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jakebe
Sneppers is heading to Feral! tomorrow, so this was the last weekend we had before I have to miss him for an entire week. ;.;
We spent a good bit of it catching up on shows we've been neglecting: we finished The Acolyte; started up House of the Dragon; resumed Season 2 of Star Trek: Enterprise; and even caught an episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat! We headed out to the theatres for Alien: Romulus, too -- I really dig Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don't Breathe) as a director, and with first-weekend box office being such a big deal it felt nice to be doing my part to ensure its success.
The Acolyte was a good show with solid performances that kept me engaged through most of its run. The series tells parallel stories over two different time periods, breaking them up to build mystery and tension. That mostly works while you're watching it, but I'm beginning to notice a consistent sense of disappointment after shows that do this. I'd have to go back over each episode to really deconstruct what happened but it feels like the story itself wasn't that satisfying in the end, so they needed to dress it up with editing to make it feel more than it was. When it's time to lay out all the cards on the table for the finale, it's always a little disappointing when you realize you've been strung along on a high pair instead of the full house you were expecting.
It also continues the frustrating tradition of the Jedi being the worst, this baffling amalgam of military organization, religious order, and political lobby group that does none of it very well. The show is set during the High Republic Era, a period of time where the Jedi Order stood unopposed as the shining beacon of goodness in the galaxy. Even then, they do things that cause the very problems they're supposed to be protecting against. Their inability to properly integrate their emotions into their self-concept means they'll always be unequipped to deal with the problem of evil in the world. They can't even deal with the evil in themselves properly! So other traditions that use the Force but ALSO recognize that people aren't droids will pretty much kick their asses every time, and it's no different here.
The Jedi are increasingly a sore spot for me because they're so aligned with my understanding of Buddhism, but with one fundamental mistake that means the philosophy will never work. The Order as written can never be a force for good in the galaxy, and it's high past time *someone* realized that. That's why one of the most intriguing developments in The Acolyte is a Galactic Senator (played by Martian Manhunter himself, David Harewood) who feels the Jedi have too much unchecked power and wants them to be externally-reviewed for transparency's sake. He's absolutely right, but the show frames it as this over-reaction.
I'm not sure if it did well enough to get a Season 2; chatter on the Internet about it is drowned out by the culture war, so...it's hard to talk about the show on its own merits. Based on the ending, it feels like they're looking to continue the story somewhere. Whether that ends up on the Solo ash-heap of what could have been, we'll find out.
Did a lot of cooking over the weekend, too, which is always fun. We decided not to cancel this week's Blue Apron delivery and cook four meals before Sneppers heads out tomorrow morning. We had a premium dish of tenderloin steaks in blueberry pan sauce that I'm SO happy with, if I do say so myself. The steak was solidly medium-rare, though Sneppers' might have been a bit more on the rare side; I'm so stoked about that because I didn't even use a meat thermometer or poke it with my fingers! It was all just time and temperature control. The blueberry pan sauce was SOOOO good, though I would have liked for the blueberry to come through a little more; for me, the ketchup and soy glaze overwhelmed the fruit. Still, the roasted potatoes came out perfectly and the simple side of spinach, mushroom, and shallot came out well too! I'm gaining confidence with vegetables, especially, so that I'm not overcooking them into mush.
The steaks were "flanked" by two pasta dishes. One was a fifteen-minute thing with minimal prep; just cut the veg and reheat pasta and meat that's already been cooked. That one turned out shockingly well; usually, Blue Apron's pulled meat cooks up as a disappointing mush but this time it was tender and juicy, supporting the sauce well. The other one was a cuttlefish-ink pasta with shrimp, also great. Thicker slices of zucchini are the way to go when you're layering in your vegetable, and I think I salted just enough for the veg to taste like "itself", lifted by the calabrian chile spice.
Right now I'm working hard to develop a more balanced palate. It's easy, when you're used to blowing out your taste buds with "primary color" flavors like bacon (salt), candy (sour/sweet), and so on, to miss out on the delights of subtler flavors and harmonious pairings. The cuttlefish pasta has a richer flavor than your usual pasta, which serves as a nice grounding for the fresh, light taste of the shrimp. The zucchini adds a snappier texture to the dish as a whole, and the sweet, acidic tomatoes marry all those flavors in a mellow sauce that gets lifted with hits of grated parmesan cheese. It's easy to toss the dish together and hope you aim for "shrimp, tomato sauce, bit of cheese" on the palate. But when you understand what each ingredient brings to the dish and how they're meant to flow into each other, it becomes an intriguing challenge to shape each "note" in the dish in a way that complements everything else.
This is all to say, I'm really into cooking. :)
While Sneppers is away I'm hoping to organize my personal spaces a little bit. I'll start with the home office and bedroom, then move out to the living room and, if there's time, the kitchen. There's significant unused space there, and I'd like to use it with a bit more thought. After our lemon drizzle cake session and the recent successes I've had with the air fryer, I'd like to feel more confident making things without Blue Apron, just on my own. I'd like to "own" the kitchen enough that I could feel comfortable pulling shit from the pantry and making a cake, or cookies, or whatever, on the fly. That's the dream, anyway.
It'll stay a dream, only if I don't take action on it.
We spent a good bit of it catching up on shows we've been neglecting: we finished The Acolyte; started up House of the Dragon; resumed Season 2 of Star Trek: Enterprise; and even caught an episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat! We headed out to the theatres for Alien: Romulus, too -- I really dig Fede Alvarez (Evil Dead, Don't Breathe) as a director, and with first-weekend box office being such a big deal it felt nice to be doing my part to ensure its success.
The Acolyte was a good show with solid performances that kept me engaged through most of its run. The series tells parallel stories over two different time periods, breaking them up to build mystery and tension. That mostly works while you're watching it, but I'm beginning to notice a consistent sense of disappointment after shows that do this. I'd have to go back over each episode to really deconstruct what happened but it feels like the story itself wasn't that satisfying in the end, so they needed to dress it up with editing to make it feel more than it was. When it's time to lay out all the cards on the table for the finale, it's always a little disappointing when you realize you've been strung along on a high pair instead of the full house you were expecting.
It also continues the frustrating tradition of the Jedi being the worst, this baffling amalgam of military organization, religious order, and political lobby group that does none of it very well. The show is set during the High Republic Era, a period of time where the Jedi Order stood unopposed as the shining beacon of goodness in the galaxy. Even then, they do things that cause the very problems they're supposed to be protecting against. Their inability to properly integrate their emotions into their self-concept means they'll always be unequipped to deal with the problem of evil in the world. They can't even deal with the evil in themselves properly! So other traditions that use the Force but ALSO recognize that people aren't droids will pretty much kick their asses every time, and it's no different here.
The Jedi are increasingly a sore spot for me because they're so aligned with my understanding of Buddhism, but with one fundamental mistake that means the philosophy will never work. The Order as written can never be a force for good in the galaxy, and it's high past time *someone* realized that. That's why one of the most intriguing developments in The Acolyte is a Galactic Senator (played by Martian Manhunter himself, David Harewood) who feels the Jedi have too much unchecked power and wants them to be externally-reviewed for transparency's sake. He's absolutely right, but the show frames it as this over-reaction.
I'm not sure if it did well enough to get a Season 2; chatter on the Internet about it is drowned out by the culture war, so...it's hard to talk about the show on its own merits. Based on the ending, it feels like they're looking to continue the story somewhere. Whether that ends up on the Solo ash-heap of what could have been, we'll find out.
Did a lot of cooking over the weekend, too, which is always fun. We decided not to cancel this week's Blue Apron delivery and cook four meals before Sneppers heads out tomorrow morning. We had a premium dish of tenderloin steaks in blueberry pan sauce that I'm SO happy with, if I do say so myself. The steak was solidly medium-rare, though Sneppers' might have been a bit more on the rare side; I'm so stoked about that because I didn't even use a meat thermometer or poke it with my fingers! It was all just time and temperature control. The blueberry pan sauce was SOOOO good, though I would have liked for the blueberry to come through a little more; for me, the ketchup and soy glaze overwhelmed the fruit. Still, the roasted potatoes came out perfectly and the simple side of spinach, mushroom, and shallot came out well too! I'm gaining confidence with vegetables, especially, so that I'm not overcooking them into mush.
The steaks were "flanked" by two pasta dishes. One was a fifteen-minute thing with minimal prep; just cut the veg and reheat pasta and meat that's already been cooked. That one turned out shockingly well; usually, Blue Apron's pulled meat cooks up as a disappointing mush but this time it was tender and juicy, supporting the sauce well. The other one was a cuttlefish-ink pasta with shrimp, also great. Thicker slices of zucchini are the way to go when you're layering in your vegetable, and I think I salted just enough for the veg to taste like "itself", lifted by the calabrian chile spice.
Right now I'm working hard to develop a more balanced palate. It's easy, when you're used to blowing out your taste buds with "primary color" flavors like bacon (salt), candy (sour/sweet), and so on, to miss out on the delights of subtler flavors and harmonious pairings. The cuttlefish pasta has a richer flavor than your usual pasta, which serves as a nice grounding for the fresh, light taste of the shrimp. The zucchini adds a snappier texture to the dish as a whole, and the sweet, acidic tomatoes marry all those flavors in a mellow sauce that gets lifted with hits of grated parmesan cheese. It's easy to toss the dish together and hope you aim for "shrimp, tomato sauce, bit of cheese" on the palate. But when you understand what each ingredient brings to the dish and how they're meant to flow into each other, it becomes an intriguing challenge to shape each "note" in the dish in a way that complements everything else.
This is all to say, I'm really into cooking. :)
While Sneppers is away I'm hoping to organize my personal spaces a little bit. I'll start with the home office and bedroom, then move out to the living room and, if there's time, the kitchen. There's significant unused space there, and I'd like to use it with a bit more thought. After our lemon drizzle cake session and the recent successes I've had with the air fryer, I'd like to feel more confident making things without Blue Apron, just on my own. I'd like to "own" the kitchen enough that I could feel comfortable pulling shit from the pantry and making a cake, or cookies, or whatever, on the fly. That's the dream, anyway.
It'll stay a dream, only if I don't take action on it.
