Simply Divine - A Book Review

What an irony! The cook book (Simply Divine, by Lisa Vanderpump) arrived on the day I was food poisoned. Between the trips to the loo and a medicine cabinet, I got my first glimpses of the book (and for the record, I did not take the book to the toilet). Unable to hold down any food or water, I kept looking at the juicy food photos. It felt like I went window-shopping with an empty wallet in my pocket.

First Impressions

1. Bublibicious: Definitely bublibicious. As soon as I opened the book, guess who was sticking out his bubli-tongue at me? The sexy little Giggy of course! Fluffy only wishes to marry this stud, in spite of him already being married to that wrinkly old pussy.
2. Pink: It sure is pink.
3. Approved by Fluffy: Fluffy basically turned this book into her brand new (and very firm) pillow. On an unrelated note -- She is turning sweet sixteen this Friday. Happy birthday my dear puppy! You changed my life!
4. Underexposed: Being a perfectionist (a professional software engineer) and an artist (a part-time photographer), I do have a lot to say about some of the photography in the book. More on that later. 

Why did I get this pink book? I don’t even like pink (besides dusty rose and the like). People like to follow advice from people who are like them (or who they think are like them). Since the author (Lisa Vanderpump) and I have a lot in common (both European, not fans of PB&J, have a chocolate problem, obsessed with furry creatures), chances are that I’ll also like her recipes. And I think I do.

The book is divided into chapters by a type of occasion you would serve the food at. The last chapter is for the “pig out” days... which reminds me, I must take this book to Slovakia this Christmas and cook something from the last chapter. Holidays in Slovakia are like nothing you’ve ever seen. My American husband can testify. It’s no joke. You basically eat, drink, eat, drink, and repeat. For the whole week. And then you go home with tupperware full of cakes and cookies.

Ahhh, the photos. All of them were taken with only available light, some without the additional (and badly needed) fill light. How do you know you need an extra light or a fill light in the scene? Use the following trick that I use when putting lights on a Christmas tree: Step back about four meters. Look towards the tree and squint, just enough to blur what you see into a fuzz of light and dark. You will immediately notice larger dark unlit areas on a tree. Add some Christmas lights and repeat. I use the same technique to evaluate a scene I’m photographing or even a finished photo. Open a page 93 and squint. What do you see? I see a black silhouette surrounded by a lot of white. If the photo was properly lit, I would be able to see a brighter spot (Lisa’s face) at the top of the silhouette, if not along the whole length of her body. Some of the photos in this book make me feel helpless. Lisa spent an enormous amount of effort to make the food and set the table, but some of this beauty was not captured properly. Even a little on-camera flash or ceiling bounced flash would do miracles. Sigh. This ends my professional rant. Moving on...

Lisa will show you how to entertain your guests at various settings, from intimate dinners to large formal parties. She will show you how to add a class and a bling using things you already have in your household (fabrics, jewelry, books, picture frames, etc).

The recipes are well explained, and once you read them, you have a pretty good idea of what the finished product would look like. However, I would still prefer to see a photo (even a small one) next to every recipe in the book. Selecting a recipe is like picking a man. You have to see it to know if you want it. No-one pays attention to online dating profiles that don't have the profile photos. The Internet era we live in lets us view recipes interactively with videos and other visualizations. Paper cookbooks need to step up their game and start including more photos.

My next challenge will be applying Lisa’s tips and entertaining suggestions to a modernist San Francisco loft my husband and I live in. Ornate tableware used in Lisa's book would not match our Herman Miller Eames chairs. We have been struggling to give our place a character and not make it look like a scene from a CB2 catalog. Its all about finding a balance between the mass-produced and the rare. Brad and I love to discover unique items that bublibish us. Our most recent find is a metalwork lamp we brought from Cairo. We decorated the whole Morrocan room around this lamp.

Decorating your own home is a great journey that makes you spend a lot of quality time with your loved one. Lisa spent her whole life personalizing her homes and restaurants, which I give her kudos for. It's easy to open a page in a furniture catalog and buy everything you see in the photo. It's a lot harder to envision the final room and work hard towards fulfilling that vision.

Take-Aways

The book offers few things worth adopting:

• write a menu by hand and display it in a nice picture frame
• use edible flowers to decorate the plates (but avoid gnarly pesticides!)
• cook with oil, bake with butter
• buy an oversized silver tray (any kind of food will look better on a silver tray)
• apparently, you need to give your home a name (we’ll call ours "Bubli-Château")

Final Thoughts

If you are ready to stop the addictive cycle of store-bought meals and those 9pm trips to Whole Foods deli section, this book is for you (and you can get it on Amazon). Even if you don't plan to cook anything... just looking at the amazing table settings and food is always a feast for the eye. I do, however, plan to cook. I can’t wait to get my ass in the kitchen and make some of the yummuses from Lisa's book.

Post-War Glamour

This year's Google holiday party was on USS Hornet, a retired aircraft carrier turned into museum. The party tried to take the visitors back into the 1940s -- into USS Hornet glory days. But I figured it's ok to wear something even older and rocked a 1920s style. (The truth is, I thought the party was 1920s themed until after I put my 1920s outfit together. When I found out it's 1940s themed, I had a mini heart attack.)

My first impression of the ship was: "Damn, this ship is huge!". Well, until I saw the deck and realized that it looks like a medium sized parking lot. Where the hell did they land the airplanes? How could they land them on such a tiny runway?

Let me tell you a secret. The dress is not really a dress. It's a fringe top over a thin babydoll dress I got during a heat wave in Manhattan. Brad put together his outfit in about two minutes. Mine took a little longer, but it was a lot of fun, expecially because Brad's mom was helping me shop for accessories. She has a degree in fashion design, and was using some serious terminology while talking to sales people. :) The feathers are from Britex Fabrics, the head band is from Icing, and the shoes and a clutch are from where else but Zappos.

We had to enter the ship via a narrow bridge... that was spanning over a very very cold water. Not the most pleasant thing to do.

... and were welcomed by four lovely singing ladies:

The hangar area had some airplanes and hellicopters on display.

We took a tour of the ship, and discovered many bublibicious rooms and devices:

We also witnessed a 1940s dance resurrection:

There was this little station with a mini donut conveyor belt. I had to come back couple of times.

Most of the ladies would have been in trouble going on a tour of the ship in their heels. Fortunatelly, the organizers provided some flats. They were thin and offered no insulation between the cold floor and my feet, but they probably saved me from falling off a ladder. For the rest of the evening, I strutted in my cute new gold princess shoes:

The area around the ship is pretty gnarly. What can I say, I'm in love. Bill and I have to come back one of the warm October nights and do some long exposures.

When we got home, a little bublibicious furrus was waiting for us. The furrus is not visiting very often (joint custody), but when she does, we love to spend every minute with her. We noticed that she matched my outfit and included her in the photo.

Brad was making lound complaints while using my pro SLR camera for the first time. He pointed out that the interaction design of a single focus point setting is horrible. But after some tweaks and instructions, he took pretty decent shots of me (which I'm super stoked about because nobody takes pictures of me... ever).

I had some fun with Adobe Lightroom last night, trying to come up with few new color effects. Unless you need to swap eyes and heads, Lightroom is plenty powerful and you don't need the whole Photoshop Creative Suite.

The wig left some temporary dents on my forehead, but what stays are some fun 1920s photos to show our grandchildren (and I'm pretty sure there will be another 1920s party I can reuse the dress at).

Visual Dictionary Of Mathematical Fields

What is a "Calculus"?

I transferred to a US university after completing four years at a university in EU. When I moved to the US, I spoke fluent English. But I have received all my prior math and CS education in Slovak language.

The English word "calculus" sounded foreign to me. I knew I must have studied it, but I was not sure what exact field of mathematic it really was. My classmates used it in reference to many things. It seemed like every math class they ever took was calculus. So what is calculus exactly?

After looking it up, I had my "aha!" moment. Calculus is a study of change, or (as I knew it) a mathematical analysis.

How does calculus fit into the large picture? I tried to answer that in the visualization on the left.

The Wicked Economy Of Airline Miles

Did you know that ten thousand airline miles buys you $123 of domestic travel or $200 of international travel?

I am planning our honeymoon and looking into some nice tropical destinations. Besides the temperature, I'm also optimizing for the travel cost. I already knew that using miles for domestic travel is a very bad idea. However, I was not sure how the deals compare when traveling to various international destinations. Here is my little analysis of flights departing Dec 6 and coming back Dec 29, 2011. As you can see, some flights are best purchased using miles, and others are best purchased using cash.

Who Wore It Better?

The guy with a broken nose or my handsome groom? I think the answer is obvious.