Monthly Archives: June 2014

Snapshot: doughnut peaches

I’ve decided to add a new blog category: Snapshots. They’ll be a super quick look at an interesting food item. And, they’ll be sporadic, much like the Writing Exercises.

Of course, Difference Between and Food History categories will continue to be posted weekly.

For the first Snapshot, let’s take a look at doughnut peaches. They inspired me to start a Snapshot category just to highlight random fun foods – just look at how cute they are.

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Food history: Florida tomatoes

This is a little bit of a different kind of Food History post. 

I was inspired to write about Florida tomatoes (sorry to pick on you, Florida) from a fascinating book that came out just three years ago, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, by Barry Estabrook.

Estabrook, a former editor of Gourmet and founder of Eating Well, explains how the majority of supermarket tomatoes are being created with the intention of being able to survive long journeys from the farm to the store – flavor and nutrients are sacrificed for the sake of longevity and durability.

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Props (writing exercise #12)

Continuing on with the characterization section of writing exercises, this activity emphasizes the literal surroundings of our characters as they exist in a setting.

This reminds me a lot of my play writing class I took last year. If you ever go to plays (I recently saw Phantom of the Opera with my mom – it was fantastic) try paying close attention to the props on stage. They’re likely telling you additional things about the characters, that you can’t get from action and dialogue alone.

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Difference between: organic produce and non-organic produce

The methods by which organic produce must be grown tend to be more expensive, and that cost is passed onto the consumer.

Although many people want to eat healthy and buy organic, some do not know the true difference between organic produce and non-organic produce. Is it worth it to spend the extra money?

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Wedding showers

My wedding shower – or bridal shower if you will – was this past Saturday. It went perfectly, other than the fact that it flew by so fast I didn’t get a chance to speak with everyone individually as I wanted to.

In the majority of my wedding posts I talk about the planning process, questions to ask vendors, etc. I hope as I write about my wedding journey I can advise and occasionally amuse others along the way.

In the case of the shower, I had nothing to do with the planning and didn’t know where the location was until I was driven there. It was so wonderful to be out of the loop, to have one less thing to worry about.

Consequently, I don’t have a solid list of how to plan a shower, but I would like to share what was done for me – I’m sure great ideas can be sparked.

To start out with this, this was the cake, courtesy of my very talented future sister-in-law. I’m pretty sure all guests were shocked that she is not a cake person or baker by profession.

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