Mr. Burke's Reading List

I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend , by Martin Short, 2014 Martin Short, the comic, the actor, the funnyman, started from humble beginnings. I knew of him from Second City TV , which was syndicated back when I was in high school, so I knew he was a little older than I was. I didn't realize how much older than me he is. The other, more significant thing I hadn't realized is just who was in the circle of performers he started with, people not associated with SCTV (or that I associated with them). He was friends with Paul Shaffer , for example, long before Paul was part of Letterman's Late Night or Late Show and before his days at Saturday Night Live . (I also didn't know that Shaffer was part of SNL -- he played piano for Bill Murray 's lounge singer, for example.) Short didn't just know Gilda Radner , but dated her in the days before Gene Wilder and Nancy Dolman . I knew that Short and Dolman had been married a long time, but I didn't r...

4 Ingredient Cookbook: 150 Quick & Easy Timesaving Recipes , by Bonnie Scott, 2014 This entry is a bit of a cheat, but the recipes are not. Normally, cookbooks are reference material and not something you read cover to cover. However, I did go through the entire book (or almost the whole thing) because I liked the concept of the book as it appeals to my nature as an amateur cook with very little patience for lots of ingredients. Seriously, keep it simple for me. If it comes out plain, then I'll figure it out and work from there (maybe). The idea of the book is that meals can be created with just four ingredients, plus salt, pepper and water (which aren't included because you probably have these in your house anyway). I haven't tried any of the recipes yet, but I'm a teacher and it's summertime. I will revisit each section Real Soon Now. In fact, it's almost time to revisit another blog side-project I started a few years ago: Summer Creations in Food...