| The Green Kitchen: Risotto under pressure
Vent the steam immediately, remove lid. Stir. Leave with lid slightly ajar to finish cooking for 2-3 minutes. Tough, eh? Sometimes, saving fossil-fuel energy means saving your own energy, too. If you think that bit of verdancy is easy, check out this. Ages ago, my friend and colleague Aggie MacKenzie told me you can cook pasta as follows. Bring water to the boil, put in pasta, stir and bring back to the boil, cover the pot and turn the heat off. The pasta, she said, would be ready in the time specified on the packet. I didn’t get round to trying Aggie’s method till my hands fell upon a copy of a new book called 50 Ways to Save Water & Energy by Siân Berry (Kyle Cathie, £5.99). Ms Berry uses the same method, and that reminded me to try it on some penne.
The enigma of Day-Lewis
It has already won him critics' awards, a nomination for a Golden Globe and talk of a second Oscar to go with the one for My Left Foot. All three New York Times movie critics chose him last week as their top candidate to win best actor this year. People do cling to the 'mad bastard' stereotype of him, Day-Lewis acknowledges, as we settle in front of the fire. He laughs, a self-deprecating, chuckle at the irony of it all. 'How can you be a recluse,' he asks, 'in a house full of children, even if you had the inclination to be, which I don't? ' Before we go any further I should declare an interest. I've been in this house before, when researching a biography of Day-Lewis's father, the Anglo-Irish poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. We talked at length about the family history as Daniel went about his domestic routine, even offering at one stage to take me for a spin on one of his beloved motor bikes.
North Shore religion briefs
The Alpha Course, an 11-week practical introduction to the Christian faith, will be held at the South Congregational Church, 60 Prospect St., Peabody, directly across from Macy's at the Northshore Mall, on Thursday nights starting Feb. 7. For more information, call 978-531-1964 or visit www.southchurch.net.
Family Alpha, a free program for the whole family, will be held for 10 Friday nights, starting Feb. 1, and one Saturday, March 8, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at North Shore Bridge Christian Fellowship, Suite 135, Cummings Center, Beverly. Coffee, soft drinks and dessert will be served. Sponsored by North Shore Christian Ministries, registration is available at www.northshorecm.org; click on "Family Alpha."
Little Rock Bible Study on "The Gospel of John" and the Johannine Letters commences at Our Lady of Hope Parish, 1 Pineswamp Road, Ipswich, on Thursday, Jan.
Walter Bowart, 68; co-founder of the East Village Other
Walter Bowart, who channeled the cultural chaos of the 1960s into print as the co-founder of one of the era's first underground newspapers, died Dec. 18 in Inchelium, Wash. He was 68.
The cause was colon cancer, his family said.
Bowart helped launch the biweekly East Village Other in Greenwich Village in 1965, a convulsive year when the Beatles, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War were rocking American society.
Bowart and a small band of colleagues used the paper to push the boundaries of convention with articles about sex, drugs, music and pressing social issues, presented in an experimental format that changed from issue to issue.
The paper reported on the exploits of many of the figures who became icons of the psychedelic era, including Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg.
Mike Greenberg: Admission to S.A. performing arts, museums is a real ...
As everyone knows, classical music and opera are elitist art forms, just for rich people playing dress-up. Popular music is . . . well, popular, for regular dudes in casual duds. Unless you do the math. The cheapest tickets to the San Antonio Symphony's concerts on Friday and Saturday cost $11.50, including the required facility charge for the Majestic Theatre. San Antonio Opera tickets start at $20. But tonight the masses will gather at the AT&T Center to hear loudspeakers relaying the voice of the popular Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel for a $35 minimum. At the same time, popular American singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett will perform at the Majestic for a minimum of $39 a ticket. If you want to see the Police next month at the AT&T Center, you'll pay at least $50.
Stunned by Lack of Outrage, Not Outrageous Acts
His pure evil no longer surprises me, although there was a time when he routinely stunned me. Torture? Torture?? Not by Congress, either. There was a time when I was stunned by that crowd's sheeplike mentality. I'd hear them decry the war, decry torture, decry Bush's growing deficit, then I'd drop my jaw as they voted time and again to give the president carte blanche. No longer. I fully expect Congress to disappoint, to fail to do its job in balancing the White House power grab. I'm no longer stunned by the politicized courts nor by the media, which is unwilling to offend and uses vague, watered-down language instead of strong condemnations of this, the worst presidency in history. So who continues to stun me? I will tell you.
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