Spiritual Feast

Former Cruzan and best-selling author Geneen Roth opens up about food, life, God and the legion of emotions that can illuminate our deepest held beliefs

When you take your pulse, you know you’re alive. But are you really “living?” If Geneen Roth were asking that question, she’d no doubt add: How are you really living?

Congrats to the winners of this week’s contest:

Please enter our next contest by leaving a comment here at this blog. Contest ends Sept. 7. Winners are announced on Sept. 8.

Mary Roach’s latest book illuminates the strange yet true facts of space travel
If you thought her first three books (“Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” “Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife,” and “Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex”) were disgusting, yet you were struck by the strange affliction of being unable to put them down, just wait until you read “Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void,” Mary Roach’s fourth scientifically based book that explores the oddities of human beings in unusual situations—this time focuses on space travel.

The Crafter’s Studio opens for its second time
It’s a blistering hot day in late August, and a woman ducks out of the heat and sweeps through the front door of The Crafter’s Studio, rushes straight to Rebecca Clinger, and says something along the lines of, “I heard there’s a class where I can make pajama pants. Sign me up.”

Plus Letters to Good Times

When you grow up in a Polish household, food—God, sometimes a lot of it—is a major part of your upbringing. Stuffed cabbage, peirogis, Polish sausage, sauerkraut, beet soup, and special, fat, fluffy donuts you can’t find anywhere else but in your mother’s hot, steamy kitchen—all filled with tasty berry jam. Needless to say, my wonderful Polish  mother and I had to purchase my clothes in the “husky” section of the boy’s department at Sears. Still, being a foodie gave me keen senses—and adventurous taste buds—so it seemed absolutely fitting for me to attend  a rather unconventional local food festival last week, one I never would have imagined ever attending: The Young Farmers and Ranchers Annual Testicle Festival.

‘Women Food and God’ is a delicious literary meal
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”    —Carl Jung

Geneen Roth’s incisive and well-written book “Women Food and God” is a timely book. I don’t know if eating problems have proliferated but women today certainly discuss them more openly than in previous generations.

I go to Burning Man to hang out with my friends and have a good time. It’s a playground for adults and there’s nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
Don Sullivan
Santa Cruz | Electrician

Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With reviews and trailers.

The 2008 Gold Stripe Chardonnay is a take-anywhere, eat-with-everything kind of wine. It’s drinkable, delicious—and very reasonably priced at less than $15. Ventana Vineyards is a successful, popular winery. Their wines are always in demand, they can be found in most wine stores and supermarkets, and the label boasts that they are “The most award-winning vineyard in America.”

Original Sin Desserts, Bakery and Café moves its creative menu
and decadent edibles to downtown Santa Cruz

What was Capitola’s loss has become Santa Cruz’s gain as Original Sin Desserts Bakery and Café moved into the Culinary Center on Front Street.