Julie & Julia, redux...

Finally, I got to see the rest of the movie. I was at the 11:20 am showing early, 'cos, who knew, maybe there would be swarms of foodies thronging the theater. I went to another Regal theater because I had my free pass from them after the last debacle... And they honored it. Of course, I spent $12 for popcorn (bad popcorn with bad grease) and a fucking bottle of water, so they certainly got their money out of me.

I didn't at all mind watching the first half again. Since then, I've since read The Julie/Julia Project blog, and read My Life in France, so it was interesting to see where Nora Ephron had decided to change things. Some were kluges of incidents to move the story along more quickly, but, some, especially the parts with Julie, seem to have been made up. There's an article by her in The Atlantic about it that I think is quite good.

There were not throngs of people at the movie, but there were a respectable amount of people, mostly women, mostly older. The previews totally sucked. This is the second time I've seen a preview of 2012, and it looks like it's one of those special effects movies where the world gets destroyed every way possible. I always thot the idea was to pair the previews of 'coming attractions' with the main feature, and if so, this was a crappy pairing. The second preview was for The Stepfather, and even worse paring. Shit, even the preview was scary!

When I left the theater, there was a line of people waiting to get in to Julie & Julie, again, mostly older, mostly women, probably women like me who miss the hell out of JC. Meryl Streep does a wonderful job with her voice, which, as everyone knows, was one of the things that made JC so wonderful to watch.

All of this Juliaizing has made me pull out my MTAOFC and cook a fricassee, one that Julie cooked. It's your basic fricassee: soft saute carrots, onions and celery in 4 T of BUTTER, push aside in the pan and add your chicken parts (I used thighs, skin on) and make them golden, not brown. Sprinkle them with seasoned flour on both sides. Add boiling chicken or veggie or whatever stock and alcohol (white wine, vermouth, whatever) (I used vermouth, 'cos I had some) and cook. Cook some boiler onions using water and a glob of BUTTER, and saute some mushrooms in BUTTER. Pull the chicken from its sauce, and the mushrooms and onions from their liquids. Pour the mushroom and onion liquids into the chicken stuff and cook it down by half. Then add a cup of CREAM. Let it cook a bit and then pour it over the chicken, onions and mushrooms which you've appetizingly arranged on a platter.

Can you say rich? Can you say too rich for eating when it's 105 out? The first bite of onion and BUTTER squirts all over your chin. I mean, it TASTES fabulous, but it's... Just. Too. Rich.

I honestly prefer foods where the food itself is the centerpiece and not the sauce.

Which saves me from ever, ever having to make aspic. That alone qualifies Julie Powell for a Hero award.

And, in case you're wondering what's with the cute cat picture... It's just that. A cute cat picture. That's Spot. On a pedestal. He did it first thing this morning just to see if I was awake enough to grab my phone and take his picture...

Teaching...

I'm teaching this weekend at the Art School at Laguna Gloria. It's a great place to teach and I always have a good time teaching there. I teach three times a year at this place: two, five-week classes, fall and spring, and a summer weekend class.

For the five-week classes, I teach four structures: a fun 'longstitch' book which is non-adhesive and really simple; a 'wrap/strap' book, also non-adhesive and pretty simple, coptic stitch, which is simple, but sometimes difficult in terms of getting the tension of the sewing right, and a flat-spine book.

For the weekend class, I do the long-stitch, wrap/strap, and a simplified version of the flat spine.

The first two, longstitch and wrap/strap, are pretty simple and can be made just about anywhere. I've made the first one in Mexico using paper I got at the corner copy shop and dental floss, because I couldn't remember the spanish word for 'thread.' (It's 'hilo,' in case you ever need to know... But dental floss - mine was cinnamon - adds a certain je ne sais quoi, to mix my languages...)

I like non-adhesive structures. I am especially enamored of them this weekend, as the PVA I had in my car for the class, dumped over, the lid came off, and I now have to figure out how to get it out of my car's upholstery.

Yuck.