Driving In Traffic

I come from a family of wonderful cooks. Sometimes I think my husband married me because of the benefits to his stomach (outer size and inner happiness). I owe my legacy to my grandmother (whose prowess in the kitchen caused the development of the term “Pearl’s Portion” to describe her idea of the minimal acceptable portion size for non-wussys), my other grandmother (a caterer with a huge cookbook collection), my mother, my brother (trained chef), & my sister-in-law (another trained chef).

So it should not be a surprise that I use the internet to find new recipes, methods for cooking, and ideas to guide me. I have previously used the old standards: Food TV, All Recipes, Hazelwood cookbook collection, and the occaisional phone call to my mom. I was delighted to find a new place to look: Big Oven.

I think Big Oven really wants to sell you their software— which is fine– but they allow you to look at and pull down recipes without any obligation. If you sign up, you can store favorite recipies on their site similar to All Recipies. Give them a try and post one of your family’s favorites!!!

Click here to find a more detailed description of all the cool functionality Big Oven has including an add in to the google toolbar.

Technorati tags: cooking, Recipes, bigoven.com, google toolbar

The trip started with a 14 hour flight from Atlanta. About 8 hours into it, I felt like a kid in the back seat of the family station wagon….Are we there yet?!?!?!

The flight was fairly unremarkable. However I was able to get caught up on a number of movies that I’m glad I didn’t pay to see. I also got to see a good documentary of Ferraris. We flew up over Alaska and came down to Japan from the north. It was interesting to see the glaciers- when I was able to crack the window shade.

It was daylight all the way over. So I understand why everyone closes the shades and go to sleep. However, I must admit darkness for 14 hours made me feel like I was in a cave. I suppose I never could live in Alaska. Anyway, for those of you who don’t know… when flying to Japan, never crack open the shade no matter what kind of nocturnal creature you feel you’re turning into. If you crack the shade you are met with scowls from polite but obviously aggravated Japanese travelers. So just keep the shade closed and dream of being in the sunlight.

Once I got there I was greeted by a gentleman who would drive me to my hotel. He promptly handed me a package that contained my international cell phone. This was a challenge to use as that all the prompts are in Japanese. Each one does have some cute little animated character with it, but dang if that helps?!?!?!

On the way from Narita to Tokyo, I was taken by the fact that the road we were traveling looked much like roads in Jersey that go into Manhattan. There is a fair amount of industry and a good amount of fairly open space. Coming into Tokyo, I was amazed by the two HUGE ferris wheels. Huge = I’ll ride any roller coaster, but there is no way I would get on one of those things.

I stayed at the Nikko Hotel. It is on the side of Tokyo that has been reclaimed from the ocean and has been built up in all Future-rama architecture. The crazy thing is that for all its futuristic architecture— you can’t get an internet connection in your room. I suppose If I had known how to read Japanese, I might have had more luck getting the cell phone to send messages than the internet in my room.

The Nikko looks out over the “Rainbow Bridge” and you get a good view of the port in Tokyo. I never realized how busy it was. It also looks over a replica of the Statue of Liberty. This was a bit of an oddity to me. However, many of the Japanese families that came by wanted their picture taken with the statue in the background. I was a bit puzzled by this and still haven’t figured it out.

In my next installment, I will write about my experience lecturing at a medical conference in Japan. It was much different than I expected. However, it was a real treat all the same.

My grandfather always said “It is better to be lucky than good.” Well, when God was dishing out the luck quotient for our family, he heaped it on my grandfather and my brother. I got the minimal amount required to ensure that I would continue to wake up each morning and that’s pretty much it.

So it is with great elation that I wanted to share that I’ve had a part in actually winning something. Granted, the success probably comes from the fact that this was a combined effort of a lot of people. But still…. one must always celebrate when given the opportunity.

So what did I have a part in winning……

The animal rescue organization I work with participated in the Helen Woodward Animal Center’s Home 4 The Holidays Campaign. We entered one of our success stories from the campaign in the essay contest—- and we won the grand prize. See the story by clicking here.

Like I said before, this was not an individual accomplishment. There are numerous volunteers who care for these neglected and abused critters. There are also a lot of people who think over the kind of home an animal needs and then makes sure they get the right home.

It is good to get some recognition for trying to make a difference in your corner of the world. It doesn’t happen very often and when it does it is important to be thankful!

Addendum: The story was the same one I mentioned in the previous post. I think I will resubmit it to the lady and see if it is worth a mention now…

technorati tags: animal rescue, pets, thankfulness