Birdsong Review

Birdsong is a short story written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Adichie is a Nigerian author born in 1977. She attended the University of Nigeria where she studied medicine for 18 months before studying communications and political science at Drexel University and Eastern Connecticut State University. She then completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.

The story Birdsong is about a woman who has an affair with a married man. The author's descriptive style really brings the story to life. My favorite part to read was the following, on the second page in the online version on www.newyorker.com.

"When I stepped out of the car, I felt as though I had stumbled into a secret garden. A dense mass of periwinkles, white and pink, bordered the walkway to the house. The air was clean here, even fragrant, and there was something about it all that made me think of renewal." 

-Birdsong by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

She is so descriptive of the look, the smell and even the feeling of the place. The style she uses to describe the house was so realistic that I felt like I was in front of the house experience the view, smell and feeling.

One critique I would give is on the pacing of the story. I felt like she went off on a couple tangents and I felt myself a little bit lost in the text. Every time she referred back to the beginning part of the story, she did make a new paragraph which made it easy to follow but she didn't end them in context. A lot of times she would melt the two tenses together in one paragraph which isn't necessarily bad but I found it hard to follow.

Overall, Birdsong was a good read and I would definitely recommend it. It was published in The New Yorker on September 20th, 2010. You can find it in the magazine or online at www.newyorker.com

I Thought Tweeting was for the Birds

A few years ago when it was brand new I decided I should get Twitter. I thought that following all the celebrities I wanted would be so fantastic and thought I would be on it everyday. That is until my friends all made fun of me for having it!

Wanting to be the queen of popularity I decided to stop using twitter and never mentioned it to my friends again. Little did my friends know that Twitter would soon be one of the biggest phenomenons of our generation.

I think the first person I started following was Ashton Kutcher. At the time I had the hugest crush ever on him! This was at the time when I thought I still had a chance because Demi Moore was "really old"! I started following Ellen, Oprah and Britney Spears. All while shamelessly hiding behind an anonymous username. Sadly, my friends still made fun of me for following celebrities since it probably "wasn't even real" so I promptly deleted my account.

In anticipation of starting CreComm at Red River College I decided to venture back into the world of Twitter. I am now using it for more useful things such as following news, recipes and classmates. Best of all, my friends can't make fun of me now because it's required for school!

Follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/trsdancer

How to Use Sriracha Sauce

Sriracha hot sauce (aka Rooster sauce) is probably the greatest hot sauce I have ever tasted. As a huge fan of spicy food, this is my number one hot sauce choice because you can literally put it on anything and it tastes amazing.

DISCLAIMER: Do not use too much hot sauce! Very little goes a long way with this brand and unless you want to scald your mouth, less is more! If you use too little, it is very easy to add more for extra hotness, if you use too much then you will either have to go hungry or burn your mouth.

Dipping sauces Sriracha makes a great dipping sauce, either alone or mixed in with something else. My personal favorite thing to use it for is to add it to mayonnaise and dip yam fries in it. You can dip almost anything in it, and put it in any dip (ranch, BBQ sauce, mustard). You name it, it tastes good in it!

Eggs Before I found Sriracha sauce I was never an eggs and hot sauce type of person and now I can't eat them without it.

Hamburgers Sriracha sauce in and on hamburgers is pure bliss. Either put it on like ketchup, or as I like to do when preparing my patties, put it directly in the meat before cooking.

Stir Fry Any time there is any kind of stir fry or rice involved this sauce is essential! Walk into any Chinese cuisine restaurant and you will find large quantities of Sriracha hot sauce.

Soups and Stews Aside from cream based soups, Sriracha is always a great addition to any soup or stew. It helps kill the over salted flavor of canned soups for a deliciously warming, easy meal.

Mr. Noodles It is impossible to eat Mr. Noodles without hot sauce. That is all.

These are just a few of the many uses of Sriracha chili sauce. I encourage you to go out, buy a bottle, experiment and report back!

Links The sauce is so awesome it even has it's own facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sriracha-Rooster-Sauce/31148831142
Huy Fong's website: http://www.huyfong.com/no_frames/sriracha.htm

Mongo's Grill: Helpful Hints!

Mongo's Grill is a unique dining experience that is sure to be delightful as long as you know what you're doing! For those of you who don't know, Mongo's is a do it yourself type Mongolian restaurant. They have an assortment of vegetables, meats, noodles, sauces and seasonings in which you combine and they cook it for you on their grill. There are a few options on their menu, you can get just one bowl, one bowl plus soup and salad bar (which isn't worth it), or the Mega Mongo, unlimited bowls and soup and salad bar. Each one becoming more expensive as it includes more. For most people just one bowl is satisfactory since it's pretty hard to make a bad stir fry but there are a few common errors that people often make that result in unsatisfactory meals and repeat trips to make more bowls. Personally, I have frequented the restaurant on many occasions and have learnt a few things on how to be a successful Mongolian stir fry guru.

Tip # 1: Stack all your food in a certain order, it makes it easier to fit as much as possible into one bowl (if you fill up on one bowl it's less expensive than if you have to go back for more). My winning order is vegetables, meats, noodles, sauces, spices. The noodles are best on top because they all stick together and then they'll absorb all the sauces and oils creating less mess!

Tip #2: Plain and simple, do not overfill your bowl! If you are that hungry, shell out the extra couple dollars for the unlimited bowls and do everyone else a favor by not creating a huge mess when your bowl leaks everywhere.

Tip #3: When choosing your vegetables, make sure you think about it. Just because they're all there for you to pick from doesn't mean that they're going to taste good together. It's all about flavors combining and if you don't think they would go well together, don't put them all in our bowl.

Tip #4: Stick to one or two kinds of meat. Though steak and salmon may sound like they go well together you have to remember that in a stir fry all the flavors mingle. It's best to keep in the same family of meats (seafood, red, white, etc.) in stir fry. (Note: this isn't very helpful to a lot of men since they think all meats go together...all the time.)

Tip #5: Neatly stack your noodles. This does take practice but the way you stack your noodles is very important. The best way to ensure that they won't fall all over the place is to stick to one type of noodle. Once you start adding more than one it gets messy. There's no real trick to stacking them right, just practice makes perfect.

Tip #6:  Make sure to read all the different sauces before choosing which ones you are going to put together. I've seen people just put one scoop of each sauce that they think sounds good without thinking if they even mix well. This is a recipe for disaster. Choose 2-4 different sauces and use multiple scoops of each so that it's of significance to the flavor of the stir fry.

Tip #7: When they ask if you want rice, get it on the side. Though it may sound delicious to have it mixed in, sometimes it's just too much for people and they wished they had gotten it on the side. This way is win, win, you can have it on the side and then if you decide that you like it enough then you can mix it in yourself.

Tip #8: Taste the finishing sauces before you put them on. There are little black containers for a reason, so you can put the sauces in them before finishing off your stir fry. There's nothing worse than ruining a stir fry because the finishing sauce wasn't to your liking.

Tip #9: Kind of an extension of the last tip, do not pour on too much hot sauce! I always see people put way too much hot sauce on and then complain because their mouths are burning. They have Sriracha sauce there and for those unfamiliar with the brand, it's very hot and you need very little to add spice. Once again, I suggest putting the hot sauce in a little black container and add more as you go to avoid a burnt mouth.

Tip #10: Last but not least, finish off with any nuts or crispy chow mein noodles as you wish and enjoy!

For more information on the restaurant locations, hours, etc. visit their website : www.mongosgrill.com

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Terryn Shiells and I am a first time blogger. I'm currently enrolled in my first year of the Creative Communications program at Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I'm an arts and culture enthusiast and have recently learnt to love cooking. I will post about various issues that are prevalent in Winnipeg's lively arts community as well as the latest innovations in cooking gadgets, recipes and restaurants. Take a look inside my mixing bowl of ideas!