food as a weapon?

in chillicothe, i don't have TV. i mean, i have a tv, but no channels. so i've been spending my downtime recently catching up on oscar-nominated films (up in the air, the blindside) and tv-on-dvd. i am fairly obsessed with glee. in fact, i'm embarassed to admit how many times i have watched the dvds. even all the sex and violence in true blood could not divert my attentions from the mesmorizing saccharinity and sly humor which is glee.

my point? since the glee kids are living in the sub-basement of the high school hierarchy, they are frequently accosted with slushie baths.

granted, i have not been in high school for some time, but i don't recall ever being drenched in high fructose corn syrup or smacked in the face with hostess cupcakes. and, as you may well imagine, i was fairly nerdy. i don't even remember a food fight.

maybe it was the omnipotence of catholic educators and the baby jesus that discouraged this behavior. hell, to this day i'm still afraid to deviate from the sidewalk and cut across the grass. maybe it was single sex education. perhaps the barbarianism of boys dictates food be projected into another's face as a warning against those who diverge from the herd. (elder alums, care to weigh in?)

did anyone else experience this phenomenon? and, whether it's throwing eggs or purple slushies, why is food the new scarlet letter?

there's a girl in my soup

it's 1970. peter sellers and goldie hawn make there's a girl in my soup, which despite the title and the fact the main character is a tv gourmet, has very little to do with food and everything to do with sex. the tangling of food and sex is always intriguing. a few key scenes: peter sellers' lothario character is having an intimate moment with a woman and comments, "you taste delicious"...a few scenes later an intimate moment with a different woman occurs while he is watching his own tv show about wine and food, and the descriptions sort of match up, if you know what i mean.

ok, i have to admit i only watched about half of the film. i was tired, and even goldie hawn's terrifically witty dialogue couldn't keep me engaged.

on a related but totally random side note, at work this week we had several morbidly obese patients, so it sparked conversation about what leads to that kind of weight gain, etc. one of the docs i work with told me the story of this woman he treated(? i think) who at the time was about 400 pounds. her husband kept wanting her to gain more and more weight. during sex he would feed her and rub her belly and talk to it.

insert your own commentary.

boo julie & julia!

ok, i haven't been very up on my blog reading, so if this has already covered ad nauseam in the cincinnati food blog world, i apologize. but i just returned from julie & julia, and wow, am i suffering from major movie letdown. how can i have not liked this movie? it's about food and a food blogger. and julia child. and it stars amy adams AND meryl streep?! what's not to love? well, i will tell you.

it was boring. went on and on for ever. despite this seeming eternity, i did not feel i got to know the characters at all and they were not engaging. i didn't care what happened to them. the food didn't make me hungry. meryl streep was obviously standing on some kind of raised platform in several scenes.

i do have to say though, meryl streep was a pretty good julia child; she was fun to watch. but it just wasn't enough to hold my attention for a whole movie.

it felt like the movie tried to do so many things it didn't succeed at anything.

maybe i'm being too harsh? did i build up too high of expectations?

cloudy with a chance of meatballs

did anyone else love this book when they were a kid? such a creative story, and what a fantasy. can you imagine all the food you ate everyday just falling from the sky at the appropriate time?it was absolutely one of my favorites, especially the part where things start to go haywire and it does nothing but rain cream cheese and jelly sandwiches all day (another childhood favorite - cream cheese, strawberry jelly, and bananas on pumpernickel). well, they have made it into a movie, and people, it's 3-D! i saw my first preview for it today, before up (a great 3-4 kleenex pixar endeavor). it looks like they changed the plot a bit, save the food falling from the sky. we'll see. it opens fall this year.

i can't wait for this movie

julie & julia.

it's everything i dream of in a movie, and everything my husband dreads. he looked terrified when we saw the preview yesterday and made a point of telling me he wasn't going to see it.

meryl streep as julia child? inspired. amy adams? adorable. story based on a blog about food? yay!

you know where i'll be august 7.

unsanitary tap dancing

while watching doris day and ray bolger cavort across the screen in april in paris, it struck me that mr. bolger is tap dancing on a food preparation area in the bowels of a french oceanliner.

that's just plain unsanitary.

bottle shock

brian and i happened upon the charming "bottle shock" at the video store last week (yes, we still go to the video store). i wanted to get it because it is about wine, and brian wanted to get it because it stars alan rickman as french wine store owner steven spurrier. he loves alan rickman. he will watch harry potter with me just to see alan rickman slither on in.

anyway, i am quite uneducated. i had never heard of the paris tasting of 1976, which started as a publicity stunt until the californian wines triumphed over french wines in the blind test. the movie tells the story of the chateau montelena and their perfect 1973 chardonnay, a bottle of which now resides in the smithsonian. the movie is cute and likeable, much like chris pine as the slacker son who saves the day.

other things i didn't know: 1) wine can turn brown if it isn't exposed to any air at all. it turns back after a couple days. 2) bottle shock occurs when wine is transported and results in a temporary muting or disruption of the flavors.

intense quote (by the foreman, gustavo): you have to have it in your blood, you have to grow up with the soil underneath your nails, the smell of the grapes in the air that you breathe. the cultivation of the vine was an art form. the refinement of the vine is a religion that requires pain and desire and sacrifice.

random side note: chris pine is rumored to be cast in the 2010 green lantern film. sweet!!

cocktails at the office

sabrina. the 1954 billy wilder film in which audrey hepburn warms humphrey bogart's ticker-tape heart. this is one of my go-to movies when i'm feeling sad, when it's a rainy day, when i feel like romance is gone from the world. it's simply enchanting.

one of my favorite lines in the movie is when sabrina is in a paris cooking school. she is moping about william holden's character david larrabee, who she has been in love with her whole life. they are learning the souffle, and sabrina's comes out "much too low" because she has not turned on the oven. the man cooking next to her comments, "a woman happily in love, she burns the souffle. a woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven".

what really surprises me in this movie is linus larrabee's office, which has a mini-kitchen and a full bar. the patriarch of the larrabee family regularly mixes martinis for board meetings. was this a common practice in the 40s and 50s? when did drinking at work become taboo? i had the chance to travel to austria during grad school to study business, and i learned it is written into some union contracts that beer should be served in the lunchroom. i'm not saying i want to guzzle a margarita while doling out prescriptions, but i am curious about the shift in drinking from the boardroom to after-hours "networking".

sub question: how many drinks can reasonably be consumed at a work function? is it ok to be "that guy" at the office get together, crooning with the karaoke machine, shirt and tie in shambles? how does that alter coworkers' perceptions?

yours, mine, and ours

kind of a brady bunch on steroids, yours, mine, and ours marries lucille ball to henry fonda. she has 8 kids, he has 10. hilarity ensues. you get the picture.as you can imagine, the food needed to feed this army is going to be pricey. breakfast preparations include 5 pounds of bacon and 3 dozen eggs. on a trip to the commissary (luckily dad is in the navy), 3 carts of food, including double digit quarts of milk, totals $126. god bless 1968.

which got me to thinking about a couple things.

1) inflation and the rising cost of food. it's scary. i'm not an economist or a financier and i have anxiety.

2) will we ever see big families like this again (>6 kids), since it is so expensive? why did people stop having so many kids - dual career parents, cost, no need for workers in the family business? one thing's for sure, if everyone started having 6 kids again, the restaurant business would go to hell cause no one could afford it.

thoughts?

how to marry a millionaire...and still enjoy a great hamburger

"a gentleman you meet among the cold cuts is simply not as attractive as one at the meat department at bergdorf's."

such are the rules set by lauren bacall's character schatze page in how to marry a millionaire (1953). bacall, marilyn monroe, and betty grable play three models who set up a class act in a manhattan apartment to snag rich husbands. schatze discusses the proposition with pola (monroe) and loco (grable) over hotdogs and champagne.

all three girls are having a rough time of it, selling off furniture from the (rented) apartment to finance evenings at stork and twenty-one, until all that remains are card tables and folding chairs. their fridge contains a only a corsage and a package of hot dogs. to their rescue comes jd hanley, having been picked up by loco in the meat department at bergdorf's. he invites the three to a reception at the oil institute. from there, events percolate which lead pola and loco to meet eligible, creamy young men who are unfortunately poor. schatze persists, though, and spurns the advances of tom brookman, a "gas pump jockey" by schatze's estimations and completely unworthy. he doesn't even wear a necktie. however, as she's about to marry the millionaire jd, she realizes she really loves tom. the three ladies adjourn with their respective steadies to the local "greasy spoon", where tom pulls out a wad of $1000 bills and reveals (surprise!) he is actually worth $200 million. happily ever after ensues.
the film's defining food moment is when schatze is with tom at hamburger heaven. she is lathering her hamburger with everything from ketchup to coleslaw and has already ordered seconds. tom shrewdly appraises her, "you're strictly a hamburger with onions dame and won't admit it...you're not the kind of girl you pretend to be at all".

can someone be rich AND love coleslaw? all indications point to yes, after all.

food in film

besides food, movies are another one of my favorite pastimes. i am one of those wonderful people out there in the dark, living vicariously through the characters on the screen, chomping popcorn and milk duds. i started thinking this week about the role food plays in film. not just the obvious heroes in chocolat or woman on top, but the subtleties revealed about characters by what they eat and where they eat. this seems overly dramatic i suppose, but something i want to further explore. so i am going to post periodically on food in film. and warning - there may be an occasional spoiler.

this year for the first time i watched holiday affair, a 1949 film starring janet leigh and robert mitchum in a rare romantic role. janet leigh plays a comparison shopper (connie) for a major department store who gets robert mitchum's train salesman (steve) fired at christmastime. connie is a war widow with an adorable 6-yr old son, timmy. as you can imagine, love blossoms and everyone gets what they want for christmas, except carl, connie's longtime boyfriend who gets ditched for manly, out-of-work steve.

this film drips charm. early in the budding relationship between steve and connie, he invites her out to lunch with the agreement that he orders everything. where do they go? the central park zoo. they share hot dogs, steaming coffee (hot chocolate?) and nuts for dessert. janet leigh is in a fur coat shelling nuts and watching a barking seal. brilliant. simple pleasures - casual, unpretentious. as they eat, steve shares the story of his life. he describes his past life, "every monday i'd buy a chunk of meat to last all week. i'd cook it 6 different ways. by saturday night it ended up goulash". one monday, he asked for porterhouse steak because he couldn't bear the thought of that same mundane meat all week. that steak changed his whole life. too big to eat alone, he invited friend over, who provided him with an opportunity and a dream.

i love that metaphor, and the thought that breaking free of our conventions can prove serendipitous.