My word this week is apostatised. I found it in Color Me English by Caryl Phillips in the essay titled “Shusaku Endo: Confessions of a True Believer.” It’s on page 210, describing the novel Silence by Japanese author, Shusaku Endo:

The novel centres on Rodrigues, a young Jesuit evangelist who travels to seventeenth-century Japan from Portugal in order to discover why his mentor has apostatised rather than suffer martyrdom. p. 210

According to Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, apostatize (I’m guessing the version without the z is a British spelling) means to commit apostasy. The definition of apostasy that seems to fit is “renunciation of a religious faith.” Later in the story of the Silence, the young Jesuit finds himself also going against his own beliefs, trampling an image of Christ in order to prevent Japanese converts from being tortured. According to Phillips, the missionary “decided that, in this instance, martyrdom would be unacceptably selfish.”

Edited to add: Commenters are curious about any relation to the word apostle, so I accessed the on-line Oxford English Dictionary through my library. It looks like they aren’t as similar as they seem. Both Greek words, but apostle comes from a word meaning messenger and apostasy from a word meaning withdraw. At least, that’s how I’m interpreting it. If anyone is good with Greek, I’d love to get someone else’s opinion.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Bermudaonion’s Weblog. Kathy says: “Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.”

I’m right on plan for the month of May — 655 minutes of the 1400 that I intend to exercise and I’ve worked through an exercise DVD every other day.

My best workout was on my birthday this past Saturday. I turned 50. So, just to prove I could, I did the third and final phase of the Slim in 6 workout. It was my first time so I didn’t really know what to expect — 65 minutes of cardio and strength-training with a bit of stretching at the end. I had a great time!

How was your week?

My reading has slowed as other things like gardening, trip-planning, and celebrating birthdays sped up.

I was on track for my exercise goals in my first report for May: Readers’ Workouts May 8 (Check back tomorrow to see if I still am. It will take a fair amount of effort to get there.)

I received and awarded my first ever blogging award: Liebster Blog Award.

For Weekend Cooking, I celebrated my 50th birthday with Chocolate Chip Bread: Weekend Cooking: Chocolate Chip Bread.

Read

I didn’t finish any books last week.

Reading

I read about half of Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs. I want to finish it, but there’s a waiting list at the library and they want it back. So, I’ll have to pick it up again later. I’ve switched back to Why Calories Count by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim, a book I started in April during the Read-a-Thon.

I’m still reading Color Me English, the next selection for our book club. If I’m going to get it back to the library in time for someone else to read it, I’ll need to get through it more quickly. It turns out to be a collection of essays. I’m enjoying it, but there’s no plot to drive me through the pages.

Will Read

Julia’s Child by Sarah Pinneo is a May selection of the From Left to Write Book Club so I want to read that. I’m wishing for something purely fun, though, so I after Julia’s Child, I’ll pick a romance or a YA novel.

What are you reading?

It’s Monday! What Are Your Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. Be sure to check out her post today to see her selections and the list of links to all the other participating bloggers.

Since buying myself a cake isn’t in my current food plan, I’m celebrating with Chocolate Chip Bread. The original recipe came from allrecipes.com: Chocolate Chip Bread II Recipe. Of course, I changed it to make it a little healthier — some whole wheat flour, a little less sugar and fat. It’s still not health food, but a satisfying alternative to cake.

Chocolate Chip Bread tastes wonderful either fresh out of the bread machine or toasted. It’s good with nothing on it, but I like it with yogurt cheese mixed with just enough mayo to make it a good texture for spreading. The tangy yogurt flavor contrasts nicely with the sweetness of the bread.

The secret to chocolate chip bread is to freeze the chocolate chips and add them five minutes before the end of the first kneading. Otherwise, the chocolate chips melt and you get chocolate bread, which isn’t bad but not quite the same thing.

Chocolate Chip Bread for the Bread Machine
modified from Chocolate Chip Bread II by Joy Weese Moll

1 cup whey (from making yogurt cheese, skim milk or water would also work)
1 egg
3 tablespoons organic raw sugar
1 teaspoon salt

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup bread flour
3 tablespoons of butter

2 teaspoons yeast

1 cup frozen dark chocolate chips

1. Stir together whey, egg, sugar, and salt in small bowl or measuring cup.

2. Measure the flours into a bowl. Chop the butter into several pieces and stir into the flours.

3. Pour the liquid ingredients into the bread machine bucket. Top with the flours and butter. Make a well in the center of the flour and measure 2 teaspoons of yeast into it.

4. Add the frozen chocolate chips when the “Add” signal beeps or about 5 minutes before the end of the first kneading cycle.

How do you celebrate birthdays?

Find more recipes and other food stories as we celebrate Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads.

The book bloggers were well and truly over the whole blog award thing before I ever came on the scene, judging by the number of times that I come across comment forms that declare “This is an Award-Free Zone.” As much fun as it is to get an award, you can kind of see that it would get old pretty quickly to write posts like this nominating other blogs for the award. And, it might get pretty circular after awhile.

On the other hand, as we learned during the April Platform Challenge at My Name is Not Bob, linking to other blogs is a terrific way to build community.

In order to open the circle a little bit, I’m going to give my five nominations to book bloggers who started about the same time that I did or after. I figure that they, like me, missed out on the award-giving trend in the book-blogging world and might get a kick out of it.

Plus, I would like to introduce some of my new writing friends who participated in the April Platform Challenge to some more book bloggers. We can help you. We are your audience.

According to the people who nominated me, there are 4 rules to follow when receiving the Liebster Blog Award:

1. Thank the one who nominated you by linking back.
2. Nominate five blogs with fewer than 200 followers.
3. Let your nominees know by leaving a comment on their sites.
4. Add the award image to your site.

So, item 1, thank you Anne of Life on the Funny Farm who was certainly the funniest writer to participate in the April Platform Challenge, Gerry Wilson whose descriptive prose exudes warmth and enthusiasm, and Sarah of sarahscapes who writes beautiful evocative poetry. I’m so honored to be nominated by three such different people who appreciated different things about the way I work.

And, item 2, here are my five nominees for the Liebster Blog award:

Martha at Hey, I want to read that writes with wit and whimsy about books with lovely covers featuring beautiful houses and dresses.

The Brunette Librarian is a fellow Missouri librarian who loves books about strong women and reads them quickly so there’s always something new on her blog.

Alysia of My Little Pocketbooks is not new to book blogging since she’s one of the powers behind Mocha Girls Read, but her new personal blog gives her a chance to join book blogger memes and write more personal reviews.

Libby at libbysbookblog reads a variety of books–literary, nonfiction, classics. She participates in two of my favorite book blog memes (Weekend Cooking and Wondrous Words Wednesday) as well writing really fun things for a meme called the Trifecta Writing Challenge.

Julie at ReadHanded is another eclectic reader. She writes outstanding summaries of the books she reads.

I’m off to tell the winners (item 3), having already posted the image at the top of this post (item 4).

My week went well. I exercised 300 minutes of the 1400 I intend to complete in May and I’m on course with doing full-body DVDs every other day. Yay! Last month I was always behind so it’s great to be just about on track for a change.

How are you doing? Answer on your blog and use the Linky or answer in the comments.

• Book Review: Dido’s Prize by Eugenia O’Neal which I deemed the perfect summer beach read.
• Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Rhonda Britten which I compared with the book I read a few weeks ago with the same title, published in the same year, and on the same topic, but two completely different takes on the issue.
• Book Review: The Fire Island Cookbook by Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen which led me to dream about beach house vacations and parties.

I had a great time with a project where I interviewed Dana and she interviewed me. I think our blog readers learned a lot about us!

• Interview: Poet and Blogger Dana Dampier
• Blogger Spotlight~ An interview with Joy Weese Moll

In Readers’ Workouts May 1, I reported that I met my April exercise goals (just in the nick of time) and set my May targets. Please join us tomorrow for a new edition of Readers’ Workouts — it’s a great opportunity for accountability and supportive encouragement.

My word for Wondrous Words Wednesday was suzerainty and it came from a travel guidebook, of all places!

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Read

I read More than a Mistress by Mary Balogh. I was worried last week that I’d read it before since it was first published in 2000, but I don’t think I had. It’s not as good as her recent novels, with an annoying bit near the end where the reader doesn’t get to witness a key scene, but still fun. I like seeing how authors improve their story telling skills over time.

As I mentioned, I finished Do I Look Fat in This? the second book that I’ve read with that title in less than a month. They were both useful books in their own way and ones I would recommend to women as a solution to the trap our society puts us in:

• Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Jessica Weiner
• Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Rhonda Britten

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Reading

Our next book club meeting isn’t until the 24th, but I’m already reading the book because we have limited library copies available. Color Me English by Caryl Phillips is a series of essays by a black man raised in England, now a citizen of the United States — an interesting perspective both an outsider and insider at the same time.

My lunch-time reading is currently Drop Dead Healthy by A.J. Jacobs, a humorous look at one of my favorite topics — how to live a healthy lifestyle in our current environment.

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Will Read

I’ve just started both of those books, so I’m not sure if anything new will make it in the queue, but if it does, I’ll probably go with Julia’s Child by Sarah Pinneo, a May selection of the From Left to Write Book Club, and Why Calories Count by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim.

What are you reading?

It’s Monday! What Are Your Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila of Book Journey. Be sure to check out her post today to see her selections and the list of links to all the other participating bloggers.

Source: Received, unsolicited, for review from the publisher

Summary: Fire Island is a vacation spot near New York City where the authors, Mike DeSimone and Jeff Jenssen also known as the World Wine Guys, entertain at a beach house. As their nickname implies, DeSimone and Jenssen also travel so these recipes are from all over: Tuscany, Spain, the Caribbean, and more.

Many of the menus in this cookbook involve dishes that can be prepared ahead of time and finished at the last minute, so you can do your prep work in the morning and then spend your day by the water along with the rest of the gang. They can also be divided up among the group, with one or  two people tackling each course, so that nobody has to work too hard to get dinner on the table. With fourteen menus to choose from, there is one for each weekend from Memorial Day to Labor Day, or one per night for a two-week stay at the beach. (p. 2)

Gorgeous full-page photos throughout the book and wine-pairings for every course make this a beautiful book for browsing.

Thoughts: Living in Missouri, beach house vacations are as fantastic as a fortnight in Florence, a photo safari in Kenya, or a garden tour in Ireland. Oh wait, I’m doing that last one soon, so none of those are impossible dreams. In the meantime, I enjoyed reading this cookbook as a virtual visit to beach locations around the world.

I’m not very experienced at entertaining so a few of these menus look a little daunting, although splitting the work among the guests would make a difference. Many of the menus seem high-fat to me, but these are meant to be special occasion meals. Some could be lightened by simply leaving out a course or converting something like Mayan Chicken and Lime Soup, p. 84, to a simpler tomato soup since it’s on the same menu with Tequila-Marinated Hanger Steak on a Bed of Grilled Peppers and Onions.

I marked several recipes to try this summer, including Fusilli with “Crudo” Tomato Sauce, p. 32, Basil Vanilla Ice Cream, p. 39 and the afore-mentioned Mayan Chicken and Lime Soup, p. 84 which would make a great main dish in our house.

I would like to try the Greek-inspired menu late in the summer: Mykonos By Torchlight, starting on page 69. Since Rick is allergic to red meat, I would substitute chicken for the lamb, but here’s the menu as The Fire Island Cookbook presents it:

• Feta Cheese Baked in Puff Pastry
• Tomato, Cucumber, and Feta Salad
• Rosemary-Rubbed Boneless Leg of Lamb with Tomato-Eggplant Caponata
• Pistachio Frozen Greek Yogurt

Appeal: The Fire Island Cookbook will be most useful to those who entertain in the summer, but if you’re like me and just dream about it, you’ll enjoy it, too. Vegetarians will find little to dream over, however.

Challenges: This is the 8th of 19 books for the 2012 Foodies Read 2 Challenge.

Edited to add: I just realized this works for the What’s In a Name challenge as a topographical feature — island!

Visit Beth Fish Reads for other Weekend Cooking posts.

Source: Library

Summary: Rhonda Britten was a life coach on the reality TV series Starting Over during the time this book was written and published. She has written several other books beginning with Fearless Living in 2001. In Do I Look Fat in This?, Britten covers the issue of body image and weight. The book is part memoir, part self-help.

Thoughts: I had this book out of the library, then took it back as being not quite what I needed for my own development and not quite what I needed in my continued thinking about body image while reading another book titled Do I Look Fat in This? (Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Jessica Weiner). But then I realized that I was still thinking about two things I read in this book, so I re-requested it from the library and read the whole thing.

The first thing that struck me was this bit on page 24:

Many of us are on a quest for body perfection, while others have given it up on the surface, but still cling to the belief that if only their bodies were different, their lives would be so much better.

When I reached that point in the book I’d been thinking, “this isn’t me.” I have rarely, in fact, asked “Do I look fat in this?” or been conscious of many of the other body image issues that I’ve been reading about recently. I felt that Britten called me out with this quote. She reminded me that I gave up on the quest for body perfection long ago, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t affected by body image issues. I gave up around age 9 when it was clear that I could never compete with the pretty girls on their playing field but I could get enough positive feedback with a focus on being smart and bookish.

The second part I kept thinking about was her description of how mass market clothes are made. Fit models are used to determine the proportions — women who are a “perfect” size 8 or size 12 that all clothes in that line are made to fit. Manufacturer’s love fit models with small breasts and hips because clothes are cheaper to make if they don’t have to go around curves. Guess what happens when a curvy woman picks a pair of pants off the rack and tries them on? Nothing fits right.

That section and planning my wardrobe for the upcoming Ireland trip conspired to reveal my denial about my closet. My clothes didn’t fit. I had been putting off clothes-shopping because the last foray was disappointing. At that point, I knew I was near the end of my weight loss and went shopping with the fantasy that now that I was normal weight, clothes would fit. Ha! In fact, I had the exact same problem that I had when I was heavy. Pants that fit in the hips and thighs left a huge gap in the waist.

Armed with information from Britten and some advice about curvier brands from the ladies at 3 Fat Chicks (and assisted by my favorite sales lady at Nordstrom’s), I made another attempt a few weeks ago with much better results. I bought Not Your Daughter’s Jeans that fit in the hips and, then, had the waist taken in. And, this time, I refused to “feel fat” simply because the jeans weren’t cut to fit my body.

The exercises in this book, along with the experiences of Britten and the women she coaches in the Starting Over house, eventually lead the reader to this result on page 232:

When my motivation changed from “body perfect” to “body healthy,” something shifted inside of me. I quit chasing an illusion. I know it might sound like giving up, but in fact, this was the beginning of true freedom for me.

When lifelong health became my commitment, I began to filter all my actions, all my thoughts, all my feelings through that one intention.

Appeal: Do I Look Fat in This? by Rhonda Britten and Do I Look Fat in This? by Jessica Weiner (Book Review: Do I Look Fat in This? by Jessica Weiner) were published in the same year. I’m guessing everyone involved with both books wished they weren’t released with the same titles.   Still, it does make for an interesting comparison because it’s hard to imagine two more different books on the same topic with the same title.

Rhonda Britten is more like me — older, more inclined to overeating than other eating disorders, and more interested in changing one woman at a time than the entire culture. Jessica Weiner is younger, suffered from a different eating disorder, and wants us to change ourselves and our culture by changing the way we talk about our bodies. Either or both books will support a reader who wants a healthier body image and a healthier body.

How do you cope with clothes designed for less curvy women, conflicting messages that simultaneously shove skinny fashion models and 1000-calorie fast food lunches into our concepts of what’s normal, and body image issues?

Source: Won from the author during the Black History Month blog hop hosted by Mocha Girls Read and Reflections of a Bookaholic. See the video of my name being drawn by the author’s daughter: Black History Month Blog Hop Giveaway Winner. My prize package included some fun extras — pirate playing cards, bookmarks, and a colorful Virgin Islands postcard featuring a map, pirates, and exotic birds and flowers.

Summary: Dido, an enslaved woman in 17th century Jamaica, disguises herself as a young man to run away. She finds a form of safety on the ship commanded by the pirate El Negro, but, of course, that plunges her into all manner of other dangers. Her goal is to earn enough treasure as a pirate to buy the freedom of her family members, but the life of a pirate and the attraction she feels for her captain conspire to pull her away from an island that had never been a true home for her or her people.

Thoughts: The author of Dido’s Prize, Eugenia O’Neal, lives in the British Virgin Islands so it’s no wonder that reading this novel feels like taking a Caribbean vacation with a beautiful setting of island and sea. I read this a few months ago, but saved my review until now because I think it would be the perfect summer beach read with pirates, adventures, and romance.

Eugenia O’Neal’s website, Eugenia Writes!,  is a delight as well. Her recent blog entries include her participation in the Spring into Horror Read-a-Thon, photos of the exotic fruit of her sugar apple tree, and the geographical “facts” of the fictional island setting of her next novel to be released in June.

Appeal: This is presented as an adult literary novel, but I think it works equally well as a YA title for older teens. There’s enough adventure for the gents even though the point-of-view character is a young woman. As a romance reader, I enjoyed the love the story but Dido’s Prize is structured as an adventure, not a romance novel.

What do you recommend for summer reading in 2012?