Various Recommendations

Here are some things I've been reading/watching/listening to/seeing lately...

Spain...On the Road Again - A PBS miniseries following Mario Batali, Gwenyth Paltrow, Mark Bittman and Claudia Bassols as they drive around Spain in convertibles, searching for delicious food and enjoying Spain's culture. It just premiered last week, and I know, the cast is fantastic. It's casual, light, and very enjoyable. You can also log onto the website for various recipes and extras.

Drawing Babar - The new show at the Morgan Library, featuring original watercolors from the Babar series. They are SO wonderful. Be sure to grab lunch at the Cafe after!

The Sharper the Knife, the Less you Cry, by Kathleen Flinn - The book I just finished, written by a woman who lost her job, and picked up to go to Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. Everyone's dream! Though it toys with some cheesy parts (particularly since her boyfriend came with her), the writing is good and reading about the school is fantastic! She takes Basic, Intermediate, and Superior Cuisines (each a semester) to earn a diploma. It also mixes in recipes.

iTunes Genius - This may or may not beat out the Style.com app for greatest Apple feature. If you download the new version of iTunes, you can now highlight a song you want to listen to, click a button, and voila! A whole playlist, based on that song, is created for you from your library. It has changed the way I listen to music, and I've loved how it pulls out songs I haven't thought about listening to in years. I feel like this is one of those technology things you used to imagine would be cool, but never thought could happen. It did!

Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield - Essentially a B-version of High Fidelity, the real draw of this book (which is about music and love and loss in the 90's) is that it takes place in Charlottesville! I'm only through the first chapter, and he's already talked about Tokyo Rose and Plan 9. Sick! (N.B. As I've only gotten through the first chapter, this might not be a true recommendation, but updates on quality to come...)