Movie Review: Maleficent

Or: How did you fail me? Let me count the ways.

Before I start, I should state I'm going to be spoiling pretty much the entire movie in this review. Because when I'm frustrated with a movie (or excited with one, let's be honest) I can get a bit carried away in my discussion of the topic. (Indeed, after this movie, I actually went and spoiled an old Hitchcock movie for a friend because I got caught up in my rant on disappointing movies. Hint: if you ever want to watch the movie "Suspicion", don't get me started on how I feel about that movie and how of all the movies I've seen, it was the one that let me down the most because it was *GREAT* until about the last 5 minutes and then it RUINED EVERYTHING because of STUPID STUDIO EXECS and wasn't Hitchcock's fault at all, he had a brilliant ending planned but nooooooooo. Can't have THAT. Mumble mumble spoilers mumble mumble.)

So. Don't read on if you haven't seen the movie unless you don't mind spoilers.

Now. Maleficent.

I was extremely excited by this movie (which is part of the reason I feel so let down now). The trailer looked great; I *adored* the single "Once Upon a Dream" that was released from the teaser; I have a strong partiality towards fairy tales redone, and those retold from the villains point of view are usually a lot of fun (Wicked, for example, is great fun. And things like the 100 Kingdoms books. Or Ella Enchanted.) So I went in with high expectations. Indeed, prior to seeing the movie, I made a point of re-watching the original Sleeping Beauty (which I also love, but hadn't seen in ages -- it's a gorgeous movie! They don't do animation like that anymore - hand painted backgrounds with incredible detail, drawn stills based on live models....) and listening to Tchaikovsky's original Sleeping Beauty ballet (on which the original movies score is based -- "Once Upon a Dream" is based on a waltz in it, for example.)

First off: technical stuff. The score was disappointing, especially as the first thing that drew me to the movie was the gorgeous creepy take on "Once Upon A Dream." Alas, that song appeared only in the final credits. I didn't notice any other references to the original scoring during the movie, and the scoring that was there was just... I want to say standard modernish fantasy music with heavy inspiration from Harry Potter that was neither creepy, moving, or in any way special or memorable. And while we're going with look and feel, the CG was not great. The moors were supposed to be a realm of magic and wonder, they certainly could have tried to make them a bit more impressive. The original art from the 1959 movie is so beautiful -- this was... not so much.

Now for the main issue: the plot. The plot did not know what it was doing.  It starts off decently enough: there is a kingdom where all the humans live, and a separate realm for all the fae creatures. A young Maleficent falls for a young Stefan (an ambitious and curious child) but they grow apart as they age. However, when Stefan finds out he could succeed as king if he kills Maleficent, he uses their former connection to establish trust, drugs her, and -- while he can't bring himself to kill her -- cuts off her wings to bring home as a trophy, to prove he has what it takes to rule and as a promise that he'll try and take over the fairy realm, like the current king wants. Which is a *terrible* and *horrifying* thing, but completely reasonable as a premise (and as the review here states, is a thing that while children might be shocked by this betrayal, adults, unfortunately, won't be.) So far, so good. However, this is where things start going wrong.

This movie *could* have gone the "she's protecting her realm from invaders" route. Or the "misunderstood and not actually doing anything that evil" route. Or even the "gradually starts making choices that lead her down a darker and darker path until she's completely corrupted" route. But no. Instead, rejected, mutilated, and heartbroken, she does a complete 180, takes over the fairy realm and instantly establishes herself as an evil and terrifying queen (modifying and darkening the landscape around her), and, of course, curses Stefan's firstborn child to die. [Now, a minor note here: in the first scene of the movie, it establishes that the moor where the fae live does not need a ruler and everyone lives in harmony! As she grows, Maleficent graduates to a protector of that realm (being the strongest fairy) but as soon as she gets betrayed, she immediately seizes power and none of the others put up any fuss about this. And at the end, when things are supposedly back to their happy state at the end, she randomly declares that Aurora is going to be joint queen of that realm and the human kingdom! Huzzah! Yeah... does not compute.]

This brings us to the three 'good' fairies. I do not know WHAT was up with them. I think they were supposed to be comic relief? The fact that they showed up at all to the christening was a little odd, considering the fact humans tried to invade the moor and Stefan mutilated their realms protector. Are they just traitors to their species? I was prepared to snicker despairingly that the gifts from the fairies were beauty and a lovely voice -- clearly the most important things for a young lady to have! However, they swapped the second fairy's gift to "She'll NEVER be UNHAPPY or BLUE." What the hell??? That's a TERRIBLE GIFT. You will never be able to feel unhappiness. You have no control over your emotions! Plus, it didn't even WORK - I was wondering if Aurora was going to go through the movie in a state of clueless bliss because of it, but, while certainly clueless, she definitely had some moments where she was less than thrilled. And then the three fairies take charge of the baby and decide to do so without magic and are hopelessly terrible at it and it's a wonder the poor kid doesn't die.

Except it's not a wonder, apparently. After Maleficent curses the baby, she finds it right away, and instead of letting the three neglectful fairies do her work for her, or just taking care of things there and then, she decides to protect the child and follow her around as she grows up. She naturally grows to care for her (though I can't say I grew overly fond of Aurora) and eventually even tries to lift the curse (but fails). Aurora mistakes her for her fairy godmother and decides she wants to live in the fairy realm with her as they grow to care for each other. However, once Aurora finds out that Maleficent cursed her, she doesn't even give the woman she had JUST said she loved and wanted to live with forever and take care of her and be happy with a chance to explain, or ANYTHING. Nope, she just runs off, straight into the arms of her father. Her father, who has just been growing more obsessed about finding and killing off Maleficent as the years go by, even ignoring the death of his wife, the Queen who did not even merit a name (though according to IMDB she had one - Leila. It didn't ever came up in the actual movie, though.) He barely looks at her, and just sends her off to a tower while he prepares to try and kill Maleficent when she approaches.

I won't go through the entire climax. Maleficent decides to make sure that Aurora gets cured on her own, gets into the castle, Aurora awakens (see my positive notes, below) and as they go downstairs, Stefan attacks and there is a big fight. Stefan gets what is coming to him, dying a predictably Disney death by falling to his doom after Maleficent spares him, thus negating all responsibility on anybodies part. The ending is abrupt and saccharine and doesn't really track very well at all. In general people's motivations aren't well explored or understandable, and while I understand if you want to make this movie about Maleficent and make her the 'good guy' you have to make changes to the story, you can still make the other side more complex and interesting, and you can still try and make people behave in ways that make sense for *them* instead of doing things all over the map.

On the plus side: Angelina Jolie was magnificent. She was working with poor source material, but she *worked* it, and looked dead on as Maleficent. When she was on screen, my eyes were glued to her. Definitely the highlight - she was creepy, wounded, and lovely, even when I was let down her actions, she was still brilliant doing them. Whoever designed her look also deserves props - she could alternate between beautiful and terrifying while keeping all the same features - her horns made her look gorgeous in the right context!  I also liked that it was Maleficent that added the "true loves kiss" thing to the curse as a mocking note to Stefan, who supposedly give her a 'true loves kiss' when they were younger. She also got to use her awesome opening lines from the 1959 movie, and delivered them perfectly.

Additionally, I was quite pleased by the fact that Prince Phillip was understandably -- but considering how things usually go in movies, unusually -- reticent about kissing a girl he'd just met the once while she was sound asleep and thus completely out of it. And then it didn't WORK because you don't get true love after one conversation with a person. Seriously. Thank goodness for smashing THAT sort of trope. They handled the manifestation of the dragon well (though I wish it was closer to the original movie design) and they didn't suddenly hand Maleficent shapeshifting powers, they did it in a logical manner by giving that to the shapeshifting crow. The fact that they made the thicket around the castle a nest of cold-iron thorns was pretty cute, though easily circumvented. Indeed, I really appreciated that they made it clear that, like in the lore, fairies are weak against cold iron.  I also appreciated some of the small touches referencing the original movie: the cottage design looked like the cottage; the castle looked like the castle; the abandoned ruin which makes her headquarters in the original looked spot on.

So. To sum up. Disappointing CG, design, and score. Plot is patchy, doesn't track well, and doesn't create a new and interesting story from the original. The reason why people do certain things and make various choices is completely incomprehensible at times, inconsistent at others. It really doesn't say anything new. I would say that the ads were quite misleading, in fact - don't go in expecting Wicked. Nothing is all bad, there are some highlights, but overall, not worth it.

(Huh. Both my movie reviews in this blog were movies I felt strongly disappointed by (the other being the Hobbit). I should try and remember to review a movie I actually like at some point.)

Cleaning out the Freezer

This summer I'm going to be spending three months in the UK, where my boyfriend, Benson, is working his post-doc position. So prior to leaving (in two weeks!), I've been trying to eat all the consumables in my apartment that are sitting in my pantry, my fridge, my freezer. This has resulted in me eating and making some interesting dishes lately, just to get rid of various ingredients. This past week, this resulted in me making Matzah Ball soup (getting rid of a bunch of soup stock), pan-fried chicken hearts (getting rid of chicken hearts), and dark chocolate beet brownies (getting rid of both some frozen leftover beets AND my chocolate chips). I got the recipe for the beets from here, altering the recipe slightly by removing an egg, adding a bit of extra salt, and swapping butter in for oil, so if you compare to the website I got the recipe from, you'll see a few changes. The chicken hearts, I improvised after looking at a bunch of different recipes, none of which I liked completely. (And I'll leave the Matzah Ball recipe, recipe from my friend Abe but with bacon fat substituted in for chicken fat because I didn't have any chicken fat -- the most unkosher matzah ball soup ever -- for another time.)

Dark Chocolate Beet Brownies
2 large beets, peeled (~1 lb)
2 large eggs
2/3 c. brown sugar
2/3 c. white sugar
1/2 c. butter, melted
2 tsp vanilla extract
1.25 c. cocoa powder
3/4 c. flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher or sea salt
1 c. chocolate chips

So as I said, I had some beets in my freezer (see "Death of a Lobster" - yes they were a year old - but you can freeze that kind of thing for ages and they're still just fine) -- basically extremely finely chopped beets, which had been through a blender, and which came from roughly 1lb of beets. Now, if you have your own beets not yet pureed, chop them up into a smallish dice, boil them in water until they're soft, drain well, then puree in a blender. If it doesn't blend well, add some melted butter from your butter reserve (as the butter is going to go in your brownies anyway!) so that it purees! You want the puree NOT to be hot (warm is ok, but NOT hot) so let that sit and cool a bit. In a separate bowl, mix flour, any remaining butter (melted), vanilla and sugars. Then add the beets and blend until homogenous. Next add the dry ingredients, mix again, then finally stir in the chocolate chips. Pour everything into a WELL GREASED, 9x13 baking pan, and bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 30 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool, then consume these delicious, rich and uniquely flavorful brownies at your will!


Pan-fried chicken hearts with garlic and rosemary
chicken hearts
a few cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
rosemary
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
chili powder (for an optional KICK)
flour
bacon fat (or other oil/fat to cook them in! Butter, chicken grease, or even more oil would work fine)

So as you can see, this recipe doesn't really have... proportions. I had a container of chicken hearts, and just kind of scaled accordingly. I sliced them up into strips (like 4 slices/heart - not quartered, but flattened slivers) rinsed and drained them thoroughly, then tossed with olive oil and the various spices to taste until they were well covered, then let them sit in the fridge for a couple hours (though honestly, 30 minutes would probably be fine). After that, I simply tossed the heart slices in flour and pan fried them in bacon fat (because everything improves with bacon fat!) for maybe 10 minutes, until they were cooked through. Then I popped them in a bowl and ate them as is. These turned out REALLY well - I tend to be ...non-discriminating when it comes to what types of food I'm willing to consume, so eating hearts doesn't bother me. Especially considering that my family always eats the chicken innards when we roast a chicken (or turkey, or other fowl beast) anyway. My dad's even made chicken heart soup. So eating chicken hearts is nothing new. However, when cooked this way, rather than baked to death inside a roasting chicken, they turn out extremely tender and juicy, much better than I've had them before (again, boiled or roasted to death). 10/10 would recommend for the more adventurous eater!

Homestyle Cooking: Meatloaf!

Everybody has their own recipe for meatloaf, and each one is just the way you had it growing up, and no other recipe for meatloaf can compare. What good is meatloaf if it's not just the way that mom/dad/grandma used to make?  In college, my biggest almost-fights - recurrent arguments? Joking arguments that almost weren't jokes? - with my friend Abe were over our respective meatloaf recipes. His recipe involves lots of ketchup, with more ketchup served on top - meatloaf, to his family, is a mechanism for getting rid of ketchup in a tasty fashion. Whereas I would never let ketchup within a MILE of my meatloaf - who eats meatloaf with ketchup??? Meatloaf is nostalgia, personified (food-onified?). As such, visiting my folks last week over Spring break, and having my grandfather over, I happily use my mothers - or rather, her Aunt Grace's - meatloaf recipe for some good home cooking. I don't tend to make it for myself very often, as it's rather a lot of food for one person. On the other hand, it does freeze well. But when I make it for family, well, there is never enough left to freeze!

Meatloaf

1.5 lbs ground beef

1 c. seasoned bread crumbs

1 c. tomato sauce

2 eggs

1 medium onion, chopped (optional)

1/2 tsp salt

dash of pepper

Preheat oven 400F. Mix all ingredients thoroughly - I usually just do this by hand, as I find that gets the whole mixture a bit more homogenous. Now, this recipe is a bit flexible, and usually when I make it it's with a little more (or less) meat. As such, I usually give it a good mix, then add more tomato sauce or breadcrumbs as necessary. You want the meat to be firm and moist - holding it's shape well - you don't want it to be overly crumbly from too many breadcrumbs or overly moist or slimy from too much tomato sauce or too many eggs. When cooking in Baltimore, I actually usually make a 2+ lb batch, which I split into two smaller loafs, saving one for a second meal with my folks.

Now, once everything is nicely mixed, and (for larger batches) split into equal loaf sized parts, you shape your meatloaf. This is the ... trademark? ... of my meatloafs. Ever since I was very small and helping my parents make meatloaf, I've always always always made my meatloaf into shapes. A cat, a Christmas tree or snowman, something seasonal. I've found that rabbits are particularly nice. Bake for 1.5 hours (more or less - obviously for more meat, cook longer, for less, cook shorter). Serve without ketchup.

Fun with Soup Stock

As I've mentioned in a few previous posts, I save chicken (and duck, and turkey, and lamb) bones in order to make my own soup stock. This results in me having, first, random bags of bones sitting in the back of my freezer, and second, large amounts of soup stock sitting in my freezer. Which means even when I'm busy, I have easy access to quality soup. It's easy enough to make soup stock: fill your pot 2/3 or 3/4 up the way with bones. You can add in some veggie scraps if you have them - or some garlic, or onion, or celery - for a bit rounder a flavor. I usually toss things like corn cobs in a plastic bag and save those in my freezer as well. Cover entirely with water, with a couple inches above the bone line to spare. Add in a bay leaf if you have one, and possibly a bouillon cube as a bit of a starter, and salt generously. Cover and cook. In a regular pot you have to cook for HOURS (and you probably want to smash up the bones with a hammer or something so they release their flavor a bit easier). However, I have a pressure cooker. Hence, I can just pressure cook the pot for about 45 minutes to an hour, and it's gonna be as good as it's gonna get! Once that's done, simply strain the soup thoroughly - first to get rid of the bones, then through a finer strainer to get rid of any small particulates which may have slipped through. Apparently fine restaurants strain their stocks up to 5 times to get them extra smooth, through increasingly finer strainers, but I generally don't go that far. Any sort of bones work here - as I've said, I've made turkey soup, duck soup, chicken stock, lamb stock, shrimp stock, and even veggie stock once (I didn't find that veggie stock was worth it, though - I'd have rather just eaten all the veggies and bought veggie stock - the difference from store bought didn't seem significant, except for a bit of a stronger dill flavor, but I digress). You can also make soup out of actual meat - buy a whole chicken and work from there - and that will end up with a delicious pot of soup as well - with actual meat in it to boot. But I rather favor this bone based method, as it's nice not to waste the bones from your lovely chicken roast and to reuse them for new, delicious purposes. It feels thrifty, and it turns out very well.

So in the past few weeks, I've made a couple different soups using my stock base (and yet, still have some remaining in the freezer). First, I made a sort of 'leftover' soup using a bunch of items that I had in my fridge I wanted to get rid of. This ended up consisting of onion/garlic/celery/cream cheese/parmesan cheese/heavy cream/chicken soup/cumin/bay leaf/chili powder/pepper/cayenne pepper/chives/corn starch/MSG/salt/anchovy paste/hot sauce! I don't have a picture, or even a recipe really other than my list of ingredients, because I just kind of kept adding things to the soup, tasting it, and whisking vigorously. So I guess this bit of the post is just a self-reminder and PSA that making soup once you have a good base is pretty easy and flexible. And there aren't any rules about it. Just stick things in that will taste good, and there you have it.

More recently, I decided to make some congee. This is also a relatively recipe-less dish. At it's most basic, it is rice in soup broth, cooked for long enough that the rice breaks down and becomes mush. So it is mainly a question of what you want IN your mush. However, I scandalized Benson by putting onions instead of scallions in my congee (one of these items I had, the other I didn't. The onions taste FINE, but admittedly the scallions are a BIT more traditional...). "Why would you put onions in congee? Nobody does that." I don't recall his EXACT phrasing, but the upshot was I was corrupting one of his favorite dishes, apparently. He also gets on me for putting sugar in my tea. Which is why I don't put sugar in green tea any more (but still keep to my sugared black). Anyway, this is an example of when I like to take full advantage of my slow cooker to just let the soup sit on my counter as everything cooks. So here are the ingredients I put into my most recent batch of congee - again, the only real things you need to put in are rice and broth. And scallions. And perhaps some ginger. And salt.


Congee
1 quart chicken stock+ 4 cups water (aka, 2 quarts soup)
1.5 c. uncooked rice
2 chicken thighs
1/2 diced onion (or, fine, SCALLIONS - ok? I had to promise Benson that if I ever made this for him, I'd only put scallions in.)
Ginger (alas, I only had the ground stuff this time, but I prefer to chop up a few actual chunks/slivers - that's what I tend to do. I usually have it around, but I recently finished off my last hunk.)
Salt
Pepper
MSG (see my post, Cooking For One, if you want to hear my mini-rant on MSG having a bad rep)
Soy Sauce
Maggie sauce
Sesame oil
Jyok3 sung1 - which is shredded... dried... pork stuff? From Chinatown. Added at the end as a kind of garnish, on top of the soup, not cooked with it. Also delicious over straight up rice. Or over other stuff with rice. Or on it's own. Just look at the picture, not really sure how to describe it other than kind of sweetish dried shredded pork.

Shredded dried pork product

I add the bit of water to my soup stock because stock is STRONG, and I added other stuff into it for flavoring, so I can get away with diluting it a bit. It goes further that way. But yes, toss everything in your crockpot, give it a stir, and let it cook for 4-6 hours until the rice has broken down and it's nice and porridge-y. That's when you taste and adjust the seasonings. Obviously, since I tossed in raw chicken, one can't taste until after it's cooked through. But I don't even bother taking the chicken off the bone - just tossing the whole thing on is fine, because after a few hours it falls OFF the bone. So yes, all of the ingredients, save the jyok3 sung1, into the crockpot for 4-6 hours. Stir occasionally. Or in an actual pot, but then you have to keep an eye on it and stir a heck of a lot more often. I mean, I put it in the pot and then watched a movie with Benson. Can't do that with a pot sitting on top of your stove. (We watched Hot Fuzz, which was great. And in case you are wondering how I watched a movie with Benson when he's in England and I'm in New York, we do this by getting the same copy of the movie, shared via Dropbox, getting on Skype, setting up the movie, and counting backwards to hit play at the same time. Then we keep Skype going, and usually IM comments back and forth throughout. It's nice. We do TV shows the same way.)

 So, that's it for now. Hope that this encourages folks to stop and enjoy some delicious, delicious soup. After all, when I was little, soup was my absolute favorite meal of all. I'd eat it almost every day. Nothing wrong with that - it's extremely versatile and a wonderful comfort food.

Catching up, plus Deviled Eggs

Hey all!

It's been much, much too long since my last blog update. Very sorry about that, I genuinely WILL TRY to go back to an update schedule of every other week at a minimum. So. What have I been up to since... gosh, has it really been since last summer, basically? I've had many blog posts I meant to write. My dining experience at Per Se. The rest of my trip to Italy. The many various things I've cooked over the last 6 months or so. Well, I've been up to a lot in that time. Benson has visited twice. I've gone to Baltimore more than one might expect, including a week of housesitting plus keeping an eye on my grandfather who recently moved down to an assisted living place in Baltimore. A dear friend of mine got married and had a lovely wedding. I gave a public outreach talk on some interesting debates in the history of astronomy, plus have participated in other outreach activities with the astro department. I've been running/attending a movie night with friends in the department, too, so lots of good movies, there. My research has been going well, and I've been working on some papers and gotten several proposals in, and even accepted (well, my research group has, and I've helped). I went to the AAS meeting in National Harbour, MD, to present a poster on my research. I got glasses, and want to get a monocle (but these are a bit hard to find prescription). I bought some single malt scotch with some of my Christmas money. Benson went to Cambridge, so we've been adjusting to an all-new 5 hour time difference. I went to the beach in Ocean City, MD. I wrote a couple pieces of fanfiction (you saw the piece for the WTNV election, my last blog post!). I've been spending too much time on the internet, particularly Tumblr, AO3, Facebook, etc. I've been going to Chinatown semi-regularly with a group in my department, mostly for dim sum though recently for the Chinese New Year and peking duck (amazingness!). I went to my 5 year Brandeis reunion. There was Christmas. Iceskating and sledding with Benson. Watching too much TV, including a new season of Sherlock, starting Supernatural, the Sopranos, and the usual Doctor Who, Homeland, HIMYM, and other shows. Played a few good computer games - particularly Fez and the Stanley Parable. Movies: Godfather Trilogy, Hunger games, Desolation of Smaug, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir dogs (in a one night Quintin Terintino marathon). Hung out with my friend Lloyd and cooked with them a bit as well. Went to a Doo-Wop festival in Wild Wood, NJ, dressing all 50s in a poodle-skirt both for that AND Halloween. I may do some mini-blog entries on some of these things, we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, with this "sort of" entry, I figure I'll post a "sort of" kind of recipe. I made some deviled eggs last weekend for an Oscar party I attended Sunday night, so there we go!

I've always loved deviled eggs. It's probably one of the first dishes I made on my own without help or recipe from my parents. I'm not counting sandwiches or scrambled eggs or cake mix here, or a recipe I made 100x with my mom before doing it again by myself - I mean a recipe I sought out on my own. This is also not counting the numerous instances when I was really young when I would mix spices, water, and food coloring to make 'magic potions' - those were pretty inedible, considering they were made entirely of edible substances. Anyway, deviled eggs. I ate them for the first time... probably at my aunts New Years Eve party or something similar... and really loved them, so resolved to make them on my own. I don't know the age when I started making them, but it was probably sometime in elementary school.

Now, my recipe is a bit different than most deviled egg recipes because of this. When I was younger, I HATED mustard. Would not eat it. Could not stand it. So that very classic ingredient in deviled eggs has been substituted by thousand islands dressing, which apparently my childhood self decided was the obvious substitute for that much-hated condiment. And I think it works very well.

The other thing about this recipe is that it doesn't have 'proportions', per se. I just tend to add each thing until it looks/tastes right. My usually 'stopping' point for adding ingredients is and always has been that when I can't stop myself from tasting it because of deliciousness, that's when I can stop.

This recipe has also evolved to be spicier over the years. The hot sauce is a relatively recent (ie, college-aged me) addition. This is because, in addition to my spice-tolerance growing, my mother dislikes spicy food. In fact, I'd always fill a couple eggs early for my mother prior to adding some of the spices (like the old bay and chili powder) before making the rest of the egg fill more spicy for my dad and me. I contained this trend of a separate early non-spicy batch in college for my dear friend Kaila, who has an even more extreme spice intolerance.

So my point is, this is not so much a recipe as much as a flexible set of guidelines for how to my style of (awesome) deviled eggs. Modify and taste throughout for your best personal results. Feel free to experiment until you find the combination that's best for YOU. But DO include the Old Bay - it is my not-so-secret key ingredient.

Deviled Eggs

Eggs (hard boiled and shelled)

Miracle Whip

Thousands Islands (French) dressing

Hot Sauce

Spices:

      Old Bay

      Cajun seasoning

      Chili Powder

      Paprika

      Pepper

      Anything else you think might be delicious, like chives, if you have them!

Obviously, the first step is to boil and shell however many eggs you are planning on making. I usually make a minimum of 6 at a time. I have a very nice egg transport container, with little divots for the eggs so they'll be stable, and that will hold 20 half-eggs, so when making them for large groups I'll make a dozen, eat 2 of them, and put the rest into the container for transport! So. Once you have your eggs boiled and shelled, slice them all lengthwise (as shown) and remove the egg yolk and put it into a small mixing bowl. The egg whites go into your egg container to be filled later.

Now, first, add in *roughly* equal parts Miracle Whip and Thousand Islands dressing - not *quite* equal, though, I tend to put in a bit more of the Miracle Whip than the dressing, because I like the tang. How much of each of these, you ask? Well, that depends on the number of eggs, for one thing, so add a bit at a time and MASH everything with a fork. You want the yolks to form a thick paste - on the creamy side of crumbly, and as smooth as you can get it, like really thick icing. When the texture seems pretty good, take a taste to balance the Miracle Whip/dressing ratio, make sure that's good, and then you can start adding your hot sauce and spices. The amount of hot sauce, of course, depends on how spicy you like things and the spiciness of the sauce in question. I have a thing of "Dave's Insanity Sauce" which I've been very slowly working my way through for a while now, because a little goes a LONG way. As far as spices, I'm VERY generous with my Old Bay (being a Maryland Girl at heart). But the cajun spices are also a really good addition and I put those in with a fairly liberal hand as well. And of course, chili powder and pepper for a bit more kick, and you can't make deviled eggs without paprika. All I can say for this bit is just keep mixing and tasting. This time I also happened to have some chives in my fridge, so those turned out to be a really nice addition, but I don't usually have those around.

Once you're egg-paste is to your satisfaction, you can fill your egg yolks. I would be generous in how much you put in each egg - it's better to have nice fat eggs and just munch on an empty egg white or two than to be skimpy here, I feel. Plus, you've added mass to the egg whites by adding in the Miracle Whip and the dressing, so you should be able to fill most of them. Once that's done, for a dash of color (and a bit more spice) I toss a dash more of Old Bay and paprika (and sometimes the cajun seasoning, or in this batch, chives) over the top as a lovely decorative touch!

Anyways, hopefully this is a useful set of guidelines for deviled eggs. Also hopefully it won't take me forever to update this blog again. I do like writing it, I just got busy and then out of the habit of posting. Ah, well! Such is life. Like I said, I may try to do a few mini-blog entries describing a few of the things that have gone on in my life in the past 6 months in a bit more detail in the future!

Welcome to Night Vale Elections

(A note: this blog post will make absolutely NO sense to anyone who is not familiar with the podcast "Welcome to Night Vale", which you can find for free on iTunes, and I have been really enjoying listening to of late. You are warned. This is basically something of a writing exercise, as I want to get back into the habit of posting. I also highly recommend this podcast, which I have clearly overthought.)

This year, as there aren't any major elections in my voting district, my thoughts turn instead to the mayoral elections of Night Vale, where, after the withdrawal of Mayor Pamela Winchell, two newcomers to the political scene have entered the race. First to enter the race was Hiram McDaniels, who posted his interest in joining the race on his blog this past December.

 McDaniels has some problems in his past - he was arrested for insurance fraud, falsifying identification fraud, evading arrest, and assaulting a police vehicle with fire. It is also worth stating that he has come under some criticism for his very nature: he is literally a five-headed dragon. However, despite some of the negative stereotypes for multi-headed beings, and general dragon-bashing, he has taken this fact and tried to turn it into a positive, using it as his campaign slogan: "I’m literally a five-headed dragon. Who cares!" McDaniels has a reputation for his intelligence, new ideas, and focus on youth development - both in business and physical activity. He has also expressed interest in expanding local park systems. His opposition, however, has pointed to his exchanges with corn lobbyists with concern, in fear they may try to move in on the local imaginary corn market.

Less is known about the other mayoral candidate, the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, who announced her candidacy this past July. While McDaniel's description is well known and circulated (a five headed dragon,18 feet tall, weighing about 3600 lbs, and with red, black, green, and yellow eyes - mostly green), the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home tends to be always just out of your sight. However, she is regularly in touch with the media and, like McDaniels, has an active online presence, based on her internet browsing history found on your computer cache, and her requests for your wifi password. Her stated positions include some innovative new ideas for increasing school funding while still lowering taxes, as well as for simplifying the political system which she believes has become too complicated. It is also rumored that she holds critical information that the Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency is eager to get hold of. This information may or may not be about you.

As an editorial, at the moment I find myself leaning towards Hiram McDaniels, since I feel I know more about his policies. And, while I try not to lean on stereotypes, I can't help but feel that being a five-headed dragon may give him a unique advantage for generating new ideas which may benefit Night Vale and a fresh perspective. However, I am not yet ready to endorse him in full - he is, in some ways, the more conservative candidate - and I would like to know more of the ideas from Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. There is something to be said for being in touch with the voting base, and based on her residency, she is certainly more familiar with the day to day goings on in Night Vale than her opposition, who clearly originates from somewhere other than our little world. 

 I am looking forwards to the rumored debate which may (or may not) occur this coming Friday, which I plan on listening to with an open mind.

AstroFest and Créme de Menthe Brownies

WOW it's been a while. Hopefully now that the academic year has started up again, I'll start posting more regular updates. And I'll  try to go back and maybe describe the rest of my big trip and some other exciting things from this summer. I've been quite busy, and the summer tends to be a bit unstructured, and while this may imply more free time, it also means I tend to let things go at the same time. But I've been quite busy, cooking fun things, not to mention other summer plans (like a trip to Ocean City Maryland and eating lots and lots of crab plus plenty of time on the beach), so I have plenty of new content, if I just write it up. So now that the academic year is back in the swing of things, my move to a regular and structured schedule should return. I'll aim for an update approximately two times per month, probably with a few extra updates in the next two weeks catching up with my life until now, starting with some recent events and a recipe for my delicious créme de menthe brownies!

One recent event was my department's annual "AstroFest." Every year, everyone in the department gets together and each person gives a four minute talk (plus one minute, for questions) on their research or some related or interesting aspect of astronomy (in theory - in practice not everyone signs up each year and we have some outside folks as well, though graduate students are required strongly encouraged to present). This lets us all be social with each other, remind ourselves what everyone else is doing and how their research is coming, familiarize ourselves with cool topics in modern astronomy, plus get a pretty decent breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the department. Plus, coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. We're talking 60+ talks starting at 9am and going on 'til 5pm, albeit with breaks for coffee, lunch, and breathing space. A really fun event, though it can also be overwhelming.

I myself gave a talk on the same object I presented in South Africa - now with a few more data points, but compressed to 1/4 of the time to present. So I basically gave an overview of the theory driving our observations and showed a few pretty plots demonstrating why it's interesting. I left off by tossing the subject to the speaker after me - another graduate student who is also looking at the same object - with more of a focus on modeling - who has been working with my advisor and me for the past year. So I also provided her talk with a bit of background, while showing off my pretty, pretty data, and having the benefit of not having to cover EVERYTHING about this object in four minutes. Which would be, frankly, impossible. I'm currently working on the paper for this object, and the roughest of rough drafts, without figures, citations, or finalized data (plus a conclusion section which is simply bullet points at the moment) is already three pages of very small type print. So it worked out quite well, we even practiced together a bit beforehand to make sure we flowed well, topic wise, and that I could set up her talk decently. We got a fair number of complements on our joint talks, in fact!

After AstroFest is the all important AstroFEAST: where (after hitting a bar for an hour and a half first) we head over to one of the professors apartments and just eat, drink, and be merry. It's always a very nice time, this year with loads of Indian food, some of which is even now in my freezer (there was so much left over, the hostess insisted we take food home, and I found myself with a huge tray of lamb curry). Other highlights of the evening include an entire table covered in different sorts of ice cream, playing some cat's cradle and hand games with other graduate students (including teaching another grad student how to play "cups"), discussions of Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time and other geek favorites, random musings about science, and general revelry.

After all that astronomy and festivities, one might ask how I work a recipe into the blog post. While I'm certainly not above simply sticking in a recipe at the end, it is somewhat related. FOr the breaks between talks at AstroFest, graduate students are also required encouraged to bring in an afternoon snack. So this year hailed the return of my much beloved recipe of créme de menthe brownies, which my family has been making since I was but a wee barne. Créme de menthe brownies: a delightful mix of rich chocolate and mintiness in three delicious layers.We generally only made these about once a year at home, mainly because they have many separate steps which need to be spread out during the day (or, in a crunch, an evening). So they take a while. However, each individual step is pretty straightforwards - it's just that each layer needs to bake/cool/chill/set before you can start the next one.

These are made with creme de menthe liqueur, but if you are not a fan of mint youc an substitute other flavourings. I have some friends who always make these brownies with Kahlua instead of creme de menthe for the middle layers. While these are also delicious, I'm partial to the brownies of my childhood which were always, ALWAYS mint. Nostalgia dictates. This recipe also requires almost three full sticks of butter, so it's not for the faint of heart!

Crème de Menthe Brownies (in 3 layers)

Layer 1:

1 c. sugar

4 eggs

16 oz Hershey’s syrup

1 c. flour

1/2 c. butter (melted) – 1 stick

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350°F

Mix all ingredients and bake in an ungreased, unfloured 9x13 baking pan for 30 minutes. Let cool COMPLETELY before starting the next layer.

Layer 2:

2 cups powdered (10X) sugar

½ c. butter (1 stick)

4 tbs crème de menthe

Mix ingredients thoroughly, spread over layer #1 and chill – let solidify before starting last layer. This will take at least an hour.

Layer 3:

6 tbs butter

1 cup chocolate chips

(Actually, you can also use a full 1/2 c. butter and 1-1/3 c. of chocolate chips for a thicker layer. I sometimes do this if I'm feeling particularly decadant. Or if I just don't want to have those 2 tbs of butter left from the stick. Whatever.)

Melt butter in saucepan, add chocolate chips and stir on low heat until melted. Spread on layer #2, chill for 30-45 minutes and then cut into squares. If you chill longer, when you cut them the 3^rd layer will crack when you cut them. But if you are just going to let these sit out at room temperature a while before you cut them, the cracks aren't a huge problem. But you DO want to chill them for a while to make sure the top layer sets! These also freeze well, for long term storage!

All in all, delicious. Three layers of delicious.

So until next time, and with much hope for more frequent updates, enjoy!