Mexican Recipes in Your Slow Cooker

I'm a huge fan of my slow cooker---I cook with it at least twice a week at my house!  I enjoy being able to come home to a meal that has cooked safely all day, without me having to lift many fingers to fix it.  The library has many slow cooker recipe books available, but we just received a very intriguing new one-The Mexican Slow Cooker by Deborah Schneider. I must admit, at first glance, the recipes in this book look a little complicated.  Basically, the slow cooker is used in these recipes to perform the "gentle cooking" of the recipe with the cook having to perform "prep work" and "finishing touches."  The slow cooker cornbread recipe looks delicious as well as the Enchiladas Suizas and Mole.  Also included are great recipes to make tasty-looking tortillas that you can fill with one of the meat recipes included in this cookbook.  I believe this recipe book is better suited for the more advanced cook, and there are plenty of authentice recipes to choose from!  

A Beginner's Guide to Endings...

I stumbled across a very entertaining movie that I had to watch!  It is a quirky comedy with some very memorable characters and is hilarious.  A Beginner's Guide to Endings stars Harvey Keitel as Duke White, a man who has not been a good example of a father to his five sons (from three different moms).  After Duke learns that a foolish action of his youth has endangered the lives of his three eldest sons, he sets about trying to kill himself.  Thinking that they only have a few weeks to live, the three eldest boys create their own "bucket lists" and set out to accomplish all of the risky things they have wanted to do, before they die.  The result is a zany, madcap adventure full of twists, turns and unlikely circumstances.  All five boys characters' are wonderfully acted and Harvey Keitel is the perfect grizzled, remorseful dad.  This movie is rated R (for language and some sexual references) and won the Jury Award for Best Feature Film, Cinematographer and Screenplay at the Newport Beach Film Festival in 2011.  Funny and sensitive, this movie will make you think twice about living every one of your days to its fullest capacity.

Meet author Harris Dickson Shortle on September 18!

     Join us on Tuesday, September 18 from 12:00-1:30 pm in the library auditorium for a book reading and signing with Vicksburg native, Harris Dickson Shortle.  The program will be a Brown Bag Luncheon where attendees are  encouraged to bring their lunch to the program and drinks and dessert will be provided by the library. Harris Dickson Shortle, known as Dickson, is the author of Duplicate and The Duke of Zardano both published in 2009 by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, Mustang, Oklahoma.  Both books reflect a diversity of approach and innovative techniques of expressions in two distinctively different historical genres.

     Shortles’s story-telling is a product developed as the result of the influence of his grandfather, Harris Dickson, attorney, jurist and raconteur of note who published 13 novels and received an appreciative bicentennial award from The Saturday Evening Post for his 100 contributions. He was published by Collier’s, Redbook and other magazines during his career also.  Dickson’s novel creations followed his long-standing career as a construction project engineer, project manager and general contractor.  His work experiences and interactions with people during his career , granted him a “feel” for the humanisms of the stories he tells so realistically.

     Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and reared in Mississippi and Louisiana, Dickson’s background is spiced not only by the influence of his grandfather, but also by his father who was a civil engineer from Detroit, Michigan and by the grace of his mother who was an English major at the University of Mississippi.  Harris Dickson Shortle was a cum laude graduate of the Sewanee Military Academy at Sewanee, Tennessee, a member of the class of 1960 at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York and a graduate of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  Dickson and his wife, Dllona recently moved back to Vicksburg from Upper Arlington, Ohio. Their only daughter is Harra Dickson Shortle Windsor who with her husband, the Reverend Doctor Van Windsor and their sons, Dickson and Walter live in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

Being Flynn

I just watched a very moving film that was powerful, honest and entertaining.  Being Flynn stars Robert DeNiro and Paul Dano and is a portrait of a young man and aspiring author, Nick Flynn (Paul Dano) who is struggling to find his place in life at the same time as his dad, Jonathan Flynn (Robert DeNiro), a taxi driver who imagines himself to be a great writer.  Nick is unsure of his life's calling until he meets a girl in a bar who suggests he apply for a job at Harbor House, a local men's homeless shelter.  Nick takes the job because he needs the money, but soon he grows to understand that his life has meaning and purpose when he helps others less fortunate than himself.  Nick has not had a relationship with his father, until Jonathan calls him out of the blue and asks Nick to help him move out of his apartment.  Through a set of odd circumstances, Nick and Jonathan meet again and the exploration of their burgeoning relationship is the heart of this tough but tender story.  The film is rated R, and is not a gentle movie, but the acting is wonderfull and the story is moving.  Check it out and let us know what you think!