6/8/06: Cleaning up the edges

[davidlevine]

Word count: 2096 | Since last entry: 150

In today's writing I integrated the new opening into what I wrote earlier, including writing a brief conversation that introduced the situation a little better.

The other week we saw a movie called The Sci-Fi Boys, a documentary about Forrest J. Ackerman and his magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland and the boys (they were all boys) who made homemade sci-fi and horror movies after reading it and went on to become John Landis and Rick Baker and Peter Jackson and suchlike. The movie included a lot of clips from both the homemade movies and the 1950s and 60s classics that inspired them. This, in turn, inspired us to seek out a few of those classics, so tonight we rented The Day of the Triffids. It managed to be quite commendably tense and interesting despite the shabbiness of the special effects and some ludicrous logic holes (especially the ending). Tomorrow: This Island Earth.

I also feel I ought to blog about our dinners this week. For some reason (at least partly because we've started to receive our weekly basket of organic veggies from Pumpkin Ridge Gardens) we got inspired to try a whole bunch of new and fairly ambitious recipes. They've all turned out fabulous. So far this week we've had:

• Stir-fried mixed greens (bok choi, spinach, and beet thinnings) with tofu, greatly enlivened by the addition of a strip of bacon [improvised]
• Broiled halibut in a teriyaki marinade [Moosewood cookbook], accompanied by brown rice and sauteed broccoli with oyster sauce
• A salad of grilled chicken slices on a bed of blanched greens (snap peas, snow peas, and arugula) topped with a fresh strawberry vinaigrette [Eating Well magazine]
• Lamb satay stir-fry (lamb, cabbage, carrots, kohlrabi, and green onions in a light peanut-lime sauce) [Eating Well again] served on brown rice
• Cashew chicken [an old family recipe], with white rice -- this was better than usual, made with fresh organic vegetables and chicken

We don't usually eat this well, but I'm proud of us and I wanted to brag about it. Tomorrow: spinach tacos [Eating Well again].

Comments

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Lamb satay stir-fry (lamb, cabbage, carrots, kohlrabi, and green onions in a light peanut-lime sauce) [Eating Well again] served on brown rice

Um, might I beg the recipe for this? That peanut-lime sauce sounds intriguing, and I can tinker with the vegetables to deal with PK's brassica-hate!

[davidlevine]

I found the recipe online here: http://www.denverpost.com/food/ci_3747715

Hope you like it!

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you ...I can't think why I wouldn't like it. Lamb – check. Lime – check. Peanuts – check. It has everything going for it!

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Personally, I love "This Island Earth." It's sort of the quintessential '50s sci-fi flick (and I use that term very specifically): bug-eyed monsters, mysterious scientists, cool gadgets, alien planets, shrieking female (which I actually kind of hate since she's a scientist), and a flying saucer. A lot of the cliches we see in science fiction today came from this film and from "Forbidden Planet," to which Classic Star Trek especially owes a huge debt. Looking forward to hearing what you think about "This Island Earth."

[davidlevine]

I never posted about what I thought about the film. It was pretty cool, but about three-quarters of the way through I noticed that the heroes hardly take any effective action. The main scientist guy makes a couple of key decisions early on -- to order the Interociter kit and to board the spooky robot airplane -- but once he arrives at the secret compound the only other thing he does on his own initiative is to attempt to escape, which is foiled. The main alien guy also tries to defy his superiors' most evil plans, but he is inevitably overruled. The whole second half of the movie is a travelogue of the voyage to Metaluna and back, where all significant decisions are out of the characters' hands; they are saved only by the timing of the bad guys' attack. The main alien guy makes one more decision, to return the heroes to Earth and then to kill himself, but the end result is pretty futile.

So if I didn't have this pesky Writer Brain critiquing the plot I would have enjoyed it a lot more. As it was, it was just cool eye candy.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

And thank you for the tip about The Sci-Fi Boys; I think I'd like to see that. Are you familiar with the BBC version of The Day of the Triffids? Still the best dramatisation of a Wyndham novel ever in my view.

[davidlevine]

"The Sci-Fi Boys" was a direct-to-DVD release but we saw it at a theatre as part of the theatre owners' annual UFO festival. You can order the DVD from the web site linked above, although I don't know if they have a PAL version available.

I've heard good things about the new BBC "Triffids" but I haven't seen it yet.

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

We have multi-regional gear so we can deal with strange furrin DVDs, providing Amazon will disgorge them. The BBC adaptation is actually quite old, around 1980, I think, but I think it's been released on DVD fairly recently. Well worth tracking down. John Duttine is the definitive Bill Masen and the story remains true to the book. All good stuff.

[numbat.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you want to risk watching a movie that's already been done over by MST3K. It seems unlikely that they chose This Island Earth to mock because it had many stirling qualities.

[davidlevine]

Actually, I always disagreed with their choice of This Island Earth for the MST3K movie. It was much better than anything else they've roasted, and they cheated a bit by cutting it unmercifully (from a 90 minute original running time down to about 50 minutes of actual screen time) which made it seem to make less sense.

I think they were afraid that putting a movie that was too bad, especially one with poor production values, at the core of the MST3K movie would scare off potential audience members who weren't aready MST3K fans. But by choosing a fairly good movie instead I think the result was less hilarious than it could have been.

[katybeth]

Broiled halibut in a teriyaki marinade [Moosewood cookbook]

Um? Substitution?

[davidlevine]

Not sure what the question is.

The notations in brackets were intended to be the original sources. To be precise, the recipe came from New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant, one of our workhorse cookbooks.

[katybeth]

My edition of the Moosewood cookbook is all vegetarian. I was wondering where the halibut came in.

[davidlevine]

Ah, I see. Mollie Katzen's original Moosewood Cookbook is strictly vegetarian, but New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant includes fish. Should have been clearer about which Moosewood cookbook I was talking about.

[amysisson.livejournal.com]

Spinach tacos? This is one I'd like to try. Can you point to either an online recipe, or simply the title of the cookbook (Interlibrary Loan is my friend, so it doesn't matter how obscure the cookbook is....).

It's odd, I don't cook much for myself (I've been eating lots of fake-meat vegetarian things, like Fantastic brand sloppy joes, Fantastic brand tacos, etc.), but I really like using the slow cooker to make stuff for Paul that freezes well and he can carry to work for late-work-night dinners. Just tried the simplest ever beef in red wine in the slow cooker, and he raved about it. (Not something I'd eat, though!)

[davidlevine]

The recipe is in Eating Well magazine and is online here: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/search.php?id=627

As it turned out, we didn't actually prepare that meal yesterday (it was a long day, we went out for Vietnamese instead) so I can't tell you whether or not we liked it.

[davidlevine]

We just made the spinach tacos tonight. A light dinner, but an intriguing variety of flavors. A lot will depend on exactly which tortillas and salsa you use. Don't forget to give the onions plenty of time to caramelize.