The skills of butchery meet the world of fresh produce in The Vegetable Butcher, an essential, inspiring guide that demystifies the world of vegetables.
In step-by-step photographs, “vegetable butcher” Cara Mangini shows how to break down a butternut squash, cut a cauliflower into steaks, peel a tomato properly, chiffonade kale, turn carrots into coins and parsnips into matchsticks, and find the meaty heart of an artichoke.
Additionally, more than 150 original, simple recipes put vegetables front and center, from a Kohlrabi Carpaccio to Zucchini, Sweet Corn, and Basil Penne, to a Parsnip-Ginger Layer Cake to sweeten a winter meal. It’s everything you need to know to get the best out of modern, sexy, and extraordinarily delicious vegetables. (description from publisher)
Unless you’ve been living inside a red and white ball, you’ve probably heard of Pokémon Go. The original Pokémon RPG (role-playing game) video game was released way back in the ancient times of 1996. Beginning as a game for the original Game Boy, it quickly expanded into card trading games, TV shows, movies, more video games, and even a Monopoly board game.
If you happen to be like me and only just now catching up (or you want to know what all the kids are doing) here are some questions and answers.*
So what the heck is/are Pokémon?
The name is a combination of the words “pocket monster.” Players – called “trainers” – find and collect wild Pokémon, and help them evolve into new Pokémon. Trainers also battle their Pokémon, using their Pokémon’s unique characteristics, gaining experience points, to become Gym Leaders and ultimately, the chance to become a tournament champion.
What is Pokémon Go?
Pokémon Go is a “free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game.”
Eevee in the large print section!
Eh?
It’s a game that you can play on your phone or other mobile device that places you (via your avatar) within the game based on your location, superimposing the game world onto the real world.
The company that created Pokémon Go used location data (landmarks, photos, etc.) from another of their games, Ingress, to create the world within the game. So, if you happen to be standing outside Davenport Public Library Eastern Branch, then that’s where you are in the game.
Why are all these people standing around outside staring at their phones? It’s a little creepy.
Right?
That’s the augmented reality part of the game. While you see people glued to their phones in an empty field, outside a building, or wherever, they’re actually experiencing the location within the game.
Lots of public places have been made into important locations in the game (more on that later). Players must be within a certain distance to interact with whatever is at the location. And since the game is so popular, some locations have experienced very high traffic. For some businesses (and libraries!) this has been a boon. For other locations, not so much.
It’s true that there have been some horror stories – true and not – about people getting hurt, lost, or finding some terrible things while tracking Pokémon. The most important thing to remember when playing is to pay attention to your surroundings. Believe me, it can be hard. But, the game offers vibration and sound alerts so you can keep your phone in your pocket while you walk. USE THEM – or be eaten by Gyarados!
And it should go without saying, don’t play and drive.
I heard that Pokémon Go is reading players’ emails …
Not exactly. The concern is that players who created their accounts by linking their Google/Gmail accounts were granting very broad access to their accounts. That has since been fixed, but if you’re still concerned, sign up with a Pokémon Trainer Club ID – it takes a little longer, but you won’t have to worry.
Do I really have to walk?
Yup – that’s the “go” in Pokémon Go! If you want to get cool new Pokémon and hatch eggs you will be walking. The game can tell the difference between riding in a car or even biking fast. But it’s a good thing! You get to experience new places you might never have seen before! Meet new people! Exercise!
Firstly, down the game from the App Store or Google Play. Once it’s up and running, sign in using you Google ID, or get a Trainer Club ID.
When you choose your trainer name and appearance, be careful! You CANNOT change either after you confirm!
UPDATE 7/31/16 – An update for Pokémon Go! (1.1.0) now allows trainers to change the appearance of their avatars!
Capturing the wild Venonat
Now what?
After Prof. Willow’s introduction, you’re dropped into a fairly sparse map. Your surroundings should reflect major aspects in your surroundings, like roads, rivers/lakes, buildings and so on.
On the screen, you’ll see what looks like green confetti or leaves nearby. Those are Pokémon! Once you get close enough (your trainer’s radius is the pulsing purple circle around you) the Pokémon will reveal themselves. Tap on them, and you’ll go mano a Pokémon.
Tossing the Poké Ball correctly takes some practice. If you find the “virtual reality” setting too distracting, you can turn it off by sliding the AR switch at the top. The higher the Pokémon’s CP (combat points) the more difficult it will be to catch. The rings around the Pokémon will give some idea how where and when to toss the Poké Ball. When it’s large and green, toss! Yellow rings mean it will be more tricky, and orange even more so. Pokémon with higher CP (100+) will often break out of the Poké Ball and you’ll have to catch them again. Sometimes, they’ll grow weary of your attempts and run away.
Pokémon can break out?
Yes, once you catch one, it tries three times to get out. If they can’t escape, you get to keep them.
That’s … a bit grim.
Yeah.
Eastern Avenue Branch / Gym
What’s up with PokéStops and Gyms?
PokéStops are where you can pick up more Poké Balls, and an occasional bonus item, like reviving potion, eggs, razzberries and so on. PokéStops are usually located at some kind of landmark (although the term “landmark” is used loosely). You have to be within a certain distance to interact with them.
Sometimes, you may see a PokéStop surrounded by pink confetti or petals. That means that some kind soul has set a lure and, hopefully, more Pokémon will come close enough to catch.
Gyms are where trainers can pit their Pokémon against each other in battle to win the Gym, earn points and train up their Pokémon. You have to reach level 5 to enter and view a gym.
What Team should I pick?
That’s entirely up to you! If you have friends playing, you might want to choose the same team so that you can gain and keep control of Gyms. Or, if you live near a Gym that is consistently held by one team, you can join them and help defend it.
<cough>Team Mystic <cough>
How do I identify and keep track of all the Pokémon I’ve caught?
In the game, tap on the Poké Ball icon, then tap “Pokémon” from there you can see the Pokémon that you’ve caught, see how much CP they have and evolve and power up. The Pokédex is like a Rolodex (GET IT?) for the Pokémon you’ve seen and collected. It gives descriptions, strengths and weaknesses and each Pokémon’s evolutionary pattern.
Where are some places that I can go to catch Pokémon?
The Davenport Public Library Main and Fairmount Branches are PokéStops , and Eastern Avenue is a PokéStop and a Gym.
According to David Heitz, the downtown Moline riverfront, Rock Island arts and entertainment district, the Village of East Davenport and Avenue of the Cities are good places to find Pokémon. In Davenport, Vander Veer Park is a very popular place!
UPDATE 7/31/16 – An update for Pokémon Go!(1.1.0) has removed the footprints from the “Nearby” menu, presumably until they can get it work properly.
What the heck do I do with all these Rattatas, Pidgeies, and Weedles!?!
Even though it can get annoying, it’s worth it to keep collecting the common Pokémon. The more you have, the more candy and stardust you get (which you use to evolve your Pokémon). If you have too many, you can transfer them to Prof. Willow and get one Pokémon candy in return.
The game isn’t working, and/or my battery is dead.
Yeah, you’re not the only one. Pokémon Go has been plagued with slow and broken servers since it was released. It also uses up wireless bandwidth, so slow internet connections are also to blame. If you’re wondering if it’s you or the game server, try here: http://cmmcd.com/PokemonGo/.
The game also has some battery saving settings, too. But remember that you must have the game open if you want alerts and to count your steps. Bring a charger!
Sharp Objects was Gillian Flynn’s literary debut in 2006, followed after with Dark Places in 2009, Gone Girlin 2012, and The Grownup in 2014. Flynn’s first three works are all suspenseful, dark books full of thrilling chases, tragedies, secrets, and lies. I was introduced to Gillian Flynn through Gone Girl and immediately dived into her other books.
In Sharp Objects, Camille Preaker is working as a journalist for a second-rate newspaper, the Daily Post, in Chicago when her boss, Frank Curry, gives her a new assignment. Camille is to head to her hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri to cover the murder of one young girl and the kidnapping of another. Camille soon finds herself back in Wind Gap for the first time in eight years, working on her career-boosting serial-killer-in-the-making article.
In this psychological thriller, Camille struggles to break through small-town barriers to find the truth about what happened to those two girls. Once the body of the second girl is found, Camille finds herself swept into the story amidst all the rumors flying through town about who committed these vile acts. These murders are especially hard for Camille and her mother, as her younger sister died when she was 10 of a mysterious illness. Local police call on the help of a profiler from Kansas City, MO and Camille works closely with him to discover Wind Gap’s secrets.
Camille has secrets of her own. She comes from a dysfunctional family and one of the things she turned to to cope was self-mutilation. She was once institutionalized for this; her body covered in scars, words littering every surface of skin. Her trip back to Wind Gap forces her to relive her disturbed childhood, digging into old family secrets and things simmering under the surface. This book is truly suspenseful, leaving readers guessing about the murderer and the truth those simmering secrets until the very end.
This book is also available in the following formats:
The One & Only by Emily Giffin is a book about family, whether it be your biological family or the family that you are raised with. Shea Rigsby has lived in Walker, Texas her entire life. After graduating from college, she even decided to stay in town and work in the athletic department at her alma mater. The thought of leaving her beloved hometown never even occurred to her.
Her best friend Lucy’s father, Clive Carr, is the head coach of the Walker college football team, a legend within both the coaching and local communities. He and his wife served as a second set of parents to Shea after her own parents divorced and her mother had a breakdown. Tragedy hits the Carr family, leaving them all reeling and Shea wondering if she is really happy with the way her life is going.
Breaking up with her slacker boyfriend, Shea finds encouragement from Coach Carr and decides to look beyond Walker to expand her life. New relationships and old relationships weave a messy web all around Shea, forcing her to leave her comfort zone and do things she never thought she would do. This book is truly chick lit with some serious football lingo thrown in. If you are fans of Emily Giffin or enjoy chick lit, check this book out.
Joy, a 2015 biographical comedy-drama, stars Jennifer Lawrence as Joy Mangano, a suburban mother at the end of her rope. Joy grew up as a very creative child in a loud and boisterous home. Her parents split up when she was young, leaving her in a creative lurch as she had to forgo college to take care of her parents as they worked through their divorce.
As an adult, Joy lives with her two children, her mother, and her grandmother, while her father and ex-husband are both camped out in the basement. Her father owns a body shop where both Joy and her half-sister, Peggy, help out sometimes. Her ex-husband sings in a nightclub, barely contributing any money to the household, leaving Joy to manage all the finances to herself. This movie follows all four generations of Joy’s family with her grandmother narrating Joy’s journey to her place as the matriarch of her family and eventually the founder of a massive business dynasty.
Joy struggles financially as she works to bring one of her inventions to life, while also juggling her family and work. This movie highlights the dark side of commerce and how people just starting out really have to find their own ways in the world. Joy fights through betrayal, loss of love and innocence, and treacherous backstabbing as she works to patent, manufacture, and sell her invention to the world. Joyfollows the title character’s rise to becoming the matriarch of her complicated family and her journey to success in commerce.
Have you ever read fan fiction? Fan fiction is when fans of television series, movies, books, etc. write fiction about the different characters present within that certain TV series, movies, books, etc. Quite simple. A famous example of fan fiction is Fifty Shades of Grey, which is a Twilight fan fiction story. (If you look online, there are many, many other examples, as well as popular fan fiction websites.)
Fangirl focuses on Cath, a teenage girl just graduated from high school preparing to head to her first year of college. Cath is a GIANT Simon Snow fan. While other people love Simon Snow, Cath lives and breathes him. She has spun a new world for Simon through her fanfic website, “Carry On, Simon”. Simon Snow is a character in a magical series that Cath and her identical twin sister, Wren, write about online. Once college starts though, Cath and Wren begin to drift apart.
This first year of college is rough for Cath. She and her sister are going to the same college, but her sister doesn’t want to room with her, a fact that Cath can’t understand. Rooming with Reagan, a much older girl, and somewhat-rooming with Reagan’s ex-boyfriend, Levi, who never seems to leave their dorm room, Cath struggles to find her balance between the real world and the fanfiction world of Simon and Baz. Cath’s relationships with Reagan, Wren, Levi, and her father all add necessary personal touches to this book, allowing readers to draw connections between what Cath writes about in Simon’s world and what is actually happening in Cath’s world during the day-to-day.
This book alternates between sections of the Simon series, sections about Cath’s real life, and sections of various fanfiction(whether it be Cath’s or someone else’s). While all this switching may seem overwhelming, the book actually benefits from the many different points of view. Don’t give up! Stick with it and soon you’ll be sucked into Cath and Simon’s world.
This book is also available in the following formats:
Nearly five years after their last album, Blink-182 releases their seventh studio album. It marks a change for the band as Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba joins the group.
A collection of thirteen faith-based songs featuring Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, her mom Linda Davis, father Lang Scott, and little sister Rylee Scott, all produced by Ricky Skaggs.
A highly anticipated first solo country album from Steven Tyler, the voice of rock band Aerosmith. His first single, Love Is Your Name, hit number one on the Billboard Country Streaming Songs chart.
For the first time in ten years, Switchfoot went back to the studio with producer John Fields to work on their tenth studio album. While moving forward, the band does look back, and there is a lot of nostalgia flowing through the album.
All The Summer Girls by Meg Donohue focuses on the lives of three friends: Philadelphia lawyer Kate, Manhattan mom Vanessa, and San Francisco writer Dani. Kate’s fiancé has dumped her on the same day she found out she was pregnant. Vanessa is dealing with news that her husband cheated on her with another woman and is searching the internet for a man she dated eight years ago. Dani has just been fired yet again in San Francisco and is turning to her good friends (drugs and alcohol) to cope.
Kate, Vanessa, and Dani have been best friends for years, but have drifted apart. Their separation is as much to do with where they each live, their adult lives, and a major event that happened eight years ago during their last summer at the shore, as it is with normal daily life. The three plan a long weekend getaway at Dani’s father’s house in Avalon, the place where they spent two weeks out of their summer every year until one deadly night eight years ago. Being back in this familiar place brings tension to the surface of their friendship, making them all realize just how much their choices eight years ago have shaped their lives today. Each woman is holding onto a big secret, one that each is afraid to tell, and yet all of their secrets are interconnected. Kate, Vanessa, and Dani are forced to come to terms with the decisions they made eight years ago as their friendship hangs in the balance.
This book is also available as an e-audiobook through OverDrive.
Lenny Russo, chef at Heartland in St. Paul, was inspired by the lakes, fields, farms and orchards of his adopted homeland to create 100 delectable recipes including Midwestern Cassoulet, Sweet Corn-Black Barley Cakes, Chocolate-Sorghum Custard Tart, Freshwater Bouillabaisse, Wild Rice Salad with Baby Kale and Blue Cheese, Fennel-Cured Whitefish with Danish Brown Bread Salad and dozens more. (description from publisher)
Rick Remender’s Low series is so far one of my favorite discoveries this summer. Low, Volume 2: Before the Dawn Burns Us brings to light the tragedies that the Caine family was faced with in the first volume and expands upon the ways the mother, Stel, is trying to rise up and save who she can.
In the first volume, the entire Caine family is torn apart with the father dead and the two daughters torn away from Stel and her only son. She vows to bring the family back together only to fall into despair. The sun has gone radioactive forcing all of the Earth’s inhabitants underwater, knowing they cannot stay there forever and hoping for an eventual inhabitable world to be found elsewhere. Shoot forward ten years and a probe has been recalled to the surface of the Earth, one that shows Stel that there is an inhabitable world elsewhere. She must get to the probe first and find her children along the way.
In volume 2, Stel wrestles with herself as she feels her hope in the future fading, something that had previously seen her through numerous bad situations. Stel struggles to salvage what she can of her mission to find the probe and ultimately save all of humanity, while a side story shows Stel’s estranged daughters working to find themselves and each other after their horrific split from their parents. One of her daughters, Della, is the relentless Minister of Thought, living in a totalitarian state where hope and optimism are squashed. Stel and two members of Marik’s surviving gladiator team are still searching for the probe. This second volumes is full of tragedy, loss, and hopelessness, but is ultimately about what happens to all of us when we lose hope and try to find it again.
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The skills of butchery meet the world of fresh produce in The Vegetable Butcher, an essential, inspiring guide that demystifies the world of vegetables.
Unless you’ve been living inside a red and white ball, you’ve probably heard of Pokémon Go. The original Pokémon RPG (role-playing game) video game was released way back in the ancient times of 1996. Beginning as a game for the original Game Boy, it quickly expanded into card trading games, TV shows, movies, more video games, and even a Monopoly board game.
Isn’t this game dangerous?
Blink-192 — California
Jake Owen — American Love
Hillary Scott & The Scott Family — Love Remains
Steven Tyler — We’re All Somebody from Somewhere
Switchfoot — Where the Light Shines Through
Various Artists — Hamilton Original Broadway Cast Recording
