Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Both/(And)

My highest level to date!The undulations of my moods lately aren't severe, just ripples riding sometimes higher in anxiety and sometimes lower in listlesness. There are some good days too, to be sure.

Lots of the money stress, still. Still. Some relationship ennui has come and gone, the way it does with long standing love. Dr. Mario has been brought out of its 1 1/2 year slumber in order to nurse Astrid and I through our collective anxiety about not accomplishing real things. My private practice is finally turning a "profit" if that's what you call around $400 per month. This is truly a good, good thing. But with just one tiny bookkeeping gig in addition to the therapy work, I'm still making just enough to pay rent and that's absolutely it. I've blogged enough about all this before, so I should get on to other things. Like that I'm hungry, and I should probably eat some lunch.

xo
Bree

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) **½

There were certainly some laugh-out-loud gags, and fun cameo/supporting cast choices (particularly the meta choice of Crispin Glover as a bitter bell hop), but for the most part: tired plot, tired homophobic and sexist humor and characterizations, and an utter lack of creativity in utilizing the time travel premise. And the most cloyingly conventional and predictable resolution ever. This movie gives us one gift: a prominent role for Clark Duke, who plays 20 year-old straight man to a bunch of sad-sack 40-somethings. I'll look forward to seeing his career develop.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Don't Hang Noodles On My Ears

Here are some English idiomatic expressions and what I believe to be their Russian equivalents. At least, these are my guesses. I'll have the real answers, if they differ from mine, in a bit. Venture your own guesses at Dave's blog.


Monday, March 15, 2010

Super-Quick White Bean & Tomato Veggie Soup

Have to share this recipe from last night's dinner. Astrid and I had a long day at Fort Funston with the dog and were too exhausted to cook something elaborate, but are also too broke to treat ourselves out right now. We stopped by Arizmendi to get some yummy bread for sandwiches, but ended up with a crunchy, crusty sourdough loaf instead. Astrid said it'd be good with soup, and thought of the combination of white beans and tomato. This was the inspiration for the following totally ad-hoc recipe, full of shortcuts (canned beans, canned tomato, bouillon cubes). We had delicious soup in about an hour.

Ingredients:

1-2 T oil (olive, canola, whatever)
1 yellow onion, chopped
2-3 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 a red bell pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed and minced
8-10 mushrooms, coarsely sliced
1 turnip, diced
2 veggie bouillon cubes dissolved into about 6-7 cups hot/boiling water
small handful of fresh marjoram or other herbs (about a tablespoon dried)
2 cans butter beans or cannellini beans, drained
1 large can of whole peeled tomatoes, coarsely chopped, with juice
fresh parsley for garnish*
fresh-milled black pepper to taste

* (This is a totally Throw-All-the-Old-Veggies-You've-Got-Into-the-Soup situation. I think the onions, garlic, and celery are essential, but otherwise anything goes. Zucchini or dark leafy greens would be fantastic.)

Method:

In a large pot, heat a glug of oil on medium flame. Throw in the onions and move them around while they cook to milky/translucent. Add the garlic, celery, red bell, mushrooms, turnips or other veggies. Sautée all.

While veggies are sautéeing, boil water separately for the bouillon. I used the kettle - it's a quicker boil than a pot. Place the bouillon cubes in a large glass bowl or measuring cup that won't crack from the hot water. Add the water to the cubes and mix around to dissolve, then pour the broth over the veggies in the pot.*

Add the herbs, drained beans, and tomatoes with juice. Turn the heat up to high and boil. Then turn down to simmer for as long as you want. At least a half hour.

Garnish with some fresh parsley and dunk some crusty bread! I didn't add any additional salt besides the bouillon cubes. Salt to your liking - it'll depend on how much water you add. The flavor of this soup is very similar to minestrone. If you wanna go that extra mile, add some cooked pasta and some grated Parmesan, then mangiare!

*If I'm not making a veggie stock from scratch, I prefer to use a good bouillon cube or paste than one of those ready-made liquid stocks in the aseptic-pack cartons. Three reasons: 1. cheaper; 2. less packaging waste; 3. I find that a bouillon imparts a clearer, more pure stock flavor than those thicker liquid stocks. Most of the vegetarian ones are high in carrot flavor, which provides more sweetness than I like.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Avenue Q

Avenue Q at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, January 16, 2010 ****

My whole family went to see this performance together. Our section of the audience ranged in age from 72 (my mom) to 24 (my youngest nephew Zach) with cultural tastes as divergent as Sinatra and Sigur Rós. Everyone got something out of the show, though unfortunately the acoustics and sound weren't great, so mom had trouble hearing it.

It's always something of a thrill to partake in a cultural production that captures some kind of essence of what I consider to be "my sensibilities." Having been born in a particular time and place, 1972 in the United States, I straddle the fence between Gen X and Gen Y, not old enough to remember the Vietnam War, but a student marcher against George Bush, Sr.'s invasion of Iraq. Old enough to have written real, paper letters to my friends through high school and college, but also an avid blogger, chatter, texter.



Avenue Q gave me the same sense of, "Yes, that's it, exactly!" as did Douglas Coupland's Generation X, Richard Linklater's Slacker, Roche Troche's Go Fish. These works made me bask in recognition, "This is me, these are my friends, this is my specific experience!" Avenue Q, with its broken fourth wall (floor?) puppeteering, takes on issues both timely and timeless (racism, queerness, internet porn, being unemployed with a humanities degree, finding life's purpose). It eagerly inhabits stereotypes while smashing them at the same time. My only critique is that the major narrative thread (boy meets girl, boy and girl fuck, boy hurts girl, boy tentatively wins girl back), a structure that may hold all the outrageous action in place, is still maddeningly conventional for such an iconoclastic production.