Thursday, December 31, 2015

How to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

pen-open-notebook
As a psychology professor, I teach classes on changing behavior, and I usually start by asking my students how many of them have made New Year’s resolutions that failed. Most hands go up. In fact, many people respond that they have stopped making New Year’s resolutions because they don’t work.
But it does not have to be this way. Simply put, if you want to succeed with your New Year’s resolutions, you have to start way before New Year’s Eve to get ready. Don’t make a fervent wish on Dec. 31. Instead, people need to give themselves some preparation time.

The reason that resolutions fail is that people don’t put in enough effort to allow them to succeed. The things we resolve to change in our lives are generally the systematic failures in our lives. For instance, people often resolve to get in shape, stop smoking or drinking, or to get more serious about establishing a career.
But even if you want to make a change, it is not easy to make systematic changes in your behavior. We have habits that get in the way of achieving our goals. We also have constructed an environment that supports our behavior and have surrounded ourselves with people who help us.
You first have to focus on positive goals rather than negative ones. A positive goal is an action you want to perform; a negative goal is something you want to stop doing. Your habits are memories of actions you perform in a particular situation. You can’t learn not to do something, so if you focus yourself only on stopping behaviors, you will never develop new habits.
For example, when I was growing up, I used to bite my nails. I would resolve periodically to stop biting my nails, but that never worked because I would eventually return to my old habit. When I was in graduate school, I observed my own behavior, and discovered that I bit my nails primarily when sitting at my desk at work. So, I bought a bunch of desk toys and started playing with them instead. It is awkward to bite nails while playing with a toy. I now have the habit to play with desk toys, but I no longer bite my nails.
More people also need to make realistic plans for what they want to change about themselves. If you want to start going to the gym more often, it is not enough to say that you want to go to the gym three times a week. Where is that going to fit on your calendar? You need to pick specific days and add that to your agenda. Unless you get specific, you will have a hard time identifying all of the obstacles that will get in your way. Put the gym on your calendar Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. That is specific enough to give you a fighting chance of succeeding. Click here to continue reading.

4 Kitchen Mistakes Not to Make in 2016

IMG_3219
When was the last time you had an oops moment in the kitchen? For me, it was a few weeks back when I absently dropped a potholder on an off, but still hot, burner. Though I quickly realized my mistake, it wasn’t before embossing my cute strawberry pot holder with a fancy new charred pattern … that rendered it unusable.
Eh, it was time for some new potholders anyway.
Who hasn’t make a mistake in the kitchen at one time or another? Whether it’s making a chili way too hot (guilty!) or over-salting a dish (guilty again!) or forgetting a key ingredient, we all mess up from time to time.
What was your last kitchen mistake? Share in the comments, or email me at scaron@bangordailynews.com. I want to hear!
As we approach 2016, here are some important mistakes to avoid as you cook deliciously, eat well and enjoy all that food in Maine has to offer.
Not Tasting as You Go
When you’re cooking, the cooking process can change how different seasonings taste — and their intensity. For this reason, it’s a bad idea to heavily salt and pepper a dish in the early stages of cooking. Instead, season lightly and taste throughout the cooking process so you can adjust seasonings without overwhelming the dish with too much salt or anything else. But, for that matter, you don’t want to under-season either.
Softening Butter Too Much
Have you ever really, really wanted to bake something but didn’t want to take the time to soften butter to room temperature? It’s so easy to pop it in the microwave, right? But often, that leads to inconsistently softened butter where some is completely melted, some is super soft and the rest is firmer. This will impact whatever you bake, changing the texture and consistency of baked goods. And in cookies, it can lead to flatter, more spread out cookies, instead of tender, chewy ones. Instead, take the time to soften butter at room temperature. The end result will be worth the effort.
Using Metal Cooking Utensils in Nonstick Pans
If you’re using nonstick pans, it’s essential to use the right utensils to cook with. Sure, metal spatulas, for instance, seem to just work better for flipping. But the metal scratches the surface of the pan which can be bad for the pan — and for you too. Instead, opt for wood, rubber or other non-abrasive cooking utensils when using nonstick. Or use a well-seasoned cast iron pan instead, which is virtually nonstick thanks to the seasoning.
Not Washing Reusable Bags
It’s not enough to remember your reusable bags when you head to the grocery store. You also need to remember to wash them regularly. After all, you don’t want last week’s raw chicken mingling with this week’s Brussels sprouts, right? Reusable bags can easily become contaminated when exposed to the juices of meats, eggs, produce and more. In 2016, make it a habit to wash them after use.

About Sarah Walker Caron

Sarah Walker Caron is senior features editor for the Bangor Daily News, and resident cook. Her recipes have appeared in the BDN, Betty Crocker publications, Glamour.com and more.

Best wishes for a Great New Year!

New Year's Eve
Sydney Harbour New Years Eve 2012-2013.jpg
New Year’s is the perfect occasion to celebrate love, friendships and all the good things in life. Let's take the time to appreciate what this year has given us and what the new one is about to bring! 

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Movie Review—Trumbo

Trumbo
Trumbo (2015 film) poster.jpg

by Peter J. O’Connell

Trumbo. Released: Nov. 2015. Runtime: 124 mins. Rated: R for language including some sexual references.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” This question resounded throughout the “Red Scare” years of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1947 the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) asked it of a number of Hollywood luminaries. Ten—instantly known as the “Hollywood Ten”—refused to answer it and engaged in verbal sparring with the Committee. In 1950 members of the Ten went to prison for contempt of Congress. After their appearance before HUAC, they also went on the “blacklist.” That is, they found themselves barred from employment in most areas of the entertainment industry.

Dalton Trumbo was one of the Ten—and one of the best-paid and most highly regarded screenwriters of the era, responsible for the scripts of such popular and patriotic movies as Kitty Foyle (1940), A Guy Named Joe (1944), and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). He also was a leftist activist who never made a secret of his sympathy for the Communist Party in the 1930s and his actual “card-carrying membership” (to use another phrase from the era) in 1943-1948 and 1954-1956. But Trumbo believed that the government had no right to compel him to testify to that effect. Now Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach, tells Trumbo’s story—or at least part of it, how he survived the blacklist and was instrumental in ending it.

Trumbo (excellently played by Bryan Cranston) survived by means of cunning, family solidarity and a tremendous work ethic. He and his family had to move from their comfortable ranch to modest homes, where Trumbo incessantly wrote all kinds of material, ranging from total junk to the superb noir Gun Crazy (1950) and the superb romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953). His writing was credited either to “fronts”—other writers or even non-writers. In 1956 his script for the family-friendly film The Brave One garnered an Academy Award for one “Robert Rich.” Rich did not appear to collect the Oscar, but Dalton Trumbo watched the Oscars show on TV at home. Rich was simply the nephew of flamboyant B-movie producer Frank King (hilariously played by John Goodman), for whom Trumbo did much of his sub rosa work. 

Trumbo eventually had so much work that he organized his household on a kind of industrial model. While he churned out material—often written in his favorite creative spot, a filled bathtub!—his wife (Diane Lane) did typing and retyping and kept the accounts and his children delivered the scripts and picked up assignment info. (Trumbo himself could not be seen at producers’ offices for fear of revealing that he was still working.)

The scenes of Trumbo’s operating his “script factory” and interacting with Frank King have a humorous quality. Other scenes have a tense, edgy quality as Trumbo confronts such adversaries as venomous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and conservative activist John Wayne (David James Elliott). The movie’s most intense scene is one between Trumbo and Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlberg). Robinson initially had resisted HUAC but eventually cooperated after he had no work for a year. The scene becomes a thought-provoking clash between moral courage mixed with sanctimonious self-righteousness (Trumbo) and moral cowardice mixed with practical necessity (Robinson). 

In the late 1950s, the blacklist weakens and Trumbo is given open credit for the scripts of the big hits Spartacus and Exodus. So ends Trumbo’s story about Dalton Trumbo. But what about the “rest of the story”?

Shouldn’t the “rest of the story” involve deeper exploration of what it actually meant to be a dedicated Communist or Communist sympathizer in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s? The movie presents the connection as primarily support for labor, civil rights and civil liberties, and opposition to fascism. But it would also have meant support for the Moscow show trials, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And it would have meant support for North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. And it would have meant working to prevent films critical of Communism from being made. These were all positions that Dalton Trumbo took. 

You can read about this “rest of the story” in Allan H. Ryskind’s book Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters—Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler.



“Footnote” to the film: Dalton Trumbo was born and raised in the Montrose/Grand Junction area of Colorado. Though the area residents were definitely not pleased with Trumbo’s involvement with Communism, they did eventually erect a monument to him outside a local movie theatre. It shows him writing in his favorite location—a bathtub!

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

9 Ideas for Easy Crostini Appetizers

Sage Ricotta Crostini with Sugared Cranberries recipe
From the Bangor Daily News
There was a time when I truly believed that my memories were so vivid, they could never fade. I remembered in such detail that the past felt like an unwavering, ingrained part of me. But that was the ignorance of youth, and as I look back on the Christmases of my childhood, I am sad about how many details have faded and blurred.
While I once could recall each Christmas with such clarity, now I remember bits and pieces in a montage of childhood joy. There was the shopping, for instance, which remains one of my favorite parts of the holiday. Finding just the right presents for loved ones is an art, and one that makes me so happy when I get it right.
Of course, my handwritten lists of childhood have transformed into the yearly spreadsheets I use to keep track of presents now.
Now an adult with children, I’ve loved teaching them about putting aside their wants and thinking of others, both through donating to food drives and buying presents for their loved ones. I’ve encouraged them to think about what would really make a great present for everyone on their holiday lists. And I love seeing their eyes light up when they find just the right present for someone else.
We’re in the home stretch now, when it’s time to gather and enjoy each other. And with that comes the need for little bites to fill our bellies while we fill our souls.
Need something quick for your holiday festivities? Why not make some easy crostini. With so many options for topping them, crostini can be a tasty offering for any gathering.
But, first, what is it?

Crostini sounds impressive but really it’s a fancy word for something that’s just somewhere between toast and a crouton. If you like bread (and crackers), this is for you.
And ultimately, crostini is a vessel for delicious toppings. It can be fancier like the Sage Ricotta Crostini with Sugared Cranberries I shared a few weeks back, or it can be simple like the ideas below.
Ready to make some? This is a simple process of brushing slices of bread with oil, seasoning and baking.
How to Make Crostini
Author: 
Serves: 8-12
 
Ingredients
  • 1 French baguette, sliced into ¼-inch slices
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the bread slices on a baking sheet (or two, if necessary), and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 10-12 minutes until just beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly before topping and serving.

 
Once you’ve made the crostini, it’s time for the fun part: topping it. Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.

Easy ideas for topping crostini

  • Quick bruschetta: Mix together diced fresh tomatoes with chopped fresh basil, salt and pepper. Spoon onto crostini and drizzle with a touch of balsamic vinegar glaze
  • Caprese: Spread basil pesto on crostini. Top with a slice of fresh mozzarella and fresh tomato
  • Mediterranean: Spread with ricotta cheese. Top with chopped kalamata olives, artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Raspberry, walnut and gorgonzola: Spread with raspberry preserves, sprinkle with chopped walnuts and crumbled gorgonzola cheese
  • Egg and arugula: Top with sliced hard cooked eggs and mound with baby arugula that’s been mixed with a little fresh lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil
  • Bacon, egg and tomato: Mound with prepared egg salad. Top with a grape tomato. Sprinkle with crumbled bacon.
  • Fig and prosciutto: Spread with fig preserves. Top with baby arugula and a little thinly sliced prosciutto.
  • Meatball marinara: Spoon a little marinara sauce on and top with sliced meatballs. Sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.
  • Barbecue chicken: Spread with shredded rotisserie chicken mixed with barbecue sauce. Top with a little coleslaw.
Arrange your crostini on a platter, and you’re ready to serve.
Click here to read more in the Bangor Daily News.
Sarah Walker Caron

About Sarah Walker Caron

Sarah Walker Caron is senior features editor for the Bangor Daily News, and resident cook. Her recipes have appeared in the BDN, Betty Crocker publications, Glamour.com and more.

Classic Names That Are Making a Comeback

Americans love anything vintage. Vintage furniture, retro swimsuits, old-school music or vintage artwork—the older, the better.
As it turns out, Americans also love classic, old-school baby names. Whether today’s parents are paying homage to their ancestors, or just trying to be hipster, classic names are making a comeback.
Using data from the Social Security Administration and the United States Census Bureau, the experts at MooseRoots were able to find 30 classic names that have come back into popularity over the last few years. Specifically, they looked for names that:
  • Ranked in the top 200 before 1930
  • Ranked outside of the top 200 between 1930 and 1980
  • Ranked in the top 200 again after 1980
If you’ve been on a hopeless hunt for a unique baby name, take a look back in time. Here are 30 classic baby names from the past that have resurged in popularity.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Melting Little Snowballs Cookies



Sandy Oliver
From the Bangor Daily News.  Click here to read more.

The species of holiday cookie known as snowballs really do melt–in your mouth. At a holiday party this weekend I attended, I saw that the hostess had manufactured a gorgeous pile of them, and when I tried one, I thought—umm, pecans. Butter. Sugar. Oddly, though, I have never made this kind of cookie in all my years of Christmas baking. Surely somewhere in piles of recipes I have is a one for snowballs from my Great-aunt Lee, a wonderful baker whose snowballs I recall from my childhood.
Alas, it would take me until Easter to find Lee’s recipe so I went to the great library in the cloud, where I did a little snowball research and discovered something about them that you probably already knew, but that I didn’t: the sugar used is all confectioner’s sugar. No wonder they are so tender.
I threw together a batch, and I chose my mixer to help. I have to say that I was a little dubious about the outcome, especially as I began to add flour to the creamed butter and sugar because the mixture in the bowl looked so dry. Then when I added the nuts, it all came together. The oil in the pecans (or walnuts if you chose to use those instead) was enough to do the job! What a revelation.
The pecans had spent a few moments in the food processor being turned into a coarse meal. Otherwise, chopping on a board until they were quite finely chopped would be quite the chore, but is worth the effort if you don’t use a processor.
It certainly looks like these are the only snowballs we are going to have around here this Christmas. It sounds like it is going to be warm enough on Friday to go on a picnic. If you take these cookies for dessert, though, you won’t have to worry about them melting in the sun, only in your mouth.
Snowball Cookies
Serves: MAkes 3 dozen
 
Ingredients
  • 1 cup butter
  • ¾ cup of confectioner’s sugar
  • 2 ½ cups flour
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup pecans or walnuts, very finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
  2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or grease it.
  3. Additional confectioner’s sugar for rolling
  4. Cream together the butter and sugar.
  5. Add the flour, salt, nuts, and vanilla and mix until a firm mass of dough forms.
  6. Roll inch sized balls of dough and place on the cookie sheet.
  7. Bake for twelve to fifteen minutes. They will be barely browned.
  8. When they are cool enough to handle, roll them in a bowl of confectioner’s sugar until they are generously coated.
  9. Allow to cool further and store in a tin.

 

Looking Back to Look Forward, Carly Simon Finds Her Chorus


Near the end of her new memoir Boys in the Trees, Carly Simon writes: “I’m not the type of person to let go of my past easily. My memory is too good.”
Indeed, Ms. Simon’s memory is beyond good as she recaptures her life from childhood to about the mid-1980s, after she had reached the pinnacle of musical stardom and following the breakup of her marriage to James Taylor. But her memory also had help. Throughout her life Ms. Simon has been a dutiful diarist, and so the whole of her life — the events, thoughts and conversations of almost every day — were just an arm’s length away waiting to be reborn.
On Sunday, Dec. 20 at 4 p.m., Ms. Simon will give a book signing at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.
The Simon family with a young Carly to the left of her brother Peter. — Courtesy Peter Simon
The memoir took more than three years to write she said in a recent interview at her home off Lambert’s Cove Road in Vineyard Haven. “The first six or eight months was just research.”
She pored over her diaries, looking for clues and the melody of her life. She has long been a songwriter and the act of completing a book was in a way merely a longer version of what she had always been doing. And although it wasn’t a conscious decision, the patterns in a song also served as a guide.
“It’s a book whose chorus you don’t find out until it’s over and then you see if there is a chorus, a repeated phrase, or a repeated idea,” she said. “The beast, in a way, is kind of like a chorus. But not really. It’s more of a leitmotif. I think the big chorus doesn’t happen for me until the end when I start talking about forgiveness.”
The beast Ms. Simon refers to is the aggressive embodiment of the hurt and insecurity she felt in her life. And it does appear throughout the book, beginning when she was a little girl, the third daughter born into a wealthy New York family whose father Richard Simon started the publishing company that would become Simon and Schuster.
Performing with James Taylor at the Oak Bluffs School. — Courtesy Carly Simon
“I saw that the effect my father had on me was so crucial because of the lack of self esteem that I got from his not wanting a third daughter,” she said of her childhood. “I wasn’t beloved to him. And I saw it in contrast with how he was with my sisters.”
She developed a crippling stutter as a young girl, which made her shy and afraid of her own voice, a feeling that never went away. “I don’t like to be on stage either because I don’t like to be in the spotlight and that probably has to do with the early days in school and being called on in class and I couldn’t say anything because of my stammer,” she said.
A strange scenario for someone who has spent so much of her life on stage, performing for millions. But incongruities and insecurities are often at the heart of art and the drive to succeed. Click here to continue reading.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Movie Review—Spotlight

Spotlight
Spotlight (film) poster.jpg

by Peter J. O'Connell

Spotlight. Released: Nov. 2015. Runtime: 128 mins. Rated: R for some language including sexual references.

When Marty Baron (played by Liev Schreiber) arrives in 2001 as the new managing editor of the Boston Globe, it's expected that he'll probably shake up the newspaper, which is undergoing changes of ownership and some financial difficulties,  Baron does that, but he also does something that eventually shakes up more than a newspaper—it shakes up the oldest existing institution in Western civilization, the Roman Catholic Church, the world's largest religious denomination. Spotlight is the true account of how journalists in pursuit of a news story brought about this historic development, one that eventually had, so to speak, global ramifications.

Boston is a sports-crazed city with historically a huge Irish-Catholic population. Baron is not from Boston, is not Irish, is not Catholic—he is not even a sports fan! But his outsider's eye leads him to suggest that the Globe's small team of investigative reporters for long-term projects—known as the Spotlight team—take a fresh look at scattered reports over the years about sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy and particularly at the response of the church hierarchy, headed by Bernard Cardinal Law (Len Cariou), to such abuse. 

The somewhat quirky but talented team members—Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James)--all with Catholic backgrounds, take to their task with energy. After all, they don't want to lose their jobs as Baron shakes up the paper! The team is supervised by “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), who is also active in the investigation, and Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery). Bradlee, Jr., is the son of the legendary Ben Bradlee, who was editor of the Washington Post at the time of Woodward and Bernstein's classic reporting on the Watergate scandal, the subject of the 1976 cinema classic All the President's Men.

The circle of truth cast by the Spotlight team's dogged interviewing and arduous cross-checking of records expands and expands, exposing more and more evil—from one pedophile priest and his victims to scores of priests and hundreds of victims; from seeming simple incompetence on the part of the hierarchy to something approaching a systematic cover-up conspiracy; from complicity in the cover-up by a few police, political and judicial figures, and lawyers to corrupt actions—and inaction—by many in those professions over many years. Even the Globe itself over the years may have become too cozy with the hierarchy.

Tom McCarthy, director and co-writer, shapes Spotlight in a concise, economical way that belies the fact that the film is slightly longer than most. He infuses it with steadily mounting tension, even in such  matters as the poring over of dusty archives. And he avoids the hoary tropes that often appear in “expose: films. There are no strangers lurking in the shadows, no cars following too closely at night, no threatening phone calls, no bullets through windows. But the fact that there is potential danger—that of ostracism of the reporters and financial damage to the paper—is made clear.

Spotlight lacks cinematographic pyrotechnics, but one visual technique is subtly effective. Almost every outside scene has a Catholic church or institution somewhere in it, thus establishing the nearly ubiquitous presence of the Church in the city. McCarthy's greatest achievement, though, is in his casting. He has created a true ensemble, a team of talented players working together, to portray the team of reporters working together. No sooner does one think, as one will, that so-and-so deserves an Oscar than one thinks “but so does so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so.” The actors meld with their characters and with each other. And the script by McCarthy and his co-writer, Josh Singer, provides just enough indications of the characters' off-the-job lives to make us see them as full persons but does not lead us astray from the main story into side stories.

That main story is, of course, an enormously important one. Amid the current indignation felt by much of the public about perceived media bias and laxity, Spotlight shows that sometimes journalists can fulfill a spiritual role more than churchmen do. Good journalism, such as that of the Spotlight team, embodies the Biblical maxim: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”



“Footnotes” to the film:With regard to the casting of Spotlight, a Web site has placed photos of the actors in the movie next to photos of the actual persons whom they portray. The physical resemblances are truly striking. (2) In theaters shortly before the release of Spotlight was another film about journalism, Truth, starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather. The film deals with the notorious episode during the Presidential campaign of 2004 in which Rather displayed on TV a document, purportedly from the 1970s, indicating that George W. Bush was derelict in his National Guard duties at that time. In actuality, the document was quickly exposed by knowledgable members of the public as obviously inauthentic. Its typography and military jargon were not those of the decade of the 1970s but from the 1990s or later. Rather, in effect, defended the document as “perhaps not authentic” but “expressive of a larger truth” about Bush. CBS' firing of Rather eventually followed. Truth, instead of focusing on the many interesting story possibilities that might have been followed up about the inauthentic document and its exposure, focuses on a purported political/corporate conspiracy to silence the liberal Rather. This claim is as inauthentic as the dubious document. The title of the movie is a complete misnomer. Robert Redford, who played Bob Woodward in All the President's Men, should be ashamed of his involvement in this meretricious movie, meretricious both in theme and technique. Redford is a liberal activist, but liberalism should be expressed without lying in the way that Truth does.