"Pretty soon this will be all mine. WHERE'S MY BOTTLE!"
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Who Stole the Gosselin Kids?
Filipino Woman Kidnaps Gosselin Kids. Claims them as her own. Kate Gosselin says "Take 'em. There's more where they came from..."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Forget Diprivan (is it too soon?), use Pork Fat
At least that's what I would use for a Filipino Family outing.
The dish was simple: pork belly prepared two ways. Preparation #1, simple salt/pepper with the fat scored into diamond cubes. Preparation #2, sliced pork belly similar in length to American bacon but at about 3/4" thick and dry marinated with sugar, Chinese 5 spice, salt and pepper. And, of course, scoring the skin. I noticed that it was very important to score the skin in order to get the skin to crisp under the broiler.
Fact of the matter is I was pretty worried about the results. Not necessarily that it would not come out well, since I have cooked this before, but you have to understand something about my Wife, her Filipino family and all Filipinos: They are connoisseurs of all things pork. Crispy Pata, Lechon, Chicharrones, are all products considered to be ambrosia in the Filipino culture. Filipinos know their pork. I can't blame them!
The pig is a heavenly animal revered by many cultures. In this case, a culture that has embraced preparations from their former Spanish oppressors who have done an incredible job in preparing and "making due" with cheap cuts of meat. Sublime would be an understatement to describe what Filipinos have done with available food resources. For example, another common prepared Filipino dish is Minced Meat with Quail Eggs. Juicy, fatty ground mystery meat, sauteed with onions, sliced garlic, tomato paste and quail eggs. Usually served on top of steamed white rice. The flavors of the minced meat and quail eggs permeating through the rice as eggs pop in your mouth can only be described as comforting as Americans to Mac 'n Cheese. Again, another dish that had me worried about its outcome. However, after seeing half the plate disappear only moments after the dish was served was a good sign that I brought the dish home for my wife and her immigrant family.
Another sign that it was a good meal was the 8-10 middle aged family members sprawl over my seersucker sofa, and feet propped on the wicker coffee table in the living room of my Wildwood home. Not to mention the 2-3 aunts and uncles still picking at the bits and drippings off the pan where the pork was cooked. You know they want more if the meal is over and they are still picking...
Something to note, for me anyway, was watching Uncle Nestor elevate the eating experience by eating with only his hands. For me, meals as traditional as the lechon and mince meat/quail eggs, even my own bastardization, should only be experienced with the hands. There is just something with rice, high-fat meats and eggs that should not touch metal or plastic before entering the mouth. It wasn't a great meal, it wasn't even a good meal, but watching my wife's family anesthetized and in a food coma was worth effort.
The dish was simple: pork belly prepared two ways. Preparation #1, simple salt/pepper with the fat scored into diamond cubes. Preparation #2, sliced pork belly similar in length to American bacon but at about 3/4" thick and dry marinated with sugar, Chinese 5 spice, salt and pepper. And, of course, scoring the skin. I noticed that it was very important to score the skin in order to get the skin to crisp under the broiler.
Fact of the matter is I was pretty worried about the results. Not necessarily that it would not come out well, since I have cooked this before, but you have to understand something about my Wife, her Filipino family and all Filipinos: They are connoisseurs of all things pork. Crispy Pata, Lechon, Chicharrones, are all products considered to be ambrosia in the Filipino culture. Filipinos know their pork. I can't blame them!
The pig is a heavenly animal revered by many cultures. In this case, a culture that has embraced preparations from their former Spanish oppressors who have done an incredible job in preparing and "making due" with cheap cuts of meat. Sublime would be an understatement to describe what Filipinos have done with available food resources. For example, another common prepared Filipino dish is Minced Meat with Quail Eggs. Juicy, fatty ground mystery meat, sauteed with onions, sliced garlic, tomato paste and quail eggs. Usually served on top of steamed white rice. The flavors of the minced meat and quail eggs permeating through the rice as eggs pop in your mouth can only be described as comforting as Americans to Mac 'n Cheese. Again, another dish that had me worried about its outcome. However, after seeing half the plate disappear only moments after the dish was served was a good sign that I brought the dish home for my wife and her immigrant family.
Another sign that it was a good meal was the 8-10 middle aged family members sprawl over my seersucker sofa, and feet propped on the wicker coffee table in the living room of my Wildwood home. Not to mention the 2-3 aunts and uncles still picking at the bits and drippings off the pan where the pork was cooked. You know they want more if the meal is over and they are still picking...
Something to note, for me anyway, was watching Uncle Nestor elevate the eating experience by eating with only his hands. For me, meals as traditional as the lechon and mince meat/quail eggs, even my own bastardization, should only be experienced with the hands. There is just something with rice, high-fat meats and eggs that should not touch metal or plastic before entering the mouth. It wasn't a great meal, it wasn't even a good meal, but watching my wife's family anesthetized and in a food coma was worth effort.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Victoria's Ingredients for a Beautiful Day
Sun, warm breeze, steal a bite of Night Kitchen pecan pie from Daddy. Deglaze the day by splashing water with a bunch of unfamiliar yet familiar new friends...
(Video courtesy of Daddy's Nokia E65. You can't do this on Mommy's IPhone 3G)
Friday, June 26, 2009
All Hail Megatron...or maybe Michael Bay
I'm sure many of you have already read the reviews about how poorly written or the lack of a storyline in the latest of Michael Bay's testosterone & explosion rich movies known as Transformers: The Rise of the Fallen. Basically, the critics annihilated the movie and gave it probably the worst review of 2009. I was just on Rotten Tomatoes and they have it rated at 21%. Most mainstream critics from the NY Times to the Philadelphia Inquirer used some pretty nice adjectives like "cretinous", or "not impressed". I got news for the news critics: This movie was a welcome injection of entertainment for many Americans. Most of 2009 has been emotionally draining. With the impending death of our economy, the constant threat from terrorists and dictatorship regimes playing with nuclear weapons like a boy with his marbles, Transformers 2 was a relief for many Americans because every ticket holder knew, even before walking in the theater, that the good guys would win. Having said all that, let's be honest. Its the summer and we like watching movies with explosions, ridiculous plots, and fairly obvious vehicular product placement. What's not to like about Transformers 2?
I'm not going to go through with an in-depth review of the movie, but I do want to point out that I am a big time Transformers fanboy. I also want to point out that if you are a douche-bag with a yellow Camaro that it does not guarantee you will get Megan Fox. In terms of holes in the story or elements that may be unbelievable, it would believe that Shia Laboeuf could get Megan Fox. That's just pure fiction. I'm more inclined to believe that a millenia old cybernetic organism named the Fallen needs to get juiced up by our sun's energy after a couple thousands years and is trying to get to a machine that will cause our sun to go supernova and thus allow him to collect the energy of the supernova.
Now let me put on my fanboy hat on. If you haven't done this, you need to find the War Within Mini-Series, then the follow to the next series The War Within: The Dark Ages both published by Dreamwave productions. The War Within is a fairly good retelling/origin story of the G1 Transformers. In The Dark Ages, the storyline centers are around the coming of the Fallen and gives some pretty good origin stories of the Transformers themselves. If you are fan of the latest Transformers movie series you need to do yourself a favor and get these two series.
One thing that I have to mention and why I'm remembering all these particular points about the film is because I saw this movie with my friend Andrew who loved the movie but was not a TF Fanboy and did not have a lot of the background or origin story. For example, the character Alice who was played by Isabella Lucas was more than likely based off of an old toy-line circa 1987-1989 called the Pretenders, Transformers with organic skin to hide their robot forms. However, from what I remember about the toys they were no where near as attractive as Alice. As a matter of fact I think that toyline was a complete bomb. Michael Bay did a fairly great job in transforming Alice and it was very similar to the T2 & T3 liquid metal robots although Alice probably had a little bit more character.
Something else that Andrew had questions about was Devastator which was probably my all time favorite G1 "combiner" robot made from 5 construction vehicles called the Constructicons. Unlike the movie Constructicons, the G1 animated series Constructicons were not only very strong characters, but they were diabolical in the the things they built. Scrapper, the leader was always building things to give Megatron the advantage over the Optimus Prime. One thing that I'm fairly disappointed at from the movie is that we do not hear dialogue from Scrapper. I would've like to see Scrapper be the doctor rather than that Spidery-thing and for icing on the cake have Jeffrey Combs do the voice.
Lastly, there's Swideswipe who was also a Transformers G1 character that transformed into a Lamborghini. Although for nostalgia I would've like to see the Swideswipe in the movie transform into a Lambo, but I think the Chevy Corvette concept did Swideswipe justice. Now, unlike the orginal cartoon, Swidewsipe was a force to be reckoned with. Again Michael Bay did a fairly good job with these character. As a fanboy of the original, I always felt that Swideswipe was kind of like the metro-sexual Transformer along with his brother Sunstreaker who tranformed into a yellow Lambo. Personally, I would've like to have seen these two twins rather than the jive-talking twins, Skids and Mudflap. Everytime I watched them it reminded me of the cabin scene between the Beav's mom and African American guy with the stomach ache.
All in all, the movie did Transformers justice. There will be some fanboys that will disagree with me and say that Michael Bay did not stick with original story-lines or characters. However, one needs to understand that there is no such thing as the "original" story. There have been at least 10 different Transformers cartoons with roughly the same characters but sometimes in different designs and with different origins stories. Now, as a criticism to the movie, I do have to say that we need to see more dialog between the Transformers. I do not believe we saw enough of that and I actually think there might've been less Transformers dialog than the first movie. The movie, afterall, is called Transformers: Rise of the Fallen not Sam Witwicky: Rise of the Douchebag.
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