San Diego Zoo 2012

I'm conflicted about zoos. I know that the best thing for most of the animals is not to be confined to an exhibit. On the other hand, seeing animals in-person raises awareness and helps educate. Going to the zoo when I was young made me want to be a veterinarian. Of course, I didn't become a veterinarian, but that was mostly due to the fact that I am horrifically allergic to dogs and cats.

The point is, I've always loved going to the zoo. I still love it, but there's a twinge of guilt mixed in as well.

Nevertheless, we went to the San Diego Zoo last weekend and had a great time. The zoo is enormous and beautifully designed. The best zoo in the country, perhaps the world. It was hot outside, so the monkeys weren't inclined to swing as much, but the tigers were playing, and the giant male polar bear was swimming.

Here are some photos Hubs took during our visit:


This tortoise was attracted to a red iPad from halfway across his enclosure.

A sleeping jaguar looks remarkably like a pit bull.

October Update

I love nutmeg, so maybe this bodes well for me.

So I set a goal for the month of September to finish a first draft of a feature screenplay. And I basically did it, minus a few (albeit, major) scenes. I ran out of steam for those last few scenes and have taken the last two weeks to write the final fifteen pages. Today I finished.

This week, I need to reread the script and address some minor notes that I've been making during the writing of the first draft, mostly continuity/clarity stuff. I think the draft is good. I hope it's good. I'm almost ready for people to read it, so I'm in that nervous-excited phase. It's the phase right before the oh-god-I'm-overwhelmed rewriting/second draft phase. Can't wait!

Baco Mercat

Hubs and I trekked downtown to the hotel district and had lunch at Baco Mercat.

The restaurant had good atmosphere; high ceiling and school-room-ish chairs lead to an industrial feel. Yeah, it's a little hipster, and I liked the look.

We started with a couple sweet and sour sodas that are made in-house.

The red is chicha morada and the green is lime-chile. If you love vinegar, I definitely recommend trying one of the many sodas on the menu. A little too much vinegar for me, but I would still be tempted to try a sweeter, more fruity flavor on my next visit.

For our meal, we each had a baco, the namesake.

I had the toron. It was basically a very tender cheeseburger with tater tots and a creamy horseradish sauce on top. What's not to like? It even had mixed greens and sprouts which brought a note of freshness so it felt lighter than a tater tot topped cheeseburger. Having a bite with pickle, the perfect bite. And while the innards were delicious, the bread was the star of the show. It reminded me of navajo bread, my favorite. The bread is decadent, but just thin enough that it doesn't feel too heavy.

Innards of The Origianal Baco

Hubs had the original. I really loved the sauce it came with, it had a ton of flavor. Lots of meat in this one if you're a big carnivore.

All of the bacos on the menu look so good. I want to try them all. They are the perfect portion, not too big, not too small. I would say they're comparable to an Umami Burger in size. Just enough room left for dessert, which was pretty darn good.

Pecan panna cotta. Light and not too sweet. Yeah, I would order this again. Baco Mercat, we will see you again in the near future.

Summer Kale & Quinoa Salad

Yeah, I know, summer is over, but peaches and nectarines are still at the farmer's market for a few more weeks.

Summer Kale & Quinoa Salad

* 1/2 bunch of kale, stems removed and chopped
* 1/2 cup cooked quinoa
* 1/4 can of kidney beans
* 1/2 peach, diced
* 1/2 nectarine, diced
* 1 medium beet, roasted and diced
* 1 scallion, sliced
* 1 oz. goat cheese, crumbled
*  2 T creamy avocado dressing (recipe below)

Toss all ingredients together.

Serves 1. About 475 calories.


Creamy Avocado Dressing

* 1 small avocado
* 1/4 cup lowfat yogurt or lowfat buttermilk
* 1 T white wine vinegar
* 4 T fresh herbs (I used parsley and cilantro)
* 4 T water

Blend all ingredients together. Add more water if a thinner consistency is desired.

Walnut-Banana-Date Smoothie

This is my spin on Aida Mollenkamp's Walnut Date Smoothie. It's mostly the same recipe, but with single-serving proportions.

Smoothies are tricky. Often, recipes that look like the perfect size for a meal are actually 2 servings. And have you ever looked at the calorie count on the Jamba Juice menu? That's nightmare stuff.

I did some math and created a recipe for a single serving. This smoothie comes in at about 400 calories. Sounds like a lot, but this smoothie will keep you full until lunch, no snacking necessary. It's delicious and slightly sweet, but not so sweet that you gulp it down in thirty seconds.

Walnut-Date Smoothie

- 3/4 cup walnut milk (recipe below)
- 1/2 cup plain, lowfat yogurt
- 1/2 cup dates, pitted and roughly chopped
- pinch of cinnamon
- a few grates of whole nutmeg
- pinch of salt
- 3-5 ice cubes, depending on how thick you want it

Blend walnut milk, yogurt, dates, banana, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together (I use an immersion blender and it works fine). Then add ice cubes and blend again. Ice cubes do not need to be fully incorporated, just broken up.

Recommended: Set a glass in the freezer, preferably overnight so it's ice cold for your smoothie.

Makes 1 large smoothie. About 400 calories.


Walnut Milk

- 1 cup walnuts.
- 5 cups water
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract, or 1 vanilla bean
- 1 T honey or agave nectar
- pinch of salt

Place walnuts in a bowl. Cover them with water, about 2 cups. Cover the bowl and let soak overnight at room temperature. Drain and rinse the soaked walnuts. Add 3 cups of water, vanilla, honey or agave, and salt. Blend until all the walnuts are incorporated. Run through a fine sieve if you want the milk to be less gritty.

Summer Box Office In Review

The summer movies have played out, making way for Oscar season, which I'm excited about. Just a few thoughts on this summer's offerings.

Best Movies 

JOHN CARTER

This movie was so much fun. The CG was absolutely spectacular. The story was solid. The characters didn't take themselves too seriously. It was just a great popcorn movie, and I'm sad that no one went and saw it. Personally, I thought it was ten times more enjoyable than AVATAR.

BRAVE

Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. No, perhaps not the best story structure or characters for a Pixar movie, but Pixar sets that bar high. Did I mention that this movie was pretty?

Biggest Letdown

PROMETHEUS & SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNSTMAN
(I still love you Charlize, it's not your fault.)

Ugh. I've said all I need to say about PROMETHEUS here.

With SWATH, the movie looked great, but didn't have any substance to back up those visuals. It was boring and not a drop of fun was injected into it by anyone involved. Well, I think Charlize was trying, but she didn't have anything to work with. And why, oh why wasn't the mirror involved in the climax at all? So many missed opportunities in this movie.

THE HUNGER GAMES

I had high hopes. I usually love Gary Ross's films and I loooove Jennifer Lawrence, so I thought this one would be excellent. Plus, I lovelovelove (triple love trumps elongated "o" love) BATTLE ROYALE. Seriously, that movie is the shit. There's egregious violence being doled out by children accompanied with a heartfelt love story, all done compellingly. So I have no problem with this subject matter, and I thought THE HUNGER GAMES would be much of the same, done in a PG-13 style.

THG wasn't a bad film by any means, but I felt like it had been adapted into a movie that only the fans of the book would truly love. For me, someone who did not read the book, there were too many characters. I found the "love" story confusing because I didn't understand the characters' motivations. So much time was spent showing the rich people world before we got to the games. And all that training crap...for what? We spend forever building up to the short dude throwing something big and impressing everybody, and then he never throws anything heavy again. What the...? Too much time spent in the wrong places for me.

MOONRISE KINGDOM

All the critics went batty for this one. I love Wes Anderson's aesthetic, but I rarely enjoy his movies and this one was no different (I want to like them, really I do). Not much of a story with this one. And all those great actors with nothing to do. Sad face.

Most Pleasant Surprise

21 JUMP STREET

I think this one technically came out in the spring, but I just saw it recently. This was very funny and the writing was great. I loved how the characters' roles reversed, but in an organic sort of way, very clever. This movie was so much better than it should have been, and how many times do you say that?

A Good Movie That was Totally Off the Radar

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

This one had some odd bits. The tone was a little all over the place, and the casting was slightly head-scratching. But once you get past that, this one was an enjoyable little indie rom com. It had the best last scene to come around in a long time.

Lone Star - Two Years Late

Watching Political Animals (only the pilot) and seeing James Wolk, I was reminded of Lone Star, a unique, well-executed TV show from 2010 that was promptly cancelled after airing its second episode.

I didn't read any of the theories about why people didn't watch a show centered around a con man living two equally fulfilling lives. I had a brief discussion with a friend who thought women would hate it, though he didn't watch the show, so had no opinion for himself. Apparently, I was one of the few people who did watch the show, and I quite liked it. Soap opera/family drama meets heist/thriller, my kind of show.

Yes, the subject matter did appear sexist with the lead character being a womanizer and all, but the show didn't glorify him. He wasn't portrayed as a hero in a male erotic fantasy, the show was simply telling a con man's story. So I do understand why women especially wouldn't have tuned in in the first place, but Fox knew that from the get go. Lone Star was a hard sell, and I appreciate the risk that was taken. Unfortunately, not many people showed up for the premiere and even less came back for episode two.

For me, the show's failure was in the casting. James Wolk was not that character. I'm not saying he's a bad actor, I haven't seen him in anything else (except for PA where he had no storyline in the pilot). Just look at that face. He's a baby Dylan McDermott. But he played the lead character with zero edge, he was just a nice guy. Um, nice guys don't live double lives. That was a character that needed to walk the line between likeable and felon very carefully, not an easy task, and Wolk had no balance.

I enjoyed all of Lone Star's scenes, the two love interests were equally likeable, and I was interested in where the show was going with the conflict between Wolk and his con man father. But Wolk was all wrong for the part. And I'm still sad about it two years later.