Ratatouille

Check out http://thirty-before-thirty.blogspot.com/ for the latest attempt at healthy recipes. It was great!

African Stew

This was my first attempt at adding more veggies to my diet, and it was delicious! I found it online when I was searching for spinach recipes. Not only was it great, its pretty easy as well. I halved the original recipe, so here's what I did:

1 bag spinach
1 can diced tomatoes
1 onion
2 Tablespoons peanut butter

Chop the onion and cook it in oil until soft. Add can of tomatoes and cook about 5 minutes, stir occasionally. Add chopped spinach and cover, cook at medium heat for 5 minutes. While spinach is cooking thin the peanut butter with hot water until it is a smooth paste. Remove the lid and stir in peanut butter. Cook another 5 to 10 minutes.

When I make this again I might add some red pepper flakes and see how that goes.

Updates

Earlier I said that I was going to keep track of the number of books I read this year with no goal in mind. This morning I decided to amend that. In my apartment I have two bookcases that are overflowing, and enough stacks on the floor to fill a third. I've decided to donate the ones I don't want to Planned Parenthood, and to really try to read the ones I've been meaning to get to. Hopefully I can ween it down to two appropriately filled bookcases.

The Mailman is still being a jerk. I didn't get any mail for about a week, then I got two pieces of mail addressed to "current resident". I have also received more mail for the person who doesn't live at my address, but none for me.

Taken

I watched Taken yesterday, and it was great. Liam Neeson was awesome, there was tons of action, and a few things happened that were genuinely surprising. This was not a run of the mill action flick. Go see it.

The Mailman

I am currently in a stand off with The Mailman. I recently started getting mail addressed to someone else, but with my address on it. On the first letter there was a post-it that said:
"If someone else is a this address their name needs to be added to the mailbox! - The Mailman"

I took the letter out and wrote "not at this address" on the post-it, then put it back in the mailbox. That was over a week ago and he hasn't taken it out yet. And he keeps continuing to deliver this guys mail to me. On every letter I write, "return to sender not at this address" but he WILL NOT take the letters.

So now I am checking my mail everyday, taking out whats for me and leaving the rest. My mailman is an asshole.

Update: I haven't received any mail since Friday, which is unusual. Could The Mailman be holding my mail hostage? Game on.

Thanks Renee

I was listening to Morning Edition on my way to work this morning when I heard this:

Dear Mr. Obama,

My name is Christopher Tinajero. I live in a brick house. All my family needs is food. Whenever I get home and I'm hungry I cannot find anything. We can't go anywhere because we always have no gas to drive. My mama voted for you, Obama, because we are a big fan. When you won we went crazy. I would want you to take away guns so our people don't have to die.

Sincerely,

Christopher Garcia Tinajero

Could it be any sadder?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99088962

The Great Escape

Over the holiday week I saw three movies, so I thought I would review them all in one post.

The first one I'll talk about is Doubt. I really liked this movie and would recommend that everyone see it. The acting was great of course, and even if you don't like the story it's worth seeing for Philip Seymour Hoffman's sermons alone. The plot revolves around whether or not his character has an inappropriate relationship with a twelve year old boy. I thought the ending was quite clear, but my cousin (who I saw it with), came to the opposite conclusion regarding his characters guilt. If you do see it be sure to let me know what you think.

I also saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This was my least favorite of the three. The acting was good, but the movie was very long. I also find it frustrating that the characters are in love but do everything in their power to mess it up. People ruin their love lives enough in real life, I don't need to watch a three hour movie about it as well. If you see it could you explain the juxtaposition between the story and Hurricane Katrina? I don't get it.

Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie I have seem in a long time. It was well acted, beautifully shot, and had great music that really enhanced the story. The story itself was wonderful, and it was told in an interesting way. Unlike Benjamin Button, Jamal fought for his love and would have died for it, instead of giving up on everything he ever wanted.