Remember that party I mentioned a few posts ago? A bespectacled friend let me know that I was caught, in digital form, dancing with Kato-chan.
Bibliography:
Some of you may remember the tomato seedlings I received from 306 Paul last summer. The little buggers were amazing! Not only did they survive my neglect, they managed to produce delicious tomatoes well into autumn. I literally could not keep up with the fruit they yielded, having to give the stuff away that I flat-out didn’t have the energy to turn into bruschetta.
So robust, I had to euthanise them in the end. They wanted to live so bad, just like Bonnie and Clyde! I have many fond memories of these plants, which can still be glimpsed in the Google Maps street view of my house. (Right)
Healthy and happy. I later plucked its fruit off and killed it with a dull kitchen knife. Giving Tree, anyone?
The only problem with these tomatoes was that I didn’t have a cage to hold them up, resulting in the splitting of one of the plants’ stem and a bit of damage to both. This year I’ve addressed this problem with two hilarious contraptions, inverted hanging planters! Just this morning, from my bedroom aerie, I overheard my neighbors pondering what exactly they are and if they’re an eyesore. (No conclusions were reached.)
So hungry for fresh tomatoes!!! Get ready, friends and nebby neighbors. Yinz will be on the receiving end of the surplus.
Feliz Cinco de Mayo! For the celebration of Mexico’s triumph over the French troops at the Battle of Puebla (don’t worry, the poor frogs weren’t really stampeded by cattle, haha!) I have decided to make a delicious, all American food: Guacamole!
Two days ago, at a rather absurd and expensive party on the NorthSide, I was talking with catering chef Greg ’bout guac. I’ve always had it in my little head that avocados require beaucoup fric ($$$) to acquire, which is why I don’t buy them. In most cases this holds true: the devil Whole Foods, the wonderful but misguided East End Food Co-op, the pedestrian Giant Eagle, etc. are all about swindling - à la Rumpelstiltskin - the everyday shopper. According to Greg, the ever-pragmatic ShurSave - a local supermarket chain with a location within spitting distance of my humble abode - has them for cheap. He was right! On 4 May 2008 I got four for less than four dollars… holler!
This here recipe is “adapted” from Heidi Swanson’s Indian Curry & Cumin Guacamole. I say adapted in quotes because, in reality, Swanson is very clear that what I’m making is her default guacamole recipe, and that the variant she provides is an embellishment. (Be sure to read her guacamole recipe for tips on recognizing ripe v. overripe avocados. I found it very useful, and was delighted by the condition of my purchase.)
:: Dee-lish Guac ::
1 small white onion
1 clove garlic, minced (I used pre-minced, jar garlic. Lazy!)
4 avocados
1/2 lime
salt to taste (no more than 1/2 teaspoon)
- Chop the onion. Scoop out the avocado flesh, trying to keep it as intact as possible. Throw them, with the garlic, in a bowl.
- Squeeze the half of lime, either by hand or using some sort of juicing apparatus, and splash the ingredients with its juice. Sprinkle a bit of salt on top.
- Stir, but be sure not to purée the mixture (unless you prefer it that way).
- Give it a taste. If it needs more lime juice or salt, add it in now and finish it off with a final stir.
- Serve, at room temperature or chilled, with tortilla chips.
The resulting guacamole was stellar–easily some of the freshest and best I’ve had. I whipped up another batch for a photo shoot, and used a red instead of white onion and lemon juice instead of lime. (I’d stick with the original recipe, in terms of taste.) The next time I make this recipe, I think I’ll add chopped tomatoes and some cilantro just to see how it fares. So much guac; what to do with it all?!
:: Bibliography ::
Hilarious in part because it is both accurate and a caricature. I’m not sure I like it at all. Here is the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull trailer:
I really, really enjoy checking out how people find my blog and should start keeping track of the funny, bizarre, and repellent search strings they employ. So far, most people who get to my blog are connecting with my more image and recipe based posts.
Current event posts also seem to have staying power, as well as anything that has some sexual wording in it (no matter how distant). For example, using the word “sexual” has just ensured that this post will be viewed repeatedly. Note at the right how some depraved sexual deviant got to my blog just today by searching for “via veloso rape scenes”. (Poor Via!) I hope my post that discussed the rape scene in Hitchcock’s Marnie didn’t titillate the social deviant! ;-)
It’s also interesting to see how users punctuate their searches, as if adding symbols and operators [all over] the -place +will (return better) “results” ‘for and some and strange and reason’. Hahaha! Information literacy be damned, let’s just make things look tech-ish and Boolean for no discernible reason at all!
In conclusion, I would like to tell the person who plugged “dsytopic pittsburgh” into a search engine that I share your interest, and would like you to watch George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead for this very reason. (There is one particularly excellent, if computer-generated, shot of the Point all dystopia’d out.) Or, if you’d like to see some real dystopia, I’d suggest South Oakland (south of the boulevard) on a Saturday morning. A wasteland, that!
…I took these photos:
Not artistic at all, I know. But they do articulate my love of Bloomfield in springtime.
I love granola, but unfortunately the delicious kinds that are my favorite are both expensive and remotely located. Never settle for lower-quality, boxed, preservative-ified granola, because all you will think about is the good stuff you’d rather have! (I have learned this the hard way, with boxes of fancy organic granola outdating as I pine for that one at the co-op with those weird soy malt things in it.)
Knowing full well that granola is easy-as-pie to make, and very cost effective, I decided to give it a go. Lisa’s favorite granola - from a recipe by Sara Foster - seemed like a good starting point, so I decided to adapt her recipe. My variant makes a dark, rich, and very filling granola just as good as the fresh luxury stuff you can buy at your local grocer. Sprinkle a bit over some Greek yogurt and garnish with more substantial dried fruits for a delicious, simple dessert. Or, for a decadent breakfast, have a small bowl of the granola with some soy milk.
:: Cocoa-Molasses Granola ::
2 cups old fashioned oats
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1 cup slivered almonds
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup craisins (or raisins, dried cherries, etc.)
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
salt to taste
cocoa to taste (around 1 TBSP)
- Preheat the oven to 275.
- On a baking sheet with sides, layer first the oats, followed by the coconut and almonds. (I used a 16″ pizza pan so I wouldn’t have to make multiple batches.) Then sprinkle with a bit of salt and bake for 12-15 minutes. (The ingredients should not brown.) When finished, pour them into a mixing bowl.
- Change the oven temp to 350 and spray the baking sheet with cooking spray.
- Stir the honey (I used blueberry flower, but clover honey is fine too), maple syrup, molasses, and canola oil in a small bowl. At this point, stir in any other spices you’d like, as well as around 1 TBSP of cocoa.
- Add the wet to dry, stirring to coat everything evenly.
- Spread the granola on the baking sheet. When the oven has finished preheating, bake for 30 minutes. Turn over the granola every 10 min. If the granola still seems too damp, reduce the oven temp to 250 and give it a little more time. (Watch out, though, because as the granola cools it will also continue to dry!)
- Pull that sucker out of the oven and give it about 45 min to cool completely. Add your dried fruit* and store it in an airtight container.
*Note: If your dried fruit isn’t as dry as you’d like, add it to the granola after the second time you stir. I used Sunsweet brand apricots which, while amazingly delicious, were not exactly “dried”.
:: Bibliography ::
Foster, Sara, Carolynn Carreño, and Quentin Bacon. Fresh Every Day: More Great Recipes from Foster’s Market. New York: Clarkson Potter/Publishers, 2005.
The prom has never preoccupied me. Many people have strong feelings about their’s, which is usually rooted in le teen angst. The only proms I concern myself with are of the horror variety. Yes, a re-imagining of a 1980 horror classic is being released today. It will be wretched, so I’m going to take a look back at the original Prom Night.
First, we have to get beyond this:
Clocking in at well under four minutes, the notorious disco dance sequence featuring scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis has made Prom Night the whipping boy of early ’80s slasher films. (This is compounded by having Leslie Nielsen in the film, and this clip, as JLC’s father.) Yes, it is filled with every cliché, every odious dance move imaginable. However, a dud dance sequence didn’t stop Carrie from garnering some acclaim.
So now that you’ve seen the shamefaced underbelly of Prom Night, are you wondering why you should watch it? Is it going to be as painful as attending (or not attending) your own prom?
The answer is, as far as slasher genre films go, Prom Night is much better than the average fair. The narrative is well-crafted, despite now being seen as straight horror formula. Characters, and the psychology that underpins their actions, are consistent and believable, if not exactly compelling. (And not hyper-Freudian, for a change.) The acting in general is not bad, with occasional bursts of proficiency. My father lauds the ending as Jamie Lee Curtis’ best performance ever. (I don’t recommend watching this video if you’re really interested in watching PN.) Although that isn’t saying much, I think most people will find the climax to be rather surprising and challenging. If you look back on the film and ruminate on the themes of family, justice, and guilt, I think you’ll find Prom Night a worthy addition to your horror arsenal.
P.S. The best Prom Night DVD is only $7 at Amazon. Nice.
:: Bibliography ::
Yeah, I’m boycotting the 2008 summer Olympics. And by boycotting I mean not watching them and refusing to talk about them. This photo from the BBC is from a feature about Parisian demonstrators going crazy over Tibet and mucking up the torch run. If there’s one thing that France has a long and glorious history of, it’s student demonstrations and riots.
Highlights include:
:: Bibliography ::
I have a passion for reading manifestos. Crafted precisely to proselytize and provoke, these often short and highly political compositions are two parts soap box, one part ideology, one part creativity, and five-and-a-quarter parts ridiculous. Of all the major literary forms, they are my guiltiest pleasure. Because if they do affect social change, the result is always drastically different from the vision of the author.
So when I came across the SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas during my familiarization with Andy Warhol (for my archival internship), I couldn’t help but read it. Here is the first line:
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. (Solanas)
Marxism, feminism, science fiction, and anarchy all in the opening sentence? It gets better (then redundant, then sort of obnoxious), I assure you! Solanas has a writing style that strangely satisfies my funny bone. Just look at the way she uses the word “groove”, her convoluted gender logic, the contrast between ribald and formal discourse. The fact that it wasn’t written for laughs only makes it more hilarious. (Although a look at Solanas’ biography may rob your interaction with the text of any mirth.)
My favorite sentiment expressed in the manifesto has to be that SCUM “will always operate on a criminal as opposed to a civil disobedience basis” and never “picket, demonstrate, march or strike to attempt to achieve its ends. … if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.” (Solanas)
If you find yourself delighted by SCUM, I suggest you also read The Futurist Manifesto by Marinetti. A nice counterpoint, as he advocates “contempt for woman.” (Marinetti)
:: Bibliography ::
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