The Great Zimbabwean Bagel

We ate bagels this morning. I baked them two nights ago, and I was surprised at how easy it was to make them. The key is to boil the dough before baking, which gives the bagels a smooth and chewy crust. Yumm… Does anyone know how to make Montreal smoked meat?

My next culinary experiment will be replicating the Big Mac. It’s good to have goals.

We are running out of books!!! I just downloaded four new ones to read on my Palm Pilot, which will hopefully get me through the next few weeks. I downloaded Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock, Ernest Hemmingway’s Short Stories and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. I’m really looking forward to reading Murakami’s stuff. I read one of his short stories from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman last night and thoroughly enjoyed his writing style.

We’re coming home to Canada at Christmas for a short vacation, so we’ll be stocking up on some more books. I will definitely be picking up MG Vassanji’s The Assassin’s Song and Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air. Do you have any book recommendations?

Two of my recent favourites: Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Rochelle’s brother Joel just sent us some movies, so that should slow down my reading rampage. We watched a few episodes of Lost last night (thanks, Joel!) on my laptop while we ate a very Canadian supper: Fried egg on a bagel, corn on the cob, watermelon and strawberries. All of the food was grown locally, except for the flour used to make the bagels. We haven’t spent much time on our garden lately, but we’ve got onions, peppers and carrots growing right now and we’ll plant a new batch of sweet corn this weekend. We also have plenty of lavender growing in the front of our house, so I occasionally cut a few branches and throw them into our morning bath.