti in The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, the 12th book in the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series.
- Francine Pascal revisits her wildly popular Sweet Valley High series with Sweet Valley Confidential. The Wakefield twins are all grown up now, but the angst keeps coming.
- Jodi Picoult blends themes of infertility, music, gay rights and evangelical Christianity into her latest novel, Sing You Home. Picoult wrote the lyrics to the songs included in this recording.
- Stuart Woods is back with another Stone Barrington novel. Strategic Moves sees Stone receiving a million dollar bonus from his admiring bosses at the law firm, but his clients soon involve him in murder, embezzlement and CIA intrigue.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
More sneaky food
When I was a kid, the general parenting approach to unpopular foods was "I don't care if you like carrots, you're not leaving the table until you eat them!". Perhaps we're more nonconfrontational these days (or too lazy to enforce strict rules), but the new trend with parents is to sneak healthy ingredients into meals. I posted previously about Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious. We have a new title in this underhanded cooking genre: Ice Pop Joy: organic, healthy, fresh, delicious, by Anni Daulter.
Not content with pureeing up spinach, carrots, kale and squash into a form unrecognizable to children, Daulter has added the extra sneaky step of mixing these vegetables up with pureed pineapple, mango, strawberries and bananas, spiking them with sweetener and creamy liquids (cream, milk, yogurt, or soy milk) and freezing them into popsicles.
A far cry from the fluorescent-colored sticks of high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors, these homemade pops are packed with protein, calcium, vitamins and antioxidants. The recipes are frequently livened up with ingredients such as peanut butter, lavender, chamomile tea, flax seed, quinoa, wheat germ and tofu. The pops look delicious, the children are all smiling, and everything looks so easy. In fact, many of these recipes sound interesting enough to appeal to adults: pistachio tofu pop, spicy Italian pop, Rooibos red tea immunity pops and Mexican spiced fire pops. The recipe I'm most likely to try? The Green Machine pop, made with spinach, bananas, pineapple and flax seed.
Not content with pureeing up spinach, carrots, kale and squash into a form unrecognizable to children, Daulter has added the extra sneaky step of mixing these vegetables up with pureed pineapple, mango, strawberries and bananas, spiking them with sweetener and creamy liquids (cream, milk, yogurt, or soy milk) and freezing them into popsicles.
A far cry from the fluorescent-colored sticks of high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors, these homemade pops are packed with protein, calcium, vitamins and antioxidants. The recipes are frequently livened up with ingredients such as peanut butter, lavender, chamomile tea, flax seed, quinoa, wheat germ and tofu. The pops look delicious, the children are all smiling, and everything looks so easy. In fact, many of these recipes sound interesting enough to appeal to adults: pistachio tofu pop, spicy Italian pop, Rooibos red tea immunity pops and Mexican spiced fire pops. The recipe I'm most likely to try? The Green Machine pop, made with spinach, bananas, pineapple and flax seed.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Becoming a true Alaskan
There are many material signs that you are a true denizen of Southeast Alaska - a pair of ExtraTufs, an Alaska Airlines Visa card on which you load every bill except your mortgage payment, a 10-year old bottle of sunscreen - but there is also a set of special skills and knowledge you should have. If someone hands you a wriggling sea creature, you should be able to dress it and cook it. If you've read our latest book - The Fishmonger's Apprentice; the expert's guide to selecting, preparing, and cooking a world of seafood, taught by the masters by Aliza Green - you are already in the club.
This excellent book, laden with photographs, will show you how to debone herring, fillet halibut, butterfly salmon, shuck oysters, dehead shrimp, clean geoduck, gut dungies, cut steaks from cod, and clean live sea urchin. And as if that weren't enough, there is a handy-dandy DVD that accompanies the book, featuring 12 tutorials and 32 recipes. The disc demonstrates basic seafood cooking techniques, such as steaming, stuffing, pickling and blackening. Learn how to properly cook clams, calamari and scallops. Make crabcakes and fish fumée (which is a fancy term for fish stock...I had to Google that one).
Once you've mastered this book, you'll be ready to tackle the many fine seafood cookbooks we have on the shelf (many of which assume you know how to gut a fish). Derby season's coming up, and what better way to impress the guys down at the harbor than to gut and fillet your massive catch yourself with a few quick flicks of the knife...
This excellent book, laden with photographs, will show you how to debone herring, fillet halibut, butterfly salmon, shuck oysters, dehead shrimp, clean geoduck, gut dungies, cut steaks from cod, and clean live sea urchin. And as if that weren't enough, there is a handy-dandy DVD that accompanies the book, featuring 12 tutorials and 32 recipes. The disc demonstrates basic seafood cooking techniques, such as steaming, stuffing, pickling and blackening. Learn how to properly cook clams, calamari and scallops. Make crabcakes and fish fumée (which is a fancy term for fish stock...I had to Google that one).
Once you've mastered this book, you'll be ready to tackle the many fine seafood cookbooks we have on the shelf (many of which assume you know how to gut a fish). Derby season's coming up, and what better way to impress the guys down at the harbor than to gut and fillet your massive catch yourself with a few quick flicks of the knife...
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
New Music Section
We had a patron request that we create a New Music section, much like the sections we have for new books and new videos. We love to get great ideas, so we've created a shelf of new music above the stereo system. This will make it much easier to find the new CDs that we've added to the collection.
We've just stocked the New Music section with 22 albums spanning all genres:
We've just stocked the New Music section with 22 albums spanning all genres:
- Blessed - Williams, Lucinda.
- The king is dead - Decemberists
- Science & faith - Script
- Waylon: the music inside : a collaboration dedicated to Waylon Jennings. Volume 1
- Go-go boots - Drive-By Truckers
- 21 - Adele, 1988-
- The party ain't over - Jackson, Wanda,
- Rare bird alert - Martin, Steve
- Mission bell - Lee, Amos.
- Songs from a Zulu farm - Ladysmith Black Mambazo
- WOW #1s: 30 #1 Christian hits! - Heath, Brandon.
- Town line - Lewis, Aaron.
- Low country blues - Allman, Gregg
- --For the ghosts within - Wyatt, Robert.
- The very best of the Rat Pack - Sinatra, Frank
- Chamber music society - Spalding, Esperanza
- Sidewalks - Matt & Kim
- Edie Brickell - Brickell, Edie.
- Dreams in America - Bloom, Luka.
- Violin concertos - Beethoven, Ludwig van, and Janine Jansen
- Three flights from alto nido - Laswell, Greg.
- The Trinity session - Cowboy Junkies
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