Random, some food
Feb. 25th, 2007 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThe Coolidge Corner Theater has been having a series of opera movies this year. The ones that are still upcoming are Carmen Jones (a contemporary verion of the Bizet) March 11 (which sounds amazing but I won't be able to go), Tales of Hoffman May 20 (which I have vague memories of seeing, perhaps at the parents' friends' (the Posts?), and all I remember was it was strange, and I'd like to see it again), and Diva July 22 (one of my favorite movies :-).
Car freedom day! I finally got the car out of the space it's been occupying for the last week and a half, and went out to Russo's (the greens ganged up on me; I must stir fry soon) for the first time in ages.
Trader Joe's has hechshered vanilla paste, but I couldn't talk myself into getting any this close to Pesach. I did succumb to a grinder filled with pepper, lemon, and salt, though. (Reminder to self: Trader Joe's carries tofu, but it has only a K on it.)
The problem with not cooking for Shabbat* is the lack of leftovers later. So today I cooked a chicken with jasmine rice, onions, chickpeas, preserved lemon, lots of black pepper, and dried fruit (prunes, cherries, some apricots). It was good to be eating something I'd made, but it's not quite what I'd envisioned. It's not balanced; the pepper wasn't enough to counteract the sweetness of the fruit. Possible changes next time: make the rice separately so I can roast the chicken and fruit, caramelizing them. Add pistachios or sunflower seeds. Consider using some form of pomegranate. Add olives.
I finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. It's a great sweeping adventure story (and started to feel like it would've been a great role-playing campaign, actually, with all the different races and factions and such), and I thought the world and the problem very creative (also the solution). Two issues, one with the writing, one with the physical design. The first one: it's dirty. It's dusty, moldy, sewaged, dripping, and more. I get that. It's really a bit much to keep seeing that in every scene throughout the 600+ page book. And for the physical: whoever designed the paperback edition was apparently trying to keep it as short as possible, which meant not leaving a lot of white space around the page. I understand that. But it really makes a difference to leave sufficient space in the gutter, so the reader doesn't have to break the binding to get at the words. I figured out that I could manage to not break the binding if I held it with two hands, but it annoyed me.
* Going to the Tremont St. shul's group dinner, however, was definitely the right choice. It meant I got to see people, and I didn't have to fight the post-travel malaise to make something. It did, however, continue my four-day fish streak: I ended up eating fish almost every meal in Chicago (I ran out of lox before the third breakfast), ranging from lox to fried whitefish to homemade gefilte fish to fake seafood salad to raw salmon. Friday lunch I went to Milk St. and got.... fried fish and fish chowder. Dinner Friday night featured salmon (and some wonderful side dishes: roasted green beans, a yogurt salad with cucumber and pomegranate seeds that I didn't think I'd care for but was wonderful, cauliflower with chickpeas. Plus the ultimate veggie dessert: pumpkin pie. Mmmm.... pie.) I think I'm fish-ed out for now.
Car freedom day! I finally got the car out of the space it's been occupying for the last week and a half, and went out to Russo's (the greens ganged up on me; I must stir fry soon) for the first time in ages.
Trader Joe's has hechshered vanilla paste, but I couldn't talk myself into getting any this close to Pesach. I did succumb to a grinder filled with pepper, lemon, and salt, though. (Reminder to self: Trader Joe's carries tofu, but it has only a K on it.)
The problem with not cooking for Shabbat* is the lack of leftovers later. So today I cooked a chicken with jasmine rice, onions, chickpeas, preserved lemon, lots of black pepper, and dried fruit (prunes, cherries, some apricots). It was good to be eating something I'd made, but it's not quite what I'd envisioned. It's not balanced; the pepper wasn't enough to counteract the sweetness of the fruit. Possible changes next time: make the rice separately so I can roast the chicken and fruit, caramelizing them. Add pistachios or sunflower seeds. Consider using some form of pomegranate. Add olives.
I finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. It's a great sweeping adventure story (and started to feel like it would've been a great role-playing campaign, actually, with all the different races and factions and such), and I thought the world and the problem very creative (also the solution). Two issues, one with the writing, one with the physical design. The first one: it's dirty. It's dusty, moldy, sewaged, dripping, and more. I get that. It's really a bit much to keep seeing that in every scene throughout the 600+ page book. And for the physical: whoever designed the paperback edition was apparently trying to keep it as short as possible, which meant not leaving a lot of white space around the page. I understand that. But it really makes a difference to leave sufficient space in the gutter, so the reader doesn't have to break the binding to get at the words. I figured out that I could manage to not break the binding if I held it with two hands, but it annoyed me.
* Going to the Tremont St. shul's group dinner, however, was definitely the right choice. It meant I got to see people, and I didn't have to fight the post-travel malaise to make something. It did, however, continue my four-day fish streak: I ended up eating fish almost every meal in Chicago (I ran out of lox before the third breakfast), ranging from lox to fried whitefish to homemade gefilte fish to fake seafood salad to raw salmon. Friday lunch I went to Milk St. and got.... fried fish and fish chowder. Dinner Friday night featured salmon (and some wonderful side dishes: roasted green beans, a yogurt salad with cucumber and pomegranate seeds that I didn't think I'd care for but was wonderful, cauliflower with chickpeas. Plus the ultimate veggie dessert: pumpkin pie. Mmmm.... pie.) I think I'm fish-ed out for now.