Un-banish-ed?

Sorry I've been away so long.  My workplace is apparently on the fence as to whether blogspot.com is a "non-value-added" website, since it was blocked for a few weeks, and now apparently is back.  I know I can blog from any computer really, but my evenings and weekends have been so packed that I usually just fit in a quick 20 minutes of downtime during work to compose my posts.  Maybe this doesn't make me the best employee ever, but if I don't have occasional distractions I'm going to be unhappy, and that doesn't make for a great worker either.

So we'll have to see if this lasts.  If I recall correctly, something similar happened with twitter, where it was available, blocked, available and then blocked for good.  Fingers crossed this will be different and I'll get back to blogging more regularly.  Otherwise, I'll try to find time in the evenings to check in but I doubt it would be as frequent.

At the moment, I'm pretty busy, so the next "real" blog post will probably be next week.  In the meantime, here's a fun picture of some Michigan blueberries.  We had steel-cut oats for breakfast this morning, with some of these delicious guys defrosted and thrown in.  Yum!  Good thing there's still more than 10 lbs left in the freezer!  :)

52 Changes - Semi-plagiarism edition

Apparently I have just been way too busy lately, between my awesome new food and wine class, cheering on the Cyclone Volleyball team, camping every weekend from now until snow, and riding the new scooter every chance I get.  Between all of that, I haven't blogged quite as much as I should, and actually fell behind a week.  So, let's make this change effective last week, and sometime this week I'll come up with another one.  Good enough?

So, I've been reading a pretty cool book lately, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  I stumbled upon it via a link from another blog, which ironically enough ended up being another book by the exact same title.  I tried to find that book on Amazon, and ended up finding Gretchen Rubin's book, being interested, and you can see where it goes from there.  Incidentally, I still haven't found that other happiness project, but I like this one, so that's probably good enough.

Gretchen's quest and mine seemed to have some similarities, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought mine should be like hers.  Several of my changes have been focused on more efficient use of my time, but what I really had wanted was focusing my time to the things I enjoy, i.e. the things that make me happy.  It's an interesting semantic difference between making changes to become the me I want to be, and accepting the me that I actually am inside, making changes to bring that me out more.  You should really just read Rubin's book, since she says it all a lot better than I do, but the end result is that I'm still making changes, but they may be more happiness-oriented in the short term.

In the very short term, I'm leading off with something that I don't think is in the book, but ties in to being happier.  I'm going to try to smile more.  This kind of ties in to part of Gretchen's project, where she opts to fake being energetic about something in order to actually end up being more energetic.  Kind of a "fake it 'til you make it" concept.  Well, on a broader sense, I'll give it a whirl with just being happy and smiling.  I tend to smile a lot when I actually am happy, but not so much with little everyday interactions.  If I see a neighbor walking into the condo, I'll wave and say hi, but it probably doesn't come off as friendly as it would if it came with a smile.

This will be a little tricky, since I often hate my smile, and cannot force it for the life of me.  Ever since I was a kid, there were the other kids who could smile on cue and have perfect school pictures, and there was me, who ended up with some sort of a grimace, a frightening bared-teeth look, or the years I opted not to try at all, and got what looked like a mug shot.  It really doesn't come naturally to me, unless I truly am happy.  But how do you get better at something?  Practice.  And as dumb as it might sound, I'm going to practice smiling.

Not all the time, mind you.  I don't want to walk around with a constant grin on my face - that makes people start to whisper about you behind your back.  But I'll try to be more conscious of it, and throw it in when I'm chatting with people, so they don't think I'm always so serious.  So if you happen to bump into me and I wave and say hello with a bizarre expression on my face, don't run away.  I'm trying to smile!  :)

Double Dipping

I had to write an essay for my DMACC food and wine class about what I wanted to get out of it, and I thought, well, it's kind of like a blog post, so I'm going to recycle it.  :)  First class was awesome - we learned how to make stock and taste wine!!!  Full review/discussion may be forthcoming, but in the meantime, here's my essay.

I have always had a passion for food, but never really realized it until just a handful of years ago.  Looking back, it should have been obvious, given how much time I spent in the kitchen helping out.  Even now some of my favorite childhood memories are from the last-minute rush to put together every Thanksgiving dinner, everything finishing at the same moment, people hurrying about the cramped, warm kitchen to tend to each aromatic and delicious dish.  The energy of that moment is something I always loved to be a part of, but it took me until several years out of school before I realized I wanted it back.

I started cooking for myself once I got out of school, but I soon discovered that helping in a kitchen and having your own are two different things.  Almost continually, I’d find myself seeking confirmation that things were going right, since I was so used to my Mom’s experience and advice to simply tell me the next step.  Although I now feel that I know a little bit about cooking, I frequently ask my wife if she thinks the dish is ready, or how she thinks it looks.  This comes down to a question of technique, which is one of the main things I’m looking for from this class.

Technique to me means the knowledge that the particular skill you are using in the kitchen is being performed correctly.  If, let’s say,  I need to sear a pork chop, knowing the proper technique means that I know what steps to undertake, so that I know that it’s going to turn out right.  Or, as another example, when I made chicken stock this past weekend, I didn’t need to ask my wife at all if it was progressing properly, because I now knew exactly what to do. Regardless of which variety of stock or what application it was for, I knew the proportion of the ingredients and the steps, so I didn’t need someone telling me what to do.  Having the confidence that I know the right skills, the proper technique, to address these fundamental cooking skills, will go a long way to improving my abilities.

The next thing that I’d like to attain in my culinary journey is a better overall understanding of food.  I feel that this is a natural progression from knowing technique.  It’s a little bit like creating a work of art: you need to know the proper brushstrokes, but once you’ve mastered them, you need to understand how to put things together in a cohesive way.  Bringing the analogy back to the kitchen, let’s say I’ve learned exactly how to cook a piece of salmon; now I need to know what to do with it.  How to season, what to pair with it, sauces/sides, etc.  This goal is one of comprehending different flavor profiles and being able to put them together in a creative way.

It all kind of builds into my ultimate goal.  To be able to bring together great ingredients into a dish of my creation, and knowing it will come out right.  Naturally, this is something that takes years of experience to even get close to, but it’s something I strive for, and I think the class is a great way to begin that journey.  I’m pretty decent right now at following a recipe and making food.  I might not do every step exactly right, but I can get close.  But I want to go beyond that, to trusting that I know how to treat and prepare each ingredient, and truly appreciate how to put them together cohesively without following a recipe.

Like I said, it is a bit of a long-term goal, but if this course can give me a better feel for technique and understanding, then I’ll be happy.

As for the wine side of things, to be honest I signed up for the food aspect and considered the wine instruction more or less a bonus.  But after the first class period I was intrigued and started thinking about it more.  If one of my goals is to be able to put food flavor profiles together in a thoughtful way, why not wine?  Up to this point, I pretty much put red wine with red meat, white wine with fish, and figured if I liked the taste that was enough.  But we have five senses to appreciate food and drink, so it seems a shame to simply ignore most of them when drinking wine.

I didn’t expect it when I signed up, but if I learn the same things about wine as I mentioned I was hoping for with food, this will be a pretty great class.  Technique – knowing how to actually taste a wine to appreciate it, and understanding – actually giving thought to the flavors and how they play off of food flavors to work well together.

Based on the syllabus and the first class period, it seems that we will be talking about a lot of the things I was seeking when I signed up for the class.  Thank you for putting together such a great course, and I look forward to what more we can learn this semester!

August Filmfest

First go-round on the new DVR went pretty well, all things considered.  I found a few movies playing this month that I needed, got some from the library, did an interlibrary loan, and watched some that were on Turner Classics even though they weren't coming up on the list.  After last month's eight movies, we're down to six, but who cares?  It's not a race, as I need to keep reminding myself.  Here it this month's batch, from least to most favorite.  Unfortunately this was a bit of a down month overall, but there were some that were pretty good.

6) MASH (1970) - There are very few movies on this list that I would describe as ones that I hated, but MASH just might make that group.  I had seen clips here and there of the spinoff TV show, and hated that too, but people kept telling me the movie was funnier.  No such luck.  It's supposed to be a dark comedy about the Vietnam War, but it was really hard to find the comedy parts.  Jokes consist of people talking over one another so things are indecipherable, some really mean-spirited and borderline misogynistic pranks, and the constant reminder that the "heroes" just don't give a shit.  Then it ends with a very long and utterly pointless football game scene.  At times, Hawkeye was a little likable, but everyone else was awful.  As a movie, it was tedious, boring and depressing, but as a comedy it was a real disaster.  I hope to never see this movie again.

5) The Wild Bunch (1969) - I don't like most Westerns.  You know it and I know it.  So if a Western is pretty unremarkable, I'm not likely to enjoy it.  If instead it features emotionless and unpleasant "antiheroes" in some rote robbery scheme, you can imagine where the review is headed.  In some ways this was a neat idea, since it's set at the end of the cowboy era, so there could be a lot about how the traditional outlaw is feeling marginalized as technology approaches, but every single person in it is at best nondistinct or else flat-out unlikeable.  The story is blah, as we follow some bandits to rob a weapons train for no real reason save money, so you're unlikely to get drawn in there.  And I won't give it away here, but the ending shootout/finale is totally unsatisfying.  Comparing this to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which came out in the same year, and it's no contest.

4) Spartacus (1960) - Entry number two in a pair of remarkably similar epics on this list, after Ben-Hur.  The story is actually very comparable, with a slave of ancient Roman times rising up to become an inspirational leader against the overwhelming powers that be.  These are always at least okay, though they're always so long that they do drag on a bit.  I liked Ben-Hur better for some reason; the protagonist was more believable or likable, but Spartacus did have some pretty entertaining supporting characters.  There's a very clever, conniving member of the Senate that is fun to watch as he subtly backstabs some of the others.  Aside from that, though, the love interest seems forced (almost literally), and the ending is just pretty darn depressing.  But it's worth a watch if you want to know why everyone says "I am Spartacus!"

3) Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) - Hard to find this movie in DSM.  I had to interlibrary loan it from Perry (or was that Pella?).  Anyway, this is a fun, though apparently historically inaccurate depiction of a real-life mutiny in imperial British times.  It seems that Captain Bligh wasn't truly a cruel ship's captain, but setting that aside, this version is pretty satisfying.  The film version of Bligh is so deliciously nasty that you can't help but feel that somebody needs to rise up and put him in his place.  With the dashing Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian, it's easy to cheer for the good guys.  So, yeah, it's a fun tale of adventures and drama on the high seas, with a typical struggle between the really bad and the mostly good.  The only things that I didn't really like were the new midshipman, who was just obnoxiously chipper and happy to be on the boat, and the slightly draggy last act.  If you don't use it as a history lesson, it's a quality film.

2) Woman of the Year (1942) - BONUS!  This wasn't on the list of top 100 movies, but it is listed as the 90th best comedy and 74th best romance by the AFI.  So per the original plan, I shouldn't have watched it til I finished the top 100, but in today's no-rules environment, I wanted to watch it so I did!  It's the first Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy collaboration, and as such it's fun and pretty cute.  Fairly standard romantic comedy fare, with two newspaper writers from totally different worlds getting married and trying to fit in together.  There's a little bit of good banter between the two, some actual serious moments, and a great slapstick-y ending, which did in fact make me laugh out loud.  For a moment I thought this was going to come dangerously close to reinforcing traditional gender roles, which would have been sad given Katherine Hepburn's strong character (in real life and the film), but it pulled through pretty well.  This isn't like a Great Film, but it is fun to watch.

1) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - One of the younger classics on the list, and a good one to be sure.  If you've seen this film before, you know that a lot of the appeal is predicated on a twist ending, which usually makes me think that the rewatch value is lessened.  But just as I discovered with the Sixth Sense, Shawshank really does hold up over time.  This is one of those if it's on, I'll watch it for a while movies, but I hadn't seen it all the way through in some time.  When I did, I got to once more experience Tim Robbins in perhaps his best film role as the soft-spoken, wrongfully (?) imprisoned Andy Dufresne, and Morgan Freeman beginning his career renaissance as the wise older supporting character.  They both do a great job adding humanity to the roles, and you can't help but to feel inspired by Andy's journey.  And there's a really good, emotional sequence with the minor character Brooks.  All of it melds together really well to tell a great story in a never-dull film.  It may not be one of my absolute favorites, but still, if I catch it on TV, I'll usually stick with it for a while.

That's August!  There are still 75 movies on the AFI Top 100 lists, so I should be doing this for some time to come.  Even though this month wasn't spectacular, this has been a really cool project, as I've found a bunch of movies that I really do enjoy that I never knew.  September starts on the creepy side with the already-begun Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and who knows where we'll go from there?  Find out in another month!

52 Changes - Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"

I first started this program of making a change a week over three months ago.  I didn't really know what I intended to change about myself, but I had a nagging feeling that I wasn't quite living life to my potential, and that I wasn't actively spending my time on things that I really wanted to do, instead whiling away time lazily watching TV I didn't care about and goofing off on the internet.  I wanted, in the words of Dr. Dreyfuss (The Apartment, a Zinkthink favorite movie!), to "be a mensch."  I didn't know exactly how, but I was going to start making some changes.

And those changes have gone fine, as evidenced by my recap last week.  After a quarter-year, some modifications have been made, but they're mostly all there still.  But I still hadn't made any game-changing paradigm shifts.  I wasn't snoozing my alarm clock, but was that truly all I wanted to accomplish?  Then, for whatever reason, the universe aligned, and the Big Change was made visible.  As in the Buddhist maxim at the start of this post, perhaps I was just finally ready, or maybe it was a really big coincidence, but a great opportunity came up.

For some inexplicable reason, I was poking around the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) website.  I've done that a few times in the past year or so, since I know they have a culinary arts program, and I've thought it would be great to take a class or two if their schedules allowed.  They never do, since DMACC wants people who will take the full program, not jokers taking one class in the evenings.  Or so I thought, until I stumbled upon this listing: HCM 550 Food and Wine Seminar, will cover topics such as: food-wine pairing, stocks/sauces, meat cooking methods, poultry preparation, shellfish cookery, cheese, dairy products and bakeshop principles.  This was everything I'd wanted to learn, in one class!

I have intensely wanted, for the past year or so, to truly learn to cook.  To make that transition from one who can follow recipes, to a professional who can create dishes from whatever is fresh or on hand.  To know the essential techniques so I wouldn't have to color by number from a cookbook, but simply know how to treat a piece of meat or a batch of produce fresh from the garden to fully utilize it.  Right now, I like to cook, but I still don't think I know how.  With this class, I think I can bridge that gap.

Of course, one class for the masses is not the same as all-out going to culinary school.  But it's a heck of a lot better than the free offerings at Williams-Sonoma (bleah!), and it's just enough given that I don't actually want to work in a restaurant.  I'm trying to temper my expectations, but if we even begin to get into the fundamentals, I think this course is the kick-start that can get me on the road to cooking skill.  If they get me comfortable enough in the shallow end, I think I can use what I've learned to gradually work my way deeper on my own.

As the title implies, this class wasn't free - it cost $375.  That's going to hurt if the class isn't up to par with what I'm hoping.  But if it is, over a 16 week semester, that's less than $25 per three-hour class session.  If I gain the kind of knowledge I envision, that's a small price to pay.  And it lets me shift from talking to doing.  For ages, I've talked about how I wanted to learn to cook, but looking at what I did, there was no real progress, no action on my part.  The DMACC class gives me a way to go from a talker to a doer, and I think I'm ready as a student.  Class, and the journey to being a mensch, starts tonight.