Dim Sum Palace, Catonsville, Maryland

Dim sum is a cuisine that we all really like, so when we went to Baltimore for our son's birthday weekend this was on the list of places to make time to have a lunch at. My nephew, who lived in China for several years, gave a thumbs up from a previous visit, so it had a seal of approval as well. The restaurant opens at 11AM and the rule of thumb is that you need to be there before it opens or soon thereafter. We were not so on top of it, but a luck would have it, we were a party of 5 and the large tables had yet to fill up, and we were seated immediately. There is a menu that you can order off, but we chose to eat off the roving trolleys, and the food was delicious--the crowd favorite was the Chinese broccoli, which was cooked perfectly with some tooth feel left but cooked through and with a delicious sauce. My next up was the shrimp and scallop shi mei, which we had one left over of and I wish we had gotten more to go. The scallion pancake around a shrimp was the next favorite for some, and I did enjoy the salt and pepper calamari, but wouldn't get it unless there are at least 4 diners, as it is both a large portion and filling. We would 100% make a effort to go back, and when we left 45 mintures after arriving there were dozens of people waiting for tables.

Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall

Well, the country is quite broken right now, so the title stands out for it's accuracy, and the stories told within are of people who are also struggling mightily. Beth had big dreams as a teenager. She was in love with Gabriel, who encouraged her to reach for the stars, and she was on course to go to Oxford and fulfill her dreams of writing. It was all set off course by Gabriel, a misunderstanding, and his mother, who did and didn't do her part, and Beth decided to marry someone else from her class, a man who had loved her for years. Beth and Frank lead a fulfilling life. They love each other and work alongside each other, along with Frank’s volatile brother Jimmy, on the Blakely family farm in Dorset. They had a son soon after they were married, and he died in a tragic accident that both Frank and Beth blame on Frank. Enter Gabriel, returned from years away, on the verge of a divorce, with a son about the age that Beth's would have been, and it is all over for Beth. A love triangle develops for all to see, and it ends tragically. As with all tragedy's, you can see this one coming from a mile away, but there is no stopping it and no telling how it will end.

Holiday in the Vineyards (2025)

Yes, this is a romantic comedy aimed at the holiday viewing set, and no it is not a great film. I watchd it when my spouse unexpectedly tested positive for COVID and all of our weekend plans got canceled or put on hold because of it. He was ill, not just infected, and so our whole household lived separate lives for several days and I watched this movie. I enjoy the occasional movie in this genre. There are predictable things that happen and there are some real stretches to believe, more so than in movies of this genre, which is saying something. The situation is that Carter Baldwyn is the screw-up son of Margo Baldwyn (Eileen Davidson), the wealthy head of a huge bargain basement wine brand. In an effort to prove to his mom that he’s not a total good-for-nothing, he agrees to visit a small winery called Huckabee Vineyard in the fictional wine country town of Los Santos, CA, that’s just gone on the market and which his mother wants to acquire for their company. The catch – Carter has to be a run of the mill guy while he’s scoping out the vineyard so no one catches wind that it’s a Baldwyn that’s buying. No one likes the Baldwyns or their brand, becausethey are predators who not only make bad wine, but have a scorched earth approach to doing so. Carter lucks out when the real estate agent selling Huckabee, Valentina Espin offers him a place to stay if he finishes the remodel on her guest house. She is a widowed mom of two adorable boys, and Carter is no more suited to renovation than he is to anything else, but he manages to get the local hardware store owner to help him. It turns out that the locals are making some very good wine in their garages, and Carter comes to see things from their point of view. The scenery is gorgeous, and this is a quiet unassuming movie.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

Ok, first of all, I made a mistake here. I added this to my library holds, I cannot remember why, but it happened in the flurry of articles about "The Best Books of 2025 So Far". Somehow in the rush to capture things I thought I would like but had not discovered, I missed that this book is categorized under "Horror", which is a genre that I most definitely do not read. Consider that as you read forward! I thought this was a non-fiction book, and I have a stack of them to read out from the library, so I brought it on a plane trip, and even though I recognized my mistake, I felt committed at that point, and read it. This isn't a fun read or even necessarily an enjoyable one, and the subject matter is dark and difficult to stomach at times. It is however is an unforgettable novel about a Pikuni vampire seeking revenge related to all that happened to both the buffalo and the Blackfoot in the mid-nineteenth century. So if horror is your jam, you might enjoy this.

La Mexicana, Coralville, Iowa

We had a family dinner here recently to celebrate my son's birthday. It is definitely our favorite Mexican restaurant in the Iowa City area--we literally drive by 6 or 7 other Mexican restaurants to get to it, we feel that strongly. My son has three small children and it has several advantages to recommend it for this occasion. One is that it is continually open, so that we don't have to get there before the lunch service ands or wait for the dinner service to begin--that is not an issue, and the added bonus is that if you are eating at an odd hour it is likely that you can get a table for 8 or more without difficulty. Truely, we never have an issue with it--there is a lot of flexible seating, and the service is fast, so turnover happens quickly. Second is that it is a bit loud and raucous while being kid friendly, so perfect table manners are not absolutely required. Then there is the food--all three of the aforementioned small children could find multiple things on the menu that appealed to them, and in actuality the chips with a salsa and a bean dip were most popular and they took a bulk of their ordered food home. There are several options that are popular and good for the adults--the chili relleno and the choripollo to name two. On this occasion there were a lot of tacos, but the rice and beans are very solid and we all leave happy every time. Finally, there is a grocery store connected to the restaurant and that was a fun stop for candy and cookies on the way out.

There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone

There is one common thread when reading about homelessness in America--it is always gut wrenching and unfair. This is no exception. The twist is that the five families that the author follows in Atlanta are all working. The people in this book work a lot, and earn very little. Sleeping in cars, crashing with friends or paying for a decrepit room in an extended-stay hotel, they are trapped in an endless circle of poverty and uncertainty. Politicians have been incentivized to define homelessness narrowly, including only people living in shelters or on the street. A true measure of homelessness in America would be six times the official figure, pushing the number up to more than four million. It always leaves me wondering how you can feel exceptional when as a country you step on the most impoverished amongst us. The allowance for wages that do not add up to being able to feed, cloth, and house one's family is what underlies this tragedy. That things like food stamps and Medicaid serve to make people depend on government subsidies when the companies that employ people should be shouldering that burden.

Wish (2023)

This movie got a lot of very bad reviews, and where the story goes, this is a sub par addition to the Disney ouevre. The best rap of it is that it is all about emphasizing Disney's 100th anniversary, and that wishing upon a star is one of the oldest Disney tropes out there. From my point of view, that is 100% okay, that making a movie that harkens to their past once every 100 years is excusable. The downside is that the story does not drive the plot, the foundational concept does. So here is the story. Asha is a 17-year-old about to interview for an apprenticeship with the beloved King Magnifico of Rosas. The King is the keeper of magic in Rosas, a man who can extract the wishes of his flock, keeping them in a chamber high above the city, and choosing one wish in a ceremony to allow to come true. Asha hopes that her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino will finally have his wish granted, but she discovers that Magnifico isn’t well named. He’s more of a hoarder of wishes than a granter, and someone who doesn't keep his promises. Of course this is Disney, so Asha isn’t just an ordinary girl who learns about the absolute corruption of absolute power—she becomes a magical figure herself when a wishing star grants her abilities that turn her into a leader for her people. Asha literally wishes on a Star, and said Star comes down to cause chaos and help Asha start a revolution.

A High Wind In Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929)

I have recently gotten hooked on the Friday videos by Ann Patchett that she does from her bookstore in Nashville, Parnassus Books, and this book was recommended in the series that they do on important books from the past that have been forgotten and shouldn't be. In thinking about the book and preparing to write this review, I found a review by someone who read it as a teenager and then again as a middle aged man. He found it full of adventure and strange and unknown things that enthralled him--that was definitely not my experience, nor was it his the second time around. This is an odd story, creepy even, told from both adult and child points of view and takes place sometime before 1860. The Thornton children and 2 mixed race children are placed on a ship to get them to England, where their parents are waiting for them. Their ship is boarded by pirates pirates, a profession that is no longer profitable but they haven't cross trained to do something else, but neither are they completely blood thirsty villains either. They are unable to wrench any valuables from the ship they have boarded, and they take the children to their ship in an effort to convince the Clorinda captain to hand over his money. He does so, probably more to save his own skin, but, about the children, he gets confused and thinks the pirates have murdered them, and, so, he sails away in the dark. The pirates awaken to find they have the children now as unwanted passengers. You will have to read to see what happens--it is in some ways worse than you think and in other ways better. Richard Percival Graves, in his biography of Hughes, placed this novel between RM Ballantyne’s optimistic adventure story The Coral Island, published in 1858, which shows a group of children cast away on a deserted atoll “to be naturally good, decent and self-reliant,” and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, published almost 100 years later, in which the civilized values of adult society are soon jettisoned by the schoolboys who turn to savagery on their island. A High Wind in Jamaica takes no sides as it patrols the eccentric, sometimes amoral borders between a child’s and an adult’s natural territory.

Restaurante Lurrak, Arbonne, France

We spent almost a week in Basque country and one day of it was spent in French Basque ountry. We did not get to a memorable bakery, and we did not get any cheese, so that was disappointing to the point of needing to go back when time is less of an issue, but the restaurant we ate at was perfect.

The emphasis on seasonal food, and the fact that we were there when it was white asparagus, artichoke, and strawberry season was exceptional, and we were able to have these delicacies almost every day. The top picture is of a lightly pickle and thinly sliced kohlrabi that was absolutely the best version of this spring vegetable that I have ever had. The kitchen was small, as was the restaurant, but it was a memorable and delicious lunch!

A Blissful Feast by Teresa Lust

The trouble with going to the less traveled spots is that sometimes it is hard to find books that cover said regions. I have an acquaintance who travels extensively and often who swears by travel blogs as a source from which to plan your trips. She travels off the beaten path, and I am seeing the wisdom of her way. So I picked this up because it starts in Piedmont, a region that I am traveling to very soon. The author's maternal grandparents came from the Italian Piedmont, and it's there that she begins her what is part memoir, part recollection of culinary lessons and cultural insights in three parts of the country. The book contains more than 35 recipes for the likes of braised rabbit with white wine and rosemary, breakfast biscotti, and tagliatelle made with fresh eggs, the real instruction comes through the stories Lust tells about the cooks who fed her and whom she worked alongside to learn how to cook regionally in Italy. Ancient and contemporary Italy overlap in her stories of cooks and marketplaces, restaurants and holiday feasts, regional rivalries and evocations of Dante. She went to Piedmont to learn Italian at a language school, and she recounts her struggles when the limitation of her language skills led to challenges in her understanding the conversations she had with the cooks, bakers, and butchers but as her skill improved her stories have more depth and interest. It really stuck with her, because she is now a professor in Italian language study at Dartmouth, and some of the stories towards the end of her book are about trying to take the cuisine of Italy home to New England. I especially appreciated her story of harvesting hops shoots and how perplexing it was for the farms caretaker to understand what she was about. There is a hazard that you're likely to want to make your own trip to Italy, and luckily I had that in hand before I started the book.