in re #90: AFI's top 100

Duck Soup

I decided to capitalize on my general slothful state of being today by beginning #90, a/k/a my quest to watch all of the films on AFI's 100 years...100 movies list. Surprisingly, and rather embarrassingly, I have only seen a handful of the movies that made the list, but I'm excited to watch all of them (well maybe not allllll of them, but most). This particular task makes me feel very grateful for Netflix (especially for streaming rentals), which will certainly help me

Today I chose to watch the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup. Not only was this the first movie for me off AFI's list, but it was also the first Marx Brothers film I have ever watched. I know I've seen clips of Groucho with his famous moustache and cigars, and at the very least, I've seen Bugs Bunny dress up as him, but this was my first full length film.

For the most part, I enjoyed the movie, although I have to agree with one netflix reviewer's comment that a lot of the scenes seem as though they just started rolling the camera and let the brothers do as they pleased. There were a lot of weird timing issues with actors stepping on each others' lines and clips not matching up, but you can forgive that because of the sheer genius of Groucho's wittiness, often so quick that you can't keep up with him.

I think my favorite character was Harpo Marx's "Pinky," who carried exaggeratedly large scissors in his pants and would cut off just about anything another character was wearing: a tie, coattails, helmet plumes. All in all, I liked the movie. While I probably wouldn't watch it a second time, I would recommend it to anyone who has an hour of free time and could use a chuckle or two.

My rating: 3 out of 5 Rileys.


PS: You can always check the list (and reference my personal ratings) at the top of the page or by clicking here.

#40 Fly a Kite

Vacation is over. Sad face.

BUT, we did have an amazing week in Duck, NC spent at "Landing II" right about here:


It was a wonderful trip filled with dolphin sightings, family dinners on the deck, dune runs with Erica, and jumping over waves with my niece and nephew. And although it's nice to be back home, I'm now much more painfully aware of the fact that our apartment is not three houses from the beach.

One especially fun activity on our trip was getting to fly a kite for the first time in well over a decade I'm sure. It's amazing how wonderful such a simple act can make you feel. You can't help being filled with a sense of awe as the kite rises slowly in the sky. Of course it doesn't hurt to have a three year old first time kiteflier literally jumping for joy around either.

Erica wrote a great post about our experience, so I'm going to cheat a bit and ask you to just hop over to her blog to read more. I will include the following video and pictures so I don't come off as completely lazy today, even though I totally am.

 

 

Riley's New Trick: Go Hide!

I took the day off from work today to pack for my OBX vacation, which I leave for in less than 4 hours. I even got up at 7am to make sure I could get everything done: the cleaning, the packing, the last minute errands. But the procrastinator in me is shining brightly today, so I decided instead to tackle the first third of #48: Teach Riley 3 new tricks.

It isn't perfected yet, but she was doing it a number of times without treats, so I consider it done. All that's needed now is some reinforcement and she'll be ready to show it off at the dog park, parties, events, galas, regattas, political rallies, etc., etc. This trick is purely for human amusement, although knowing Riley, I'm sure she's proud of herself too.

Below is a clip of the trick I'm calling "Go Hide!"

I guess it's off to packing now. With Riley exhausted from all the hard work, I'm quickly running out of ways to procrastinate.

in re #16: from scratch

Banana Rum Bread

This is technically the fourth thing that I baked from scratch this month.


The first round of baking included Breakfast Biscuit Sandwiches, which I would highly recommend to anyone with the one suggestion of cutting the amount of salt in half (and that's saying something coming from me). I would have used this recipe, but I hadn't even finished my list at that point so I opted not to count the biscuits as one of the thirty-three.


The second round of baking was for a July 4th party wherein I made a delicious chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and chocolate-peanut butter ganache with Ms. ELG. This recipe was only half new to me though, as I had already made the chocolate cake previously (pairing it with a chocolate coffee icing), so I decided that counting it as my first new-to-me from-scratch baking item would be a bit like cheating (and it's way too early in this thing to be cheating). You can read all about our baking experience on Erica's blog though, and I highly suggest you do as that cake was unbelievably delicious.


The third round of baking included making croutons from the then stale biscuits made the weekend before. It's funny how quickly biscuits just don't keep the right texture for very long. All that involved was cutting the biscuits into big chunks, drizzling on the melted butter, throwing in an assortment of dried herbs, and baking for an hour at 350° with a few shakes of the sheet halfway through. These were delicious, but the project didn't feel quite worthy of its own entry.


Thus, Banana Rum Bread...

The combination of three perfectly browned bananas in our kitchen and not being able to fall back asleep this morning after waking up way too early before work led to a delicious result.

I slightly tweaked a recipe for Banana Bread I found at Simply Recipes that required no mixer. I have one, but it was nice to not use it that early in the morning. The end product was a moist, not too sweet bread that will stretch the life of those otherwise doomed-for-the-trash bananas. This is definitely one recipe I'll be keeping, if I ever get around to doing #6 that is.

      

For those interested, here's the final recipe:

Ingredients 

• 3 medium to large ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1.5 tablespoons dark rum 
• 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions

Preheat your oven to 350° and butter a 4x8 loaf pan. Combine the first six ingredients in a large bowl with a wooden spoon. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Slowly stir the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for one hour, or until a toothpick comes out (relatively) clean. Cool on a rack, slice, and serve.

in re #12: 20 new books

I don't like the label "slow" reader. I much prefer "deliberate." This is mostly because I know that I can read quickly, I simply choose not to, especially when I'm reading a book for the very first time. Why should I skim whole paragraphs when the author made a deliberate choice to use this word over that one. When I'm reading a new book, I like to envelope myself within it.

I think doing so helps me to appreciate and understand it all the more. Unfortunately, doing so also means that it takes me a much longer time to read a few hundred pages than it would otherwise. As a result, reading is a commitment in which I don't invest nearly enough time...until now.

#12 on my list is "Read at least twenty new books." Right now, my progress parenthetical reads 0/20. I'm hoping that by the end of this, that numerator will not just match, but exceed that denominator.

First up is Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love food. And even if you don't know me, but have happened to read through my to-do list, you should be able to glean that it's pretty important to me by the mere number of tasks involving the eating and/or making of gastronomical delights. It's more than appropriate, ergo, that my first book be about food.

P.S.- An ongoing catalogue of my literary adventures can always be found at the top of my blog, or by clicking here.

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#1 on my list is finished!

now if only i could find 10 more dollars so i don't fall behind on #101....

july 7, 2011: day 1. well, technically, day 7...

The List is up!

Finally.

Roughly a year after I got the idea in my head to do this, I finally put my act together (with some inspiration from my dear friend, Erica) and finished my list of 101 things that I would like to do over a period of 1001 days. Some are selfless, some are selfish; some [read: most] are trivial, some [read: few] are significant; some are cheap, some are...not as cheap; but all are things about which I've heard myself say, "I'd really like to do that some day" or "I really should do that some day."

That day has come. Or, more accurately, will come at some point in the two year, thirty-eight week, and five day period I officially started as of July 1, 2011.

I'll be maintaining this blog (not without a hint of narcissism, I'm sure) to keep myself on track and to keep anyone else who is interested (I doubt there are many) abreast of my progress.