February 19, 2009
I Take It Back
Vegan desserts can be amazing.
I used the Fauxstess Chocolate Cupcakes recipe, though I made a cake as I don’t yet have cupcake pan, and it’s YUM. One tip: I used agave nectar instead of maple syrup, simply because it was way cheaper than real maple, and it worked just fine. Here’s someone else’s pic of the fauxstess cupcakes, since mine is just a boring-looking (but delicious) black-chocolate cake:
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 9:06 pm under Food
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February 18, 2009
Cheeseless Pizza
Sauce is always the most important element in a pizza if you ask me, and Isa’s recipe is simple and absolutely perfect. Smashed tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, a bit of oregano and thyme, and that’s it. And if your toppings are flavorful enough, you won’t miss the cheese. Here we have broccoli, red onion, salty olives from the olive bar, and “Green Garden Puree”, also from the book, which consists of a bunch of green stuff pureed together with garlic and almonds and tofu. It rocks. But it makes a TON, so I will be eating Green Garden Puree for days and days and days. I will also say that most of the recipes in the book are a bit heavy on the salt, so I tend to halve the amount and it turns out right every time.
Also I have tried many times over the years to make my own pizza dough but just can’t get it right, so I use whole wheat pitas instead, which do just fine.
February 17, 2009
So far so Good
My primary goal with the vegan diet is not weight loss but I lost two pounds after the first day, I won’t complain about that. Today was leftover black-eyed pea and wild rice croquettes w/leftover mushroom gravy (yum) for lunch and then roasted potatoes and green beans w/tempeh sausage gravy for dinner. I took pics but I haven’t figured out the trick to taking good food pics so I won’t bother sharing them. Here’s a pic of my fresh beet juice, for example, which I photographed so you could see the gorgeous purplish red color, but it just looks like drained blood:
The beet juice is not in the cookbook but I’ve been juicing for several months and this is one of my faves–beet, carrot, and apple. I actually detest the dirt-like taste of beets but they are SO good for you I have been training myself to tolerate them. It’s working.
Also I have been chastized for disparaging vegan desserts—apparently they can be wonderful, despite my experience, so I’m going to try the chocolate cupcake recipe in the book to gather more data and reformulate my thesis. I will return to share my results.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 9:35 pm under Food
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February 16, 2009
Nectar of the Gods
That would be roasted garlic. My lunch today. That’s right, an entire bulb of roasted garlic spread on some whole wheat pita. Heaven. And vegan. And cheap—what does garlic cost, like 24 cents a bulb? Throw it in the oven with a drizzle of olive oil and you’re done.
Dinner was supposed to be Quinoa and Black-eyed pea Croquettes with Mushroom Sauce, but I’m not a fan of quinoa so I substituted wild rice, and decided I was too lazy to form the croquettes so I just made the sauce and the rice.
Bad blurry photo but it tastes better than it looks! The sauce is perfect, and I’ll be using the leftover rice to make the croquettes tomorrow, when I hope to be less lazy…
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:24 pm under Food
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Adventures in Veganism
I’m starting an 8-week plan to go vegan and will be keeping track of my progress here. Several reasons, all health-related. First, I’ve heard tell that getting dairy out of your diet will help with allergies, and my sinuses are out of control lately. Second, my cholesterol needs some thinning and I had some weird chest pains the other day that had me swearing off meat. Third, I’d like to prevent myself from becoming morbidly obese. There may be fat vegans out there but I imagine it’s much harder to do with no butter, cheese, cream, eggs, or meat. Have you ever tried a vegan dessert? There you go.
This will be my main tool for the vegan plan:
That’s right bitches, Joan Jett knows what she’s talkin’ about. I’ve already tried a few recipes and they are awesome. Ask Serpico, he sampled the Spanakopita I made from here and it was divine.
So I’m going to be back here daily sharing pics of my latest creations from this book (and some others). Right now I’m off to the grocery store to stock up on veggies …
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:28 am under Food
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January 14, 2009
British Reportage of Israel
Wow. You don’t read about this stuff in American papers:
Across the street, behind a cordon, the Rabbi Avraham Greenberg took his Israeli passport from its plastic wallet and slowly set it on fire with a gas lighter until its ashes floated around him. He explained to the small crowd on the pavement that he had been born in the state of Israel but he was ashamed to hold a passport from that country. He stood with more than a dozen Orthodox rabbis who joined in chants of “Judaism here to stay, Zionism no way”.
But many more thousands of Jews attended in support of the rally rather than opposing it, waving Israeli flags and placards saying End Hamas Terror and wearing Stars of David on their faces.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 6:12 pm under Just Movies
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January 11, 2009
State of Play
I’m only three episodes in to this six-episode BBC miniseries and I’m already sad in anticipation that it’s going to be over in three episodes. It’s that good. Put it at the top of your Netflix queue.
I did some rooting around, though, and found that it’s being adapted into a film starring Ben Affleck and Russell Crowe. Barf. It’s a conspiracy thriller so it’s not like it’s some sacred text that’s being defiled but it just has such perfect chemistry that there’s no way a dumb U.S. version condensed to two hours and starrring those bozos will be as good.
It’s to be released in 2009, so we’ll see.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:46 am under Just Movies
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January 4, 2009
Resolution: Take the Bitch out of Criticism
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to try to be nicer to people who like movies I hate. For some reason I’m not bothered if someone hates movies I love, but when someone loves movies I think are bullshit I fly into attack mode. I guess I consider being critical of someone for not liking a movie you like to be pushing an ideology on someone, while being critical of someone for liking a movie is … puncturing an illusion? Or maybe I’m just a jerk. I don’t know. At any rate, I apologize to those who have felt attacked by me and vow to (try to) disagree more elegantly. Though a recent trail of comments on my Facebook status indicates my struggle:
Cynthia hated slumdog millionaire, what is wrong with you people.seen this? I don’t know much about this org, but their picks & categories seem very lame..what are they thinking? http://awfj.org/eda-awards/2008-eda-award-winners/
Facebook status updates get most of my film criticism these days. I also posted a link to this article, with which I fully agree, but which also does the kind of criticism I tend to do but want to move away from: criticizing the critics rather than the film:
A quick scan through the critical reactions on a review aggregator like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes reveals a fountain of excessive praise, as if, with the year’s end approaching and the award-movie field looking paltry and weak, many critics found themselves in possession of use-it-or-lose-it superlatives and decided that Slumdog was their only chance to get rid of them.
But on the fundamentals of the film itself, I fully agree with him:
Slumdog isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s sappy, suspense-free, and packed with one-note characters, including a female lead who’s more object than person. In terms of violence, it’s grittier than most similar pictures, but mostly in a desperately “edgy” way that seems designed to gloss over its blatant sentimentality. The best you can say about it is that it’s stylish schmaltz.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 12:17 pm under Just Movies
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January 3, 2009
Israel Bombs Anti-Semitism Out of Lebanon
From the Onion, 2006:
“Israel really turned us around on the whole Jew-hating thing,” said Hezbollah leader Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, shortly after a U.N.–brokered ceasefire was declared on Aug. 14. “After destroying much of our infrastructure and displacing nearly 1 million civilians, we’ve come to respect Israel as a legitimate power and a beacon of democracy…”
…
“It’s remarkable to think that, had Hezbollah been capable of making surgical pre-emptive strikes against Israeli military installations and densely populated urban centers, Israel would most likely be renouncing Zionism and abandoning the region at this very moment,” Talbott said in August.
The bombings have had the most significant impact on Lebanon’s youth. Many who saw parents and friends killed in the attacks said they will now spend the rest of their lives supporting Israel.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 1:26 pm under Misc
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November 29, 2008
This Song Makes Me Weep
And I don’t even understand the lyrics. Gonzalo Yañez, Maldigo del alto ceilo.
I can’t find a direct link to just the one song but here’s his mspace page and it’s song #4. Go listen.
November 5, 2008
Saving This One for Posterity
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 2:00 pm under Misc
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November 3, 2008
Oh the Pain…
September 5, 2008
Funnies
John McCain could have won my vote just now…
had he simply looked at that protester and said, “Hey, do I come down to where you don’t work and knock the bong out of your mouth?”
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 6:32 am under Misc
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September 1, 2008
Tell No One
“It sounds like a schlocky thriller but it’s French, it has to be better than that, yeah?”
Spoiler ahead.
Please no more movies where the big secret, the root of all evil, is pedophilia. Cheap. Use a little imagination, screenwriters.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 8:32 pm under Just Movies
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August 31, 2008
Not Offensive, Just Kinda Stupid
What’s most notable about the film’s use of blackface is how much softer it is compared with the rather more vulgar and far less loving exploitation of what you might call Jewface. Hands down the most noxious character in “Tropic Thunder” is Les Grossman, the producer of the movie-within-a-movie, who’s played by an almost unrecognizable Tom Cruise under a thick scum of makeup and latex. Heavily and heavy-handedly coded as Jewish, the character is murderous, repellent and fascinating, a grotesque from his swollen fingers to the heavy gold dollar sign nestled on his yeti-furred chest. link
Jewface? Huh? Other than his name (Les Grossman) there is nothing “coded as Jewish” in his appearance or demeanor, and most certainly not “heavily and heavy-handedly,” unless Manhola considers baldness, hairy chests, gold chains, and belligerent attitudes to be code for Jew. I’m afraid Jews don’t have a monopoly on those traits, Manhola. This is what I would more precisely term as heavily coded for Jewish:
And this is what I call worth the price of admission to a film that is really not very funny and full of belabored jokes:
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 12:24 pm under Just Movies
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August 28, 2008
Attack of the Vaginas!
August 18, 2008
Fascist Opening Ceremony
While I was as wowed by China’s opening cermony for the Olympics as the rest of the word was,
I was struck by how much it reminded me of the film Hero and its fascist imagery.
Only a few days later did i find out that Hero director Zhang Yimou directed the ceremonies.
I wanted to do a little “Hero or Opening Ceremonies?” photo-guessing game but either my web connection or my computer has slowed to speeds that make such a photo-finding mission unpalatable. So this taste will have to do.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 11:47 pm under Just Movies
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June 23, 2008
The End of Silverdocs, the End of the World
I was on the programming committee for Silverdocs this year, which has made the question of blogging a bit confusing for me—how do you review an event that you had a hand in creating? My answer for now is to review just those films I hadn’t yet seen in the programming process, those I did not vote on.
One of which was Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World, in which the director continues on the path of the aging artist who no longer has patience for subtlety and now spells out his ideas for you in plain English. Or with a brick over the head. Back in 1971 Herzog made Land of Silence & Darkness, which is about people who are both deaf and blind, and I still think about the scene where the camera just sits, and sits, and watches a deaf-blind woman as she sits on her bed. The silence, to use a cliche AND pun, is deafening, as we watch her and ponder, where *is* she?
In some later films, as his patience wears thin, Herzog’s camera will linger on a person’s face, but in voiceover he’ll *tell* you what he thinks that person is thinking. And in Encounters at the End of the World, in which Herzog travels to Antarctica to photograph the breathtaking ‘ecstatic imagery’ of the landscape and interview its odd inhabitants, all tact is lost and he moves to damping down the sound while a subject is talking and coming on in voiceover to paraphrase and interpret what the subject is saying as he says it. At least he’s not hiding anymore the fact that he often invents scenarios in his “documentaries”; it’s almost as if he’s making a joke out of it. He does it twice in the film and the audience got a hearty laugh out of it. Much of the film is funny, in fact, which is another, more refreshing trait that has emerged in Herzog’s films as he ages. Most of his early films were deadly dramatic and bombastic, but he seems to have embraced the knowledge that enlightenment means lightening up (to quote that mad genius in his own mind, Mike Myers). In interviews he has always been hilarious while at the same time poetic and thought-provoking, and his films now embody that as well.
And nothing is funnier than the exchange in the film between Herzog and a scientist who studies and lives with penguins. “Can a penguin go crazy?” he asks the laconic man. And he clarifies, “I don’t mean that a penguin will suddenly think he’s Napoelon, but do penguins ever just get fed up with their colonies and leave?” And what follows is the most poignant sequence in the film, a film he vowed in voiceover would not be “another penguin film.” We watch a line of penguins waddling toward the sea in the distance, while one stops and seems confused for a moment, and then begins wandering off alone on a path toward the mountains, and as Herzog points out, toward certain death.
The parallel to humans is obvious, as Herzog has throughout the film (and indeed, throughout his career) been interrogating the various weirdos and “castoffs” who inhabit such an inhospitable place. And I think in his youth Herzog would have let that point make itself.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 7:21 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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June 18, 2008
Silverdocs: Dust
A funny thing happened in the screening of Dust, a German film about the infinitesimal particles that we consider insignificant yet battle daily, in futility, to get rid of. I had high hopes for the film, as it seems there is such poetic possibility in this tiny disregarded stuff that is much stronger than us, more ubiquitous, and ultimately even lethal. When the film started, the projectionist had the wrong aspect ratio so the bottom portion of the film was cut off, leaving us able to see only about half the subtitles. We all sat for about 10 minutes wondering what the hell we were watching—we only got about every third sentence, and even then it was just a partial sentence, leaving me puzzled as to whether the film was so poetic I just didn’t get it or if something was missing. After I checked with the theater manager and they resolved the problem, I was glad to see that even with full sentences, the film does attempt poetry, and inspires thought—the images of the obsessive-compulsive housewife wiping down everything in her home, even the inside of her television, in a battle against dust; images of terrifying dust storms about to swallow whole towns in Oklahoma in the 1910s; and the image above, part of a sequence showing the impossibility of ridding the floor of all traces of a pile of red dust. These tiny particles seem to rule the world, even the universe, the film points out. But despite the Godardian narration, which constantly brought to mind the coffee cup scene in Two or Three Things I Know About Her, unfortunately the film is rather heavy-handed at times, forcibly making and repeating its philosophical points and pounding some of the film’s mystery—yes, I’ll say it—into dust. And it didn’t help that some of the more scientific explanations were too technical to be understood by the layperson, or perhaps just too dryly presented, and dragged on way too long. Overall the film provided plenty of food for thought, and I admire the effort and the intention, but would have preferred a bit more mystery.
Filed by cynthia rockwell at 8:27 am under Just Movies,Silverdocs
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