Deal: Entertainment Book online for free

The Entertainment Book has lots of coupons good at restaurants, retail stores, and some online sites. While I have never bought the book (I think it costs $20-25 for the paper copy), I have heard its praises sung many a time on Slickdeals.net, a deal-hunting forum I visit. Today someone posted instructions on getting it for free online. You have to give an email address to sign up for a free account that's good for 1 year. Then you can enter a zip code and look for participating places near you. Selection is best in metropolitan areas. Lots of "buy 1 meal, get 2nd one free" or "20% off meal" coupons.

You can read the instructions in the first post of this thread:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=169545

My piano teacher

Recently, I've been playing piano more often so I had posted about practicing piano in a recent post. As a child, I complained about practicing though I enjoyed the results. I thought my piano teacher picked boring music because she would assign classical music while friends who went to another piano teacher got to play the theme songs from their favorite movies. She wore cat-eye-shaped glasses with a dark black frame that hung from a chain around her neck. Her hands would clap to the beat, trying to help my hands synchronize with her count. She admonished me to practice more the same way my dentist tells me to remember to floss. I saw my piano teacher as well meaning but very un-hip.

Today I was trying to play an Arabesque by Debussy. I never could play those triplets evenly with the eighth notes below it. The pages have green pen marks all over them where she drew lines showing me now the notes lined up. Here and there she would write the letters of notes that I consistently missed. In the margins are reminders to relax and not rush. She died some years back and yet she's still with me whenever I play. Sometimes by way of her green pen. Othertimes, it's her voice in my head, "No, go back and play just these 2 measures very slowly. Ready? ONE...2...3...4...ONE...2...3...4... And again." And I smile. I'm glad she made me struggle to play classical music even though my friend got to play "I've Had the Time of My Life." In a way, it's like getting a diet of the classics to build from. It feels similar to being introduced to Shakespeare while you're in school.

What a strange thing to teach someone for years and then never hear from them again once they grow up. I know she's gone now but if her spirit manages to stumble on this journal, I just wanted to say thanks.

Fresh-Fruit Pizza with Lemon Curd

I made these a while ago but I really like the pictures. Cooking these was relatively easy, though a bit time consuming with carefully slicing and arranging the fruit. I think this was one of the first recipes where I had to zest a lemon. Takes a lot of scraping to get a tablespoon of grated lemon rinds! But it was worth it. The resulting tarts were almost too pretty to eat (but only almost). I think the recipe came from Cooking Light but I didn't write that part down so I'm not really sure. There are 2 recipes behind the cut. First one is for lemon curd, which is part of the base 'sauce' for the fruit pizzas.

( Click to see recipe and bigger pictures )