SonicChicken blog

A few nights ago we watched “Jet Lag“, starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno. With those two in the leading roles my expectations were pretty high for this movie, perhaps too high. It was decent, worth watching, and the score (by Eric Serra, who also did “Subway“) was pretty good. But the real reason for this blog post is the recipe that was tucked into the credits, Veal Mignonettes. This is the dish that Félix (Jean Reno) prepares for Rose (Juliette Binoche) near the end of the movie.

Veal Mignonettes (serves 2)

• 3/4 lb veal
• 1/2 lb carrots
• 4 small zucchini
• 6 tomatoes
• 2 leeks (white part only)
• flat-leaf parsley
• pepper
• coarse salt
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• armagnac (cognac?)
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 pinch sesame seed

Cut the veal into 1-inch slices. Julienne the vegetables. Heat olive oil in a skillet and saute the vegetables over low heat until al-dente, about 5 minutes. Add a pinch of coarse salt, the parsley, and pepper.

Remove the vegetables from the pan, add the veal and armagnac (~1 Tbsp?) and flambé for about 1 minute. Return to the burner and add a pinch of sesame seeds and the balsamic vinegar. Serve with the al-dente vegetables.

There were some errors in the recipe which I’ve done my best to correct. For instance, the veal and carrots were given in “ld”, which I presume was supposed to be “lb”. Also, the armagnac is never referred to in the instructions. A 1-inch thick slice of veal seems a bit much — in the movie, it looks more like 1/2 or 3/4 inch.

I’ve never been successful with flambé. For some reason the pan never lights for me. Anybody have a suggestion as to what I might be doing wrong?

Andante sent me an invite for this survey. How could I refuse, especially since I was listed as her first victiminvitee?

Seven Things To Do Before I Die

1. Finish remodeling my house!
2. Take my wife to Ireland
3. See the metric system (SI) implemented in the United States
4. Become more active in my community
5. Take a motorcycle tour with my wife
6. Visit New Zealand
7. Watch my children grow up and overhear somebody say, “Their parents raised them right”

Seven Things I Cannot Do

1. Sing
2. Bicycle “no hands” (at least not since 1976, when I was struck by a car while doing that)
3. Keep my desk tidy
4. Any sport requiring hand-eye coordination
5. Bake
6. Tolerate mean-spirited people
7. Support the invasion of a country that was not a threat to us

Seven Things That Attract Me to…Blogging

1. Stumbling across kindred spirits
2. Being able to rant without obligating anybody to listen
3. I can write about anything I want
4. It’s easier to keep a blog up-to-date compared to a static page
5. Finding out that some people are actually interested in some of the stuff I write about
6. No schedules, deadlines, etc.
7. “Meeting” people

Seven Things I Say Most Often

1. George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television
2. Holy cow (i.e. something astonishing/good happened)
3. Crap (i.e. something unexpected/bad happened)
4. Lame (i.e. reading a university administration memo)
5. Chowderhead (often heard in traffic when somebody’s driving irritates me)
6. Dumb ass (usually when a politician or right wing-nut is on the radio)
7. “Computer hacking skills” (Napoleon Dynamite)

Seven Books That I Love

1. The Harry Potter series (I realize that’s seven books all by itself, but too bad)
2. The Plug-In Drug/Television, Children, and the Family
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide series (I know, 5 books this time…)
4. Small Is Beautiful
5. Job: A Comedy of Justice (or just about any other Heinlein book)
6. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
7. The Complete Gilbert & Sullivan: Librettos from All Fourteen Operettas
8. Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community

(Yes, I know I went over the limit. Luckily I only went over by 1, it was hard enough to trim the list down to 8!)

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again

1. Princess Bride
2. Galaxy Quest
3. Thomas Crowne Affair
4. Subway
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
6. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
7. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Seven People I Want To Join In Too Obviously there is no obligation, but it would be interesting to hear from the following people:

1. Acetylene
2. Joseph
3. Kevin
4. Holly
5. Daniel (once he’s free again)
6. Warboss
7. Punk (no URL available)

(Those who don’t blog, feel free to leave your answers as comments on this article.)

Well, we finally got around to joining Netflix yesterday, and we’ve already got 60 movies in our queue! Initially we signed up for the 3-at-a-time plan, but we’ll probably change to the cheapest plan once the novelty wears off.

Several of our friends already use Netflix, and they all had good things to say about the service. The only words of caution I received had to do with “throttling” of the movie pipe. This is spelled out in the terms of service, and basically says that if you burn through your queue they reserve the right to take their time sending your next movie. Fair enough, I guess.

Of course, this gives me another feature to hack/play with here on the blog: displaying our Netflix queue and/or recent activity. I was initially thinking of using Jimbo’s mynetflix 1.5 plugin, but he’s been pretty busy lately. It looks like development work has been taken over by Herichon, who recently released mynetflix2. I’ll be fiddling with this plugin and squeezing it into my page somewhere. Of course, this is going to be another customization that needs to be maintained for each theme, sigh.

If you’re a Netflix user reading this blog, feel free to add us (my wife and I) to your friends list. Our Netflix address is netflix@thisblogsname.net (In case that’s not clear enough, you’ll need to replace thisblogsname with SonicChicken.) My wife and I also have personal profiles to cover movies that we disagree about, for example I like Dr. Strangelove and she doesn’t. If you want to add us individually use our name instead of “netflix” in the account, e.g. jim@thisblogsname.net.