Girl Detective

From Apartment Therapy’s food site, The Kitchn:

Fridge-Clearing Avocado Soup:
serves 4 as a soup course, 16 or more as an amuse bouche

2 ripe avocados
2 cups spinach leaves, stems removed
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup milk
small handful cherry tomatoes (about 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup chicken broth
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon fine salt
small handful basil leaves
coarse salt, like Maldon or Fleur de Sel and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Place everything but a few tomatoes and the coarse salt into a blender and purée, gradually increasing the speed until soup is smooth. Adjust with more milk or broth if soup is too thick.

Serve immediately, or chill for an hour, topped with a few thin slices of tomato and a sprinkling of coarse salt. To serve as an amuse bouche, pour into shot glasses, or other small cordial glassware and top with a brunoise (tiny dice) of tomato and salt.

This was a great outline, since it was so hot last night that I didn’t feel like turning on the oven or the stove. Instead I got out the food processor and threw in a little of everything that I had, which is a lot after a good trip to the farmers market last weekend. And I didn’t worry about what I didn’t have (spinach) or forgot (milk) It turned out great, though the 2yo and 4yo still wouldn’t eat it, even after we told them it was a smoothie, and served it to them in a cup with a straw. They’re too clever by half. Here’s what I used:

avocados
cucumbers, peeled and seeded
chopped parsley, chives, dill
chopped scallions
garlic
juice of 1/2 lime
cherry tomatoes
yogurt
broth
salt
Tbl. pesto

I love the films of Baz Luhrmann. When I saw the trailer for his upcoming Australia, and heard the accompanying music, from one of my favorite films, Branagh’s Henry V, I got pretty excited. I know the music won’t necessarily be in the film, but the trailer + the music was quite stirring.

Hellboy II is a crazy visual feast from Guillermo del Toro, who also directed Pan’s Labyrinth. I was mesmerized again and again: the tooth fairies, troll market, the Miyazaki-influenced elemental, and more. The story is fine, if a bit thin. Selma Blair’s Liz has an unfortunate haircut and fashion sense. But the mix of humor, horror, and the fantastic made for a very fun film.

Geekiana: From his bio at IMDB: Doug Jones played Abe Sapien in both Hellboy and Hellboy II. His dialogue was dubbed in the first one by David Hyde Pierce, who declined a credit because he felt it would detract from Jones’ excellent performance. Jones spoke his own dialogue in Golden Army, and played multiple characters, as he did in Pan’s Labyrinth. Jones was the villain in the Emmy-nominated “Hush” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Now, THESE are what young-adult graphic novels for girls should be. I have been disappointed again and again by DC’s Minx books, but I highly recommend Salamander Dream and Chiggers by Hope Larson, author/artist of Gray Horses, which I also enjoyed. Larson’s books are beautifully illustrated stories about young girls coming of age. They have elements of nature and magical realism that called to mind the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Like those, Larson’s books are about and for pre- and early adolescent girls, but able to be appreciated by adults as well, which is what characterized really good YA fiction, to my mind.

Salamander Dream begins with 8yo Hailey, who explores the woods and hopes to meet her friend Salamander and hear a story. As Hailey grows older, she sees Salamander less frequently. The story, of growing up and away from the magical friends of childhood, has been told many times. But Larson’s art style and combination of words and pictures make it new and vibrant.

In Chiggers, Abby returns to summer camp, but it’s not a completely happy experience. She struggles with insecurities about her friends, annoyances with her bunkmate(s), and shyness around a boy she likes. Her old friends feel distant, and she’s not sure how she feels about the new girl. In straightforward black and white, Larson recalls the emotional ebbs and flows of early adolescence, and depicts a summer camp experience (complete with instructions for card games and campfire activities) both bitter and sweet, as in real life. Chiggers is something more, though, because some of Abby’s flights of imagination are beautifully drawn and lend an element of magic to the mundane.

Geekiana: Larson is married to Bryan Lee O’Malley, writer/artist of the very funny Scott Pilgrim series, which I love.

I’m one of the few people who don’t seem to like the Minx line of graphic novels from DC Comics (see positive reviews here, here, and here, for example.) But I read New York Four because my friend the Big Brain assured me it was good. I read it; when I told him I didn’t agree, he said I must hate everything. Not true, but I clearly am not the target audience for the Minx books, though I appreciate well-done YA books.

Riley is a first year student at NYU who is overly attached to her Blackberry. In spite of her antisocial ways, she manages to make friends with three girls: a non-brilliant beauty from a wealthy family, a socially inept jock, and a tightly wound academic. (They didn’t dig very deep into the YA cliched character closet.) She has an older sister who she hasn’t seen for years, who was kicked out by their parents for an unknown reason. The four girls all get jobs that require psyche interviews, which are used to convey the girls’ thoughts and feelings.

Will she find out her sister’s secret? Will she regret her attachment to virtual friends instead of real ones? In spite of one part of the ending that was unexpected, most other plot points were by the book. Ryan Kelly’s art is great, though, and elevates NY4 beyond its mostly pedestrian story.

The Minx line may be better for fans of manga than for fans of YA fiction. It seems that DC is going for an older reader with stories like NY4 about 18 year olds, and Plain Janes, about older high-school girls. Yet the mostly chaste romances, and the unsurprising stories, make them feel as if they’re more appropriate for much younger girls, say 9 to 12 instead of 12 to 16. Here’s an interesting post on the audience for Minx.

And so is his geek initiation. Last night was a pretty typical night in our house. We put the boys in bed by 8:30pm, then my husband G. Grod and I repaired to the basement to watch television, which is about all we feel up to after wrangling the boys (2 and 4) into bed. Earlier this week, SciFi reran a few Doctor Who episodes from Season 1 that introduced Captain Jack Harkness (not yet of Torchwood), as well as references to the phrase that ended last Friday’s US airing of “Turn Left.”

It is not unusual while we’re watching to hear the pitter patter of little feet overhead on our creaky hardwood floors. G. Grod and I take turns to go up and tell 4yo Drake to go back to bed. He’s usually grabbing some toy cars to take upstairs. He calls them his “contestants,” a la PBS’ Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. I’ve learned to search his bed after he’s asleep to remove the cars. More times than I care to count, G. Grod and I have been startled awake in the wee small hours by the sound of a Matchbox car falling out of Drake’s bed onto the hardwood floor.

Last night, though, all was quiet. We watched the two-episodes that ended Season 1 of Dr. Who, and that had some pretty dramatic events. G. and I were discussing them afterwards, when Drake appeared in the hallway of our basement, with a please-don’t-yell-at-me-for-being-awake-because-look-how-cute-I-am! smile on his face. We admonished him for still being awake, when he got a grumpy look on his face, crossed his arms in front and moved them up and down, as if he were in a hip-hop video.

“What,” he enunciated slowly, “was that city flying across the sky?”

G. Grod and I exchanged a look. Drake clarified.

“That building, I mean.”

“How long have you been watching, there?” G. Grod asked with some concern.

A quick interrogation proved he’d watched the entirety of the last, pretty scary episode, and he had many questions.

“What were those things? With bumps?”

“Daleks, Drake.”

“And that thing with one eye, it said it couldn’t die. Hey, I made a rhyme! But, what did it mean?”

“Um, that it thought it would live forever.”

We shooed him up to bed. He fell asleep quickly, I removed the cars from his bed.

I think we’re going to have to get a motion detector in our basement. Dr. Who is one thing, but I’m thinking of renting Apocalypse Now sometime soon. Yikes.

2yo Guppy, screaming. I stumble in, give him water, which usually appeases him. He continues to moan. I return to bed, hoping he’ll settle. He doesn’t, and his cries increase in volume. I return, pat his back, and ask what’s wrong. I ask if he wants a hug. He nods and stands up, then quiets down.

I tell him to lay back down with his friends Snake and Baby Elmo. Guppy suddenly is in a rage.

“I DON’T _WANT_ BABY ELMO!” he yells, picking up the toy and flinging it across the room, and beginning to cry again. I am at a loss.

“More water?” I ask, and am surprised when he agrees. He finishes the cup, and asks for more. I get some from the bathroom, then return, and his screams rise in pitch.

“BUT _I_ WANTED TO GET WATER!”

It is too dark for him to see me roll my eyes. “OK, Guppy, I’ll take you out of the crib, we’ll go into the bathroom, dump out this water, and you can fill the glass again.” My sarcastic tone and sigh were to make me feel better; I knew he wouldn’t get it.

“O-TAY,” he says, petulantly. But we do exactly that, and I return him to the crib. He has quieted, and I ask him if it’s all right if I go. He says yes, and I beat a hasty retreat before he changes his mind.

Three Junes was recommended to me by a writer friend, and I can see why. Though the title and the cheesy cover suggest breezy chicklit, there’s a lot more of substance between these covers. The book is actually three novellas, narrated by interlocking characters. Within each novella, the action shifts back and forth in time. It takes a great deal of authorial control to make shifts like these clear rather than confusing. Glass pulls this off with apparent ease.

The first part is narrated by Paul McLeod, a Scotsman whose wife has recently died. He’s on holiday to Greece, while he quietly assesses his life past and present. The next, and longest, segment is narrated by his eldest son, Fenno, a semi-closeted homosexual who now lives in the United States. The final segment is narrated by a minor character from the first section. It ties things together, and progress the novel’s themes of love, commitment, risk, relationship and family to a satisfying conclusion that didn’t feel forced or saccharine.

Filmed in Cuba soon after Castro took over but before he aligned with the Soviet Union, Our Man in Havana is one of the last movies set there. It was written by Graham Greene and directed by Carol Reed. Noise was so great in the street scenes that all the actors’ dialogue during them had to be redubbed. Alec Guinness is a vacuum cleaner salesman; his teen daughter wants a horse. An English Secret Serviceman, played by Noel Coward, recruits Guinness as a spy; he accepts for money, and in several funny scenes begins to fabricate sub-agents and discoveries to buy his keep. Unfortunately, he’s playing it as a game, but the others are not, and tragedy follows. This is a weird mixture of comedy and spy conventions, and the two make uneasy bedfellows. The mood was fitting for Cuba at the time, though. It was in the wake of a corrupt regime, and optimistically embarking on a new one that wouldn’t prove so different from the old one.

It’s not hype if it’s true; Dark Knight is the best new film I’ve seen this year.

Unfortunately, star Christian Bale appears to be in some trouble.

Sad news for fans of Ebert, Roeper, and fans of good film reviews. They are officially leaving At the Movies, the show that introduced Ebert, Siskel and the Thumbs Up and Down ratings.

Richard Roeper joined Roger Ebert on the show after Gene Siskel’s death. Ebert has long been absent from the show for health reasons. Several guest critics have filled in, but only a few have even come close to Ebert’s high standards of review, in my opinion: New York Times’ A.O. Scott, Village Voice’s Robert Wilonsky, and Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips.

Ebert and Roeper will continue to review movies in different media formats, such as Ebert’s site.

Along with many NE Minneapolis residents, we are frequent flyers at Punch Pizza on Hennepin. During the summer especially, I long for an ice-cream finish to the Neapolitan-style pizza and salad. I was delighted to discover that Kramarczuk’s across the street carries a few flavors of Izzy’s ice cream. Izzy’s owners learned their trade in Italy, so their ice cream is very much in the tradition of gelato, and much better than the supposedly authentic but actually gummy and kinda yucky gelato at the coffee shop near Punch. Thus it’s a good match for Punch pizza, though perhaps incongruous at the Eastern European sausage shop. The ice cream is vegetarian, though, as are the many international candies and treats.

Punch has a blog, and recently addressed the hot topic of how best to enjoy their pizza at home.

I was aware of Helen Oxenbury’s work before I had children, because I oversaw the kids’ section at a large used-book store. But I didn’t own any of her books till after I had my own child. The first thing that raised my interest was an article I can no longer find*, I think from the Guardian or Times, about best books for children that included at least one of Oxenbury’s quartet, Say Goodnight, All Fall Down, Clap Hands and Tickle, Tickle. The second was a post by kidlit/librarian blogger Book Moot about Farmer Duck, whose author is Martin Waddell. We owned, and both Drake and I loved, Owl Babies, by the same author. It had humor, and a wonderful almost-rhyming text that was a joy to read. Farmer Duck, a Parent’s Choice award winner about a lazy farmer who takes advantage of his hard-working duck, delighted us as well. Finally, a comment from a reader (was that you, Loretta?) about the Tom and Pippo series made me seek those out. After Guppy was born, we bought all four of Oxenbury’s baby books that were recommended in that first article, Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, and the four “I” books: See, Hear, Can, and Touch. He adored all of them, and they were his favorites for a long time. Now that Drake is nearly 5, I’ve added the Helen Oxenbury Nursery Collection and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and both these are often off the shelf.

Many of Oxenbury’s books, such as the Tom and Pippo series, and the charming It’s My Birthday, are out of print. But they’re still in circulation at many libraries, and on the shelves at used bookstores. I highly recommend Oxenbury’s illustration. She captures something that clearly speaks to my children, and draws them into the books. Her style is distinctive and accessible, yet not saccharine.

I highly recommend the books I mention above. Seek out those in print so that they stay in print. Perhaps we’ll be fortunate to see others come back.

(For anyone who wants to have a go at finding it, here’s what I recall. It was an English best-of list, probably from 2005. It included work by Oxenbury, Shirley Hughes (Alfie’s 1 2 3 or A B C) Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, and Baby Brains. But I may be conflating two lists. I think it was a part of a series of many best-ofs, like novels, or non-fiction, and not just confined to the previous year.)

The return of Project Runway, and was it me, or did Bravo run it an hour earlier (9pm Eastern, 8pm Central) to further confound fans?

A few observations. Suede has a silly name, freaked out at a challenge that had been done before, and refers to himself in the third person. Two contestants from my city of origin, Columbus, Ohio? Will someone tell Blayne that tanning is a bad idea that he’s going to regret in a very few years, and ask him if he has allergies or a coke habit. The two runners up last night did not look like gracious winners. I thought the mop top, the paper-towel dress and the pasta skirt should have gotten more love. I love how Austin Scarlett celebrates his femme-y self. All three of the losing dresses deserved their drubbing. Last night I questioned the judges’ decision and thought the goth trashbag was the loser. Looking more closely this morning, I am still horrified by Blayne’s whatever-it-was. Reviewing the serial killer/nurse outfit this morning, I applaud the judges’ decision.

For more dissing and dishing, visit Project Rungay and Blogging Project Runway.

Project Runway Season 5 starts tonight on US television. This is the show’s last season on Bravo, and the network is acting rather pouty; Bravo did hardly any marketing for the season, then dumped a ton of info at their site a few days ago, including a list of the challenges and guest judges. Part of the joy of watching has been the weekly surprise of what the challenge is, and who will be sitting with judges Michael Kors, Nina Garcia, and Heidi Klum.

So while Bravo is messing with the marketing, mentor Tim Gunn talked to Time magazine and answered some questions. My favorite comments:

Pear-shaped women should make friends with their shoulders. Not wear shoulder pads, but rather avoid tanks and sleeveless tops. Wear things that cover the shoulder to visually balance the look from head to toe.

Worse shoe trend? Crocs–”they look like plastic hooves.”

And, finally, on the comfort excuse: “If you’re going to dress like you just got out of bed, please, stay in bed.”

For more PR news and nattering, visit Project Rungay and Blogging Project Runway.

Last week, the New York Times ran an article on the pursuit of the “perfect” chocolate chip cookie, and included a recipe adapted from chocolatier Jacques Torres (Link from ALoTT5MA). It touched on people’s obsessions with the cookie, as well as things that can be done to tinker with the classic, back-of-the-Nestle-bag recipe.

Torres, for example, refrigerates his dough for 36 hours before baking. Food scientist Shirley Corriher, author of the excellent Cookwise and the upcoming Bakewise, laughed when she heard this, and said it was a clever way to dry out the dough and bind the flour and butter, thus creating a better-textured thick cookie that’s crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle.

Of course, I tried this recipe. I happened to have both cake and bread flour in the pantry, since those were the two types specified, rather than the more easily found all purpose. I used Guittard semi-sweet chips (which my grocery co-op sells in bulk), rather than spending $20+ on either of the chocolates the recipe called for, here and here. And because the timing was inconvenient, I made one batch about 31 hours after refrigeration, and the other about 47. The latter batch browned more nicely and turned out better. The earlier batch tasted more like sugar cookies (albeit very good ones) with chocolate chips. The latter batch tasted like excellent chocolate chip cookies. Even so, I probably won’t make this recipe again. The two special flours, plus the long refrigeration time are inconvenient. Even worse, I thought, was how difficult it was to scoop out the refrigerated dough. I tried letting it warm a bit, but that produced the lightest cookies in the bunch.

Instead, I’m returning to what has been my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe for about three years, Pam (not Pamela!) Anderson’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. Making the dough is easy (though use unbleached all purpose; there’s no reason for bleached). Rather than refrigerating the dough, she says to scoop out dough balls, freeze them for at least 30 minutes, then bake first at 400F, then finish at 350F. It has a few more steps than the back-of-the-bag recipe, but it’s well worth it. The cookie, as promised, delivers puff, crisp, and chew. It browns nicely without having to wait 36 HOURS! as in the Torres recipe. Also, it’s a marvelous vehicle for experimentation with additions other than chocolate chips or chunks. I’ve even added some oats and wheat bran before with excellent results. Further, the dough balls can be refrigerated for a long time. I’ve made a batch after thirty minutes, then another weeks later. This is a versatile recipe with a few weird twists that produces great results without long waits, specialty flours, or expensive chocolate.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies by Pam Anderson from USA Weekend

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 tsp. salt
14 Tbs. butter (2 sticks minus 2 Tbs.), cut into chunks
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbs. flavorless oil, such as vegetable or canola
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips or 8 ounces good-quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate cut into 1/4-inch chunks, about 1 1/2 cup
OR
1 cup each chocolate chunks or chips and 1 cup toasted nuts (pecans, walnuts, unsalted peanuts or macadamias)

Hot tip: If you have a 3/4-cup measuring cup, it’s the only one you’ll need. The sugars measure 3/4 cup each, the chip quantity is 1 1/2 cups (3/4 cup times 2), and the flour is 2 1/4 cups (3/4 cup times 3).

Mix flour, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl; set aside. Mix eggs, vanilla and salt in a small bowl; set aside. Microwave butter on high power until just melted but not hot, 30 to 45 seconds; set aside. Mix brown and granulated sugars in a large bowl. Add butter and oil; stir until smooth. Add egg mixture and stir until smooth and creamy. Add dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Stir in chocolate and optional nuts. Using a 1 1/2-ounce (3 Tbs.) ice cream scoop, spoon 16 dough balls onto a pan that will fit in your freezer. (Don’t worry if the dough balls are crowded. They pull apart when frozen.) Freeze until dough is hard, about 30 minutes. (Once dough balls are frozen, they can be stored in freezer bags up to 3 months and baked as desired.)

Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to upper middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees. Working in half batches, place 8 frozen dough balls onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake until set, but not brown, 8 to 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees. Continue to bake until cookies are golden-brown around the edges and lightly brown on the top, about 10 minutes longer. Let cookies cool on cookie sheet. Repeat, preheating oven to 400 degrees again before baking second batch.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight container up to 5 days.

Servings: 16 large cookies.

ADDED LATER: Boing Boing discusses Ideas in Food’s experiment with vacuum sealing the NYT recipe’s dough, which significantly reduced the 36-hour refrigeration. The vacuum-sealed dough looked much different than what I’d made, which was significantly lighter in color. And the cookies looked different also. Theirs were browner, but high in the middle and thin on the edges. Mine (see above) were a uniform 1/4 inch from center to edge.

Full disclosure: Jeff is a friend of mine, and his blog Velcrometer inspired me to start my own in 2002. I’m going to say positive things about A TV Guide to Life no matter what. Fortunately, Jeff made that pretty easy by writing a clever, funny, entertaining book.

Reality check: A TV Guide to Life will not change yours. It is not profound and deep. It contrasts life on TV and so-called real life. It had chapters with titles from TV theme songs, divided into several shorter subtopics. It’s eminently readable in short bursts–in other words, to follow a heavy read, for a distracted parent, at a boring job, or even in the bathroom.

We all know how to do CPR from watching TV, right? Except that in CPR classes, they claim that doctors and lifeguards always get it wrong on TV. They do it with their hands out in front of them rhythmically pressing on the victim’s sternum lightly enough to not even get out of breath. But then the Red Cross tells you that you have to have your arms straight down under you, resting the weight of your entire upper body on the victim’s chest and using only the heel of your hands, while you fling the force of your head and shoulders into the victim’s chest cavity with each compression. Which sounds really painful for the victim, not to mention tiring for you. And then they tell you not to actually do that to your classmates upon whom you’re practicing, and when you ask why it’s done differently on TV, they say it’s because if you do it correctly, you’ll break the person’s ribs. And this is the right way to do it?

Jeff’s encyclopedic knowledge of TV is both impressive and frightening. I didn’t watch half of the shows he mentioned. But I’d _heard_ of almost all of them, and was familiar with enough of them to enjoy the anecdotes even if I’d not watched a show.

If you’re a fan of 24 (which Jeff knows well since he is the Television without Pity recapper for that show), there’s lots to love. Ditto for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Law and Order(s), Dr. Who, Lost, hospital shows, cop shows, sci-fi shows and many more.

Buy this book; Jeff is a good guy with a cool wife and a cute kid. Read it now. Because if you don’t, it won’t be nearly as easy to recall recent developments on the shows you love once the new season starts in the fall.

Day before yesterday, 4yo Drake woke at 2:30 am crying.

“I dreamed bugs were all over my feet, Mom!” he wailed.

I checked the bed, and assured him that they were in his dream, not in real life. “And Daisy and Duckie are ducks (referring to some of his loveys), and they eat bugs, so they’ll protect you.”

“BUT THEY’RE NOT REAL, MOM!”

I pause, think. “But neither are the bugs in your dream, honey.”

He pauses, thinks. “Oh, OK.” Turns over and shuts his eyes.

This morning, 3am, 2yo Guppy started to yell. I stumbled into his room.

“Drake’s being really mean to me, Mom!”

I, figuring this need not be dignified with an answer, placated him with a drink of water, and returned to my bed. What, it’s not enough that I have to endure their fights all day, but I have to deal with bad-dream versions, too? Oy. And poor Guppy doesn’t even get a break from his younger-sibling torment in his dreams.

Three on a Match, another film from TCM’s series, “Forbidden Hollywood vol. 2“, with then-subversive pre-decency-code movies. As with Night Nurse, there’s not a great deal to scandalize by modern standards: women singing suggestively to each other in a reform school, adultery, drunkenness and implied drug use, and child neglect. Also, one of the characters meets a particularly bad end.

Three schoolmates meet up as adults. One is a showgirl, another a secretary, and the other a depressed rich man’s wife. Each takes on some of the details of the others’ lives as they strive for the life each thinks she wants. The title refers to the superstition that it was bad luck to light three cigarettes off one match, and that the third was marked for death. Originally a myth of WWI, it was instead invented by a match manufacturer.

This wasn’t a good film. It was poorly directed with clumsy newspaper montages to mark the passage of time, and it had a heavy-handed didactic message. But it was worth it to see another example of what was once transgressive at the movies, for an underused bottle-blonde Bette Davis, and a young, handsome Humphrey Bogart in his first gangster role.

At Pages Turned, SPF writes about books read and un-, the latter of which includes Lin Enger’s (brother of Leif) Undiscovered Country, and Daniel Wrobleski’s Story of Edgar Sawtelle, both inspired by Hamlet. The former is set in Minnesota, the latter in MN’s next-door state WI.

And while I was searching for possible productions of Love’s Labor’s Lost, I came across this information on this upcoming, far-away production of Hamlet. (Be sure to read down to see who plays Claudius.) Shall we all go, if only in our dreams?