Dallas Mavericks: Reigning Champs

The Dallas Mavericks are the reigning NBA champs, but they're hungry for more.

The Mavs head into the new season stronger and more confident than ever. Tyson Chandler is gone, but head coach Rick Carlisle still has many weapons at his command, including a strong core of veterans. Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry remain at the top of their games, while providing vital leadership for the Mavs' promising younger players. Oh, and did we mention that Lamar Odom, one of the NBA's best forwards, has come to town? Don't miss a game as the Mavs defend their title!

Check out http://www.nba.com/mavericks for Mavericks info, including schedules, tickets, and merchandise.

Best Movies of 2011

2011 saw a score of interesting Oscar contenders helmed by actors exercising their talent in new ways. Here are five of the year's best films:

The Descendants
Sideways director and writer Alexander Payne returns triumphantly after a seven-hiatus with a complicated dramatic comedy. George Clooney is understated yet spot-on as a father dealing with his wife’s infidelity and his misbehaving daughters.

Drive
Perhaps not a typical Oscar contender, Drive is an action-packed drama that pits Ryan Gosling in a fight against good and evil. Gosling’s quiet performance anchors the movie’s more outrageous moments.

Midnight in Paris
Hailed by many as Woody Allen’s best film in years, Midnight in Paris was a love note to the City of Lights as well as a more glamorous literary time. Owen Wilson reached new maturity in a surprising as well as convincing role as a neurotic writer transported into 1920s Paris, schmoozing with infamous authors.

Moneyball
Like the television series Friday Night Lights, Moneyball was a sports movie that you didn’t need to care about sports to enjoy. Brad Pitt’s dedication to the story and director Bennett Miller’s fast-pacing kept the movie engaging and empathetic. 

Melancholia
Both epic and intimate, Lars von Trier’s portrait of the end of the world is surprisingly breath-taking, particularly the prologue. His narrative remains a distant character study of two sisters dealing with depression and the sudden advance of a neighboring planet.

Visit Historic New Mexico!

Northern New Mexico is a beautiful place, steeped in history – why not get out and see it some time? Here are a few must-see destinations.

Valles Caldera: This 89,000 acre park can only be accessed with an advance reservation. This innovative method of public land management means that the park is never crowded and you will feel like you have the place to yourself. 

Tinkertown Museum: For most of his life, Ross Ward created art with found objects to decorate his Sandia Park home. Now open to the public, this quirky garden of delights is a nationally recognized collection of folk and outsider art.

Santa Fe: Santa Fe is a great destination for a weekend away. Take in some theater, do some shopping, visit a museum, or make a trip to see one of the city's many festivals.

Acoma Sky Pueblo: Perched on a mesa, Acoma Sky Pueblo is the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. Residents offer year round tours of the thousand year old pueblo and 500 year old Spanish church. 

Carlsbad Caverns: These caves are world famous for a reason. Carlsbad Caverns is a network of 17 caves filled with stunning natural rock formations. Be sure to grab the inexpensive audio tour and take a walk around the Big Cave, or hike to the natural cave entrance.

Visit Kansas City, the Paris on the Plains

Kansas City is famous for a number of reasons – the hotbed of jazz music in the early days, the home of great barbecue, and more. If you’re a new visitor to the city, here are some must-visit spots before you go.

First and foremost, you’re going to want to stuff your belly with some famous Kansas City barbecue. Locals will never agree on which joint is the absolute best, but you can’t go far wrong at Gates. Established in 1946, this popular restaurant delivers the vinegary Kansas City style slow-cooked meat that eaters crave at great prices.

When you’re walking around the city, you might notice a preponderance of fountains. Kansas City actually has more fountains than any other city in the world except Rome, and many of them are quite spectacular. A walking tour of these living sculptures can be a great way to spend a day.

Kansas City was the birthplace of jazz music in America, and a trip to the Jazz Museum is a must. The museum honors many of the players that kept the city hopping during the Depression, and examines their influence on the stars of today. The neighborhood also boasts a number of hot clubs that have live music most nights of the week.

Even with all this high culture, Kansas City still embraces its frontier roots. If you’re in town during the American Royal, a season-long celebration of cowboy culture around the Kansas City stockyards, you’ll see bull-roping, trick riding, and more classic Western activities.

Love On The Page: Five Classic Romances

Romance novels get a bad rap, but before the days of Harlequin books, some of the greatest writers of all time turned their pens to the subject of love and loss. Here are five of the best romance books of all time, from the tragic to the triumphant.

-        Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen – Austen is one of the most influential female writers of all time, and her tale of the Bennett sisters as they find the loves of their lives is an essential read.

-        Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert – Flaubert’s tale of the dark side of romance is an affecting read to this day. The titular madame is a doctor’s wife who turns to affairs as a way to escape the dreariness of her everyday life.

-        The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikubu – What is commonly recognized as the “first romantic novel” actually hails from Japan. Written from a male perspective, it’s the story of the son of an emperor who is demoted to common citizen and has to win women the hard way.

-        Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte – A classic tale of doomed love, this novel tells the story of the tragic romance between an adopted boy and his older sister Catherine.

-        The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. This rollicking tale laid the groundwork for much of the contemporary romance genre, with liberal doses of swashbuckling in between the mushy stuff.

Knife and Fork: How to Throw a Great Dinner Party

Throwing a dinner party is one of the great tests of adulthood. If you can prepare a meal, be a hospitable host, and handle any contingencies as they arise, your party will go just fine. Unfortunately, that’s often a little trickier than it sounds. Here’s a set of useful tips that will help you take the stress out of entertaining.

-        Ask your guests about any special dietary needs well in advance. Vegetarianism is more common than ever, and many people also have food allergies or intolerances. Plan your menu to make sure that these people can eat, but don’t feel like you have to make every dish acceptable to them if you can provide alternatives easily.

-        Stick to dishes that you already know. A dinner party is not the best time to get experimental! When the stakes are high, having a dish not come out correctly can be incredibly stressful. A good rule of thumb is if you’ve cooked something well three times, it’s OK to cook for company.

-        Plan your entire meal ahead of time. Write down each course, its ingredients, and how long it will take to cook. Shop for all your groceries at least two days before the party.

-        The day before the party, do as much preparation as you can in advance. Many dishes allow you to prepare much of them in advance. Anything you can do to save yourself time in the kitchen when your guests arrive is worth doing.

-        Finally, relax. This is supposed to be fun! If something does go wrong, smooth over it and move on with the party. Nobody will remember the mistakes if everything else is great.

Try These Great Pasta Salads!

If pasta salads just make you think of mayonnaise and picnics, don’t despair – there are actually many different things you can do with pasta that are savory and delicious. Here are five pasta salad concepts that make a break from the norm and deliver excellent flavor.

A nice way to bring the Italian flavor back to your pasta salad is by taking inspiration from the traditional caprese salad. Combine fresh basil, vine-ripened tomatoes, and balls of creamy mozzarella in a little bit of olive oil and mix with a small, thick pasta like rigatoni to hold the oil.

Greek pasta salad is also a great take on the classic. Use a mixture of cherry tomatoes, sliced cucumber, firm feta cheese, and fragrant olives and use mostaccioli, the small, curved pasta named after the mustache, as the base of the salad. Dress with a mixture of olive oil, vinegar, and lemon juice.

Give your pasta salad an Asian flavor by using soba noodles, which are made from buckwheat flour. Toss them in a mixture of soy sauce and sesame oil and garnish with diced scallions for a delicious, simple salad that delivers robust, interesting tastes.

For an interesting Middle Eastern alternative to pasta salad, try making some tabbouleh. This dish uses kernels of bulgur wheat instead of noodles, and serves them in a tart mixture of finely-diced mint and parsley. It’s a great side dish.

Of course, there’s always room for the classics. A simple salad of penne pasta, cut bell peppers, sweet corn, and snow peas, served in a mix of oil, vinegar and mustard, can satisfy just about any audience.

Must-See Movies Opening in October

Check it out! Here are a few movies that will be lighting up the silver screen this October.

October 7

Real Steel. A gritty high-tech action ride set in the near future, Hugh Jackman stars as a boxer who wins back his title from towering, 2,000-pound robots.

Wanderlust. Comedy about a yuppie couple (Jennifer Aniston and Ray Liotta) giving up their toys and living with the counterculture.

Martha Marcy May Marlene. An escaped cult member experiences paranoia and isolation while attempting to start a new life with her sister's family.

Take Shelter. Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father (Michael Shannon) questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.

October 14

The Three Musketeers. The hot-headed young D'Artagnan (Logan Lerman) joins forces with three rogue Musketeers (Matthew MacFadyen, Luke Evans, and Ray Stevenson) in this reboot of the legendary adventure story.

The Ides of March. George Clooney’s film about an ambitious young political aide (Ryan Gosling) who gets caught in a vicious web of backstabbing and dirty tricks.

October 19

Red State. Director Kevin Smith turns his hand to horror in this film about a hateful preacher (Michael Parks) who turns a group of teens into monsters.

October 28

The Rum Diary. Johnny Depp returns to another drunken tale by Hunter S. Thompson, this time about a journalist who finds himself adrift in the Caribbean. 

October 31

So Undercover. In this raunchy comedy, Miley Cyrus is a government agent who goes undercover at a college sorority.

Support the Cowboys!

Don't forget to check out your very own Dallas Cowboys as they play their division rival, the Washington Redskins on Monday Night Football on September 26th! We hope to hear you cheering!

Pure Goodness: Which Fruits And Vegetables Should You Buy Organic?

Organic produce is becoming more and more popular in the supermarket, as people learn more and more about the harm that pesticides can cause to our bodies. But different vegetables are affected differently by chemicals. Here are some that you should opt for organic whenever possible, and some for which it matters less.

The most important fruits to buy organic are tree fruits, especially stone fruits. The meat of nectarines, peaches, plums, and the like is exceptionally porous and absorbs and retains pesticides very well. In some studies, over 90% of those fruits, when tested, had noticeable levels of pesticides. In addition, leafy greens are also grown with excessive pesticides – lettuce, spinach, and celery in particular. Purchasing these fruits and vegetables grown organically is a good idea.

Some fruits and vegetables, however, don’t retain pesticides nearly as well and can be bought from conventional farms. Most notably, root vegetables are virtually pesticide-free. Carrots, onions, potatoes, yams, and other staples that grow under the ground don’t receive the amount of bug killer that above-ground plants do. In addition, most grains and legumes are fine to purchase conventionally. They are dried and processed so well that the residue of the pesticide is removed.

Organic food is more than a fad. And smart shopping will help you separate the necessary purchases from the needless expenditures!

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