Furniture Shopping

I'm moving in a week.  Actually, I started moving this week.  In fact, I'm mostly moved because I own next to nothing.  Once I move my toiletries, my sheets, and my clothes, everything I own will be at the new place.  But I'm about to own some more.  I went out furniture shopping on Saturday.

On my list was a bed, mattress, dresser, mirror, nightstand, kitchen table, TV, desk, and couch.  Some of my bachelor friends live pretty spartan lives, with a futonish bed, a folding table or a desk, and a hand-me down couch.  (And a sound booth.)  I'll be higher on the hog.

I found this couch:

And this bedroom set:

Guess what doesn't exist.  A table I like at a price I'm willing to pay for it.  And why is an extra chair another $150?  I'll be standing to eat for quite some time.

Finding a TV I like wasn't a problem.  There were so many that fit the bill.  I'll be picking up one of those later in the week.  Maybe I'll put a board on top of it and eat off that.

Pina Colada Curry

Tonight was an Iron Chef competition. I volunteered to be "chef."  The secret ingredient was pineapple.  I made this Pina Colada Curry.

I cooked rice in pineapple juice and water, and then stirred in toasted coconut.  The curry is made with a Masaman base, but with pineapple juice and brown sugar to sweeten it a bit, and coconut milk, of course.

My team got a prize, but not the main prize, which went to the Hawaiian Haystacks Lettuce Wraps, which did look very good.

Pretzels

It's confusing why I like pretzels so much.  Normally, I'm more for foods that are easier to swallow.  Pretzels really make you thirsty, so you drink some, but then you just end up wanting more pretzels.  Why keep eating pretzels when there's caramel popcorn right there?  I can't quite figure it out.

Pretzels don't quite look like most of my favorite foods either.  They're very unique with their curls and their slightly brown skin.  When they're soft, and warm, with a little sugar and cinnamon, I've discovered nothing that I like better.

The more I get to know about pretzels, the more I seem to want them.  Perhaps it's time to purge the pantry of chips and popcorn.

Brunch 2012

After I moved to a house big enough to handle it, I hosted my first New Year's Brunch.  That was 2006.  This year was the sixth annual, and I hosted with my baby brother.  We spent the week, and especially the last two days, cooking up a smorgasbord of delish.  The menu:

Citrus Sunrise Coffee Cake, Mint Chocolate Cheesecake, Snickers Salad, Cereal and Almond Brittle,  Gingerbread Bread Pudding, Oatmeal Cranberry Buttons, English Toffee, Butternut Squash Muffins, Grapefruit Bars,  Blueberry and Lemon Scones, Chex Mix, Smoked Pork Shoulder, Gyoza, four kinds of Breakfast Strata, Curry Mustard Meatballs,Veggie Taco Wraps, two Pasta Salads, Spanish Tortilla, Cheese balls and Crackers, Home Fries, Candied Pecans, and more.

If I were a more thoughtful food blogger I would have taken pictures as I prepared and presented these dishes, but I didn't.  So, it would be kind of lame to post a bunch of recipes here with no pictures.  I'll just post the one below.  Also, it's a recipe I found online from Jamie Oliver.  I post it and link to the original.

When I tasted this after I made it, I literally jumped up and down in my kitchen, it was so good.  I made this to go on top of my squash muffins, but it worked equally good as a fruit dip.  Or as an excuse to lick your finger and jump up and down like an idiot.

1 clementine, zested
1 lemon, zested and half of it juiced
1/2 cup sour cream
2 heaping tablespoons powdered sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out

Place the clementine zest, the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a bowl. Add the sour cream, sugar and vanilla seeds and mix well. Taste and have a think about it - adjust the amount of lemon juice or icing sugar to balance the sweet and sour.

Be sure no one is around when you taste it after you get it right, they'll think you're crazy.

Movie attendance down

Movie attendance was down in 2011 to a 16-year low. I read some movie blogs, so I've seen a few theories.  They range from "tickets and popcorn cost too much" to "people who go to movies are stupid" to "there are no more real movie stars."

I'm not an analyst.  Seems like the above reasons are valid, and if you click through the links and read the whole articles, they give other valid reasons, too.  But I think many people are ignoring a big reason people went to the movies so much less last year.

There were a lot of stupid movies. And the movies that weren't stupid weren't worth seeing more than once.  Since Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking and media mean that people know instantly what everyone thinks, when a movie is stupid, all our friends know not to waste their money.  The answer isn't to get rid of Twitter, but to make good movies so that people talk them up and go again.

And another reason? There are a lot of stupid marketing people who advertise movies.  Did you see the billboards for We Bought a Zoo (which was a good movie that no one saw)?  If I didn't have a movie buff friend who told me it was a movie, I would have gone right on thinking it was an advertisement to take the family to the zoo over Christmas break.



By the time I was talking to people about going to see it, their response was, "I've never heard of that movie."

So my advice is to make better movies and then market them so we have some idea what we're going to see.