The first big thing V and I have done since I moved over to Paris eleven days ago was to plan a Thanksgiving dinner for our (read: chiefly her but also becoming my) friends. In theory, it seemed kind of complicated to me: I had in my mind visions of Sinister House galas, twenty-five people spread out across living room and kitchen happily devouring a plethora of pot-luck meals, and I didn't really know how we could equal that glory, especially in our smaller dining space (which is not small by Parisian standards, but is easily dwarfed by the SH kitchen, which dwarfs many things, including elephants). Thankfully, V insisted a week before I moved over that if we were to do it at all, we needed to plan it now.
So Thanksgiving it was going to be. I felt that we couldn't fit many people in the house (the dining table only holds 6 to 8) and imagined an intimate dinner with 5 or 6 close friends chatting face to face across the table. But the guest list expanded as we created it and we discovered that there were no less than 14 people we couldn't not invite. So be it--we could figure out space later.
Initially, too, we tried to arrange for a pot-luck affair in order to divvy up the cost and labor of foodmaking, but since many of our friends don't get out of work until at least 7pm and for some reason the French government hasn't set aside holiday time for Thanksgiving, this didn't work out. In the end, our friend Nusha, a pastry chef in training, made the desserts (wow, did she ever!) and V and I planned and cooked the main meal with a bit of later help from Nusha and Marie.
To sum up so far: the initial idea, a small potluck dinner for 6 doubles in size and becomes a feast for 13 (1 couldn't make it) cooked by 2 with dessert by a 3rd.
Now, I know my stepmother frequently manages large gourmet meals for family and guests completely on her own, but she's a very practiced and dedicated amateur chef. I love cooking, but I do not have her experience or skill. So what surprised me tremendously, after researching recipes (thanks, AllRecipes.com!), was how amazingly doable a Thanksgiving feast is (given, of course, time).
Granted, desserts would have required a good deal of additional planning, and perhaps another day of preparation, but in the end, the process wasn't bad. I made the cranberry sauce (actually, sauce aux airelles because we couldn't find cranberries) the night before because it was easy and needed chilling. I also cut up some baguettes for stuffing and laid them out to air-dry a bit. Thursday, while Virginia was at work, I made the rest of the stuffing (celery, onion, herbs & spices, chicken stock) and began to prep the mashed potatoes. When V got home, she set about making corn bread and I seasoned the turkey and set it in the oven. Then she finished the potatoes while I cleaned. Nusha came over and made a salad and then I made gravy.
By this time, most of the guests had arrived and were getting hungry so we let the turkey out of the oven to play with some carving knives before serving everything. Along with the several bottles of wine that showed up with the invitees, we had a pretty savory meal. Thirteen people crowded around two tables stretched between dining and cooking areas, the room filled with banter and conversation.
Chef's Review
As I noted above, most of the recipes came from AllRecipes.com, and practically all of them were both good and fairly uncomplicated.
Cranberry sauce is pretty much just cranberry sauce--the recipe I found didn't differ significantly from the one printed on the backs of Ocean Spray cranberry packs, and we only added orange zest at the end because we could and to account for the slightly sweeter taste of the airelles. (I added a little extra sugar at first because V found a source on the Web that suggested airelles were a bit sourer than cranberries. In retrospect, I think this wasn't necessary. Also in retrospect, more flavor might be pulled from the orange zest if it's added before cooking the cranberries.)
The mashed potatoes were excellent: light, fluffy, and full of flavor. Virginia got amazing compliments on them and many questions about what went into them.
The homemade stuffing turned out well, but possibly could have used some more salt or broth to flavor it. Maybe if we had found space inside the turkeys....
The turkey was probably the best Thanksgiving turkey I've ever had. Due to issues of availability and oven size, we used two 3kg birds, frozen and prestuffed with some sort of giblet-and-chestnut mixture. They thawed easily and cooked simultaneously in 1h40m. I think their small size helped them cook well without losing too much moisture; the herb and oil rub specified by the recipe became a sauce that we used to baste the birds, and probably also contributed a lot to their moistness. And the flavors...wow.
The gravy was also good, but it started off very liquidy and reducing it took a long time. We shortened the process by adding in a "dry roux" (thanks, Nusha!), basically a tablespoon or so of butter and the same of flour mixed together, moistened with a few spoonfuls of the gravy, and then mixed in. I used chicken stock instead of turkey, but added pan drippings from the turkey for extra flavor.
Only the cornbread disappointed me and V, though no one else offered complaint. It was a decent recipe but not spectacular, just slightly too salty and powdery, not sweet enough for me and too sweet for Virginia. We chose the recipe because we couldn't find vegetable shortening in the stores here.
Even with 13 people, we still have leftovers, though by now they're down to some remaining stuffing and a little bit of turkey. Last night we took care of most of the meat by making a delicious turkey pot pie. (That's your cue to get jealous.)
Friday, November 23, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Flip!
My first post from England (shameful: I got here 2 months ago) and it's to say I'm leaving. Decided to move in with Virginia in Paris; now I'm plotting logistics. She'll be out late Tuesday night, we'll go up Wednesday to stay with Julia and Angus in Gloucester, return to London on Sunday, stay the night so that she can get out early in the morning (she'll take a small bag of our stuff with her). Then I'll go back up to stay with J & A for the week, take half of my things over to Paris on the weekend, return on Sunday in time to meet up with my old friend Richard in London Monday and/or Tuesday and/or Wednesday. Then I'll retrieve the rest of my stuff from Gloucester or Reading (wherever it happens to be) and head over to Paris later in the week.
At least, I hope that's how it'll work ;-). Planned events often take unexpected twist. But really, all should be okay--the biggest trouble, I think, is transporting my belongings, which seem to have grown since I came over. Damn.
At least, I hope that's how it'll work ;-). Planned events often take unexpected twist. But really, all should be okay--the biggest trouble, I think, is transporting my belongings, which seem to have grown since I came over. Damn.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Journey
I'm flying to London today to spend a long-awaited two weeks with Virginia. I'll also be visiting some family friends and Julia and her counterpart, Angus.
I'm flying Air India, and finalizing my packing now, before leaving for work. (Crap. Where did my car keys go?)
I'll talk to you all in August when I return!
I'm flying Air India, and finalizing my packing now, before leaving for work. (Crap. Where did my car keys go?)
I'll talk to you all in August when I return!
Sunday, July 1, 2007
After-dinner Conversation
Gmail Chat with Gary Ploski
7/01/07 at 9:43 PM
me: So you know, I just made some awesome guacamole.
Sent at 9:43 PM on Sunday
me: And what's more, I used a recipe from the Nile delta region. I made guac like an Egyptian!
Sent at 9:44 PM on Sunday
me: Sigh. Nobody around to appreciate my puns.
Seriously, though, I did make some pretty good guac.
*For those who are interested, I diced a medium/large pearl onion (perhaps half the size of a golf ball), two or three decent-sized cloves or garlic, two and a half Hass avocados (one half was rotten), and a green jalapeno and mashed them all together till I had a nice lumpy, gooey consistency. Then I squozed [sic]** in the juice from one lime and added salt and pepper to taste, and mixed thoroughly. I suppose if you like tomatoes in your guac, you could add two diced medium Roma tomatoes here. I don't, so I didn't.
**It's a verb. Just ask my mother. She's an editor.
***Fine, I admit it. I got the whole idea from a Trader Joe's "guacamole kit" that I bought for $2.50 today. But it's a simple thing to put together and it had ideas that went beyond my own for making yummy avocado paste, and all the necessary ingredients came in one little container.
7/01/07 at 9:43 PM
me: So you know, I just made some awesome guacamole.
Sent at 9:43 PM on Sunday
me: And what's more, I used a recipe from the Nile delta region. I made guac like an Egyptian!
Sent at 9:44 PM on Sunday
me: Sigh. Nobody around to appreciate my puns.
Seriously, though, I did make some pretty good guac.
*For those who are interested, I diced a medium/large pearl onion (perhaps half the size of a golf ball), two or three decent-sized cloves or garlic, two and a half Hass avocados (one half was rotten), and a green jalapeno and mashed them all together till I had a nice lumpy, gooey consistency. Then I squozed [sic]** in the juice from one lime and added salt and pepper to taste, and mixed thoroughly. I suppose if you like tomatoes in your guac, you could add two diced medium Roma tomatoes here. I don't, so I didn't.
**It's a verb. Just ask my mother. She's an editor.
***Fine, I admit it. I got the whole idea from a Trader Joe's "guacamole kit" that I bought for $2.50 today. But it's a simple thing to put together and it had ideas that went beyond my own for making yummy avocado paste, and all the necessary ingredients came in one little container.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Heroes
*SPOILER WARNING* This post contains many many spoilers about the TV show Heroes. If you are interested in watching but have not seen it, do not read this post.
Virginia has led me to watch the NBC drama Heroes, which follows the emergence of a bunch of individuals with superpowers around the world (well, chiefly the United States and Japan). I just finished the first (and thus far only) season last night; my overall opinion: decent show, decent story, some interesting characters and very interesting powers, but major plot and character development flaws. I really wonder how the writers missed so many of them. For instance:
1) Claire Bennet should not have been alive in the future. By surviving, she ruins the whole "Save the cheerleader, save the world" bit, which is huge in the early story and big in the end as well. My logic: Sylar eats heroes' brains to gain their powers. Claire can regenerate from any injury. If Sylar gains her power, he becomes invulnerable and when Hiro runs him through with a katana, he does not collapse, and thus survives the final confrontation and manages to force Peter Petrelli to blow up New York. However, he has to kill her to gain her power. When everyone thinks she's dead, this works, but as soon as we find her in hiding somewhere, we know that Sylar didn't kill her and therefore didn't gain the ability to regenerate and should have been killed in the showdown in New York. (It is possible that, with Sylar's escape at end of season, he is still on the loose as he was in the Future, and thus can still cause some of the trouble that happened in the Future--but since there has been no explosion in New York, the Future we saw will not come to pass in the same way, so this argument doesn't fly very far without further support, and anyway it becomes, as one of my teachers likes to put it, "a case of intelligent people making good guesses," which means that there isn't really enough information presented in the work itself to draw useful conclusions.
2) Peter Petrelli should probably have begun exhibiting a bunch of random powers, and definitely should have randomly stopped time/teleported. He absorbs the powers of others around him, and he met Future Hiro early on, before he had any control of his abilities, so he probably should have randomly expressed Hiro's powers, just as he did with others he met.
3) There was a fourth (and fifth and sixth) way to solve the "Do I blow up New York" problem. Nathan did not have to die. Peter knows how to fly, and despite his apparent whining, can actually deliberately control his powers, and knows it--he flies to save Claude Raines, he turns invisible at will, he learns to use telekinesis and even perhaps stop time (when attacked by Bennet and the Haitian), and he can regenerate at will now. He has learned the key to mastering his powers. He may not completely have it, but certain ones he knows well already. So even if he can't figure out how to control the radiation power he absorbed from Ted, and I don't buy that he can't, but even if, he can fly under his own power and he can teleport. The latter is a risky option because he has never tried it and doesn't know how to control it, but he has flown under his own will several times, and could easily fly high into the sky, explode, regenerate, and return to earth. And speaking of regeneration, we should remember that he, Claire, and Nathan all know Peter can regenerate like Claire now. Claire, in fact, has regenerated from mortal injuries several times, including one in which an object punctured her brain. She remained dead until the object was removed, at which point, she recovered. Same happened to Peter with the shard of glass. So a little bullet? Shouldn't cause any problem. All three characters in this crucial scene know this fact. Claire can easily shoot Peter to stop his power, then remove the bullet and let him recover, once again calm. Or, to be extra safe, Nathan can fly Peter somewhere far away and safe, or high into the sky, remove the bullet, and leave. Then, if Peter still can't control his radiation power, he can explode safely, away from a major population center.
4) Candace. Future Sylar says that he "met a girl named Candace who allowed him to become president," meaning that he found Candace, killed her, ate her brain, absorbed her power, and can create illusions at will. He also says that he made everyone think that he was the cause of the explosion in New York City by using her powers. The implication is that he covered the fact that Peter exploded, made himself look like Nathan Petrelli or made himself invisible, and then turned that to his advantage. Thus, he has to have met Candace before in order to kill her, and time-wise this seems to have to fall into the space before his battle at the Plaza. But he never meets with Candace, there's no opportunity, and D.L. and Nikki/Jessica take her out almost immediately before they enter the battle. If they hadn't been there, Candace's job was still to guard Micah on the 42nd floor of Linderman's office building, so she wouldn't have left and would likely not have met Sylar. Yes, it is possible that events could happen in another way, but this is a probable unwinding of them.
6) Peter Petrelli, nice guy with cool powers, is not handled well. His power is to mimic the powers of those around him, and to be able (eventually) to recall these powers at will. He first exhibits this power in a very uncontrolled fashion, flying w/o meaning to while his brother is present, regenerating when Claire is around, reading minds next to Matt Parker, but being unable to restrain or direct any of these abilities, or even recall them consciously later. (This power is a very nice mirror to Sylar's absorbing power--Sylar's is violent and predatory; Peter's is symbiotic, or at the least commensalistic.) Initially, Peter cannot choose whose powers to absorb, and cannot choose how or when to express those powers. Throughout the series, it is stated that "heroes" are emerging all over the place, and implied that many are keeping themselves secret due to fear of prejudice or scrutiny or danger. Conceivably, Peter could wind up near to one or several such people without realizing it, and absorb powers from some unknown source, rather than simply absorbing plot-relevant powers from plot-relevant characters. Why doesn't he? Also, Peter learns awfully quickly to control his powers somewhat, but then, in the final showdown, he seems to feel that he cannot handle himself. From a character standpoint, I understand some of this--he has always been the little brother, always relied on his older brother and his parents' support. But if you show him growing out of that successfully, as is done with Peter after he meets Claude Raines, you cannot suddenly take it back when it is convenient for a plot climax, as was done with the season showdown.
Execution:
Sylar should not have lived. He was done as a character, in my opinion. And he was stabbed through the stomach and then sliced open across the belly. And we know he's vulnerable now that he has not had access to Claire's abilities. & Why didn't Hero finish the job?
Virginia has led me to watch the NBC drama Heroes, which follows the emergence of a bunch of individuals with superpowers around the world (well, chiefly the United States and Japan). I just finished the first (and thus far only) season last night; my overall opinion: decent show, decent story, some interesting characters and very interesting powers, but major plot and character development flaws. I really wonder how the writers missed so many of them. For instance:
1) Claire Bennet should not have been alive in the future. By surviving, she ruins the whole "Save the cheerleader, save the world" bit, which is huge in the early story and big in the end as well. My logic: Sylar eats heroes' brains to gain their powers. Claire can regenerate from any injury. If Sylar gains her power, he becomes invulnerable and when Hiro runs him through with a katana, he does not collapse, and thus survives the final confrontation and manages to force Peter Petrelli to blow up New York. However, he has to kill her to gain her power. When everyone thinks she's dead, this works, but as soon as we find her in hiding somewhere, we know that Sylar didn't kill her and therefore didn't gain the ability to regenerate and should have been killed in the showdown in New York. (It is possible that, with Sylar's escape at end of season, he is still on the loose as he was in the Future, and thus can still cause some of the trouble that happened in the Future--but since there has been no explosion in New York, the Future we saw will not come to pass in the same way, so this argument doesn't fly very far without further support, and anyway it becomes, as one of my teachers likes to put it, "a case of intelligent people making good guesses," which means that there isn't really enough information presented in the work itself to draw useful conclusions.
2) Peter Petrelli should probably have begun exhibiting a bunch of random powers, and definitely should have randomly stopped time/teleported. He absorbs the powers of others around him, and he met Future Hiro early on, before he had any control of his abilities, so he probably should have randomly expressed Hiro's powers, just as he did with others he met.
3) There was a fourth (and fifth and sixth) way to solve the "Do I blow up New York" problem. Nathan did not have to die. Peter knows how to fly, and despite his apparent whining, can actually deliberately control his powers, and knows it--he flies to save Claude Raines, he turns invisible at will, he learns to use telekinesis and even perhaps stop time (when attacked by Bennet and the Haitian), and he can regenerate at will now. He has learned the key to mastering his powers. He may not completely have it, but certain ones he knows well already. So even if he can't figure out how to control the radiation power he absorbed from Ted, and I don't buy that he can't, but even if, he can fly under his own power and he can teleport. The latter is a risky option because he has never tried it and doesn't know how to control it, but he has flown under his own will several times, and could easily fly high into the sky, explode, regenerate, and return to earth. And speaking of regeneration, we should remember that he, Claire, and Nathan all know Peter can regenerate like Claire now. Claire, in fact, has regenerated from mortal injuries several times, including one in which an object punctured her brain. She remained dead until the object was removed, at which point, she recovered. Same happened to Peter with the shard of glass. So a little bullet? Shouldn't cause any problem. All three characters in this crucial scene know this fact. Claire can easily shoot Peter to stop his power, then remove the bullet and let him recover, once again calm. Or, to be extra safe, Nathan can fly Peter somewhere far away and safe, or high into the sky, remove the bullet, and leave. Then, if Peter still can't control his radiation power, he can explode safely, away from a major population center.
4) Candace. Future Sylar says that he "met a girl named Candace who allowed him to become president," meaning that he found Candace, killed her, ate her brain, absorbed her power, and can create illusions at will. He also says that he made everyone think that he was the cause of the explosion in New York City by using her powers. The implication is that he covered the fact that Peter exploded, made himself look like Nathan Petrelli or made himself invisible, and then turned that to his advantage. Thus, he has to have met Candace before in order to kill her, and time-wise this seems to have to fall into the space before his battle at the Plaza. But he never meets with Candace, there's no opportunity, and D.L. and Nikki/Jessica take her out almost immediately before they enter the battle. If they hadn't been there, Candace's job was still to guard Micah on the 42nd floor of Linderman's office building, so she wouldn't have left and would likely not have met Sylar. Yes, it is possible that events could happen in another way, but this is a probable unwinding of them.
6) Peter Petrelli, nice guy with cool powers, is not handled well. His power is to mimic the powers of those around him, and to be able (eventually) to recall these powers at will. He first exhibits this power in a very uncontrolled fashion, flying w/o meaning to while his brother is present, regenerating when Claire is around, reading minds next to Matt Parker, but being unable to restrain or direct any of these abilities, or even recall them consciously later. (This power is a very nice mirror to Sylar's absorbing power--Sylar's is violent and predatory; Peter's is symbiotic, or at the least commensalistic.) Initially, Peter cannot choose whose powers to absorb, and cannot choose how or when to express those powers. Throughout the series, it is stated that "heroes" are emerging all over the place, and implied that many are keeping themselves secret due to fear of prejudice or scrutiny or danger. Conceivably, Peter could wind up near to one or several such people without realizing it, and absorb powers from some unknown source, rather than simply absorbing plot-relevant powers from plot-relevant characters. Why doesn't he? Also, Peter learns awfully quickly to control his powers somewhat, but then, in the final showdown, he seems to feel that he cannot handle himself. From a character standpoint, I understand some of this--he has always been the little brother, always relied on his older brother and his parents' support. But if you show him growing out of that successfully, as is done with Peter after he meets Claude Raines, you cannot suddenly take it back when it is convenient for a plot climax, as was done with the season showdown.
Execution:
Sylar should not have lived. He was done as a character, in my opinion. And he was stabbed through the stomach and then sliced open across the belly. And we know he's vulnerable now that he has not had access to Claire's abilities. & Why didn't Hero finish the job?
Friday, June 1, 2007
Of Dwarves and Toilets
This weekend I'm visiting my mom, who lives in Maryland, and my sister and her boyfriend, who live in Arizona and are visiting Mom. I meant to leave this morning after renewing my driver's license, but due to delays at the DMV and delays at home (I forgot about a parking ticket and several other things that had to be dealt with before I left), I didn't get on the road until about 3:30 this afternoon, and finally made it down to Mom's house at 10:30 this evening. I hit traffic over the George Washington Bridge, which isn't unusual but is often slow, and I hit traffic going onto the New Jersey Turnpike (toll booth) and traffic leaving the toll booth (merging and construction). Plus I got tired a couple times. So a 5-hour drive became a 7-hour drive, and on the way I had some nice mundane adventures on the john. (Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you about my bowel movements.)
Really, what it was is that I sat down on the toilet in one of the stalls at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop (yes, New Jersey names their rest stops--there's one named for Walt Whitman, who probably convulsed in his grave on hearing about it--or, really, given that it's Walt, thought it was fine because life's pretty wonderful)--I sat down on the toilet to mind my business, and after a short while the toilet flushed. "Oh!" I thought, startled. "I hadn't noticed this was an automatic toilet." I adjusted myself a bit for comfort and the toilet flushed again, as if to say "Yup, that's me. Automatic Toilet." I looked over my shoulder at the infrared sensor. No expression. I looked back ahead of me and the toilet flushed again. And again. And again. Then it waited a few minutes and flushed again. And waited. And flushed. And waited. And flushed. All told, it must have drained itself at least 7 or 8 times while I was sitting there--initially an annoying experience, but eventually pretty funny. Now, though, as I think about it, I'm pretty sure the toilet was out to get me.
After I made it to my mom's and had spent ample time hugging people--Auds, who I hadn't seen in a year (:'-(), Santiago (her boyfriend), Grady (mom's close friend and current housemate, and someone who has known Auds and I since we were pre-adolescents), and Mom herself--all of us except Grady were hangin' out in Mom's room and we realized that we had been missing a few of the names of the Seven Dwarves. (Don't ask where that topic came from; I don't remember.) So we remembered a bunch of them. Here a few of the ones we recalled (first, the heightened vocab originals):
Somnolent
Infuriated
Medicinal
Medicated
Prozac
Flaccid (the Dwarf who can't get it up)
Viagra
Vicodin
Froggy (an inside joke referring to a dance Auds & Santiago made up called Froggy on the Moon, which is really quite hilarious if you're me or Audrey or Santiago or Mom or Dad or probably Virginia or Bret, but outside of that group may just seem weird)
Schleppy
Schmo
And on that note, my friends, I am going to write my love a note to tell her I arrived safely and then I am going to bed.
Really, what it was is that I sat down on the toilet in one of the stalls at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop (yes, New Jersey names their rest stops--there's one named for Walt Whitman, who probably convulsed in his grave on hearing about it--or, really, given that it's Walt, thought it was fine because life's pretty wonderful)--I sat down on the toilet to mind my business, and after a short while the toilet flushed. "Oh!" I thought, startled. "I hadn't noticed this was an automatic toilet." I adjusted myself a bit for comfort and the toilet flushed again, as if to say "Yup, that's me. Automatic Toilet." I looked over my shoulder at the infrared sensor. No expression. I looked back ahead of me and the toilet flushed again. And again. And again. Then it waited a few minutes and flushed again. And waited. And flushed. And waited. And flushed. All told, it must have drained itself at least 7 or 8 times while I was sitting there--initially an annoying experience, but eventually pretty funny. Now, though, as I think about it, I'm pretty sure the toilet was out to get me.
After I made it to my mom's and had spent ample time hugging people--Auds, who I hadn't seen in a year (:'-(), Santiago (her boyfriend), Grady (mom's close friend and current housemate, and someone who has known Auds and I since we were pre-adolescents), and Mom herself--all of us except Grady were hangin' out in Mom's room and we realized that we had been missing a few of the names of the Seven Dwarves. (Don't ask where that topic came from; I don't remember.) So we remembered a bunch of them. Here a few of the ones we recalled (first, the heightened vocab originals):
Somnolent
Infuriated
Medicinal
Medicated
Prozac
Flaccid (the Dwarf who can't get it up)
Viagra
Vicodin
Froggy (an inside joke referring to a dance Auds & Santiago made up called Froggy on the Moon, which is really quite hilarious if you're me or Audrey or Santiago or Mom or Dad or probably Virginia or Bret, but outside of that group may just seem weird)
Schleppy
Schmo
And on that note, my friends, I am going to write my love a note to tell her I arrived safely and then I am going to bed.
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