Dinner For 1 - Chili

Oh no, I thought. I was late getting out of CostCo and the chili would have been in the crock-pot for almost 11 hours by the time I got home. I was worried the chili would be ruined.

On the other hand, if I did ruin the chili I did have this massive pizza I could cut a slice out of and bake. My mom gave me this idea of buying a CostCo take-n-bake pizza, slicing it, and freezing individual slices to bake whenever I felt the craving.

No, I didn't ruin the chili. It actually didn't turn out too bad. A bit mild, for my taste, but I can just add more spice the next time I make it.

1) In the morning, before you go to work, take out the half pound of browned ground beef from last night. Put that in your small (1-1/2 quart) crock-pot with 2/3 can of pinto beans (mash the rest with some garlic and olive oil - or bacon grease - and heat for refried beans later), 2/3 can of diced tomatoes, and half a can of tomato sauce. No, I don't know what to do with the tomatoes. Make more marinara, I suppose.
2) Add some chopped onion and chili pepper. I used one serrano without the seeds. I might add the seeds next time. Add a TB of chili powder, 1/2 tsp of oregano, and 1/4 tsp of cumin. Add some garlic powder if you don't want to mince a clove, and salt and pepper to taste.
3) Wait between 6-8 hours. Obviously, this is an estimate, because it was almost 11 hours before I was able to get home and try the chili out.
4) Eat. Top with more chopped onion or grated cheese if you like.

Movie Review - The Reader

The Reader is, at times, not an easy film to watch. While graphic in some ways, the real horror in the film is described only in a courtroom, where it has been sanitized and dehorrorized.

In so many ways, you empathize with these terribly broken people. Why are we so fascinated with WWII and the Nazis? Why are there so many Holocaust films? Because, as the protagonist Michael Berg (David Kross) exasperates, we are trying to understand.

Kate Winslet pulls a stunning performance (as to Kross and Ralph Finnes). Her character is a sympathetic one, but at the same time her actions are inexcusable. Her illiteracy parallels our lack of understanding the Holocaust, how something so evil could have been allowed to happen.

The film is brilliant. It is not just about the Holocaust, about what one woman does to contain her secret, but it is also about human nature, and how what shaped other people shapes ourselves.

Dinner For 1 - Spaghetti

I decided, as a belated New Year's resolution, that I would cook more and waste less food. I predict it will take me less than six weeks to throw my resolution right out the window and go back to being the "old me".

And yet, I made a meal plan for all my dinners (and subsequent lunches) this week, and I intend to stick to it.

Spaghetti can be amazingly simple, and if you're really put together you can make it in about a half hour.

1) Brown 1 lb of meat. Spoon half of it into a bowl for tomorrow's crock-pot chili. If you have your act together you can add some minced onion to the mix.
2) Add a can of tomato sauce and whatever herbs and spices you like. I use basil, oregano, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a bay leaf. I also glugged a bit of wine into my sauce tonight (Francis Coppola Siraz, although I think I like his Cabernet better).
3) While the sauce is simmering, cook up your noodles. One quick-and-dirty way to do this is to get something like the Pampered Chef Micro Cooker and fill it halfway with water. Microwave it for 3 minutes or so to heat the water, then take 3 oz. ("fist and a half") of spaghetti (I used whole wheat tonight), break it in half, and put them in the water. Then microwave that for however long it says to boil the noodles. I think I microwaved mine for 8 minutes or so.
4) Drain the noodles. Put half of the noodles in a bowl, top with sauce and Parmesan, and eat.

The other half of the noodles and sauce is for lunch tomorrow. Sit the stuff aside to cool, then throw it together in a container to take to work.

Tomorrow morning I will put together my chili in my crock-pot, and when I get home from work I will have something good to eat.

Hibernate

It's been cold this week. Cold to me, at least.

I wake up in the morning and unconvinced it's really time to get up, press snooze and snuggle under the blankets for a few more moments. It really is more pleasant to close my eyes and stay under down alternative than it is to brave the cold bathroom, put on cold clothes, and go out in the chilly weather.

I stocked up on winter clothes at REI this week. Why I never had winter clothes (outside of a big warm jacket) when I was in college, I'll never know. Maybe I was dumb then, and am smart now.

The winter clothes are for my Christmas trip to my parents', as I know my adapted-to-California self can't hack the Great White North.

Can I go home and sleep now?

Oktapodi

My sweetheart forwarded me the link to this film. It's super cute.

Restaurant Review - Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

There is nothing quite so satisfying as a soup dumpling, garnished with soy sauce, black vinegar, and ginger.

My sweetheart surprised me with a trip to Din Tai Fung, which is a Taiwan-based, international chain of dumpling restaurants. The menu, which you order from before you are seated, is bilingual, and the hostesses are very nice.

The soup dumplings are their specialty, but they have a variety of other dumplings and buns you can order. Their soup is very authentic, and for dessert they have a just-right size of 8 treasure rice pudding for two!

The prices are fairly reasonable, although they do get quite busy and sometimes you have to wait a bit for a table.

Din Tai Fung Dumpling House
1108 South Baldwin Avenue
Arcadia, California 91007
(626)574-7068

Twilight and Why I Will Not See It

If 'Twilight' was 10 Times Shorter and 100 Times More Honest

Really? There are plenty of really great movies to see this Fall. I know I haven't been keeping up on my movie reviews, but I've seen several great films.

Quantum of Solace
Changeling
Burn After Reading
Tropic Thunder

A Mediocre One:
Appaloosa

Ones I Haven't Seen But Want To:
Duchess
Frost/Nixon
Milk

One I Haven't Seen But Heard Some Good Things About:
Australia

Upcoming I Want To See:
Spirit - The next Frank Miller adaptation happens to be a noir. Oh yeah.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Brad Pitt growing younger?
The Reader - Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes struggle with illiteracy and Nazism all in the same film!
Shanghai - I know nothing about this except John Cusack, Gong Li and Chow Yun-Fat are in it. And that's enough. :)

Hell, if you want something light and fluffy, I wouldn't even mind seeing Marley & Me! There are so many better films out there to watch!

This quote from the article sums up exactly why Twilight disgusts me so much:

"So, the next generation of young women are currently flocking to see a female lead starring in a movie by a female director based on a bestselling book by a female author, and in this movie the main character wants to become completely submissive and self-sacrificing for a male."

Yuck! I do enough self-sacrificing in my relationships that I don't need it to be glorified for me on the silver screen.

Car = Sentient Entity?

I'm sure I'm not the first person who has a love affair with their car. A symbiotic relationship between driver and machine. The strange imprinting one makes on steel and fiberglass that transforms an inanimate object into an entity.

I'd like to think I take good care of my car. I never let it run out of gas, I wash it occasionally and dry it with microfiber cloths, and I make sure maintenance is performed on it when it's due. In turn, my car takes me to work, takes me on the road, takes me wherever I ask it to go. The sound system feeds me music and the environmental controls keep me comfortable. In every aspect of this machine, it performs exactly as I expect it to. I know this car.

Last Tuesday when I was driving home from work a guy rear-ended me. It was a craptastic finish to a long and stressful day. I just got it back today. They had to replace the bumper and fix the rear body panel. Even though my car is a late model 2007, apparently it has the body of a 2008 and it took a couple extra days to order the new bumper from the manufacturer. I have the "sport" edition so the bumper has an extra "spoiler" or lip at the bottom of the bumper.

When I picked my car up today, it was my car, and yet it was not my car. There was a rock chip on the bumper that was not there anymore. I felt like I was picking up a stranger. It most definitely was my car, because the scrape on the front bumper was still there, the scuffs in the interior were still there, and the red luck charm that dangles from the rear view mirror still hung where I left it.

After driving around a PT Cruiser (by the way, I know now why so many grannies love that car) for a week, I was so happy to climb into my newly fixed car and drive off. Except it didn't feel right to me. What is going on here? The brakes feel a bit squishier than when I dropped the car off. I guess I'll check the brake fluid level and if it's low I'll add some brake fluid.

I'm sure in a few days I will become reacquainted with my car, and everything will be fine.

Yoga For Runners

I went to a workshop today, at YAS.

YAS stands for Yoga and Spinning, and is the yoga studio that I go to occasionally. It's a bit out of the way for me, in Venice, but I like the atmosphere and the workout is a good one.

The workshop was about Yoga for Runners, and things that runners can do to improve their training techniques. There was a physical therapist who spoke about stretches that are good for common running injuries and a physical therapist from Phase IV, where you can get VO2 tests and running gait tests done. So that was interesting. If I had the money I guess I'd have a couple of those tests done to see where I'm at.

Katherine Jenkins Honeyed Voice

I haven't posted in a while. Life has kept me away.

Somehow the month of November escaped me, and we're now solidly in December. What happened?

I had a lot of projects due in my online class; I spent a lot of my hours in a lab at school. Thanksgiving was fun; it's been a while that I've had the big family get-together and really felt included. That was a good experience for me.

This week I was rear-ended on my way home from work, so now I'm puttering around in a PT Cruiser. Let me tell you, I now know why little old grannies love that car! (At least I think I know)

The few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas really makes me want to listen to grand pieces of music. I just discovered Katherine Jenkins; her voice is richer than Charlotte Church's, and I would dare say, much prettier. Apparently she's a hit classical crossover artist. Why I've never heard of her before, I don't know. And for the guys, she's mega eye-candy. ;)