Farmers Markets and Film School

So, oh my goodness - Vancouver Farmers Markets are the bees knees. I had neglected to go, mostly because I'm lazy - and went the first week of September and again this past week.

The first week I went, it was a nice sunshiny day - I bought a couple of buttons to start. Then I perused the fantastic assortment of goodness! I bought corn from Chiliwack, carrots, green beans, all kinds of plums, all kinds of tomatoes, pork sausages, bread and THE BEST PEACHES EVER.

On another note, I've discovered the kind of people who shop at these markets seem the finer kind. I dropped $15 dollars, and after scouring the ground for a few minutes, I mentioned to the info desk that maybe perhaps if anyone might turn some in, that it would be great if it could be returned to me. Needless to say, I was positive I would never see that $15 again. This thought was quite depressing, as I fully intended to spend it on delicious vegetables. Whilst I was deciding which tomatoes looked the most exotic, the kind woman from the info desk came to find me - saying someone had found and returned my $15! I was sooo very happy, not to mention grateful!

This past week I picked up more tomatoes (more different kinds), peaches (so, so good), corn, bell peppers and carrots. This was after a trip to T&T to pick up some steamed buns, which I just can't get enough of apparently.

So, this week was my first week in the SFU film program. I downed a cappuccino (yes, I've finally broken into coffee) and approached the Woodwards building downtown. I walked into that classroom and it felt like my heart had dropped into my stomach. I've been waiting for this for a long time, and it was almost surreal being there. It was both gratifying and nerve wracking, glorious and humbling.  At last surrounded by people who share the same passions, yet who come from so many different backgrounds. There's a fellow from Germany, a fellow from the Czech Republic, folks from Alberta, from BC, from Africa! All with different aspirations and ideas!

My lab time was incredible! We were given black and clear film leader, exacto knives and sharpies to draw, colour and carve into this film... Learned how to splice properly, which was fantastic. And the sheer differential in ideas between 6 people given the same media in the span of 3 hours. I'm excited to see the rest of the class' work next week!

I've found out I'm in the last shoot group in the semester, so I'll be shooting my first semester film the beginning of November. It seems a long ways away, but I have lots of time to formulate my plan. We're each given basic equipment and two one hundred foot rolls of 16mm film, and we can do whatever we want. We can work alone, we can work in groups. Next week we start getting into the nitty gritty with the Bolex's. It'll be interesting to see how I'm actually supposed to use one, instead of just sort of guessing.

In book news, I highly, highly recommend David Mamet's Bambi vs Godzilla. If you have any interest in the film business, screenwriting, film history... it's a fantastic book chalk-full of Mamet's extremely intelligent insights on many of the strange discrepancies in Hollywood and it's politics. I'd say it's one of the better books on film I've read! I've just started to read Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought and am so far finding it goes in one ear the out the other, but hopefully I'll find a foothold in this psychology mind-brain mumbo jumbo.

In film news, I've been trying to watch more new films these days. I have a list about 43 miles long filled with films I have yet to see, everything from Citizen Cane to the Godfather Part II to Dirty Harry. I caught up on films like Se7en, Man on the Moon and Juno earlier in the week. Se7en was mentioned about a half dozen times in my first film lecture and lab, so it was bumped to the top of my watch list. Juno was alright. I've heard from lots of people that it's horrible and lame, while others hailed it as brilliant. I'm just going to say it was pretty darn adorable, and that's that.

I watched Fantastic Mr Fox, whose level of detail truly blew me away. Although Wes Anderson irks me a bit (although he does produce superb and unique films), Fantastic Mr Fox is a real piece of work. The detail in each and every character - yet the small reminders of the imperfections of the artist, the shifting of the fur during stop motion, some fingerprints in clay. The styling is just genius. The tall, lanky, awkward foxes; the thin, devlish rats; the bizarre enigma that is the opossum. Wes Anderson and Rauld Dahl might be a good combination after all!

Another film I just watched was John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China. And although this seems a rather typical 80's kung fu action flick, I've got to say that it was a lot of fun to watch. Kurt Russel's character of the 'hysterical American' just cracked me up. I was also a big fan of his all-American mullet and 'wife-beater'. I may need to invest more time in John Carpenter's films. I believe the only other of his I've sort of seen is Escape from New York, which I may or may not have fallen asleep in.

If you want some amazing classic film fun, I'd recommend checking out this YouTube video, in which classic movie scenes are dubbed over by Spongebob Squarepants, Patrick Starr, Squidward Tentacles and Sandy Cheeks. So, so great.

Anyways, I hope everyone's having a great September/start of their fall semesters. I'm trying to get my hands on another part time job to fill up my weekends, but that search isn't going so well.

Ps everyone, Rainbow Owl is still on sale! He's gotten a tremendous amount of views, but no takers just yet! He's sitting here on my Wii feeling quite lost without a home. Anyone? Bueler?

Via Sponginess Gifs!

Catching up! Pie-Wise!

First up: my pie making adventure! This thing was frigging delish, I'm not going to lie. I got this recipe from the tomb that is The Joy of Cooking!

I did the basic pie/pastry dough:

Blueburries!

Basic Pie/Pastry Dough for one 9 inch or 10 inch double crust pie (page 665)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp salt

3/4 chilled veggie shortening

3 tbs cold unsalted butter

6 tbs ice water

THE MIXTURE.

Bottom shell.

Sift together flour and salt - add half the shortening and the butter, work lightly with fingers until it has the consistency of cornmeal. Add the other half of the shortening and work until it forms pea sized bits. Sprinkle with the ice water! Work it gently into the dough until it all holds together, add a little more if it's not working together yet. Divide dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap.

THEN, pie time!!

Blueberry Pie - One 9 inch double crust pie (page 677)

The lattice.

Puking pie.

5 cups blueberries

3/4 to 1 cup sugar

3 1/2 to 4 tbs cornstarch

1 tbs fresh lemon juice

1/8 tsp salt

1 to 2 tbs unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 425 F and position a rack in the lower third of the oven.First, combine blueberries, sugar, cornstarch (use the larger amount if you're planning on doing a lattice top like I did) lemon juice and salt in a bowl and let stand for 15 minutes or so. Pour the mixture into the bottom crust and dot with the little bits of butter before covering the top!

BAKE.

My only supreme mishap with this was the fact that, about 10 minutes before being done, my pie decided to throw up all over the inside of my oven. I opened the door and smoke comes billowing out, sets off my idiot fire alarm and fills my low-ceilinged basement right up with smoke. I'm really glad the people upstairs weren't home, because they probably would have kicked open my door and blasted the place with a fire extinguisher - shooting first, asking questions later. A couple weeks a pork chop I was pan frying caught a little and they came downstairs and made sure I wasn't going to burn down their house, haha.

In other baking news, as apparently I've been doing a lot lately, I made my first red velvet cake, which was pretty delicious. I got that recipe out of Joy of Cooking as well. My plan with this two layer cake was to fill it with buttercream icing and cover it with fondant. Fondant is horrifying. I'm never making it again. I ended up filling the cake with it, just so it wouldn't go to waste, then icing it with basic butter and confectioners sugar icing. Because the butter cream icing didn't ever become anything but a runny liquid in a pan. I call this cake the 'Diabetes Cake'.

Also, made more booze cupcakes for my boss' birthday. They're always a huge hit whenever I bring them anywhere - here's the recipe again if you're behind the times! Unfortunately, I ended up slightly undercooking them, and in my haste, the gnache was still super runny while I was filling and the icing was also slightly runny and they got slightly rained on, so I got there holding a box of cupcake sludge, but they still turned out pretty tasty.

Made banana bread last night, mostly to use up bananas in the old freezer and to warm up my fricking house.

This post is getting a little lengthy, so I think I'll just post more things later!!

OOOWL!

Hello everyone! Behold my first significant felt creation for quite some time! I've been fiddling with the pattern for about a week and in the past couple days the assembly began. Lots of things did not go to plan, but I think he turned out pretty swell!

See a quick progress photo in my last post, here!

The thing I love most about him is his shape That turned out pretty well. I ended up doing a lot of snipping and extra stitching than originally planned, but that is so with many of my creations. I love his colours and his lidded eyes! What I think I could of done differently is his front feathers - they could have been a little shorter I think. Originally, the pattern had him sitting a lot taller, so it would have worked in theory. He's a little lopsided (again, like most of my creations) and he doesn't sit quite like I wanted. But I think he's still quite handsome!

Side profile, so handsome!

I'm a big fan of how his tail turned out!

Ahoot ahoot?

Top view to see his glorious wings!

His gorgeous amber eyes are from Suncatcher Eyes, here on Etsy.

Such eyes!

See this sweet owl's listing on my Etsy!

Happy September everyone!!