Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Weird, Wild, Wonderful Four from December 7 - 12/09

My four favourites from this past week, in no particular order.

The Chemist's Kitchen is unique, at least of all the many food blogs I have seen. Readers can ask questions about the chemical properties and handling of food. Ingredients are explained - like the effects of too much essence of bergamot oil in Earl Grey tea or just how many rum balls one would actually have to eat to become impaired (6.6 lbs!). Interesting, informative, humourous with really nice photos.

(The image is of the bergamot orange plant.)

Got Medieval is about all things medieval - marginalia, saints, books of hours and culinary history. The treatment is lighthearted but detailed and informative. In his post about forgetting St. Cecilia in the November saints roundup, the blogger began with a riff on Simon and Garfunkel's song Cecilia: "Oh St. Cecilia, I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please to forgive me for leaving you out of my November saints roundup." Very nice touch in this blog.

Figleaf's Real Adult Sex is NOT a porn site. It is a thoughtful, very frank, and searching discussion about sex and gender by a thoughtful, frank, interesting, respectful man. I love this site because it is written by a man and deals fairly with gender issues, is informative, not shy, and often funny. It is fairly explicit, though, so be forewarned.

The Wisdom of Whores is also NOT a porn site; rather it is the blog of Elizabeth Pisani, epidemiologist, author, and journalist. Pisani writes about HIV and its prevention in the blog (among other things) and has published a book The Wisdom of Whores. The information in Pisani's blog is eye-opening, informative, often sad, but necessary. I wrote about Pisani in an earlier post - A Wise Woman.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What GREAT, interesting suggestions! It's so hard to find quality blogs...thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

ChrisJ said...

Samantha,
I know they're out there; sometimes it takes some searching to find them and sometimes they fall into my lap.

ONE of THE GUYS said...

I'm going to check these out. Thanks!

I did read your post about writing for art as well.

Being a musician, I've dealt with my share of reviews. All I ever hoped for was a review that reflected a true understanding of what was heard.
Good or bad.

Reviewers need to check their agenda at the door and listen or look with an open mind and heart. If they do that, the words will come.

ChrisJ said...

One of the Guys, excellent point about letting the words come by checking the agenda at the door. It's true for many things, I think.