In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church
by Gina Welch

“Ever since evangelical Christians rose to national prominence, mainstream America has tracked their every move with a nervous eye. But in spite of this vigilance, our understanding hasn’t gone beyond the caricatures. Who are evangelicals, really? What are they like in private, and what do they want? Is it possible that beneath the differences in culture and language, church and party, we might share with them some common purpose?

To find out, Gina Welch, a young secular Jew from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. Over the course of nearly two years, Welch immersed herself in the life and language of the devout: she learned to interpret the world like an evangelical, weathered the death of Falwell, and embarked on a mission trip to Alaska intended to save one hundred souls. Alive to the meaning behind the music and the mind behind the slogans, Welch recognized the allure of evangelicalism, even for the godless, realizing that the congregation met needs and answered questions she didn’t know she had.

What emerges is a riveting account of a skeptic’s transformation from uninformed cynicism to compassionate understanding, and a rare view of how evangelicals see themselves. Revealing their generosity and hopefulness, as well as their prejudice and exceptionalism, In the Land of Believers is a call for comprehending, rather than dismissing, the impassioned believers who have become so central a force in American life.”

House Rules
by Jodi Picoult

“Jacob Hunt is a teenage boy with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject — in his case, forensic analysis. He’s always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do…and he’s usually right. But then his town is rocked by a terrible murder and, for a change, the police come to Jacob with questions. All of the hallmark behaviors of Asperger’s — not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, flat affect — can look a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel. Suddenly, Jacob and his family, who only want to fit in, feel the spotlight shining directly on them. For his mother, Emma, it’s a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it’s another indication of why nothing is normal because of Jacob. And over this small family the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?

Emotionally powerful from beginning to end, House Rules looks at what it means to be different in our society, how autism affects a family, and how our legal system works well for people who communicate a certain way — and fails those who don’t.”

The Ask
by Sam Lipsyte

The Husbands and Wives Club: A Year in the Life of a Couples Therapy Group
by Laurie Abraham

“For more than a year, journalist Laurie Abraham sat in with five troubled couples as they underwent the searing process of group marriage therapy. Published as The New York Times Magazine’s cover story “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” the resulting article generated intense reader response and received the Award for Excellence in Journalism from the American Psychoanalytic Association. Though the article allowed Abraham to focus on only one couple, this book, which grew out of it and the reaction it inspired, tells the moving, fascinating story of all five.

The couples: Can Leigh and Aaron find the intimacy their marriage lacks; will Bella and Joe resolve the imbalance of power that threatens to topple their marriage; are Sue Ellen and Mark as ideal as they seem; what happened to Rachael that Michael cannot acknowledge; and do Marie and Clem, with the help of therapist Judith Coch – , come back from the brink of divorce?

With the dexterity of a novelist, Abraham recounts the travails, triumphs, and reversals that beset the five couples. They work with their therapist—and each other—to find out whether they can rediscover the satisfaction in marriage that they once had. At times wrenching, at times inspiring, the sessions bring out the long-hidden resentments, misunderstandings, unmet desires, and unspoken needs that bedevil any imperiled couple. At the same time, these encounters provide road maps to reconciliation and revival that can be used by anyone in a relationship. Along the way, the author draws on her explorations of literature and

Freudian theory, modern science, and today’s cutting-edge research to decode the patterns and habits that suggest whether a troubled marriage will survive or die. Both an important look at the state of marital dysfunction and a reaffirmation of the enduring bonds of love, The Husbands and Wives Club is an extraordinary year in the life of the American marriage.”

Angelology
by Danielle Trussoni

“Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

Rich in history, full of mesmerizing characters, and wondrously conceived, Angelology blends biblical lore, the myth of Orpheus and the Miltonic visions of Paradise Lost into a riveting tale of ordinary people engaged in a battle that will determine the fate of the world.”

Another Life Altogether
by Elaine Beale

“Jesse Bennett, the 13-year-old heroine of Beale’s charming debut, longs to escape the humdrum life of Britain’s East Yorkshire. Stuck in a small town with her unstable mother and ineffectual father, Jesse wants to see the world, but her hopes of breaking free are dashed when her mother attempts suicide and her father, reasoning that a change of scene will help his wife recover, moves the family farther into the country. But the people of rural Midham are less than welcoming to the strange new arrivals. Eventually, Jesse falls in with Tracey and Amanda, the toughest and most feared girls in town, though with this security comes increased scrutiny: Jesse must pretend to be just like her mates, and even though she cares nothing for clothes or boys and despises the meanness, she develops a crush on Amanda that threatens to end unfavorably. Beale’s lively narrative captures, with touching accuracy, the plights of adolescence; if the novel sometimes veers toward the saccharine and relies on less than surprising plot twists, Jesse’s affirming arc offers hope in a place where it’s in very short supply.”

Hush
by Kate White

“Bestseller White, Cosmo’s editor-in-chief, takes a break from her Bailey Weggins series (Lethally Blond, etc.) with this stand-alone thriller that generates a real sense of jeopardy while avoiding clichés. Newly divorced 44-year-old marketing consultant Lake Warren finds her latest job devising a marketing plan for a Manhattan fertility clinic rewarding until her ex-husband, Jack, sues for full custody of their two young children. While her lawyer warns her not even to date so Jack won’t have leverage against her, Lake gives in to a one-night stand with the clinic’s flirtatious Dr. Keaton. After falling asleep on his penthouse terrace, Lake wakes to find Keaton murdered. Worried that the police will accuse her of the murder, Lake begins her own investigation until she learns that someone is stalking her. A subplot about the clinic’s questionable practices adds to the tension, but doesn’t detract from the main plot with its myriad twists.”

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change
by Annie Leonard

“This alarming fact drove Annie Leonard to create the Internet film sensation The Story of Stuff, which has been viewed over 10 million times by people around the world. In her sweeping, groundbreaking book of the same name, Leonard tracks the life of the Stuff we use every day—where our cotton T-shirts, laptop computers, and aluminum cans come from, how they are produced, distributed, and consumed, and where they go when we throw them out. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, The Story of Stuff is a landmark book that will change the way people think—and the way they live.

Leonard’s message is startlingly clear: we have too much Stuff, and too much of it is toxic. Outlining the five stages of our consumption-driven economy—from extraction through production, distribution, consumption, and disposal—she vividly illuminates its frightening repercussions. Visiting garbage dumps and factories around the world, Leonard reveals the true story behind our possessions—why it’s cheaper to replace a broken TV than to fix it; how the promotion of “perceived obsolescence” encourages us to toss out everything from shoes to cell phones while they’re still in perfect shape; and how factory workers in Haiti, mine workers in Congo, and everyone who lives and works within this system pay for our cheap goods with their health, safety, and quality of life. Meanwhile we, as consumers, are compromising our health and well-being, whether it’s through neurotoxins in our pillows or lead leaching into our kids’ food from their lunchboxes—and all this Stuff isn’t even making us happier! We work hard so we can buy Stuff that we quickly throw out, and then

we want new Stuff so we work harder and have no time to enjoy all our Stuff. . . . With staggering revelations about the economy, the environment, and cultures around the world, alongside stories from her own life and work, Leonard demonstrates that the drive for a “growth at all costs” economy fuels a cycle of production, consumption, and disposal that is killing us.

It is a system in crisis, but Annie Leonard shows us that this is not the way things have to be. It’s within our power to stop the environmental damage, social injustice, and health hazards caused by polluting production and excessive consumption, and Leonard shows us how. Expansive, galvanizing, and sobering yet optimistic, The Story of Stuff transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet.”

Lift
by Kelly Corrigan

The Autobiography of an Execution
by David R. Dow

“In an argument against capital punishment, Dow’s capable memoir partially gathers its steam from the emotional toll on all parties involved, especially the overworked legal aid lawyers and their desperate clients. The author, the litigation director of the Texas Defender Service and a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, respects the notion of attorney-client privilege in this handful of real-life legal outcomes, some of them quite tragic, while acknowledging executions are not about the attorneys, but about the victims of murder and sometimes their killers. While trying to maintain a proper balance in his marriage to Katya, a fellow attorney and ballroom dancer, he spells out the maze of legal mumbo-jumbo to get his clients stays or released from confinement in the cases of a hapless Vietnam vet who shot a child, another man who beat his pregnant wife to death and another who killed his wife and children. In the end, Dow’s book is a sobering, gripping and candid look into the death penalty.”

This recipe is slightly different from the version I found online. I added a few extra ingredients (celery, white mushrooms, red pepper) and substituted the beef strips for tofu to make it 100% vegan.

• Rice vermicelli noodles — 1/2 pound
• Sesame oil — 2 tablespoons
• Tofu, thinly sliced — 1/4 pound
• Red pepper, thinly sliced — 1
• Onion, thinly sliced — 1
• Carrot, peeled and grated — 1
• Shiitakes, stems removed and thinly sliced — 3
• White mushrooms, sliced — 4-5
• Garlic, minced — 2-3 cloves
• Spinach — 8 ounces, or about 1/2 bunch
• Celery — 1 stalk
• Scallions, cut into 1-inch pieces or thinly sliced — 2-3
• Soy sauce — 2-3 tablespoons
• Sugar — 2 teaspoons
• Salt and pepper — to taste
• Sesame seeds, toasted — 1 tablespoon

1. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the noodles and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain, rinse with cold water and set aside.
2. Heat the sesame oil in a wok or large sauté pan over medium flame. Add the tofu and sauté about 3-4 minutes. Remove to a plate and set aside.
3. Add a little more oil to the wok or pan if necessary and toss in the onion, carrot, celery and red pepper. Sauté until the onion is just translucent. Add the mushrooms and garlic and sauté 2-3 minutes more. Finally add the spinach and scallions and sauté until the spinach is just wilted.
4. Add the drained noodles, soy sauce, sugar, salt and pepper to the sauté pan and cook, stirring, to heat through. Adjust seasoning.
5. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with the toasted sesame seeds.

Makes 4 servings

This recipe makes 4-6 servings. I halved everything and only used white flour as I didn’t have any whole wheat flour. I didn’t have canola or safflower oil and used regular sunflower oil. I also didn’t have any frozen blueberries and used fresh ones instead.

Halving everything makes about 3 large pancakes or 4 average ones.

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 Tbsp. baking powder (I didn’t use any because I used self rising flour)
1 tsp. sea salt
2 cups vanilla soy milk
3 Tbsp. canola or safflower oil (I used regular sunflower oil)
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/2 cup fresh blueberries

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and sift together. Add vanilla soy milk and oil and mix until smooth.

Ladle onto hot pancake griddle or pan. Add frozen blueberries. Cook for about 2-3 minutes on each side.

Serve with fresh blueberries and maple syrup (optional).

I poured the mix onto a fying pan and added the blueberries. I used my finger to push them into the mixture.

Received this in my inbox the other day:

I was always under the impression that salmon was good for you & I never really bothered to research it, but after coming across the following article I may need to re-evaluate my opinion.

From www.fishinghurts.com:

Top 10 Reasons Not to Eat Salmon

1. Salmon Are Smart
Fish are smart. Oxford University scientist Dr. Theresa Burt de Perera recently discovered that fish learn even faster than dogs. Fish learn from each other, have long-term memories, and can recognize one another. They gather information by eavesdropping, and some species even use tools, which, until recently, was thought to be a uniquely human trait. Like the dogs and cats with whom we share our homes, they also like to play, investigate new things, and hang out with friends.

2. Arsenic and Old Waste
Mmmm, want a plate full of poison? Fish have extremely high levels of chemicals such as arsenic, mercury, PCBs, DDT, dioxins, and lead in their flesh and fat. You may even get industrial-strength fire retardant with that catch of the day. The chemical residue found in salmon flesh can be as much as 9 million times that of the water in which they live.

3. Harm at the Farm
Four-fifths of the United States’ most popular fish flesh, salmon, consumed in the U.S. is farm-raised. These fish, who are raised by the millions in cages made of nets in coastal waters, are killing off wild fish populations as well, since it takes 5 pounds of commercially caught fish (species not eaten by humans) to produce 1 pound of farmed fish.

4. Sea Lice Aren’t So Nice
No one wants to wear a “death crown,” but thanks to chronic sea lice, a parasite that eats down to the bones on a fish’s face, salmon commonly suffer this condition. Salmon also routinely go insane and sustain sores and other injuries from intense crowding, as they are made to live their entire lives with as many as 27 fish in a space the size of a bathtub.

5. Slammin’ Salmon
No, we’re not talking about a baseball player—but fish farmers do often use bats to beat large salmon to death. All methods used to slaughter fish are grotesque and cruel. Fish have their gills slit while they are still alive, and smaller salmon are often packed in ice and left to slowly suffocate or freeze to death.

6. Open Waters Are Open Sewers
Everybody loves the Big Apple, but would you eat something fished out of the city’s sewer system? According to the Norwegian government, the salmon and trout farms in Norway alone produce roughly the same amount of sewage as New York City. The massive amount of raw sewage, dead fish corpses, and antibiotic-laden fish food sludge settling below farmed salmon cages can actually cause the ocean floor to rot, destroying vital habitat for the already strained marine ecosystem and turning coastal waters into open sewers.

7. Breeding Brain Damage
Usually when Moms pass things on to their children, it’s a good thing—but when pregnant or nursing moms eat fish, they pass the toxins they consume on to their babies. Studies have also shown that children born to mothers who eat fish are slower to talk, walk, and develop fine motor skills and have weaker memories and shorter attention spans. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health have found that fish consumption can cause irreversible impairment to brain function in children, both in the womb and as they grow.

8. Don’t Forget About the PCBs
Feeling forgetful? There could be something fishy going on. Scientists have proved that people who eat only two servings of fish a month have difficulty recalling information that they learned just 30 minutes earlier. The culprit is high levels of mercury, lead, and PCBs in their blood. PCBs, synthetic chemicals polluting water and concentrated in fish flesh, act like hormones, wreaking havoc on the nervous system and contributing to a variety of illnesses beyond forgetfulness and vertigo, including cancer, infertility, and other sexual problems.

9. For Your Health
Would you like tartar sauce with those cancer-causing toxins? If you’re feeling green around the gills, salmon could be making you seriously ill. The Environmental Working Group estimates that 800,000 people in the U.S. face an excess lifetime cancer risk from eating farmed salmon. Plus, salmon flesh contains high amounts of artery-clogging cholesterol and fat.

10. Faux Fish
Fake it for salmon’s sake! Tempt your taste buds without tempting fate by trying faux fish. Your local Asian food mart or health-food store likely carries vegetarian mock seafood products that have all the flavor of the “real thing” but none of the contaminants or cholesterol.

“Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent documentary film that chronicles six Americans with ‘incurable’ diabetes switching their diet and getting off insulin. The film follows each participant’s remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, and emotional transformations brought on by this diet and lifestyle change.”
- www.rawfor30days.com

A clip from Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days:

Posting what I eat every day is becoming a little redundant as the majority of my meals (with the exception of dinner) are nearly identical. I eat a bowl of Special K with soy milk for breakfast every morning, a bowl of fruit for my morning snack, and a salad with either leftovers or a piece of brown toast for lunch. I will occasionally throw in a veggie dog if I’m feeling hungry.

The last few days have been a little up and down. I’ve felt more tired & run down than usual, but that could also be due to PMS. I haven’t had any cravings for dairy or meat, nor do I miss those foods.

I’m having a bit of a difficult time coming up with things to make for dinner, though. I’ve never really enjoyed cooking in the first place, so having to be creative in the kitchen tends to make me feel a little overwhelmed at times. Plus, many ingredients are just impossible to find in South Africa.

I’ve been looking at vegan cookbooks and think I’m going to order these:

Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen – Ani Phyo
Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen – Donna Klein
Veganomicon – Isa Chandra Moskowitz
Vegan Planet – Robin Robertson
Vegan Brunch – Isa Chandra Moskowitz

As much as I’d love to switch to a raw vegan diet, I don’t know if it would be possible for me. Some mornings I have to force myself to eat my bowl of fruit. I find most fruit to be bland and not very satisfying. I love berries and could eat those all day, but they are a bit on the expensive side and are not as readily available as other fruit. I do love smoothies, however, so perhaps investing in a blender would make the transition a bit easier.

I saw this video for the first time the other day on The View. It made me so happy I cried.

I felt pretty terrible when I woke up this morning. I had a headache, a bit of a stomach ache, and I was so exausted I could barely manage to get out of bed. My muscles felt a bit tighter as well. I know those are common symptoms of withdrawal, but I didn’t expect to experience them to this extent as I’ve never really been a big dairy consumer in the first place.

According to www.healthdiaries.com, dairy actually contains opiates:

Why is cheese so addicting? Certainly not because of its aroma, which is perilously close to old socks. The first hint of a biochemical explanation came in 1981, when scientists at Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, N.C., found a substance in dairy products that looked remarkably like morphine. After a complex series of tests, they determined that, surprisingly enough, it actually was morphine. By a fluke of nature, the enzymes that produce opiates are not confined to poppies — they also hide inside cows’ livers. So traces of morphine can pass into the animal’s bloodstream and end up in milk and milk products. The amounts are far too small to explain cheese’s appeal. But nonetheless, the discovery led scientists on their search for opiate compounds in dairy products.

And they found them. Opiates hide inside casein, the main dairy protein. As casein molecules are digested, they break apart to release tiny opiate molecules, called casomorphins. One of these compounds has about one-tenth the opiate strength of morphine. The especially addicting power of cheese may be due to the fact that the process of cheese-making removes water,lactose and whey proteins so that casein is concentrated. Scientists are now trying to tease out whether these opiate molecules work strictly within the digestive tract or whether they pass into the bloodstream and reach the brain directly.

The cheese industry is miles ahead of them, having gone to great lengths to identify people who are most vulnerable to addiction. It dubs them “cheese cravers,” and tracks their age, educational level and other demographics so as to target them with marketing strategies that are tough to ignore. With a $200 million annual research and marketing budget, the dairy industry is not content to have you just sprinkling a little mozzarella on your salad. It is looking for those Americans who will eat it straight out of the package, whatever the cost to their waistlines or cholesterol levels.

At a “Cheese Forum” held Dec. 5, 2000, Dick Cooper, the vice president of Cheese Marketing for Dairy Management Inc., laid out the industry’s scheme for identifying potential addicts and keeping them hooked. In his slide presentation, which was released to our organization under the Freedom of Information Act, he asked the question, “What do we want our marketing program to do?” and then gave the answer: “Trigger the cheese craving.” He described how, in a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the dairy industry launched Wendy’s Cheddar Lover’s Bacon Cheeseburger, which single-handedly pushed 2.25 million pounds of cheese during the promotion period. That works out to 380 tons of fat and 1.2 tons of pure cholesterol in the cheese alone. A similar promotion with Pizza Hut launched the “Ultimate Cheese Pizza,” which added an entire pound of cheese to a single pizza and sold five million pounds of it during a six-week promotion in 2000. The presentation concluded with a cartoon of a playground slide with a large spider web woven to trap children as they reached the bottom. The caption had one spider saying to another, ‘”If we pull this off, we’ll eat like kings.”

I woke up yesterday morning feeling pretty good. I went for a 30 minute walk at 5am, and on the way back, walking uphill, I noticed that I wasn’t as tired as usual. Our laneway is very steep, and I’m always huffing & puffing as I make my way up, but this morning I felt much lighter, and wasn’t breathing as heavily. I didn’t feel sleepy after my walk, like I normally do, and was feeling quite bouncy and happy. I even sang to myself as I was vacuuming!

At around 8pm I started to feel pretty exhuasted, so I went to bed shortly after. I couldn’t fall asleep right away, and felt a bit anxious and overwhelmed. I don’t know if those feelings were due to PMS, or if I’m simply stressing out a little bit about our flight back to Canada next week. At one point I had to get up to eat some crackers because I was starving.

Breakfast:

1 cup Special K, 1/2 cup soy milk

Snack:

1 apple, 1 peach, 2 apricots

Lunch:

Leftover eggplant lasagna (lasagna noodles, tomato sauce, eggplant, breadcrumbs, celery, carrot, onion, mushroom, garlic, basil)

Snack:

Soy chocolate pudding

Dinner:

Stir Fry (vegetarian strips, celery, onion, tomato, brocolli, garlic, carrot, alfalfa sprouts)
Bruschetta (olive oil, garlic, tomato, onion) on brown toast

Snack:

2 crackers