culinary adventures de netis

As one of my expensive hobbies I cook stuff from my little collection of cookbooks whenever I get the unction to go out and buy the ingredients for a recipe. Tonight I made Brasato alle Cipolle or, Braised Beef with Onions.

So, I dont have the presentation skills of the Iron Chefs (forgot to wipe the plate before I took the pic) but mmmm mmmm mmmm it was tasty. I added mushrooms to the dish cos, I like mushrooms, and they werent too obtrusive on the original - 'cept for the amount of moisture in the braising. Cos shrooms are like sponges and bananas - loads of unassuming water in there. (I learned bananas had a lot of moisture in them when there was this mealworm project in 3rd or 4th grade, had to keep them in the fridge, mom was thoroughly disgruntled and disgusted for a week)

O - the cookbook I cooked from was The Silver Spoon my newest addition acquired a la christmas present during the already mentioned holiday. Most of (or 3/4) books I have are Italian, b/c I got obsessed with the food when I dug there for 2 summers in college.

a funny thing happened...

...on the metro today. I'm sure something funny happens on the metro everyday, but today on the blue line in the direction of largo at Metro Center, mass panic was almost incited in one tourist family. As the good ol "Doors Closing" chimed in, one lil 7-10 year old boy thought he'd act out one of the many movie/tv scenes he's seen in his little life and quickly dash between the closing doors and catch the train before it pulled off the platform. The problem was - he is in fact a 7 year old tourist and not some wall street or washington politico, who was leaving his family behind him on the platform.

It was shocking and hilarious in that order. As soon as the boy celebrated his victory of making it inside the doors, he also realized his mom was outside of those doors, separated from him. He started to flail his arms wildly cos he saw his mom doing that to the conductor at the front of the train and was like 'what am I supposed to do?' Luckily, there was a gaggle of the metro officers in the construction worker vests just standing at the next car over so they saw her and was able to stop the train 5 seconds after it had just started to move on to the next station.

But in that weird space of time when the doors were already closed and the train was just sittin there - some calm kind souls near the detached boy gently said to him 'it's ok just get off at the next stop.' Had the train actually left with him on it I'm sure they would've taken it upon themselves to give the guy a quick lesson in metro traveling tips and safety.

Ahh - I love those moments on the metro when everyone in the train is united in a similar feeling (well, good feeling or emotion). As soon as the lil one exited the door and was reunited with his mum, everyone in that car started cracking up. People laughed, chuckled, smirked and did reenactments of the boys confusion and arm flailing dance for a good two more stops till we got to the Smithsonian - which should just statistically have more occurrences like that b/c that is THE tourist stop.

round 2

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
West Virginia over S Illinois	Memphis over Morel Oral	UCONN of course	NOVA over Monmouth
NW St upset Iowa	Bucknell upset Arkansas	Kentucky over UAB	WRONG
NC State upset Cali	WRONG	Mason over Michigan state(home team)	Hoyas over N Iowa
Texas over Penn	WRONG	NC over Murray St	O State over Davidson

damn I'm good. 13/16 for day 2 - so thats 75% for all of the first round, I should played the brackets this year - of course I'm going round by round, but whatever. Round 2 pics:

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
GW upset Duke just kidding	Memphis over Bucknell	UCONN of course	NOVA over Arizona
LSU over Texas A&M	Pitt over Brad	Washington over Ill	Montana over BC
W VA over NW St	Zag's over Indiana	UNC over Mason	Florida over Wisc-Mil
Texas over NC State	UCLA beats bamas	Vols beat the Wich's	Hoyas beat O State

mythic moronic misanthropic myopic mayhem of march madness

March Madness, which has now spilled over to April, is the only basketball I watch anymore. NBA gets paid too much and they have gradually eliminated most games from free tv, so if I ever never had cable I won't be going into shock cos I can't see my favorite team play. But this year I missed my very bad picking of teams in all the online bracket challenges so I'll judge myself here. Since it started without me yesterday - I must say I would have had a high percentage of picks. I got 11/16 = 68.75%. I thought Seton Hall would win over Wichita; Montana didn't upset Nevada; Uni Wisconsin-Mil beat Oklahoma; and Winthrop didnt beat Tennessee. Today my pics are:

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
West Virginia over S Illinois	Memphis over Morel Oral	UCONN of course	NOVA over Monmouth
NW St upset Iowa	Bucknell upset Arkansas	Kentucky over UAB	Wisconsin upset Arizona
NC State upset Cali	Kent St upset Pitt	Mason over Michigan state(home team)	Hoyas over N Iowa
Texas over Penn	Kansas beats Brad	NC over Murray St	O State over Davidson

oscar bs

The oscars every year bring about stupid discussions, comparisons, and observations. I heard one such comparison last week on a morning radio show. The host asked the stupid "expert"-analyst guy which actor would win. So the guy was like Phillip Seymour Hoffman should be a shoe-in. Then they went off on a tangent and radio show host's sidekick was like - "well, why isnt there any buzz for Joaquin Phoenix? I mean if Jamie Foxx could win last year..." and on and on and on. Some of his highlights of what Jamie Foxx did were: thinking that he had sung in the film, comparing his music career (or what this ass only knows of it) to how Meryl Streep sung in some film "but she didnt make an album after that," and Joaquin actually learned how to sing and played a guy whose brother died and had a tough hard life! Well, well, well, mr radio show sidekick - look how ignorant u are.

Jamie Foxx did sing in Ray - if the idiot had seen any segment/highlight/clip of any interview Jamie Foxx did last year he was always sure to mention how leading into some of hte performances - it was HIS vocals. But more than that Jamie Foxx also PLAYED in the movie - does this idiot know how talented Ray Charles was? how difficult it is to play alongside him? Next - Jamie did not just get the ego bug and say "hey I imitated Ray Charles - I can sing and release my own album now!" If the stupid radio show sidekick's mind was big enough to listen to music outside of top colorless forty and classic rock - he might've remembered Jamie Foxx released at least one album before. And it had a hit single, "Infatuation," released when I was like in middle school or somethin - 1994. Jamie's been at this for a long while - he just has the tools and privileges that radio sidekick man takes for granted to make the album a success. And then... Johnny Cash is so much more harder to play because he lost his brother, was the man in black blah blah. First off, I'm sure the two great deceased musicians would never have wanted the movie depictions of their lives compared in such a stupid way - they would've liked for us just to appreciate the damn movie.

why they always need to drink from the haterade? it's like instance #375292 of white people making some excuse/complaint when another gets the prize. greedy bums