The G-Free Diet : A Gluten-Free Survival Guide

I suppose if you had to classify this text, it would be "Self-help" literature...but literature none-the-less.  And since its what I've been reading these days, its what I have the knowledge to blog about.

The G-Free Diet: A Guten-Free Survival Guide is an extensive "how-to" written by The View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.  Yes, she is the crazy right-wing one, but no, you wouldn't know it from reading her books.  This 16 chapter guide covers a whole range of subjects, from the history of celiac disease in the medical community, to symptoms of the disease, other health concerns connected to it, and reasons to exclude gluten from your diet OTHER than being celiac.

For me, the most useful chapters were "How Not to Be a Party Pooper" and "Traveling G-Free".  The first outlined smart little ways to avoid the awkward possibilities of avoiding gluten at parties.  Hasselbeck has two strategies: The Social Butterfly, where you show up with Gluten-Free treats for everyone to share, or, The Shrinking Violet, where you sneak Gluten-Free protein bars or a bag of nuts or something into your purse and eat them in the bathroom or a deserted hallway.  Haha.

The first step to either of these strategies is to eat at home, so that if you're faced with all glutenous options, you won't starve.

The travel section gave a pretty extensive list of chain restaurants that offer gluten-free menus.  Good to know.  Kirst, Chili's has a full gluten-free menu! We should've gone there in Florida!

A term I picked up that I'm pretty in love with is "getting gluten'ed".  A nice way to describe what  happens to someone with a gluten intolerance when they eat gluten.  Its caught on quite quick too- I've started following a few gluten-free food blogs, and they all refer to "getting gluten'ed" from time to time.

Hasselbeck's book has a bunch of great lists of Absolute-No foods, as well as sneaky foods that you would never expect to have gluten in them (bacon bits! McDonald's fries! What!?).

Overall, I'm just really glad I read this book, because it has inspired me to get back on track with my gluten free diet.  I've been sneaking things in like crackers, chicken Mcnuggets or Starbucks cookies from time to time, and I always pay for it.  With this survival guide in hand, I've got a bunch of great meal and snack ideas in my back pocket, and think I'll be able to stay on track without too much trouble.

Another thing Hasselbeck recommends is having wingmen.  So guys, if you catch me saying "one cookie won't kill me", don't let me eat it!!!!!

Thanks to Steph Evens for lending me the book!!!

A note to my non-blogger readers (Hi Mum and Dad!!!)

I've had a request to explain how people without blogs of their own can leave comments on my, or others' blogs.  The simplest way, as far as I can see it, is to make a google account.  You can do this quite painlessly by going to the google homepage, and clicking the "sign in" link in the top right hand corner.  Then you'll get prompted to "create an account".   So do that.

Then when you're reading someone's blog, you click the comment link, can leave a comment, and then in the pull down list of where to comment from, select google.  It'll ask you to sign in, and then you'll have write in a human verification type word, and then you'll be good to go!

I'm expecting comments from both of you to prove that you understand.

Some Poems for the Weather

Does anyone else feel bothered and conflicted by the fact that its the end of May, the highpoint of spring, and yet its rainy and cold?  I am certainly one of this opinion.  In keeping with my last post, I've got a couple poems to recommend for my current mood.

This first one is a bit obscure, and maybe I've got the interpretation all wrong, but I've always imagined this poem as perfect for a wet, Spring day.  Brought to you by Ezra Pound.

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

The street in front of my house.

Ezra's work can often cause me to tear my hair out, but I adore this imagist poem of his.  As a side note, imagism is exactly what it sounds like, poetry (or any other form of writing, really) that constructs a single image.  In the case of this poem, I'd argue that there are actually two simultaneous images constructed, but the beauty of it is the way they combine seamlessly into one another.  Just as the strange faces of  a crowded metro station blend in and out of each other, so too do delicate cherry blossoms melt into the rain soaked pavement.  LOVE IT!

This next poem is by my beloved Seamus Heaney.  Lucky lucky us, my gr.11 IB class read several Heaney poems throughout our class.  This is my second favourite of his almost entirely brilliant body of work, failing only to surpass "Black Berry Picking", which is more suitable for the hotness of summer.

The Railway Children

When we climbed the slopes of the cutting

We were eye-level with the white cups

Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.

Like lovely freehand they curved for miles

East and miles West beyond us, sagging

Under the burden of swallows.

We were small and thought we know nothing

Worth knowing.  We thought words travelled the wires

In the shiny pouches of raindrops,

Each one seeded full with the light

Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves

So infinitesimally scaled

We could stream through the eye of a needle.

These are both stolen from the internet...

...but they fit the poem beautifully.  

If anyone is a wordsmith, its Seamus Heaney.  There is something so simplistically gorgeous about the scene played out in this poem, for me anyways.  Just picturing a group of small children running alongside with telephone wires, imagining calls carried on them in whispers, puts a smile on my face.  The way Heaney transforms industrial and technological objects into ones as natural as a country landscape is just awesome.  From the lines being described as cursive, to the swallows sitting on the wires, to the imperative image of the raindrops, I can't get over how beautiful Heaney can make hunks and cords of metal sound like.  And oh man, the description of the children's faces being reflected in the teeny tiny raindrops is one that I've never ever forgotten, years after first reading the poem.

Kathaumixw 2010 - Powell River, BC.

And maybe I just have a thing for industrial beauty.  

Europe on a Budget

If you asked me a month ago what I was doing a month from now, I would have eagerly replied: "Going to Europe!" Alas, this is no longer the case. Since my travel buddy ran out of money and bailed on our trip, a month from now I will probably be up to my elbows in fish n chips, hanging out in good old White Rock.

Its not all bad though- this bump in the road has inspired a blog post! So in order to "go" to Europe when you can't actually "go" to Europe, I've concocted a reading list that gets you pretty close. Europe on an extreeeeeeeme budget.



The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway 

This novel has a special place in my heart, because in its first few chapters, Jake Barnes takes a walk along the Rue Mouffetard in Paris. This lovely and lively street is home to a marketplace, chocolate stores and wine stores and fish stores, cutesy little boutiques, and the best crépes EVER. It is also home to the apartment I stayed in with my mom, brother, and best friend in July of 2009. I read this book for my modernism class the following September, and it brought back all sorts of memories. The book is broken into two parts, the first takes place in Paris, and the second in Spain. The novel mostly follows the character of Jake Barnes and his escapades with Lady Brett Ashley, as well as many of their other expatriate buddies. They drink a lot, go dancing and fishing, and watch some bull fights. Its good stuff. The descriptive passages throughout will certainly take you to a sunlit cafe in Paris, a quiet and peaceful river in the Pyrenees and loud colourful streets in Spain. Think FRIENDS, but in the 1920s and in Europe. Kinda.

This was an amazingly yummy meal. Taken on our last day in Paris,
at a little café across the street from the Jardin Des Luxembourg

Authentic Café au Lait my friends.  They were delicious. 

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

I think its safe to say this is probably one of Dickens' most well known works. It’s about Pip, an orphaned boy from the country, who receives a mysterious endowment and starts a new life of sorts in London. Just as Pip is thrown right into the bustling city, so too is the reader. Dickens is a big fan of the smoggy London thing, so reading the novel won't give you a big romanticized version of the city, but it will give you a vision that takes you away from real liiiiiiiife! Other highlights include the scary lawyer Jaggers with his fingers/hands obsession, Estella who is a stuck up biotch in my opinion, and Miss Havisham, who no joke stops time when she’s left at the alter – cobwebbed dress, rotting cake, the whole crazy deal.

No it isn't the 1800s, but it is London. Taken on the first day
of the Surrey Children's and Youth Choir Tour to the UK.

Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay 

This book was one of Heather's (of Chapter's fame) picks a couple years ago. It cuts back and forth between 1942 - during the time of the infamous Tel D'hiv roundup, when countless numbers of Parisian Jews were taken from their homes in the middle of the night, kept for days in a stadium, and then shipped off to concentration camps - and 2002, where journalist Julia Jarmond is doing a story on the 40th anniversary of the terrible event. She ends up focusing on the devastating tale of a young girl who locks her younger brother in a dresser during the raid, thinking she’ll be back in a couple hours- a story that ends up weaving in with Julia’s more than she ever could have guessed. The novel is well written, and touching, but is a bit lacking in its conclusion. Though it gets mixed up in the whole "should there be Holocaust Fiction?" debate, Rosnay's text is very historically accurate, sheds light on a rarely talked about black spot on Paris' past and is worth a read.

Dark days.

Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffenegger 

So if you've read Time Traveler's Wife this book will likely disappoint your expectations. It’s just weird. HOWEVER- a great chunk of it takes place in and around London's Highgate Cemetery, which is very cool. So in terms of travelling to Europe through lit, this book definitely fits. I won’t get too far into details, incase anyone does choose to read this strange tale- but to give you a taste, there are adult twins who dress alike, a cemetery-tour guide, family secrets and someone’s soul in a cat.

Cemeteries are kinda cool.  

Can you imagine having a piano as your tombstone? SO COOL!

"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey Upon Visiting, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798"

Good old William. Just figured I’d throw a couple poems on this “trip” to break up the lengthy novels. “Tintern Abbey” is one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, and for good reason. I’m all about the nature imagery in this poem. Check out the references to greenery and water- they are lovely.

This is not A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.  But it looks like it could be.
Its actually a bird's eye view of Llangollen, the town that hosts the
International Eisteddfod every summer.  Our choir did pretty great.

So there you have it folks.  Travel to France, Britain, Spain...wherever- from the comfort of you own couch.

Also, if you want a quick Paris fix, listen to this.

Favourites

Before I start reviewing/suggesting/whatever I decide to do on here-ing poems and novels and other works of lit, I wanted to get a list up of my top ones.

Ode To A Nightingale - John Keats


It wouldn't take much to deduce that this is my favourite poem.  I scribble lines of it all over my school notes, I write it on walls and floors that my family are renovating, I've toyed with getting the end of the first stanza tattooed on my body somewhere, and I've saved my original marked up and highlighted photo copy of it for nearly 5 years.  Keats is my homeboy, and this poem is just one of my favourites of his. Others include: To Sleep, In Drear Nighted December, I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill and The Eve of St. Agnes.

Salem Falls - Jodi Picoult


Jodi is a tough subject with me.  We all love My Sister's Keeper, and I'm thankful that I read that one first, and that I read Salem Falls third.  I say this because I find that after 3 Picoult reads, most of them are ruined.  Its a good formula, so I don't fault her for re-using it, but her

"Law Enforcement Agent of some sort (ie, a cop), Officer of the Law, (a judge or a lawyer) Romance"

shtick can get a little predictable.  That said, she's been getting better at changing it up in recent novels, and I hear Picture Perfect steps outside of the mold (thanks for the tip Kenj). But to get back on track- Salem Falls is just great.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  If you have the patience, I recommend even higher that you first read Arthur Miller's The Crucible, as Picoult's novel is a brilliant modern day rewrite of it.  If you have Miller's play fresh in your mind the comparisons are incredible.  They blew my mind anyways, but maybe thats because I'm a huge nerd.

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

This novel, I assure you, is not a favourite-favourite, but it is my favourite Victorian novel.  Even that statement may make some people cringe though, because this is a honker of a book.  It was the first one I read in my "Heavyweights" class, and the course title did not lie.  That said, once you get past its sheer volume, its a really sweet read.  My favourite part of it hands down is the Dicken's standard of silly characters.  Think, The Aged Parent if you've read Great Expectations.  He has so many goofy individuals that just make you laugh out loud, which is impressive, seeing as the book was written in the 1850s.

Lennox Avenue - Midnight - Langston Hughes


Since this is a bit less known poem - you can find it here.  In 3rd year I wrote a final term paper about the interaction between Harlem Renaissance poetry and the emergence of BeBop in the jazz scene.  It was probably the most fun I ever had writing a paper.  I didn't use this specific poem, but I wrote on a lot of Hughes' other poetry, and came across this one and fell in love.

The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood


If I had to nail down one specific novel as my fave, this would probably be it.  I'm also a fan of its inspiration, Homer's The Odyssey.  In her novel (or maybe novella? Its pretty short), Atwood takes Homer's story and rewrites it from Odysseus' wife Penelope's point of view.  Its clever, sharp and smart.  I also love that before I had read her novel, Atwood and I had similar ideas: check out my song Penelope.

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


This was one of the novels I read for my Major's Seminar this year.  To be technically precise, its a historiographic metafiction (oooo fancy Lit words!), which basically means its a work of fiction that incorporates historical, non-fiction elements. Adichie's novel is about a small group of family/friends and their experience during the Nigerian-Biafra, or Nigerian Civil War.  The main characters are 2 sisters, their respective partners, and a young house boy.  It had multiple narrators, and Adichie really challenges her reader's expectation in pretty exciting ways. Also, it just brings to light a fairly horrific war that nobody really knows about, or cared about at the time.

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie


It didn't win the Booker of Booker's for nothing.  This novel is seriously incredible.  Thinking about the brain power it took to write the thing makes MY brain hurt.  It's a multi-generational tale that takes place in India and has some wicked Magic Realist elements.  It also has some fabulous imagery, which I am always a sucker for.  Saffron and Green my friends, saffron and green.

At the risk of this list reaching unreadable lengths, I'll leave it at that for now.

The Viewless Wings of Poesy

I'm very new to the blog world, but I've been writing journals since I was a little girl, and through my many  lined volumes I've developed a first page protocol.  First page...first post....blog equivalent, right? On my first page I always aimed to give my imaginary reader a synopsis of sorts, where I was at my life at the time.  And hence, "it started with a nightingale".

But before I go so far back: In less than a week, I will be given that inexplicably important piece of paper that says I have a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of British Columbia, with a major in English Literature.  I've spent the last four years of my life delving into some of the most significant pieces of literature to be written...well...ever.  I've also read some duds.  But at any rate, I've been pretty constantly reading, writing, and reading and writing about that lovely discipline and thrill known as literature.  So why?  Enter the nightingale.

In grade 11, at Semiahmoo Secondary, I made one of the best decisions of my life to date in deciding to take International Baccalaureate English, and was incredibly lucky and blessed to have Ms. Roni Haggarty as my teacher.  I had always liked English, but Ms. Haggarty brought out in me an entirely new level of passion for it.  I decided to continue on with IB in grade 12, entering the Higher Level of the course, again with Roni.  Along with a bunch of fabulous and sometimes sadly under-read works from around the world, our IB 12 HL class covered the regular Lit 12 curriculum.  And...sigh...there I met my lover, John Keats.

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,	5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

And then the bit with beaded bubbles winking at the brim? And the classical allusions? The transitions between stanzas?? Or the word "forlorn" being like a bell!!? OR THE WHOLE BLURRING OF THE LINE BETWEEN WAKING AND SLEEPING!?

Oh my goodness, I'll take a step back, but you'd best believe a full post on this, my literature "first"(do what you will with that innuendo) will be here eventually.

After reading Ode To a Nightingale I knew Literature was what I wanted to study in University, and what, other than music, family and friends, was something that could make me gloriously happy.

And so, blog world, it started with a nightingale.  I don't know how it will end, but for now it continues with a blog of some sort...Something About Literature...
    

a test blog entry

hello.

i'm editing danica's blog design and i need a fake entry to test fonts.

danica, feel free to delete this after.

loooooove you!