What Alice forgot

In a bizarre accident, Alice comes to on the gym floor with no memory of the last 10 years. From her perspective she is 29 years old, pregnant with her first child and very much in love with her husband. In reality, she is 39 years old with three children and in the process of going through a divorce. As she rediscovers her life, she's not sure she likes what she finds. She has become this high strung, type A personality that plans every detail of her life, and alienating those close to her. Does Alice try to reclaim what she had at age 29, fix what she has age 39 or create a new life?

What Alice Forgot was entertaining with bits of humor as Alice adjusts to what her current life is while dealing with her feelings from the past. I did finish the story, but I left it a bit unsatisfied. Some of the story was predictable and you can see Alice make choices that I did not like. I guess that is part of the journey of any life, and as an observer it is easy to sit on the sidelines and say, don't do it. We all want the happy, Disney ending, but it doesn't always work out that way. I think in Alice's situation, she made the decisions that were right for her.

Maze Runner Series

The Maze Runner series. I picked up the first book, the Maze Runner, on audio to listen while on a road trip. A kid wakes up in an enclosed environment with other trapped boys and no memory of his previous life. Each day a wall opens up and selected kids run through a mysterious maze hoping to find a way out. Each day, the maze changes and includes dangers from monsters. Each day there are new challenges among the inmates. And then a girl enters the maze as well.

The first story in the series is a take off of the Lord of the Flies. The kids setup a pseudo government with rules and punishments. The maze challenge makes you think of Hunger Games because there are people watching the kids and manipulating them in a contest type situation. Still, the first book has excitement, adventure, and a bit of a mystery. Worth the time to read it.

The series begins to crumble with the second book, The Scorch Trials. The second book of the Hunger Games lacked in the story department too, so not really a surprise. The Scorch Trials is a bridge to the third book. The kids have to traverse a desert landscape in hopes of arriving at the last "safe" city where people who are immune to the plague live. It's not entirely clear why they must do this, but that is the power center of the remaining healthy humans. They lose a few companions and some become infected by the plague. I found the second book boring, tedious, and rather predictable.

The Death Cure is exactly that. The kids search for a cure for the plague to save one of their own in the city. There are underground movements of people trying to gain safety, others looking for revenge. In the midst of this, will the one person who can save the entire world do so or will he let the corrupt government implode on itself. The ending was better than I expected, though some readers will be disappointed.

I also watched the movie trilogy. Like the books, the second movie was boring and a bit annoying and a bridge to the third. In some scenes you can tell when the director said action and the actors start to run. The first move was great. The third was better than I expected.

The Nourished Kitchen

The movement to a whole foods, minimally processed diet is a well-needed food trend. The more I have read about food and nutrition, the more and more apparent it becomes that many of our modern health ailments are because of poor nutrition and diet. What does it take to give up our convenient foods and eat only locally grown, in-season, organic foods?

The Nourished Kitchen by Jennifer McGruther is perhaps one approach. The book is beautiful with lots of full color pictures. The book is mostly a recipe book, but there is some discussion on her philosophy of food. In some ways I would consider McGruther a food purist in which she searches for food that is as close to the farm as your own backyard. It's the idea that you know the farmer and how he raised or grew your food before you purchased it. In some cases you even do it yourself.

In an idealized world, we would be able to do all of this. The reality is that many of us are not close enough to a farm or a farmer to really know. We could make some efforts by shopping only at farmer's markets, but even that can be difficult. It's not to say that many of us are unwilling to trade our convenient life, but those who live in large cities there are many challenges to sourcing this kind of food. Even for me living in a rural area, it's not so easy to find certain foods directly from a farmer or to even grow certain foods. For example, I can only grow lettuce a certain part of the year and it is nearly impossible to grow peaches due to the elevation of my area. At the end of the day, we can only do the best we can to achieve such a lifestyle. In other words, I felt a bit of guilt that I couldn't achieve such food purism from reading her book.

Many recipes in the book call for "exotic" ingredients that may be difficult for the average person to obtain, like real lard direct from the farmer without any pasteurization or processing. Some recipes have no pictures and call for ingredients I've never heard of or have never seen. Some recipes could use some extra instruction, such as step-by-step pictures of the process. The recipes may be simple, but for newbies more instruction would be better.

The book is inspiring, I just wish it had a bit more practicality for the rest of us.