serene’s posterous

Enjoyable movie.  Good thing I wasn't hungry when I was watching it.  Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Childs.  And I thought Amy Adams was also great as Julie Powell.  I didn't quite like the switching back and forth between Julia and Julie's lives, and the parallels seemed a little forced. But I do like the depiction of both characters' marriages.  I particularly liked how Julia and Paul Childs supported each other as a couple.

I liked the movie. Johnny Depp was reliably good and magnetic. But I thought Christian Bale's role was underwritten. I would have wanted to get more than a glimpse of his motivations and thoughts.

I read the book a couple of years ago, coincidentally on a long ANA flight too. The movie isn't too bad but I thought the book was better just because the movie just doesn't have enough time to explore the complexities of the relationship. Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana seemed right for their roles in the movie.

During the exceedingly long flight to Singapore, I watched 4 movies on the first leg to Narita. Good thing ANA had a good selection of movies to choose from.

This was the first movie I watched. Loved it! Yes it was almost too twee at times. But it had my favorite Smiths song There's a Light that Never Goes Out. And I loved the character Summer's clothes.

The movie was quite exciting.  Denzel Washington excelled as the regular man caught up in the hostage situation.  John Travolta played the sociopath well too.  I have got to say though, I was disappointed by the fairly trite climax and ending.

I am so tempted to sign up for this.  But I am not really sure I can take a whole week off in June since I should be focusing on finishing up my graduate work.  I did a Stanford Waltz Week back when I first started graduate school, and it was a lot of fun, but really tiring to have 5 full days of dance classes plus evening dance activities.  I think this may be even more interesting because I particularly love learning the 19th century dances - the waltzes, redowas, mazurkas, quadrilles etc.  One of my favorite dance classes I did at Stanford was the the History of Social Dance in Western Culture, where we had a mix of lectures and practical classes.

I had some frozen fish filets from Trader Joe's that had been sitting in the freezer for way too long.  Since it has been quite cold in our apartment, I thought of making fish soup.  Chinese-style clear gingery soup with fish slices and tomato.

I fried about a knob's worth of sliced ginger with sesame oil, then added some Shaoxing rice wine, soy sauce and water to make the soup.  I added some quartered roma tomatoes into the soup too. 

I then sliced the defrosted fish into fairly thick slices and added salt, pepper, a dash of corn starch and a bit of sesame oil to marinate the fish slices.  Since the fish slices cook so quickly, I just dropped the slices into the simmering soup and fished them out just as they looked about cooked. 

I cooked some xiao bai chai, enoki mushrooms and spring onions in the broth, and then re-added the fish slices to the broth for my meal with a steamy bowl of rice.  The soup was a touch too oily, so I think I will have to use less sesame oil when browning the ginger.  Also, some kiam chye (salted green mustard) would probably add some flavor to the soup.  Otherwise, the soup had a mild fish taste that sort of reminds me of the sliced fish soup you can get in Singapore.

Our Thanksgiving trip to New Mexico featured English muffins at the breakfast spreads in the hotels.  I came home wanting to eat English muffins, so with a new jar of blueberry jam and English muffins from Trader Joe's, I have been getting my fix every morning.  Yesterday's breakfast included clementines, a glass of milk and a mug of hot Harmutty tea with a touch of sweetened condensed milk.

from Mel Torment (link)

Morrissey is back in the US touring for his b-sides compilation Swords.  He is going to be performing in Oakland tonight.  Earlier this year he had canceled his tour date at Oakland at the last minute. 

I do want to go to the concert tonight, but I still can't quite justify paying about $100 per person (including all the ticketmaster charges) for good seats plus the long drive (poor Eu-Jin!).  And since I haven't bought Swords, I won't be familar with half the songs on the setlist (judging from the photo of the setlist from the concert in Portland).  I did check out what tickets were available last night and by pure random luck I had the chance to purchase seats that were within 10 rows from the front of the stage and smack in the center.  Silly Ticketmaster with its devious ways of releasing seats...

I got this on a whim at Trader Joe's.  Surprisingly, for practically Frankenstein food (the chips aren't real potatoes since the first 2 ingredients are potato flour and potato starch), they taste great.  Light and crispy, and they don't have that oily finger feel of potato chips.  They have probably too much salt, but that didn't stop me from eating way too many chips. 

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), when I bought another bag recently, they didn't seem as tasty.  I think I just got tired of that slightly artificial not-quite potato chips taste.