Posts from — April 2008

We’ve been watching a lot of movies and I have failed to be impressed by any of them. What is it with movies sucking so hard lately? I mean, I guess none of them sucked, they just weren’t very good, and they were supposedly the best movies of last year. Eh.

[Read more →]

Today I registered for the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon 2008! Woo! On September 28, 2008, I will possibly be succeeding at running, like, 13 miles… I think. How long is a half-marathon again? I should really work that out before September I suppose. Actually, speaking of distances, there seems to be some sort of bizarre tendency in Toronto to hold races of indeterminate distance. I’ll see a pamphlet or a poster or an ad on the train for some race/hike/walk for charity and I’ll think “Sure, I’ll do that. It might be fun.” So I look closer to see how far the race/hike/walk might be, as I dread accidentally getting involved with things like that walk for breast cancer that is something like fifty miles long and takes three days. But they never says the distance! Wouldn’t you think this would be a crucial piece of information to include? This has happened to me four or five times already. Sometimes the information concerning the location or the date is also omitted. Sometimes you go to the website and the information isn’t there either! Who are these people designing these pamphlets and posters and ads and websites? Perhaps we should hold a charity run to benefit them, as they clearly must be too stupid to fend for themselves.

So anyway, now that I’ve paid 70 bucks for this damn thing, I have to do it. It’s like when Stark used to ask me if I was going to change my mind and not move to Canada and I would say “Honey, of course I’m coming there, I have non-refundable tickets.” This story makes me seem like a real bitch, doesn’t it?

Besides the boring running crap, nothing much is new. I’ve been plugging away at the website, but there is always more and more to do. I have a million photos that need processing and I never read the instructions for this new recording device that Stark bought, even though I keep saying I will. I wasted all of yesterday trying to compress movies (again!) and failed. I hate compressing movies so much! Wahhhhhh!

This is a recipe for a soup that I adopted from something my mother came up with. Her recipe uses escarole, chicken broth, and no onion. My version uses broccoli rabe (rapini), which is a much more bitter green, and changes the flavor quite a bit. It’s a very versatile recipe – this particular version makes a lot of food. You can cut it down to 1 can of beans, 1 cup of broth, and 1 head of veggie, and it will still make quite a bit of food. Sadly, if you only use one can of beans, you lose the exciting tre colore effect, and thus don’t get to celebrate the glory of the Italian flag and its heritage of yumtastic food.

It is also a versatile recipe in terms of ingredients. Any hardy leafy green will do, depending on what sort of flavor you’re into. Rapini is bitter, escarole is more neutral. I think you can probably use kale, too, although I haven’t tried. I bet you could even use bok choy! Hah! It’s a party in my mouth and every leafy green is invited! You can cut out the onions, if that’s what you feel like doing. Or you could add more! Or more garlic! If it were up to me, there would be, like, five bulbs! Some people seem to think that’s too much. Hmph. Fools, I say. And season it any way you like. Mmmm… food. So here’s the recipe:

Pasta Tre Colore: Broccoli Rabe with Cannellini Beans

Ingredients

- 2 heads of broccoli rabe
- olive oil to cover bottom of a large pot
- 1 bulb of garlic (or MORE! Hah!)
- 1/2 red or Spanish onion
- 1 1/2 cubes of veggie bouillon cubes or 1 can (14 oz) low-sodium chicken broth
- 1 1/2 cup ditalini (raw)
- 2 cans cannellini (kidney) beans, one white, one red
- Seasoning (pepper, salt, oregano, rosemary)

[Read more →]

I finally finished reading George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. I started reading it way back in March, right before we left for Quebec, as I thought it would be great train reading. It was. But it was too long to finish on the trip, and then eventually it seemed like it would be too long to finish ever.

I think this book is probably the longest prologue ever written. It clocks in at 807 pages, plus an additional 25 page appendix. I knew it was the first book in a series when I started reading it, but I didn’t realize that a novel of this size was going to focus almost entirely on setting the story in action. I found that aspect of the book frustrating – so much time invested, and absolutely no satisfaction gained. It’s really not a standalone story, it ends on a cliffhanger, and you either buy the next book or never find out the fate of any of the endless numbers of characters. Although I’m not a huge Tolkien fan, I do think The Hobbit is a fantastic book because it both serves as a prologue for a series and as a standalone story. In fact, and I know this is blasphemy of the highest order, I never got very far into the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I found them boring. But I read The Hobbit three times when I was a kid.

I have to admit, though, that by the last few chapters of A Game of Thrones I was pretty well engrossed in the story and despite all the complaints I am about to spout, I do want to read the rest of the books. Maybe I’ll get around to them one day when I’m retired or stranded on a desert island somewhere.

So, some general commentary: The first thing that annoyed me about this book was the structure of the universe that the author has created. I really don’t know why pretty much every fantasy book, from Tolkien to the billions of entries in the Forgotten Realm series, have to be set in a world that’s basically feudal England with different names and a few magical additions. C’mon, people, you can create any type of universe you want, why must you hew so closely to Medieval Europe? What is so appealing about the subjugation of women? What was so great about feudalism? Why must all the heroes be white people in armor and all the colored people be exotic Others and barbarians? Sheesh! It’s so damn frustrating.

The rest of the review is spoiler free.
[Read more →]