alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)

My same gripes with Jamie Oliver as usual: too much pasta, too British, too many recipes with odd ingredients, too much shellfish. We just …. don’t vibe well, okay?

I picked this book up because I like to listen to true crime and outdoor adventure books. I was completely absorbed in the story, and Kathryn Miles told it so personally and compassionately.

I wasn't expecting the Making a Murderer component to the case. Like, there is already a horrific tragedy, and then the NPS and FBI added layers of injustice on top of that. It is rage inducing.

I think I would recommend this book if people asked for specific cues, but in general I didn’t have a great reading experience. I spent a lot of the time confused about so many different things, and I don’t think I clicked with the author. But the representation and story concepts were great, and the descriptions were truly horrifying and apocalyptic.

Such a fun fantasy romance! The story is kinda generic and stays superficial but it certainly has nonstop adventure going for it. I think a lot more could have been done with such a large and unique cast of characters, and the end wraps up rather quickly (don't sit and think about it too long, move along lol)...but anyways I enjoyed reading it when my head was very tired from working all day.

This is my fifth cookbook on my meal prep journey and I will share a new tip I learned: use dry erase marker to write on plastic containers.

This book has weekly meal plans for 3 meals a day for several weeks. It does not include grocery lists or weekly prep lists. It is up to you to turn to each recipe and figure out what you are going to prep ahead. In that light, the book allows for a more flexible usage than some of the other meal prep books I reviewed because it is organized like a standard cookbook.

There is large section of dishes that can be prepped a day or two ahead, or maybe you could just make sure your veggies are diced and sauces stirred. These dishes would actually be best if served fresh.

There are also breakfast and snack foods, both categories that take me 0-5 minutes to cook and if you need to prep ahead for those things.... honey go eat a fried egg and reevaluate your life choices.

The section I found the most valuable was the freezer meals. Soup kits to keep in the freezer and toss directly into a pressure cooker, chicken marinades, and planned-overs (make a large batch and freeze half) are all good recipes that I will be keeping.

Overall I would say this is a good family cookbook with budget-friendly, flavorful meals that use basic ingredients. It uses a variety of cooking techniques, so you wouldn't only be eating frozen and reheated meals all the time. And I appreciated that the majority of these meals could easily be made gluten free.

I was suprised by how remarkably modern this story felt. Very little needed to be changed for the Netflix show The Haunting of Bly Manor. The dissonance created by children who look perfectly innocent but are hiding a dark secret is something I thought was more 20th century, the horror coming from within the family circle instead of an external threat. Good spooky season read

I listened to the Naxos full cast audio while I read, the actors were great. It really helped me follow the play.

The play is very theatrical, with lots of plot lines and room for a wide range of emotions. It was good and I am glad I finally read it, but As You Like It still holds the title of my favorite Shakespeare comedy.

I’ll eat up any sociological look at american evangelical culture. It is fascinating to be able to take a step back and look from the outside in at a subculture that I know myopically well.

I think Bowler did a good job of interviewing and including women from the various sub sub evangelical groups, like Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ celeb women. The names I recognized are from white circles so it was interesting to learn about some of the differences and similarities.

As you might expect, celebrity evangelical women are highly influential for trend shaping, yes, but also for money making. They drive millions of dollars in women’s focused books, conferences, materials, and a more elusive to measure contribution to the perfect wife of a celebrity preacher, who would appear incomplete and untrustworthy without a woman tucked in the crook of his elbow. Their physical image and media presence, Bowler shows, is highly curated to walk the tightrope of aspirational yet not so perfect that they are unrelatable, modern and empowered yet always boasts her primary role is wife-mother-homemaker, stylish and trendy but modest, open and vulnerable but only publicly confesses easily forgivable sins (eg “doubting God” vs say, watching porn). In the end, their influence is borrowed from a male counterpart, like a father or husband, and if that connection is severed, their influence quickly dries up. Bowler makes the point well in the conclusion when she says that the time of women’s leadership has arrived, but the time of women’s leadership in theology hasn’t.

This speaks to the soul that I inherited from my great grandmother’s depression era habits. This book has suggestions for how to use up literally any kind of leftover food you can think of. No promises on how useful some of these ideas actually are (make dye out of avocado pits), but awfully handy for if it pains you to throw out that last bite or two.

The recipes here rely on you having leftovers from other recipes that are not in this book. Eg you made ceviche and now you have leftovers that are not quite enough for a second meal / you don’t want to eat leftover ceviche (brine can be used in a marinade, fish can be used to make fried fish cakes). But wait there is more! Recipes for if your fruit is hard and green or you waited a few days too long, what to do with the peels, etc etc.

I think my favorite chapter was sauces to make with empty containers (making honey mustard vinaigrette with an empty mustard jar is fairly common knowledge but what can you do with an empty bbq sauce bottle?).

I loved the author’s voice - a touch poetic, a bit of sass (“Bananas, overripe: You know what to do with overripe bananas. This recipe is here in case you discover that you have misplaced the banana bread recipe you usually use.”).

Such a great reference, and definitely something I will use in my weekly quest to defeat the vegetables.

My first time reading this, or any Vonnegut, and I had literally no idea what it was about before starting. I didn't get assigned books written after the 1950s in high school so I missed this classic. Although I din't usually like books with this type of story structure, I was interested and curious as I read through it.

The most interesting concept in the book is time. Billy Pilgrim, the main character, learns to time travel after being abducted by aliens and he experiences vignettes of his life out of their chronological order. These aliens, when they look at a human, do not see a being on two legs; they see a centepede with millions of legs that show all the moments of a person's life strung together. Billy's attitude towards the death happening continuously all around him is blasé ("So it goes.") because death is just one moment in a person's life--they are eternally alive in all the other moments.

Another thing Billy learns to do is experience events in reverse. There is a wonderful vignette where the bombing of Dresden is described this way, starting with planes sucking up all the destruction and putting it into metal canisters, where they are given to women in factories who then safely store the components deep in the ground. It's beautiful to imagine the world in this direction, heading towards goodness and healing instead of destruction.