I had previously read two or three of Laure Levine's Jaine Austen mysteries and had enjoyed them. They constitute very light reading and they are pretty funny. Before writing these books, Levine was a comedy writer with several famous sitcoms under her belt. Her experience writing humor can be seen readily in Killer Cruise, her latest mystery.

This book is laugh out-loud funny. Laugh out-loud-disturb-your-neighbors funny. In the book, Jaine Austen (Jaine with an "i"), the heroine, goes in a cruise while her parents house-sit her apartment. They communicate via e-mails, and these e-mails are hilarious. She has the cookiest parents in the world (her mother, for example, moved to Florida to be closer to the Home Shopping Network, she thinks her packages will arrive quicker that way), and yet the characters are believable. The first e-mail that her mother sends to her is soooo funny that I had to read it to Mike, and then tell the story to other people. But it's not the only laugh in the book - Jaine herself is hilarious with her self-deprecating humor.

The mysteries themselves, both in the story and the previous ones, are pretty weak. But most mysteries nowadays are very week - you follow the hero on her investigation of a murder, but are not provided with the "clues" to figure out who did it yourself. There is a reason why Agatha Christie is still considered the master of the who-done-it, nobody can equal her in setting up mysteries. Alas, it's not easy to find her books anymore (plus I've read them all multiple times).

But after reading this book I'm planning to go to the library and read whatever Jaine Austen mystery I have skipped - I need the laughs.

A couple of months ago, Grocery Outlet opened a branch in San Leandro, just across the street from me. I've blogged about it before, in my food blog, but I'm writing about it here because the store sells non-food products as well. As you could expect, it sells beauty products. What has surprised me is the number of brand-name products it sells. And not just your regular, supermarket brand-name products, but the more exclusive, expensive ones. And of course, they are sold at considerably lower prices than at the supermarket/drug-store. And indeed, some of this stuff you can't even get at regular stores. I'm impressed.

For the last few days I've been looking for biodegradable sunscreen to use in Mexico - the regular stuff is bad for the coral reefs. I couldn't find it at Safeway, Longs or Target - but they have it, along with other natural sunscreen and regular lotions, at Grocery Outlet. The sunscreens they have are from Alba Botanica, and they are all-natural without chemicals. Pretty cool. I forgot how much they were, but less than $3. They had a few varieties. They also have Aveeno sunscreen, for $5 for 4 oz - I think it was $9 at Target. I'm not sure that this one is biodegradable, however. I also saw some Jason Tea Tree Scalp Normalizing Shampoo, which sells at Target for about $10, for about $4. But you can't count on them having a specific product, they often get just one shipment of a product, and when it's gone, it's gone. But chances are, they will replace it with yet another high-end product.

As for food, they sell Harris Ranch beef, but only Tyson chicken, which I won't buy because of their history of torturing chickens. I haven't seen Twinnings tea yet :-(, but they have/had Good Earth - which you can accompany with some Walkers Stem Ginger and Lemon Cookies ($1.50!).

It doesn't pay to go to Grocery Outlet to buy a specific product, it may very well not be there, but I think it's worth it to browse there once in a while to see if something cool has come. Just make sure to grab it immediately, as it won't be there on your next visit.

Grocery Outlet
2179 E 14th St
San Leandro
(510) 895-3605

We'll be going in our short trip of the Yucatan soon, and I have set up a blog about it: Marga & Mike's Yucatan Adventure. We are also taking the girls, so the title is somewhat deceiving, but I think that traveling with the girls will, in itself, be adventure - specially given how hot & mosquito-filled the Yucatan is likely to be when we visit.

So add the website to your RSS feed or visit it periodically.

People unclear of the concept (of human rights):

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Kampala — Uganda Human Rights commission is advocating for the Death sentence as an extreme penalty to perpetrators of Torture.

The demand is made on the eve of the UN International Day against Torture, its part of a campaign to eradicate torture and on Humanity.

The main thrust of this year's commemoration is advocacy for the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Bill, 2009. The bill which was developed jointly by the Uganda Human Rights Commission and members of Coalition against Torture

It seeks to address some of the gaps in the current legal provisions that deal with torture in Uganda. It is intended to criminalize torture in Uganda, accord torture a comprehensive definition and spell out punishments to perpetrators of torture, the commissions secretary Gordon Mwesigye says.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200906260793.html

I've began naming my lotions and making little cards listing the name and the ingredients (I don't think labels look anywhere as good). The names will help me differentiate them in the future, when I go back and look at the recipes, in case I want to repeat one. But I've noticed that I don't actually want to do that - just like with food, what I want is to create something different each time. Though, I must say, lotions don't differ from each other anywhere as much as dishes.

I got this recipe from Snowdrift Farm, an online merchant of cosmetic-making products. I haven't bought from then yet - and who knows when I'll get bored of this hobby. I was looking for a cocoa butter recipe, so that I could use some of the cocoa butter I bought, and this fit the bill perfectly as I had almost all the other ingredients (I substituted the recommended preservative for the one I have at home).

I'm quite happy with the results. The lotion is creamy and silky, perhaps a little too oily, but I seem to say that about all the lotions I make. I like it quite a bit. My only complaint is that the fragrance I added cannot hide the smell of the cocoa butter (they sell deodorized cocoa butter if you want to avoid this problem). It's not a major issue, though, I just smell somewhat chocolaty :-) Indeed, I named the lotion Tropical Sun because it has cocoa and coconut oil (we'll forget about the jojoba for now).

Here is the recipe: all the measures, except for those specified as ml, are in weights.

Tropical Sun Body Lotion

I love reading mysteries, and in particular mysteries that are situated in places I am, have been or will visit. Those are not necessarily easy to find, unless the title is somewhat explicit or the author is very famous. Fortunately for me, Blood Sacrifice is subtitled "A mystery of the Yucatan" - which meant it appeared in the library catalog when I searched for "Yucatan". I was also able to find another mystery by Gary Alexander, Dead Dinosaurs at the library, which I'll start reading soon.

Both books are from the early 90's, so they don't reflect the Yucatan (or the Cancun/Riviera Maya area, as it's now called) as it is today. I traveled through the region in '91, so they are pretty much contemporary to my image of the Yucatan. That doesn't mean that I loved Blood Sacrifice, but it was entertaining enough. I liked that the detective was Maya and poor, and it was amusing that he was a travel guide. I skipped over the descriptions of Maya culture/history, as I'm reading about this in another book, but it was cool that it was included. In all, it's a good book to read to help put you in a Yucatan mood. As a mystery, though, it's pretty mediocre.

One of the main reasons why I bought this house is because I fell in love with the patio in the back of the house. It's by no means a "pretty" patio, there is absolutely no elegance to it. The uneven cement floor shows traces of gray and red under its green paint. It has an OK glass table, but the chairs are cheap plastic (at least they don't rot under the rain and I don't have to worry about bringing them inside). The vegetation, controlled while the previous owner lived here, has gone wild: there are ferns and fig branches and tree leaves and so forth. Our patio clearly has its own micro-climate, and if anything, it resembles a tropical jungle. I love it! :-)

What I like the most about my patio is my hammock. It's multi-colored and tacky and absolutely lovely to lay on. It's made in the Yucatan, and the Yucatecans make the absolutely best hammocks in the world, definitely the most comfortable.

I first came across Yucatecan hammocks when I traveled through the region 18 years ago. I found out that many, if not most, Yucatecans sleep on hammocks rather than beds and I had to find out for myself why that was the case. It doesn't take long to figure it out, in the oppressing heat of the region, a hammock keeps you much cooler than a bed. I bought two for myself, a cotton one and a "silk" one (these are made from artificial fibers, not real silk). Cotton hammocks are said to be more comfortable (not my experience) and I think they're cheaper, but silk hammocks are able to withstand the rain. I used the cotton one during my trip and then I stored them for seven years. There was no place to hang them in our little apartment. But I kept them, and when I saw the patio, I knew immediately my hammock would have a home.

And so it did. For seven years my "silk" hammock happily hang on the back and I spent many a happy morning or afternoon laying on it, reading a book or dreaming. I remember going there with my babies, swinging while telling them stupid made up stories about the garden. They were too young to understand :-)

I also hang up my cotton hammock, but I was too lazy to remove it once the rains came, and it didn't last more than one or two seasons. It wasn't a huge lost, my patio can't really fit more than one hammock in any case :-(

After seven years, however, my hammock gave up. It was still usable, but it looked frumpy and tired, and its holes were starting to grow. I figured it was time for another one. Despite the fact that we had a hammock we had bought in Brazil a couple of years before, I wanted another Yucatecan hammock. Fortunately, these are easily (if expensively) available over the internet.
I can't remember where I bought mine, so I can't give you store recommendations, but if you do a search for "Yucatecan Hammock" you'll find a bunch of places that sell them. I think I paid $85 for mine, which I hope is several times what they cost in the Yucatan (now that I'm going, I'm planning on buying another one), and it wasn't as tightly knitted as the one I had before, but it's great nonetheless. I love it! Indeed, I think it's the one item in the house that makes me the happiest.

I finally ran out of face cream, so I had to make some. I used this website for the recipe, as the last night face cream I made wasn't that great. I just finished it, so I don't know how I'll like it - but I will report back after trying it for a while. This time I didn't use any preservatives, so I'm keeping it in the fridge for now. That said, I'm going to Mexico soon, and if I take it it'll be warm most of the time. Hmmm...

I changed the recipe in a few ways: by using water instead of rose water and orange essential oil instead of chamomile or lavender oil. More fundamentally, I used lanolin instead of lecithin - I misread the recipe. I'm pretty amazed it came out anyway, I hope it won't separate.

The results were a very creamy and quite oily cream, pretty heavy and not terribly easy to spread. Still, it's just for night use so I'm not concerned. Let's see how it leaves my face after a few weeks.

*Later Note* Well, it did separate. So I added 1 tsp. melted emulsifying wax (I don't have any lecithin), and re-whisked it. The results were a lighter, creamier cream - but I think that may have been from the extra whisking.

Thick Night Facial Cream

3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. shea butter
2 tsp. beeswax pellets
1 tsp. emulsifying wax pellets
1/4 tsp. vitamin E oil
1/4 tsp. lanolin
1 Tbsp. distilled water
1 Tbsp. aloe vera gel
3-5 drops essential oil of your choice

Heat the olive oil, shea butter and waxes over boiling water, until they melt. Add the vitamin E oil and mix. Add the lanolin and mix.

Separately mix the water and aloe vera. Add to the oil mixture and whisk until it's emulsified and it's nice and creamy. Let cool and whisk in the essential oils.

I have a lot of roses. A LOT. Too many. And while I'm not particularly fond of roses, I thought I could at least use them to make rose essential oil. The real recipes for it require distillation or something like that, so I took the "cheater" way and simply mixed in the bruised petals from one rose with 1/4 cup sunflower oil. I put it in a tightly lidded jar and rested it in a dark place for a week. Then I added another rose, and so forth for two more weeks. Finally, I squeezed the oil from the petals into a strainer and discarded the petals.

The results are not too great. What I have left is not rose oil, but a mixture of oil, solids (so fine that I cannot filter them out) and water (the moisture from the rose petals, I assume); it's not completely emulsified. Most worryingly, the perfume barely smells of roses (or plants, I can't quite tell). Now, the fault may be with my roses. Even though it looks like the rose bush next to our house threw up, the resulting roses are not very aromatic.

Oh well, I planted some lavender and perhaps next year I'll have enough to attempt lavender oil.

FIRST THURSDAYS!
7pm • Zocalo Coffeehouse, 645 Bancroft (at Dutton), San Leandro
Wheelchair accessible

JULY 2 “Torturing Democracy” SCREENING
www.torturingdemocracy.org

Award-winning producer Sherry Jones presents a comprehensive documentary­more than 18 months in the making­that examines America's detention and interrogation practices in the “war on terror.”

“Please watch ‘Torturing Democracy.’ It isn't easy to watch; but what so many innocent (and guilty) individuals were subjected to in your name was unimaginably harder. As readers know, I've been fixated on this since Abu Ghraib. But that documentary made me ill by forcing me again to absorb the enormity of what Bush and Cheney have done­and the urgent, urgent task of repairing the damage. If America is to recover, those responsible must be put on trial. Including the president.”

­Andrew Sullivan, Atlantic Monthly.com

After the movie, international human rights lawyer/activist Margarita Lacabe, will talk about the United States' obligation to prosecute torturers under international law.

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SLCAN is a grassroots organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in San Leandro by ensuring quality education, smart growth, and an inclusive and equitable community. For more information, visit http://www.slcan.org.