Chinese street food that I wish could be found in the US
During this time of year in northern China, I sometimes was able to buy roasted sweet potatoes sold on the street by vendors using steel barrels to cook them. Most of my China photos are out east, so here is a link to a photo showing a barrel with sweet potatoes. The burnt skins don't look that appetizing, but the insides are cooked well enough and nice to eat while walking in cool weather with others: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajax/3824172/

Go Big Read and A Sand County Almanac?
Yesterday, I nominated Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac, first published in 1949, to be the book for next year's Go Big Read, UW's version of the all-campus/community/common book read. In the first year, 2009, the book was Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and this fall it was Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

the Leopold "shack," north of Baraboo, WI, along the Wisconsin River 

[This stereophoto reveals some of the problems with using my cheap camera. One is that the mirrors sometimes create a reflection in the picture--in this case, on the birdhouse in the left image and a little bit on the top center of both images.]

I have some mixed feelings about my nomination. It's a cliche to associate the university and the state with  A Sand County Almanac because he was a UW professor and the "almanac" section focuses on what can happen during a calendar year at "the shack," just north of Baraboo and along the Wisconsin River. Another thing is that many here have probably already read the book. However, Go Big Read seems tailored to undergrads, particularly freshmen, most of whom haven't read it.

The biggest reasons in favor of this selection are that this could be the last chance to enable many people to hear first-hand from the author's surviving children--Nina Leopold Bradley (b. 1917) and Estella Leopold (b. 1927)--about their lives at the shack, their father, and his ideas.