Get a sneak peek at the table of contents and introduction of Debbie Stoller’s latest addition to the Stitch ‘N Bitch library, Stitch ‘N Bitch Superstar Knitting! This is the book that takes everything to the next level–it’s packed with the most advanced techniques and 41 gorgeous patterns to showcase your new skills!

It’s easy to forget that ovens are energy-hogs. Ever pre-heat for longer than necessary? Or can’t resist opening the door to peek in on your baked goods (completely guilty). And since there are no Energy Star qualified residential ovens available today, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands in order to minimize energy expenditure. Myra Goodman’s new The Earthbound Cook offers up these tips (in addition to delicious recipes) to help use your oven efficiently:

• Buy an oven thermometer. The one built into your oven may not be accurate, the actual temperature may be higher than the oven control indicates.

• If you have a double oven, use the smaller oven if the dish fits. Save the larger oven for the multiple pans or large items.

• For small items that need baking or reheating, use a countertop oven, such as a toaster oven. These appliances preheat faster and have a lower output of watts.

• The longer an oven is turned on but not used, the more energy it wastes. Start preheating the oven just 10 to 15 minutes before you need to use it.

• Look for ways to maximize the use of your oven. Instead of cooking one dish at a time, if you’re baking an entrée, choose a vegetable or potato you can cook at the same time.

• Resist peeking: Opening the oven door drops the temperature by at least 25˚F, and the oven has to switch back on again to replace it.

• If you have a convection feature on your oven, it uses 20 percent less energy than a standard electric oven and has a shorter warm-up time.

• Self-cleaning ovens are more energy efficient than standard ovens because of their thicker insulation. This means they lose less heat to the surrounding air. If you have a self-cleaning model, don’t clean it too often: this is the most energy draining of the oven’s functions.

Just in time for the high holidays season, Molly Katz, author of Jewish as a Second Language, shares a CliffsNotes-style rundown of Rosh Hashanah customs and the symbolism (and humor) behind them.

Click here to read an excerpt from Jewish as a Second Language.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, which begins this year at sundown on September 8. For Jews it is the symbolic anniversary of the creation of the world–and the actual anniversary of having our celebration critiqued annually by an expert panel of relatives.

The celebration includes:

1. The sounding of the Shofar. This is the ceremonial ram’s horn that looks like the curled tentacle of a hungry octopus. It dates from ancient times, when making loud noises on the New Year was thought to scare off demons. Hence our Jewish habit of making loud noises in all situations.

Four specific blasts must be made, and in some homes 100 blasts of the horn are traditional. This insures a good year, and also excellent business for all the pulmonologists in our family.

The notes of the horn represent the sound of a King’s coronation, and the wailing of a Jewish heart. (Actually, many sounds may be compared to the wailing of a Jewish heart, such as a hedge trimmer.)

2. The sacred elements of the festive meal. A round challah bread is served, which symbolizes completion, as well as the waistlines of many of the guests. We eat the bread not with butter but with honey and apples; this represents a sweet New Year and serves the dual purpose of honoring our equally traditional lactose intolerance.

On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, we eat a “new fruit”–a fruit that has recently come into season but that we have not yet had the opportunity to eat. When we eat this new fruit, we say a special blessing thanking God for keeping us alive until this season (and warning Him not to let the fruit keep us up all night with the runs).

3. Many families follow the custom called Tashlich (casting off), in which they walk to flowing water, say a prayer, and symbolically throw their sins into the stream. Part of this custom is to warn one another not to accidentally cast our tennis bracelets into the flowing water, lest there follow an earsplitting live demonstration of the wailing of a Jewish heart.

If you’d like to participate in our celebration of the New Year, hint around to the Jews you know for an invitation. Remember that Jewish hints have all the delicacy of a cinderblock. So instead of saying, “I’m intrigued by your New Year customs,” try, “My doctor just put me on Prozac because I wasn’t invited to any Jewish New Year events.”

Enjoy, and Shana Tova (which means “good year,” and is also the name of the Hebrew Goddess of Overcooked Chicken).

My sad, undone button

I’m on my way to work, steps away from the subway, when the unthinkable happens–a button pops off my jacket. I’m able to chase down the button–half the battle on a subway grate-filled block–and think “Do I walk all the way home and get a different top?” even though I’d really rather not…

Be Thrifty to the rescue! One 2 dollar sewing kit from the bodega across from the office and a few minutes later, my button is securely back on my blazer, ready to be secured for warmth on this unusually blustery August day!

I know, sewing a button isn’t brain surgery, but I’m always afraid my poor handiwork will cause the button to fall off again and I won’t be lucky enough to recover it a second time. Using the instructions below, I am fully confident in my button’s stability–maybe I’ll even re-attach the other one for peace of mind!

Button-Sewing 101 from Be Thrifty

Button-sewing is phenomenally easy, so don’t be discouraged by the number of steps below–this technique is particularly good for staying power. To sew on a coat button, use extra-strong thread, or try unwaxed white dental floss. (Color the floss with a marker to match the button)

Re-attachement in progress

Tools: Button; needle; thread; scissors

1. Thread a needle, double the thread over, and knot the end twice.

2. Starting from the underside of the fabric, make two stitches, one on top of the other, where you want to affix the button. This anchors your knot.

3. Hold the button over the “anchor” stitches and pull the threaded needle through from the underside and up through one of the button’s holes. Go back down an adjacent hole. Don’t pull the stitches too tightly–you want wiggle room so you can button the garment when you’re done.

All done--good as new!

5. Pull the button slightly away from the fabric and wind the remaining thread several times around the stitched thread, under the button and above the fabric.

6. Push the needle back through the fabric and knot on the underside, then make a few small stitches over the knot to secure the button.

7. To make your work last, put a drop of clear nail polish over the thread on top of the button.

“No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.”

-   Taoist proverb

The 365 Cats and 365 Dogs Page-A-Day contests are accepting photo entries early via the web!

Visit PageADay.com to enter your pet photo!

The shocking date behavior in My Blind Date Went Blind! is unbelievable enough when described in the book, but seeing the most cringe-worthy moments “re-enacted” takes it to a whole new level of horror and hilarity! Watch, laugh, and experience the absurdity of a truly bad blind date (without actually experiencing one) in the video below.

We’re celebrating wine and cheese this week within the Workman family with the publication of two new books–The Guide to West Coast Cheese and Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. Learn even more about the delicious marriage between dairy and grapes at the Timber Press blog and Story Publishing blog.

Cheeses, as Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home points out, are infinitely nuanced, with a complex range of flavors and textures. Cheese can be explored the same way you might explore new wines, so go to a local purveyor and sample until you find your favorites. But you may want a little background about what you’re trying:

• Cheese can be made from cow, sheep or goat’s milk.

• A cheese rind can be described as bloomed, washed or flavored.

• For a bloomed rind, mold spores are sprayed on cheeses, where they develop a soft white exterior (think Camembert).

• A washed rind indicates a cheese that has been bathed, often in wine or beer, facilitating the growth of beneficial bacteria. Washed-rind cheeses are typically very pungent, such as Taleggio.

• Cheeses may also be coated in ash or herbs to introduce different flavors.

Now that you know a little about what you’re eating, here are a few of Thomas Keller’s suggestions on how to pair your cheeses:

• Try a pungent cheese with something savory, such as prosciutto or salami.

• Sweet, creamy cheeses go well with some form of fruit – fresh, dried or cooked.  You can try pears, apples, grapes, apricots, peaches, tangerines, dates and raisins.

• Think about including a crunchy component with your cheeses. Toast, flatbread, or nuts (candied, herbed, toasted) all work.

Susan Edmiston, co-author of The Cow in the Parking Lot, gives her take on the infamous JetBlue flight attendant whose angry escape from his “workplace,” an airplane mid-runway, has been all over the news.

Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who responded to a passenger’s offensive behavior by chewing her out over the public address system and fleeing down the plane’s chute, has become something of a folk hero for dramatizing the tensions that arise out of today’s often-frustrating air travel.

This appears to be one of those situations where it’s not clear what will turn out for the best. The NY Times this a.m. dredged up the story about the bus driver many years ago in NY who got so fed up that he went awol and drove the bus to Florida.

To be sure, Slater took some serious risks in his response.  He had to spend a night in jail, faces serious charges, and may well be fined for the expenses involved in deploying the chute.  Nevertheless, his response to the passenger’s reported hostility was sort of creative.

It appears to be coming out from what I’ve read that it was the passenger who was abusive and intentionally slammed the overhead bin door on the flight attendant’s head.  Passengers on the plane wrote into the NY Times that he had a gash on his head from this event, and lost it when the same woman got out of her seat before the plane had come to a stop and was abusive again when he told her to sit down.  The flight attendant actually thanked the other passengers before he took the slide.

Many readers’ responses to the Times’s blog post were along the lines of, “Why doesn’t someone charge the passenger with assault?”

The flight attendant’s response bears some similarity to the response to anger directed at us by others that we recommend in The Cow in the Parking Lot — Leave the scene!  He did it with style.  Whether the reward he will reap from his fifteen minutes of fame will outweigh the cost of his outburst (and bust out) remains to be seen.  At least, in this day of enraged workplace murders,he did not physically retaliate.

Yes, it’s common sense that a publishing house would attract bookworm employees. Some of us read old books, some of us read new books, some of us read to our kids, and some of us re-read a seven volume graphic novel every year (no, really). This summer, a handful of Workmanites were kind enough to tell me about the tomes that have been weighing down their book bags.

So, in the spirit of beach chairs, sand, and sunglasses, here are some of the spines we cracked while sprawling in the sun on our vacations… or at least (sigh), some of our subway reads. I hereby present to you… the unofficial Workman Summer Reading List.

First, a few highlights, in the words of the readers:

The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman. “So much fun, so cleverly constructed, so real—who isn’t something less than perfect? A great first novel.” –Suzie …and “Great for plane trips, beaches, etc., because it’s told in short takes. Light reading, but full of keen characterizations.” –Ann

The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald. “The novel’s premise (what kind of life would a man have if he had spent his first year as a ‘practice baby’ in a ‘practice house’ on a college campus?) is as irresistible as the title’s promise.” –Suzie

Help Lord–The Devil Wants Me Fat, by C.S. Lovett. “A faith-based diet book [that’s] absolutely hysterical. The main focus of the diet is fasting and resisting Satan’s evil plan to make you obese.” [Unfortunately, it’s out of print. I guess the Devil is winning.] –Randy

The Four-Story Mistake, by Elizabeth Enright. “I’m… reading [this] aloud to my children… The ‘mistake’ is the nickname for a wonderful rambling house that’s as much a character in the story as the four Melendy children. This book was published in the 40s, but it’s full of adventure and a wonderfully warm family, so doesn’t feel dated at all.” –Page

Tinkers, by Paul Harding. “…well worth the effort, a lot of interesting language…about fathers and the wilds of New England.” –Ann

Last Call, by Daniel Okrent. “[This] history of prohibition is thorough and engrossing and eye-opening. And it’s about another weird moment in American history, a time when the Ku Klux Klan and feminists and fundamentalists were all on the wrong side of the table together. Anyone curious about organized crime or our tax laws or marijuana reform or booze or so many other things will learn a lot from this one.” –Suzie

Imperial Bedrooms, by Brett Easton Ellis. “Any time a new Brett Easton Ellis book comes out, I need to buy it immediately. This sequel to Less Than Zero was breezy read, a perfect way to unwind on a warm summer night. There’s just something alluring about stories of horrible people doing bad things to each other.” –Randy

…and one more plug, that’s too good not to relay here:

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, by Robin D. G. Kelley. “It’s an exhaustive portrait, encompassing nearly every gig; what was played, and how. For jazz geeks like me, it is a marvelous wallow in music trivia. He even writes about Monk’s 1962 engagement at my favorite club, The Renaissance, on Sunset Strip. That was the one and only time I heard him live. Between sets, he unexpectedly sat down with my girlfriend and me. Don’t ask me what he said. I was nearly catatonic with shock, being a teenager, and in awe of him. Oh, would I like that opportunity, again!” –Michael
Here’s the full list. (I was delighted to find selections from our very own Book Lover’s Calendar! And, of course, a hefty Algonquin representation.)

– Liz, editorial assistant, who recently has been transfixed by The 19th Wife, laughed out loud on public transportation at Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, and who plans to enjoy her next read, The Art of Racing in the Rain.

We’re celebrating wine and cheese this week within the Workman family with the publication of two new books–The Guide to West Coast Cheese and Essential Wines and Wineries of the Pacific Northwest. Learn even more about the delicious marriage between dairy and grapes at the Timber Press blog and Story Publishing blog.

Selecting wine at a restaurant or for a dinner party can be an intimidating process, especially if you’re not familiar with the lingo. I’ve been asked if I like my wine to be bright? Tannic? Round? Complex?  Um, well, I’m not really sure. Thankfully, Pia Catton and Califia Suntree’s Be Thrifty includes a concise chart outlining which wines will pair well with different types of food.  Here are some guidelines to use as a shortcut:

• Match delicate to delicate, robust to robust. A delicate red burgundy will taste like water beside a dramatically spiced curry. Dishes with bold, piquant, spicy, and hot flavors are perfectly cut out for big-flavored wines.

• Saltiness in food is a great contrast to acidity in wine. Think about smoked salmon and champagne or parmesan cheese and Chianti.  Asian dishes that include soy sauce often pair well with high-acid wines like German Rieslings.

• Saltiness is also a stunning contrast to sweetness. This is the principle behind that great old European custom of serving Stilton cheese (something salty) with port (something sweet).

• With desserts, proceed with caution. Sweet desserts can make the wine they accompany taste dull and blank. The best dessert and wine marriages are usually based on pairing a not-too-sweet dessert, such as a fruit or nut tart, with a fairly sweet dessert wine.