Moving Beyond Blogging

I discovered YouTube tonight. Okay, I know everyone younger than me--and maybe some older--know about it, but I'd just vaguely heard of it. But then I read an article by Julie Powell about her experiments with it. She's the author of Julia and Julie: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen, about the year in which she decided to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I realy like food writing, and I enjoyed the book--although her language sometimes made me cringe. It's that F-word. Anyway I was intrigued enough by her that I went to YouTube, typed her name in the search spot, and watched a couple of videos. The skirt steak salad looked good, and the critics who said she's a little fat for TV are probably right, but somehow it just didn't do much for me. So I'm not moving on to YouTube, and I'm not going to check out MySpace, though I hear people are even selling houses there. Nope. Blogging embarrasses me enough--seems just a bit egotistic, but then, aren't writers known for ego?
Meantime, waiting for me on my bookshelf is Julia Child's My Life in France, written with her husband's grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme. I just finished a "food" mystery by Diane Mott Davidson, so I'm in a happy streak of food reading. My own memoir/cookbook languishes in the hands of a publisher with no word, and I don't want to spook her by asking about it.
It strikes me as funny that the central figure in my mystery, a realtor/single mother of two, is not much of a cook and more often than not grabs pizza or takes her girls out to the local grill. But then, that's who she is. Just because she's my fictional creation doesn't mean she has to like to cook as much as I do. It wouldn't fit her personality.
My new cooking hint: throw a bunch of good Parmagiano rinds into the soup pot. I'm going to cook a big pot of canellini bean soup Sunday for friends, and the recipe calls for that. But I told Megan I bet it would be great in her impressive minestrone. You can actually buy rinds at Central Market. I'm also going to make oatmeal/raisin cookies--found a wonderful recipe with cinnamon and allspice from a local spice vendor (surprised it doesn't have chile powder in it). And that's dinner--with a cheese appetizer, bread from one guest, salad from another. A lovely lazy winter evening. And, oh boy, does it feel like winter here today--a damp cold.