NEW

Back home from the Golden State! Did a bit of the west coast, and spent a week in San Francisco. Enroute home spent a month in Hong Kong - it's been fun!

Anyway! Here's some new stuff that I've been liking muchly:

Sharon Van Etten. Awesome singer/songwriter who has a bit of a rock-ish vibe - apparently she's quite amazing live.

Stream her latest album here: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/29/145731033/first-listen-sharon-van-etten-tramp?ps=mh_frhdl1

I've also recently started reading David Foster Wallace, more particularly, his collection of essays - Consider the Lobster. I love his naturalistic, intelligent and compassionate writing style. It's pretty good on kindle because I can jump to the explanatory footnotes and asides, which are a hallmark of his work. The research is exhaustive and sometimes he makes certain observations or critical judgments which are just like... woah! what a genius! (especially in his article about being a participant-observer for Rolling Stone documenting the McCain2000 campaign and his essay about tennis legend Tracey Austin).

Also, I quite like this TED talk by Mark Bittman - it's about changing the way we eat because how we eat is not only going to destroy ourselves, but also the environment.(short story: more plants, less meats and processed food)



Along with Jamie Oliver, New Yorker columnist, author and cook Mark Bittman is one of my favourite "food" people (if that makes any sense) - his books Kitchen Express and the Food Matters Cookbook are awesome, no-frills books about cooking and eating well. It's really simple - a lot of the food is quick and easy and delicious.

I'm not into crazy technical recipes and haute cuisine - it's not my thing - so if you're like me and you enjoy cooking intuitively, you'd dig this book. I definitely recommend reading Food Matters if you're looking at ways of improving your eating - it's not so much about eating expensive organic foods or becoming hardcore vegan, but some common sense wisdom about eating less meat (and endangered fish species), more whole foods (i.e. less processed stuff), eating more local foods and vegetables in season. Sounds pretty reasonable, no?