Tales from the Bread Machine: Hearty Flaxseed

Matthew turned out this loaf last night between two pleasurable tasks. First, this Christmas yielded a new Nintendo DS cartridge called "Personal Trainer: Cooking." It guides you through a large number of recipes from a dozen cuisines. Last night, he made blueberry / cranberry / raisin coulis, which the program classified as a German dessert. (Sunny thinks of it more as a topping.) We then re-watched the documentary "Bigger, Stronger, Faster," a highly recommended and wide-ranging examination of the social impact of performance-enhancing drugs. Totally worth the two hours of your time.

Anyway, this bread resembles a flaxseed loaf we did in the past, but allows for raisins as a mid-point addition. (Bread machines with "fruit & nut" cycle allow you to mix in more stuff just before baking.) I kept waiting for it to beep and alert me to the "add stuff now" moment. Turns out you put the fruit in a side compartment and it does the work automatically. Oh well, next time.

We used the FRUIT & NUT setting with MEDIUM crust.

Look: Bubbly top that looks a little underdone, but inside definitely baked
Cut: Crispy crust, dense interior
Taste: Not as flavorful as expected, probably from lack of raisins (the recipe says to adds cinnamon when you leave out fruit, which we did accidentally)

Ramp up to Christmas

We managed several Christmas milestones in the last seven days, including at least these.

1. First big snow (a foot last night, which doesn't stop runners or bikers)
2. First Yankee swap (aka White elephant) party with friends last night
3. First Christmas card received (grandma and grandpa Prudhon from Janesville, WI)
4. First desserts made (bread pudding using homemade corn bread)
5. First church party (a charity donation gathering on Wednesday with our fellow First Church Cambridge youth)
6. First seasonal decorations (Advent calendar and Menorah party last weekend)
7. Finished shopping, save stuff for local friends
8. Watched a movie planned for Christmas release (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, shh, sneak preview)

The snow's still coming down and we're ready to enjoy breakfast while the dulcet tones of snowblowers rumble from the street. We hope everything's equally festive where you are and that all your stockings get filled with fresh fruit!

Review of "Burn After Reading"

We caught the Coen brothers' latest film last night, a star-laden farce of violent intentions called Burn After Reading. If you've already seen their Oscar-winners No Country for Old Men or Fargo, rejoice! This also contains odd characters who have just enough information about their situation to do real damage. If you've already seen their excellent comedies Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Are Thou?, be unhappy! Most laughs in the movie come from the release of nervous tension, not actual hi-jinx or excellent physical humor. (Minor exception for Brad Pitt, who hams it up successfully as a low-brained physical trainer.)

The Coen brothers draw most viewers into their films with strength of character, a sense of constancy that explains and links seemingly unbelievable behavior across varied scenes. The stoic killer in No Country for Old Men held a strict code of conduct that made his otherwise repellant and psychotic actions somewhat sympathetic. Unfortunately, character's the primary failure in Burn After Reading. Most of the story takes small-scale mistakes and blows them out of proportion so quickly, we lose the power to judge. (Wait, is that believable? Could I get a time out to think about this?) By the end, all the characters with inner demons exorcise them by killing the people who seemed happy to start with.

The film's poster design hearkens back to Hitchcock films and the marquee design for Anatomy of a Murder, both excellent sources for life-or-death material frequently plumbed by the Coen brothers. (For example, this movie's MacGuffin is a single CD-ROM of memoirs and financial data whose contents become quickly irrelevant.)

In my opinion, they leaned too heavily on the story's comedic aspects. Fargo seemed rightly concerned with how poor choices lead to terrible outcomes--and was incidentally funny. They inject more humor here, but sacrifice how we regard the characters. Rather than communicating intelligence and an ability to cope with the world around them, everyone seems stubbornly stuck in a single-rail existence. Once it's over, did any of the characters actually learn anything? Do the viewers?

They prefer the term "little filmstrips"

We caught a great series of short films tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts. The Asbury Shorts of New York group tours films every so often and this was the first gig in Boston.

http://www.mfa.org/calendar/event.asp?eventkey=32394&date=3/22/2008

The time ranged from ninety seconds to 18 minutes and included three by Jason Reitman, recently Oscar-nominated for Juno (though I liked Thank You for Smoking better, perhaps thanks to its contrarian style). Mr. Reitman became known through his short films, a common "resume" for filmmakers. If the program comes to your town (or you head to NYC), they're definitely worth a look.

The next 48-hour film project looms and though the team situation is unsettled, the producers and I have hatched a few story and shooting ideas. I hope we don't steal anything too obviously from the ones shown tonight!