Consider this either a public service announcement or a warning siren. You see, two years ago just about now, I was obsessed, completely, with learning all the tips and tricks for slow-roasting tomatoes. All the recipes suggested roasting tomatoes for an hour. Me, over 17 batches of slow-roasted tomatoes, I kept stretching and stretching the oven time until finally settling on the 'sweet spot' for slow-roasted tomatoes roasted for ...

Thanks to Dr. Kiki Wants Your Help at .51 for leading me to The Bird's Brain.

Ever since I've heard about Curtis Sittenfield's American Wife I've been wary. It's really not due to the fact that it's based on the life of Laura Bush but that it's fiction that is based on a public person while they are still, you know, alive. The long-time dead don't bother me so much, Jane Austen as an amateur detective? I can handle that. But basing a book on Laura Bush, while her husband is still in office no less?

A new report is out about insurance and health care, and it's not good. If you think the cost of health care is high now, just wait...It's going to get even higher. Who would have thought that you could have insurance, and still not be able to afford healthcare? How is that possible? Only in America.

This week I had the great opportunity to talk with author Mary Ellen Geist.  Several years ago Mary Ellen was described by the New York Times as the:

I can't think any more today about the election. My brain is full. During this season of conventions and media debates, I have been a spiritual domestic goddess by day and a TV watcher by night. I bought a 9 cubic foot freezer. I have been buying vegetables and various freezeables for days now. My friends are asking me, "So, what did you do with tomatoes today?"

Whether you enjoy the Oprah Winfrey empire or would rather pass, it's undeniable that Winfrey is a force to be reckoned with. It is a hard admission for me to make as a pop-culture aficionado that I do not actually have a television.

The Ladies Professional Golf Association recently announced a new policy. The new rule stated that players had to pass an English language efficiency exam or face suspension.Understandably the players, fans, sponsors and the blogosphere freaked out. The Asian American Justice Center has a slight problem with this requirement, though, and are organizing a boycott to try and overturn this new ruling:

In a previous post, Spirituality, Religion and Activism: What's the Connection?, I mentioned the work of the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation. The Fund supports organizations that are using "inner work" to inform their activism. 

This week I joined much of America in my concern as two significant events unfolded. The first was the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. The second was Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf Coast.

Before moving to Georgia, the back-to-school issue that constantly stuck in my craw was dry-erase markers, of all things. Yes. Every child was required to bring a 4-pack of dry-erase markers as part of their supplies, at the kids' old school.

It's time to talk politics - Canadian politics. Yes, in the middle of the American election sweeps we're going to talk what's happening on the political front north of the 49th parallel. It seems that all the election fun that our American friends have been experiencing was just too much for the Canadian government to handle so they are calling an election. Not only are we going to get swept up in the election fever, we are going to have ours FIRST. So there. Kinda. Maybe.