Canning for a New Generation - Review

Although it doesn't seem very timely to be reviewing a book published in 2010, fresh produce is nearly upon us! I have started to pull my canning titles off the shelves after their winter hibernation, and Liana Krissoff's Canning for a New Generation was the best place to start. Having used this for two seasons already, I have found this book a pleasure to read and cook from.

For me to purchase a cookbook, I need to know that it contains more than a handful of recipes I will use; furthermore, it should teach me something new about working with food. This book falls strongly into the latter category, though I have tried several recipes from it each year with great results.

Krissoff's approach to preserving is actually very traditional. She avoids commercial pectins by straining and boiling down her product, working with with the pectin content naturally available in the fruit and amending it as necessary. This makes for lovely, flavourful preserves, even if they are a bit time consuming. For the total newbie, she thoroughly goes over the various aspects of canning, providing some rarely seen detail about your pectin options. For the more experienced cook, her recipes are at once classic and innovative, each jar presented in tantalizing photography. She has something for everyone, including the "new generation." Will your friends stare blankly at a jar of strawberry preserves? Maybe these friends might be more impressed with one of the book's more ethnic options, such as Persian Tarragon Pickles or Japanese Fermented Bran Pickles. Ooooo. Food cart-y.

Inter-dispersed among the recipes for canned goods are recipes in which you can use them, which I typically don't like to see. Let canning books be about canning, I would say. For this book, however, these are sometimes quite necessary. I might make Do Chua (Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon), but how will I use it? Krissoff tells me, and clinches the deal: her "Asia Tacos" look delicious. I planted daikon this year. Furthermore, the narration in this book is so engaging I was surprised to find how much I liked the personal voice and anecdotes she carried through the recipes. She won my trust, and for that, I will try her scones (or rather, Reagan's scones).

Krissoff's pantry (Canning for a New Generation Facebook page)

The book's Facebook page is well maintained. Krissoff carries on excellent dialogue with her followers, and displays some mouth-watering shots of her preserves.

On my "must make list" this year? I am hoping to start her Pickled Young Spring Garlic recipe by the end of the week, to help my desperately overgrown garlic patch. Last year's batch of apple butter is nearly exhausted, and from the looks of things at the market so is last year's apple harvest, meaning that I suspect we will be picking up cheap butter-grade apples again soon. And I will absolutely be making one of her strawberry jams or preserves, and something with rhubarb. For a start.

The life changing magic of tidying up: review

In the midst of feeling completely overwhelmed by all the stuff in our house, I heard of this title, published last year in English (translated from Japanese): The life changing magic of tidying up, by Marie Kondo. I jumped on the holds list at the Brantford Public Library when it was only a few people long; now there are almost 20 in line behind me.

I'll get right to the point: reading this book was a good experience for me. Entertaining, thought provoking, and very likely useful in helping me to keep a better house. At the beginning I was a bit shocked at Kondo's obsessive behaviors. As I read on, I became impressed that she made herself so vulnerable by sharing these things. I found the book very readable, and wasn't turned off by some of the zanier suggestions she makes, such as communicating with your house or thanking possessions for their service to you. I am fine with these things.

I respect that Kondo sticks to her mission, in focusing totally on tidying and discarding (the latter of which is really the main event). In its directives, the book is very simple and I don't think I will have problems following the instructions even after I return it to the library. However, I think she does have a blind spot; there is a lack of comment on responsible disposal of your discarded stuff. If you slow down to recycle and re-home goods, will it impede the discarding process? Possibly. She doesn't discuss this. While she is impressed with the number of garbage bags that her clients discard, I cringe at the thought of throwing out 60 bags at one go.

Donate it, you may say. While I do use trips to the thrift store as a way to destash, I often feel like this is making my garbage problem someone else's problem. You may be aware that unsold thrift store goods are sometimes donated or sold in developing countries, where in some cases they may be supplanting local textile industries. Eek. What started as a way to be environmentally friendly - recycling your clothes - can have a whole other set of consequences for people in southern countries. Value Village states on its website that they ship unsold product to "developing countries to help supply economies with a steady stream of high-quality goods." However much negative impact this has at a local level I am unsure of, but it makes me wary. What about locally made products? I haven't ever thought of my used t-shirts as "high-quality goods".

But really, is my problem with disposing of things in a manner that I feel comfortable with Marie Kondo's problem? No, not at all. She stays on topic. While certain things in this book don't feel realistic (turning over a seasonal wardrobe is fairly important in a country where temperatures spread over 60 degrees Celsius, for one), I also believe that things hold an energy, and that having too many things often means you don't get to appreciate the ones you have. There are many Konmari before and after pics out there, but this set from the New York Times is particularly good, I suspect because it shows a room Marie Kondo worked on herself. I'm not ready for before and after pics yet, but I do think I will start with getting rid of some items. Once I figure out where to send them.

Book sale haul

One of my favorite events of the year is the Brantford Symphony Orchestra book sale, which happens every April. Book donations are collected and sorted for weeks before the sale, and it is fair to say there are thousands of items. This year's venue was the closed Brantford campus of Mohawk College, but it has also been hosted at closed factories and schools.

Books are priced between 50 cents and roughly 5 dollars, though there are plenty of 25 cent finds and the rare book that costs more.

This year I arrived within half an hour of opening. I was so excited I could hardly stand to park the car; I wanted to run inside, to stop people from getting to my wonderful book deals. In addition to very keen readers, opening day is also marked by dealers pushing around shopping carts filled with books, with boxes of more books piled on top.

This year I walked away with 16 books, 5 patterns and a tape of awesome hits from the early 90s for $28.50. That is about 10 dollars more than I usually spend, but this year I started looking at the 3 and 4 dollar books (which I usually set aside because of their "high price" and then regret this foolishness when I get back home).

Please don't judge me for the Twilight books - as an MLIS holder I consider it a kind of research to read the YA smash hits.

Though I am very excited about my patterns, my favorite score at the book fair was a beautifully laid out Audubon bird book. I have been looking for an affordable source of Audubon prints for our living room, and this book almost appears to be made for it - one picture per page,  high quality paper. If I can bring myself to cut it up.

Reading Ru

Just started reading Ru, by Kim Thuy. The book is most recently the winner of Canada Reads, but is also winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction in its original French. Its list of accolades is long. Immediately it reminds me of the Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, in its image-heavy,  prose poem style.

This is one of my favorite styles of writing to read. I find the vignettes more manageable than a conventional novel, in particular when I am reading in short spurts. While there is a narrative flow to Ru, you can read slightly ahead or behind your "place" without compromising the story; as a reader, I like having this extra amount of control over my reading experience. I dislike when I feel locked in to the author's story line, when I have to leave off at a logical spot in order to pick up the book and proceed. These days I don't always have the time to finish a chapter.

Thuy paints very poignant scenes, which, when reading, make me thankful that such moments were captured. I get pretty emotional about good writing, I'll admit. But to me, this is the kind of writing which makes you watch and observe the world around you more closely, realizing that we are constantly moving amid these notable moments.

What else I am reading this month:

• Improving Your Soil, Keith Reid
• Bed Timing, Marc Lewis and Isabela Granic
• Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, Richard Ferber
• The No-Cry Sleep Solution, Elizabeth Pantley
• Canadian Gardener's Guide, Lorraine Johnson (ed)
• 500 Kitchen Ideas, from the editors of Country Living
• The Sewing Book, Alison Smith
• Blind Window, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami

Figs again

Groundwood Books has released a kids' title about figs, Rosario's Fig Tree. I'm into it!

I can tell, just from the trailer, that their character uses a different method of overwintering than I will employ (burying his fig tree rather than bringing the potted tree inside).

Their blog features a mystery vegetable anecdote by the author. Now I want to grow bottle gourds too.

Reading ABC

In January of 2014 I started reading alphabetically. I chose titles by the author's last name, proceeding through the alphabet one letter at a time. I had a goal in mind: instead of buying a membership card at the much larger library in Brantford, I would try to methodically go through the collection at my local branch. They had more books than I could ever want to read, but I found myself walking around and around through the stacks, unable to find a good title.

I have a lot of unread books on my own shelves as well. I figured this approach would have the additional bonus of giving some focus to tackling my own library.

I'll skip to the ending: I didn't make it through the alphabet. I contend that I was doing fairly well until I got to a non-fiction "P," even though it was late in the year and I had already skipped J and K (Joyce when I was 9 months pregnant? I don't think so). However, I enjoyed the process. And choosing books so intentionally allowed me to notice threads and themes that carried from one book to the next.

My plan is to try and put some reviews up on Bibliocommons, the library catalogue that the Brantford Public Library uses. However, here was my reading list for 2014.

Adams, Richard. Watership Down
Boyden, Joseph. Through black spruce
Coupland, Douglas. Worst. Person. Ever.
DeBerniers, Louis. Birds without wings
Eco, Umberto. In the name of the rose
Franco, James. Actors Anonymous *
Gross, Lauren. The monsters of Templeton
Hay, Elizabeth. Late nights on air
Izanni, Frances. Deafening
Larsson, Steig. The girl with the dragon tattoo
Murakami, Haruki. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage.
Niffenegger, Audrey. The time traveler`s wife
Ozeki, Ruth. A tale for the time being

While my plan is to put some reviews up on Bibliocommons, I must mention here that Actors Anonymous was horrible. I`m embarrassed that it appears on this list. When I was heading to the library my husband joked that "maybe James Franco has written a book," so when I saw he had I couldn't resist. While I don`t like to endorse books without some sort of reader engagement, I feel comfortable recommending quite blindly that people NOT read this book.