Music Interlude
Erik Satie’s Gnossienne 1. I thought it highly nice to hear on All Hallow’s Eve. Sounds as if someone’s trailing you as you walk the neighborhood in search of candy.
Another Mushroom Soup
Once more, this morning I made some soup. It’s gonna a be good because soup’s good food whenever a nor’easter rolls through.
Today’s soup is called a Hearty Mushroom Soup. It’s main ingredients is mushrooms. The recipe calls for porcini and shiitake mushrooms. The porcini had to be steeped in the broth to rehydrate. After twenty minutes the broth took on a nice delicious brown color. The original recipe called for celery, but I didn’t want to have several stalks sitting in my fridge so I abandoned that for some potato. Along with that I sautéed onions, orange bell pepper, and garlic in butter. Then I dumped in the mushrooms before adding the broth and 1/4 cup of barley. Boy, do I love barley.
As you know I’m looking out for my salt intake, although I wanted this soup to taste better. So I cut the salt down by half to 1/8 teaspoon after adding soy sauce and a dash of tabasco. The soup is also creamy. The recipe called for half and half plus some thickening agent in 2 tablespoons of flour.
After simmering for about 10 minutes, it’s done. Garnish with some scallions.
Looks good. Tastes good.
I still need to learn how to chop things better. I left the potatoes and bell pepper pieces too big. I should’ve cut down more on the salt for my health and not for the taste especially I should’ve used less soy sauce. Now I need to make more soup stock. This time perhaps beef broth.
Adventures From My Netflx Queue: L’illusionniste
Last year’s Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film went to Toy Story 3. In the Annual BrowserMetrics Oscar Pool, most everyone picked it for the winner and the other one for How To Train Your Dragon was most likely a fat finger vote. I think we all need to change our minds. I have just watched the forgotten choice, Sylvain Chomet’s L’illusionniste and couldn’t be more impressed with it. Toy Story 3 can’t compare to L’illusionniste.
The story tells the tale of a magician in 1959 whose fortunes are running out in Paris. He gets a billing in remote Scotland at a small pub wherein he meets a young lady. Impressed with his magical prowess, she follows him to Edinburgh, Scotland. The magician treats her like his daughter buying clothes and gifts for her while trying to keep up his illusionist trade. Yet, the era of magic as entertainment is dwindling and his ill fortune follows him so that it is impossible to make a living doing sleight of hand.
The film reminds me of the joie de vivre first 10 minutes of Pixar’s Up and the silent melancholia of the early part of Wall●E. It is mainly a silent movie as the film makes do with gestures to convey the emotions of the story. What little dialog there is and what little speeches there are end up sounding like Esperanto. Chomet’s animators make it all work though. The emotion of every scene is clearly conveyed in the hand drawn animation. The lack of words do not hinder such a sweet tale. It makes it all the more poignant. There is still a place for hand drawn animation.
In last year’s Oscar Pool, I rooted for L’illusionniste to pull off an upset. It didn’t but most likely because no one saw this movie. When you do, you’ll change your mind. Toy Story 3 will just be a slight cream puff of a movie while L’illusionniste will be a full banquet of delight.
5 of 5 stars
Link of the Day [10.28.11]
Android shoots itself in the foot.
One of the things that I wonder for all those Android fanbois is if they consider OS fragmentation a good thing for non-fanbois. I mean your all elite and shit, but what about your mom. Is the many versions of Android OS worth it for you average person? They don’t care right until they buy an app (or download a free one) that doesn’t work on their phone because it only works for a particular version.
And developers, can they really write apps that take advantage of things if you don’t know what the hardware is going to be?
We were discussing flashlight apps in work today and a co-worker showed us one on his phone. Someone asked if it supported flashing, strobing, or signaling. He said yeah and proceeded to show us. While it was flashing out an SOS, it also was beeping. Another co-worker asked why do you need it to beep. He then tried to turn it off, but the app was unresponsive. He made an excuse for it. I didn’t say anything, but I wondered how can you live like that.
Eventually, Google will understand. They’ll figure it out the they have to be more than an ad salesman in the tech world.
http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support
Link of the Day [10.25.11]
With winter quickly approaching and autumn finally settling in, I was thinking about making my home a little more energy efficient. I plan first to get a storm door for the front entryway, because I believe my front door is like a hole in the wall and it lets out a lot of the heat. Then I thought about a new programmable thermostat add it so that
I can control when and how much my furnace or AC goes off. I wondered how easy this would be to do. But then I got to thinking it would be nice to have a connected thermostat to check in on during the day.Well, some dudes are trying to change the thermostat industry. Looks promising. Maybe I should get a job with them.http://www.nest.com/
Je Te Veux
Cute asian playing Erik Satie’s “Je te veux?” That’s what I want to hear in the morning. Waltzes get no love nowadays, but you can’t deny that the 3/4 time signature is pretty. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, up-down-down, loud-quiet-quiet. It’s a fine for a musical interlude in the day. May this waltz smooth out the rest of your day.
1962-2011
Currently bought a few of packs of Topps Heritage 2011 baseball cards. They replicate the 1962 Topps cards, but with current players. I hated it first because I really didn’t like the original cards. It grew on me though and now I like the look of the 2011 Heritage cards and have a particular liking towards the original. Here’s a favorite Brooks Robinson card from my collection. It’s 1962! I’ve had this one since the 1980s!