Cooking and Cinema

Short Stories, Film Reviews, and Recipes

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Cooking and Gardening for American Slackers Part II: Roasting Garlic and Browning Butter

June 1, 2021 /
I inherited this skillet from my Grandma. It’s older than me and doesn’t require too much oil, since it has over fifty years of seasoning.

If you love garlic in your food but aren’t fond of fresh garlic’s aftertaste, try roasting the garlic. Roasting garlic reduces the power of the pungent bulb, but most recipes require lengthy cooking times.

If you have time to cook it for one or two hours, oven-roasted garlic produces the best texture and flavor to spread on toasted bread or add to an uncooked dip.

Garlic’s flavor and potency can be traced back to its family history; it’s in the same family as onions and lilies. However, elephant garlic varieties are unrelated to garlic and grouped with the leek family.

Quick Garlic Roasting

You can avoid cooking garlic in the oven by toasting it in a cast-iron skillet. Slow-roasted garlic is best if you’re eating it as a spread, but the quicker method is ideal when you’re adding it to sauces, stews, or baked meals. All you need is olive oil, a cast-iron skillet, and one head of garlic.

One head of garlic separated into bulbs (leave the skin on)

1tsp Olive oil

Instructions: Coat the cast-iron pan with olive oil and heat on medium. When the pan is hot, add garlic bulbs and spread out. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes a side until skin is blackened and garlic is soft.

Even vampires can consume roasted garlic.

When the garlic has cooled, peel off the skins and add to your favorite soup, stew, or Italian sauce. I’ve also used the quick roasting method for chicken cacciatore, tomato sauce, beef stew, baked manicotti, and gumbo.

In the summertime, I make basil pesto more frequently with a large crop of sweet basil growing next to my backdoor. I use fresh garlic in pesto when I going to heat the sauce, but for pesto going over fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, or another cold salad, I add roasted garlic.

With roasted garlic in pesto, the parmesan and basil flavors are more apparent.

Oven Roasted Garlic

Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Slice off the top of the Garlic head and place in an oiled casserole dish. Drizzle 1Tbsp of olive oil (you can also use chicken stock or water) over the garlic, cover with foil, and bake for one hour.

Browning Butter

Do you prefer homemade cookies over grocery store cookies? If you have working taste buds, brain activity, and a pulse, you probably said yes. It’s easier to spend three to six dollars for pre-packaged cookies loaded with preservatives and remnants of old peanuts (from making another snack product), but brand-name cookies have as much flavor as distilled water.

They’re expensive for flavorless matter, but they often have an advantage over homemade recipes. They stay soft longer. Homemade cookies taste delicious straight from the oven, but they begin to dry out the next day. To solve the problem, you can brown the butter before adding it to the batter.

Don’t let a small band of elves (Keebler’s indentured servants), working out of a tree, produce a better cookie than you. Why do people feel comforted having elves making their cookies and Christmas presents? Have you seen how easily they can kill an orc with a bow and arrow? They’re too violent to be good bakers.

Heat one stick of butter (sliced butter melts faster- it covers more surface area) over a skillet on medium. When the butter is completely melted, increase the heat to medium-high and stir with a wooden spoon or whisk to avoid sticking.

After 6 to 8 minutes, the butter should start browning and foaming. Remove from the heat and allow to cool before adding to the cookie batter.

Espresso Chip cookies are tasty and fattening. I’m glad I polished my tea kettle for the cookie photo shoot. Man, that thing is shiny!

Espresso Chip Cookies

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup baking cocoa

1 ½ cups brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp salt

½ cup vegetable oil

1 stick salted butter browned and cooled

3 large eggs

1 cup Espresso chips

½ cup ground walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 325°F

Mix the dry ingredients in a metal bowl: flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda.

Mix the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vegetable oil in a mixer on medium until the mixture resembles clumpy sand. Slow the mixer down to low speed. Add the eggs, one at a time (spaced thirty seconds apart), and the vanilla extract.

Add the flour mixture one cup at a time until the batter is blended. Add the expresso chips and walnut last. Place 2Tbsp blobs of cookie dough on a greased cookie sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes. Cool cookies on a cooling rack.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Choosing Between Art House and Horror

April 27, 2021 /

I know several people who refuse to watch horror films. Some say the movies are too violent, moronic, or poorly made. There’s a great deal of truth to that criticism since many horror movies are incredibly dumb and difficult to watch unless you’re comatose.

However, the lines between horror, art-house, and thriller genres have been blurred since the late 20th century. Even the staunchest opponents of scary movies have probably viewed an award-winning film like The Silence of the Lambs.

How did Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins persuade people to watch a story about a serial killer who appreciates rare moths, tucks his manhood between his legs, and rips the skin off his victims so he can sew together a nifty skin suit to show off to other degenerates?

How does a mainstream movie get away with including a scene where a prisoner throws his semen in the face of an FBI agent in training?

The answer to both questions is talent. The Silence of the Lambs is a sick, disturbing movie, but it’s well done. No, Meggs’ DNA slinging sequence could not have been accepted by the MPAA unless it was produced with the utmost precision.

The actors rehearsed the scene for several weeks before the eighteen-hour shooting began. They worked with a biology professor, dermatologist, and adult film star to get a feel for the scene.

Method acting took on a disturbing new meaning to the troubled cast, and Jodie Foster spent a fortune on therapy after the shooting wrapped.

Wow, His eyes are pretty like mine. They sure keep this prison glass clean. Do they just use Windex–It’s got to be something stronger.

The nonsense I just wrote was only to prove a point that many scenes require days of preparation and hard work to accomplish for a few minutes or seconds of edited footage. Many horror movies (and movies in general) skip the preparation, and it’s often evident in the results.

Slasher films or monster movies are what most non-horror lovers associate with horror. They seem linear and uncreative on the surface.

Drunken teenagers who repeatedly ignore common sense and allow themselves to be massacred in inventive ways is a stereotypical plot that reached its peak in the 1980s.

Unlike many critics, I like slasher movies like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. They may not be considered cinematic masterpieces, but they sometimes scared and entertained me as a kid. Now, those films make me laugh, but they’re still entertaining.

Slasher films made a killing at the box office in the 80s, but most critics hated them and believed they were exploitative garbage. The late film critic, Gene Siskel, despised Friday the 13th (1980) and went to great lengths to show his displeasure.

He contacted Paramount and lectured them about their immoral filmmaking, and he wrote a letter to Betsy Palmer, the actress who played Jason’s mother (the real killer), to express his disappointment that she lowered herself to accept a role in such a horrible movie.

His efforts were in vain, and the fans won out. Until 2018, the Friday the 13t h series was the most successful horror franchise in history. The first film made over 59 million dollars in 1980, and it spawned sequels, a remake, tv-series and video games.

It launched the career of the untalented goofball Kevin Bacon and solidified Sean Cunningham as a horror director. I think it’s exploitative (which I didn’t mind too much when I was ten years old) and not as well acted or produced as Silence of the Lambs.

However, if you compare the plots of the two films, Friday seems tamer and less demented. If you take away the graphic violence, nudity, and bad acting (what the critics complained about), the movie has a lot of charm and a great soundtrack.

It makes you want to go to a summer camp, armed with a flame thrower and wood chipper, to relax by the lake. Why didn’t they ever try killing Jason (in the sequels) with a wood chipper? That should have worked.

I like some of the lousy slasher films, and I enjoy a few of the Oscar-winning thrillers, but trying to categorize horror films into several different groups seems pointless.

It’s more marketable to call a prestige film a thriller than a horror movie, and I understand why, but it still bothers me.

Is Blue Velvet Art House Horror?

In 1986, my parents went to see Blue Velvet.

Since they didn’t want me to be alone in the house unsupervised (I enjoyed pyrotechnics and fire in general as a child—no one was ever hurt or burned. I swear.), they took me along but wisely prohibited me from seeing the movie.

They bought me a ticket for The Golden Child and told me to have fun. As an eleven-year-old who had never viewed a movie without my friends or family sitting next to me, I wasn’t thrilled to sit next to odd-smelling strangers.

The theater filled up fast, and I wound up enjoying the movie with an exceptionally rowdy biker gang. They had matching leather jackets and mullets. Yes, the women’s mullets resembled the men’s.

They were joking around and making a lot of noise during the previews, but when Eddie Murphy’s comic masterwork came on the screen, they were silent—until the first joke cracked them up.

I respected that, and soon I wasn’t scared that they would torment me for not wearing a leather jacket.

At that point in my life, I was probably wearing a Member’s Only jacket. The bikers looked tough, but deep down in their souls, they were more like the Grease bikers than the Hells Angels-type bikers.

I had a good time, but I wondered what kind of depravity I was missing in Blue Velvet. As it turns out, I was missing a goldmine of depravity.

Even though his films have humorous moments and inventive cinematography, David Lynch is not for most tastes.

Compared to mainstream horror films, Blue Velvet is scarier, bloodier, and more demented. It was marketed as a shocking thriller, but you never hear the term “horror film” associated with the movie.

For a high-brow audience, I guess you can’t associate it with Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, or Mia Farrow.

It’s a strange film that’s difficult to handle in some scenes. I liked it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone with anxiety problems.

It’s entertainment that induces anxiety rather than curbs it, and while that isn’t good for all people (or most people), it’s interesting that some movies can alter your breathing, heart rate, and comfort level.

I don’t think Blue Velvet would’ve turned me into a raving lunatic as a child, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have slept for a month or listened to Roy Orbison for the rest of my life.

Watching a lip-sticked Dennis Hopper terrorize poor Kyle Maclachlan while he quotes In Dreams is not good publicity for Roy Orbison, but strangely enough, it did revive sales of the song and his greatest hits.

The opening lines are pretty creepy for a hit song.

In Dreams

By Roy (weirdo) Orbison

A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman

Tiptoes to my room every night

Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper

Go to sleep; everything is alright

Everything is going to be alright

Besides the horror of seeing Dennis Hopper huffing gas and speaking like a baby while he sodomizes Isabella Rossellini, you have Kyle MacLachlan doing the chicken dance, a severed ear, a love of Heineken beer in 1986, a graphic close-up headshot in slow-motion, a corpse with his brain hanging out that remains standing, and a horse-faced prostitute dancing in a pink mini skirt.

Now, that’s horror. So, if you hate horror movies, you can avoid the ones that aren’t marketed as something else, but you might accidentally stumble into one. Have you ever seen Howard the Duck?

Cooking and Gardening for American Slackers

April 14, 2021 /

Part One: Growing Tomatoes From Slices

Amish Paste, Green Zebra, Matt’s Sweet Cherry, Japanese Black Trifele, and Purple Cherokee

Summer is on the way, and you may be dreading the stories you’ll hear from your friends or relatives about their incredible heirloom tomato patch.

You may have an uncle Cletus that cooks the tomatoes down for a spicy Picante sauce or a mother who walks to her garden with her salt and pepper shakers so she can munch on fresh Black Krim tomatoes while she watches Duran Duran videos from her phone.

Your niece Moon Tulip Child, who lives out west in a friendly commune (not the manipulative one that makes you bathe in the outhouse), grows her Big Rainbow and Costaluto Genovese tomatoes for the organic tomato juice that she adds to her stew and breakfast cereal.

Your neighbor, Stewart, places a wireless speaker in his tomato garden and plays sad songs to enhance the growing process. From Ave Maria to Tracy Chapman, he plays a variety of songs, but they all have one thing in common. They’re all full of sadness.

Stew claims that depression, anxiety, guilt, fearfulness, and hopelessness are vibes that the plants absorb and use to grow stronger. “What makes us sad…just makes them more powerful.”

He sometimes fights back the heavy tears when he prunes his prize Brandywines while listening to Glenn Danzig.

He sends you and the neighbors a text when he throws his annual Heirloom Tomato, Artisanal Cider, and Bathtub Gin party. And you ignore it because Stewart is a nutjob, and you don’t want anything to do with him.

Yes, the freak can grow an heirloom tomato, but his theory about melancholy sound waves is too much for you to handle.

You remove him from all of your online accounts and sit back and ponder how to cultivate tomatoes without receiving advice from your strange family, neglected (psychotic) neighbor, or pompous friends.

Online seed companies are selling out of their heirloom vegetables quickly these days, but you can avoid inflated seed prices or underhanded seed dealers (not every seed company is reputable or has viable seeds). I call the sleazy, fraudulent dealers the bad seeders. “I bought pumpkin seeds, but it grew into Hemlock!”

Purchase an Overpriced Tomato

Even at a farmer’s market, heirloom tomatoes aren’t cheap. You can expect to pay one to three dollars more per pound for an heirloom variety. It’s true that they taste much better than grocery-store slicers, and their price can be justified by how difficult they are to sell in a large commercial market.

Heirloom tomato plants aren’t as prolific as some of the hybrid varieties, and depending on the type, some heirlooms are more susceptible to fungus and disease. They also ripen quicker than commercial varieties and are therefore harder to transport and sell.

When I planted fifty heirlooms in my backyard, I spent a lot of time keeping the pests from destroying the fruit, but I’m glad I grew so many because some of the plants produced only ten to fifteen tomatoes.

Summers in Eastern North Carolina are humid and hot, and the temperature doesn’t drop by too many degrees at night, but depending on the climate in your area, you may have a better yield with your heirlooms.

If you want to grow up to thirty heirloom tomatoes, all you need is one expensive tomato and a pot filled with potting soil. Find an heirloom that you like at a market or high-end grocery store and cut it into three or four slices.

The slices should be about ¼ inch thick, but you can set aside the stem side and bottom of the tomato. Those sections don’t contain many seeds.

Fill a two- or three-gallon container ¾ full with potting soil and place the tomatoes about an inch apart on the dirt. With three tomatoes, you can form a triangle on the soil. With four, you’ll create a square.

Cover the tomatoes with soil, add water, and place outside after the last frost in your area. Keep the soil moist with frequent watering, and you’ll start to see several shoots appear after ten to twelve days.

You can thin some of the plants out if you only want to grow a few, or you can carefully remove the plants and place them in small transplant pots until they get large enough to plant in your yard or a larger pot.

I’ve read about other ways to plant seeds from a purchased tomato, but some techniques are incredibly complicated and time-consuming.

One method requires drying the seeds for several days before you put them in a seed starter greenhouse. If you procrastinate and have lazy moments like me, that seems like too much work.

I appreciate complex techniques that achieve superior results, but waiting for seeds to dry is an extra step that you don’t need.

Slice up a tomato, and grab your friends for a game of organic horseshoes and toss the slices in the soil. Cover the tomatoes and play something sad and horrifying like How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees.

Here are some heirlooms that I’ve grown and recommend:

  • Black Krim
  • Purple Cherokee
  • Green Zebra
  • Japanese Black Trifele
  • Yellow Brandywine
  • Amish Paste

The Midnight Sky Review ⁕⁕½

January 20, 2021 /

2049 Doesn’t Have Beard Defrosters

George Clooney’s 2020 film, The Midnight Sky, is an ambitious end-of-the-world tale. The story alternates between Clooney’s struggle with Arctic isolation and a group of astronauts trying to make it back to a worthless Earth.

I wasn’t a fan of Clooney’s previous directorial efforts, like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but after he starred in Oh Brother Where Art Thou, I began to respect his acting ability.

Of course, his magnificent portrayal of an older guy that helped the young women of the Facts of Life (right before it went off the air in the late 80s) is worth mentioning. Also, his genius in Return of the Killer Tomatoes is something to behold and regrettably forget.

With the exception of the Mad Max films, The Midnight sky has more humor than most dystopian films, but it suffers from an overload of melodrama. Yes, the world ending would be a depressing experience, but the movie sometimes becomes fixated on grief.

The Sadness…It’s Growing, but Hey, Turn Up That Neil Diamond

Augustine Lofthouse is a lonely dude. He lives by himself in an arctic outpost and spends his days drinking scotch, checking the status of radiation building up around the globe, hooking himself up to a blood transfusion machine, and trying to contact the last group of astronauts on the planet.

When he rushes into the kitchen to put out a fire, he discovers a young girl. After unsuccessfully trying to contact someone to come back for the girl, he reluctantly takes care of the child and eventually warms up to her.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn more about Augustine’s past and how he winds up in a frozen landscape. The flashbacks are positioned well in the film, but every time Clooney examines his memories, he gets sad and remorseful.

His acting and his co-stars’ performances are impressive, but the overabundance of gloom in the story can become numbing until someone, like his young co-star Caoilinn Springall, lightens the mood. However, one mood-lightening moment that I didn’t enjoy (I was actually cringing and searching for ear protection) was when the astronauts go on a spacewalk to make repairs.

One of the jokers inside the ship, played by Demián Bichir, decides to play Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” while his colleagues make life-saving repairs to the ship’s exterior. They all sing along, except for the youngest crew member who mentions that she doesn’t know the tune, and everyone does their complex repairs while they’re grinning and bobbing along to Neil’s groaning.

I don’t hate Neil Diamond. I think he’s a cornball, but I liked him in The Last Waltz. As far as his acting is concerned, I’d rather watch a series of instructional films produced in the 1950s. By using “Sweet Caroline,” Clooney escapes to another movie.

His film is no longer a serious end of the world story; it’s a short, goofy musical in space. This may have been his intention all along. He puts something stupid in the middle of the movie so that it’s not such a downer. I get it, but I didn’t enjoy it.

While the scene was playing out, I thought about a plot device that’s been overused by great directors and dime-store operators for several years. Out-of-place musical numbers (in a non-musical movie) usually preempt a horrific event.

Clooney doesn’t disappoint, and a tragedy occurs. I won’t mention what happens, but I was pleased with the special effects used to create zero gravity blood. It’s one of the most horrifying and visually creative scenes in the picture.

Frozen Eyebrows Vs. Space Brooders

Great. Now that the entire world is dead, I can finally grow out my beard. This is America’s beard. No, it’s the world’s beard now. Only damn beard left on the planet. And no more trimming my ear hair either. Gonna let it grow out till it reaches my feet. Maybe I’ll get in Guinness. Shucks, they’re all dead too.

The film shifts back and forth between Augustine’s plight and the desperate astronauts. I liked the interactions between Augustine and his silent companion much more than the brooding space people.

The special effects are high-dollar, and most of the time, I thought they looked fairly good. Clooney’s role in Gravity must have had a profound impact on him. Some of the action scenes in space look incredibly similar to those in his previous film, but I think Gravity’s effects are more polished and realistic.

Some of the space scenes, especially when they have a wide shot of the space station rotating, appear computer-generated. Using digital effects is OK when you forget that you’re looking at something artificial. For the most part, The Midnight Sky’s effects are commendable, but every once in a while, you can see weakness in the visuals.

Although I picked on it, The Midnight Sky is an entertaining film, albeit a gloomy one. It has some predictable moments, but it excels in creating an atmosphere that feels desolate and without hope. That’s fitting when radiation has killed everyone on the planet except a sick bearded guy, a silent little girl, and a group of singing space rangers.

Grandmother's house needs some pruning.

After the Thanksgiving Feast, Try Enchiladas

November 29, 2020 /

Instead of settling for turkey sandwiches or one of those gut-busting casseroles you’ve seen on a lousy cooking show where they cram turkey, gravy, cranberry relish, green bean casserole, yams, stuffing, and mashed potatoes into a large baking dish, top with bacon, country ham, gouda cheese, balsamic reduction, and Metamucil, you can make enchiladas.

I’m against wasting leftovers and feel guilty when I have to throw away food, but if I’d rather feed my trashcan than consume something repulsive created by Chef Cletus.

One enjoyable alternative to throwing away leftovers is to toss the food (or place it in bowls) into your backyard. You’ll attract the local wildlife that will appreciate a late Thanksgiving feast.

Make sure that the food is in a direct line of sight from your windows. Wait for the bunny, fox, deer, or wharf rat to munch on your bait and take a shot with a high-powered rifle or crossbow.

After a little gutting, skinning, and slicing, you’ll have another delicious meal that you can use to fatten your in-laws before they head back to Key West. The circle of life or maybe the food chain is incredible when you take an active role. Now, back to reality and enchiladas.

This recipe is based on one that my Dad uses to make enchiladas the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t remember the name of the fifty-year-old book it comes from, but I call it the brown 1970s Mexican Cookbook with gold lettering and multiple stains.

I’ve tried several homemade and restaurant enchiladas, but this one is my favorite.

Before trying the recipe, here are a few suggestions:

  • After cooking the sauce, don’t add the sour cream until you’ve taken the pot off the heat. The sour cream will curdle if the sauce is too hot.
  • When you fry the corn tortillas, set the burner between medium and medium-high. You don’t want to fry them too long, or they’ll get rigid and difficult to fold.
  • If you have extra corn tortillas, you can cut them into sixths and fry them for 2 minutes for homemade corn chips. Add salt when they’re still hot.
  • You can use chicken, turkey, or scrambled eggs (the original recipe calls for 7 large eggs scrambled), but I’ve only made them with chicken and turkey.
  • Avoid wearing lederhosen or parachute pants when you’re making enchiladas. An unexpected grease fire can be painful if your britches aren’t fireproof.
  • Seize the day, save the whales, smell the roses (they may be dead after last night’s freeze), maximize your potential, take out the garbage, clean the gutters, spot weld that hole in Grandpa Manson’s operating table, and give fleece a chance.

Turkey Enchiladas

12 Corn tortillas

2 cups shredded turkey

1 cup finely diced white onion

2 ½ cups shredded Oaxaca cheese

1 ¾ cups vegetable or peanut oil

Tomato Sauce

2 large cans whole tomatoes (or 10 to 12 fresh tomatoes)

4 cloves fresh garlic

4-8 Jalapeno rings (or 2 fresh jalapenos)

After cooking sauce, stir in ½ tsp salt and ½ cup sour cream.

Instructions

  • Set your oven to broil and cook the tomatoes, peppers, and garlic on a greased cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes. You can also put them on a lined pan on an outdoor grill set to medium-high.
  • Allow the vegetables to cool for five minutes and blend (in a blender- not a food processor) for 2 minutes. Add the diced onions to an oiled skillet and sauté for five minutes. Set aside to cool.
  • Heat oil in a cast-iron skillet and cook tortillas, one at a time, for 10 seconds on each side. Place the tortillas on a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess grease.
  • Heat a tbsp of vegetable in a deep skillet, on medium-high, and heat the tomato puree, frequently stirring, until it begins to thicken. Remove from the heat and stir in salt and sour cream.
  • Set up a cutting board on the counter near the stove. Spray a deep casserole dish with cooking spray and set it aside. With a pair of tongs, dip the cooked tortillas into the tomato sauce and place them on the cutting board.
  • Add 2 tbsp turkey, 2 tbsp cheese, and a tsp of cooked onions to the tortilla and roll into a tube. Place the rolls seam-side down in the cooking dish. You should have 2 rows of tortillas with six in each row.
  • Pour the tomato sauce on the rolls. Top with the remaining 1 cup of cheese.
  • Bake the enchiladas for 30 minutes at 350°F.
  • Serve them while they’re piping hot!

The Lodge Is Not Worth Your Time

September 18, 2020 /

A Film Fit For a Landfill (Not a Fancy One)

Don’t fall for the movie’s effective trailer or positive reviews. Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s 2019 film, The Lodge, is a disappointing 108 minutes. It’s not one of the “scariest movies of all time” or a “reinvention of the genre.” If you have any unpleasant chores to complete in under two hours, you’re better off finishing them than attempting to watch one of the dumbest horror/psychological movies ever created.

I like horror films set in frigid environments, and I’m a big fan of The Thing (all three versions), The Shining, and 30 Days of Night. Like stormy nights, frozen landscapes seem to work well in horror movies.

The weather isolates the protagonists and makes it more challenging to fight off the villain or monster. Also, most horror directors undoubtedly appreciate the way that movie blood appears on snow.

During a warmer season, a trail of blood leading to a decapitated noggin would not be as noticeable as it would during a snowy winter. The Lodge fails to take advantage of the snow/blood combination and relies on indoor settings to stage its violent acts.

However, because of the film’s writing (worthy of an adolescent), it fails to deliver chilling moments. Even in the middle of a blizzard, the characters’ dire situation becomes boring rather than suspenseful.

The film’s plot involves a father, son, and daughter who spend their Christmas vacation at a snowy lodge in the woods with the father’s psychotic girlfriend. They’re still grieving the loss of their mother.

In the opening of the film, their Mom shoots herself in the head after she finds out her husband is divorcing her and planning on marrying one of the Manson women.

It sounds just like a classic Christmas movie. Doesn’t it? Suicide, cult members, strange children, and moronic filmmaking bring out the holiday spirit.

The Lodge is streaming on Hulu, but you’re better off watching the two-part Brady Bunch episode when the family goes to Hawaii. Greg’s struggle with a tiny wave that nearly kills him is riveting television.

Death Row Prisoners: Your Next Film Will Be The Lodge. Enjoy!

The kids’ father, played by Richard Armitage, is in the race for the worst parent of the year award. He casually decides to tell his wife (Alicia Silverstone) that he needs a divorce when he picks up the kids at her house.

Richard (doing a sloppy Michael Fassbender impersonation) wants to marry Grace (Riley Keough). Grace was one of the subjects of his last books and was the only survivor of a fundamentalist suicide cult.

When Richard’s children search the web for details about their future stepmom, they find a disturbing film depicting several dead bodies with their mouths taped shut and the word “SIN” written on the tape.

They type her name in a search engine, and an instant snuff film appears. Children live in a great age of technology, and I’m jealous that I didn’t have such a graphic resource at my disposal when I was a kid.

The camera pans around to all of the dead cult members in sleeping bags and focuses on a mirror that shows Grace operating the camera.

Why would an author begin dating a mass murderer while he’s researching a book? And how did Grace escape a life prison sentence or a room at an asylum?

These questions are never answered, but thankfully, you won’t notice because The Lodge only becomes more ridiculous and amateurish as the film progresses.

Six months after his wife’s suicide, Richard has a great idea.

He decides to take Grace and his two children to a secluded cabin in the woods. Like several other haunted house or secluded cabin movies, Richard gets called away for a vital work issue and must leave Grace alone with his children.

Before he leaves, he decides to create some foreshadowing for the film.  

In one of the most idiotic scenes of the movie, Richard gives Grace a shooting lesson with his old revolver. Of course, she doesn’t need his lessons. She shoots a tree repeatedly like a western sharpshooter and empties the pistol.

Providing gun lessons to a former cult member who looks like she hasn’t slept in a year is an excellent plan. Does Richard secretly hate his children?

Riley, Will You Speak Up, Please?

Compared to the performances in horror films from the ’80s, the acting in The Lodge isn’t awful. At least the kids aren’t bad. Riley Keough’s performance as Grace isn’t too convincing. She looks ragged, has rings under her eyes, and barely speaks above a whisper throughout the film.

Indeed, she appears to be a cultist who shouldn’t be babysitting your kids, but her muted speech and painkiller demeanor are more stylish than scary.

She attempts to act like a disturbed person but only comes off as someone who failed at loving up to the goth kids in high school. When Grace begins to hallucinate after losing her medication, the movie starts to show some signs of life.

All of her food, clothes, meds, and loving dog disappear overnight, and the children act stunned when they’re accused of the crime. To make things more unpleasant, the generator stops working, and the power goes out.

The kids have to endure a frigid cabin during a blizzard with an increasingly unhinged mass murderer, but it’s hard to feel sorry for them.

When Grace finds a picture of the kids with the words “In Loving Memory of” buried in the snow, the teenager (Aidan, played by Jaeden Martell) suggests to Grace that all of them are dead.

Aidan pretends to hang himself to scare Grace, but she’s unconvinced that they’re in limbo between heaven and hell until she finds her frozen dog. The dog’s death is the breaking point for Grace, and I guess it was for me, too.

The dog was the only likable part of the movie. I can handle poorly written scripts and bad acting, but I struggled to make it through a cinematic disaster that included a dead dog scene. The kids supposedly didn’t intend to release the dog into the frozen landscape.

However, it’s challenging to believe the kids after they’ve spent their time tormenting a psychopath.

Sympathy can be a compelling emotion in a horror movie. When you identify with a victim, their death affects you, but when every character (except the dog) is worthless, their demise isn’t unpleasant. It’s welcome.

Tips for Growing Fresh Basil: Frequent Decapitations

August 24, 2020 /
Enjoy the sun while you can. Soon, you’ll be pulverized into pesto or simmering in marinara sauce.

Chop Off Their Heads, and the Herbs Will Grow! from Morris Peplo (amateur gardener, jai alai enthusiast, hang glider pilot, and landscape artist focusing on exotic fungi)

Basil Chopping

Basil is an excellent herb to grow in the summertime, but if your plants are growing straight up without forming a broad base, you should consider decapitating them. Pruning is a kinder term, but this is a cooking and cinema site that reviews horror films, and I thought head-chopping was more characteristic of the site’s contents.

It’s best to lop off the heads when the plant is only a few months old, but you can prune basil at any time. If you live in the south, your basil may continue to produce leaves until October. In North Carolina, we usually get the first freeze around Halloween, and the herb won’t survive too many nights that dip below 43°F.

Some gardeners are hesitant to prune plants like herbs or vegetables and would rather have nature run its course. There’s nothing wrong with that method if you like small harvests, but several edible plants like peppers and herbs will produce more if you crop off the lanky stems.

A 6 foot Fuji Apple Tree reduced to a sad-looking nub.

Tree Stunting

On the subject of plant mutilation, I recommend decapitating fruit trees that may be too large for your yard. Some apple varieties can grow 17-20 ft. high and around 6 ft. wide. That’s fine if you have plenty of space in your yard and enjoy picking fruit with a ladder.

For backyards and community gardens, you don’t need to simulate an orchard layout to grow healthy fruit trees. I have Fuji and honey crisp apple trees in my backyard that were cropped before being planted.

My backyard is pretty small, but I have stunted apple trees, a fig tree and paw-paw tree on espalier lines, and seven blueberry bushes. The apple trees look more like shrubs or miniature trees that a Hobbit would be proud to own.

Both of the trees were over six feet tall and 18 months old. I could barely cram them in my Honda Civic for the ride home, and I remember the tip of the Fuji poking into my AC vent on my dashboard.

Yes, I realize that a wise man would chop the trees before shoving them in a compact car, but I like driving with branches scraping the back of my head. I really feel closer to nature.

It was like the trees and I had become one being. No, that’s rubbish. I’m lazy, and I appreciate challenges and suffering. I hope no one left the site when I started sounding like a weirdo, but the longhair music playing in the background was affecting my judgment…

I replaced the love tunes with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. It fits for this post since some of Zappa’s work focuses on food. His early masterpiece, “Call Any Vegetable,” is an excellent selection when you’re shucking corn with your loved ones, peeling spuds, extracting pine nuts, or thrashing wheat.

If you’re making homemade snow cones with the family, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” is a good choice (and a valuable lesson for young children), and when you’re butchering a pig, cow, chicken, or squirrel, I think “Uncle Meat” is an ideal background song.

Fig espalier with cordon style

Back to Dismembering Fruit Trees

If you buy a fruit tree that’s under two years old, you’ll need to remove ¾ of the trunk. It seems extreme, but the pathetic, nubby, stick in the ground will eventually develop into a miniature tree. Your cropped tree should be about eighteen inches tall.

When you plant the runt, you should also trim the roots. If the root ball is bound in burlap, cut it off. The burlap can hinder the root’s growth. You want the roots to grow freely, but by trimming the roots, you can limit the space that the roots will occupy when the tree is more mature.

You might have to wait for two weeks or more before you see any growth on your Charlie Brown Christmas stick. My trees began to form branches after sixteen days, and it is agonizing to wonder before the tree grows if you made a bad decision.

If you’re patient, the sticks will turn into healthy trees. Fruit trees are not instant gratification plants. My apple trees have another year before they’ll produce fruit, and my paw-paw (a fruit tree native to North Carolina) will not produce for eight or nine more years.

However, my blueberry bushes produced edible berries after two years, and if you want a shrub that grows and flowers quickly, blueberry bushes may be for you. I had a massive harvest from my blueberries this summer.

My family and friends were happy to get baked goods, and I managed to feed a family of comical mockingbirds also.

Basil’s Recipe 9

May 17, 2020 /

Green Tomato Salsa

Ingredients

2 cups Diced green tomatoes
1 cup Diced Roma tomatoes
1 cup Corn
¼ cup Diced fresh jalapeno
1 tsp Cracked black pepper
2 Limes juiced
1 tsp Lime zest
1 tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Lemon juice
2 Tbsp Fresh Garlic
1 Tbsp Fresh Cilantro

Instructions

Mix all ingredients and refrigerate for 1 hour before eating.
Serve with tortilla chips or toasted pita.

Besides making fried green tomatoes, this is my favorite recipe to use green tomatoes. I made it for Basil’s in 2011, and I make it every summer when I grow tomatoes.

Unfortunately, cilantro doesn’t grow well in Eastern NC. After a month in the summer heat, the cilantro bolts and begins transforming into coriander.

Homegrown tomatoes and jalapenos work best, but it will probably take a month before most of you have fresh tomatoes or peppers.

Grocery store tomatoes are almost inedible now, but a farmer’s market (if you can find one) might be the best place to find tomatoes.

Basil’s Recipe 8

May 17, 2020 /

Beer and Cheddar Bread

Ingredients

3 cups Flour
1 Tbsp Baking powder
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Garlic powder
2 Tbsp Sugar
12 oz Beer (lager or amber)
2 ¼ cups Cheddar cheese

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Mix all ingredients in a metal bowl except beer and cheddar.
Stir in beer and fold in the cheddar.
Form the dough into a log.
Place on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake for 50-55 minutes.
Insert a toothpick. If it’s dry, the bread is done.
Let cool ten minutes before slicing.

This is a quick bread recipe that uses baking powder rather than yeast. As far as I know, there isn’t a baking powder shortage in grocery stores.

There’s a yeast shortage, but I’ve taken care of that by growing my own yeast in a large number of sanitary fish tanks. I should have enough yeast to fill a thimble in three months. Just Kidding.

I made this bread nine years ago at Basil’s to compliment a chili recipe developed by Kenneth Fields. It’s perfect with chili but also goes well with creamy soups like potato and cajun stews like gumbo.

Try to use a lager or amber for the beer. A dark stout, gose, or light beer will not work well with this bread. Also, avoid heavily spiced or flavored beers.

Something like pumpkin spice pilsner or artichoke ale should be set aside for your friends who lost their taste buds from a tragic Pop rocks and Pepsi incident.

Short Film Review: Alien

April 24, 2020 /

Man, where is the bathroom in this place? Hmm… I’ll just use one of those pod-looking things over there. Hey Ripley, can you send down some Charmin?

**** Ripley’s Words of Wisdom****

Ripley: Wait a minute, if we let it in the ship, we’ll all be infected. You know the quarantine procedure- 24 hours for decontamination.

Dallas: He could die in 24 hours. Open the hatch.

Ripley: Listen to me. If we break quarantine, we could all die.

Lambert: Will you open the God*#%ned hatch! We have to get him on the ship.

Ripley: NO.

In 1979, Ridley Scott brought horror into the science fiction world with Alien. The film started a trend that still appears as a storyline in today’s films. That storyline is: It’s fun to watch aliens terrorize people on a damaged spaceship.

Why is the ship always damaged? Every killer alien running-amok movie includes an asteroid impact, crash landing, exploding planet, or Oh heck, the space geese just flew into the air vents in its screenplay.

In Alien, the crew, who failed their planet landing exams, execute a clumsy landing that breaches the ship’s hull. They don’t precisely crash the ship, but they land it hard like they’re a couple of driver’s ed rejects.

Just once, Hollywood writers, I want to see a violent alien ravaging humans on a perfect, healthy ship.

The engines will not fail, the oxygen levels will always remain normal, the crew will not contract a foodborne illness from the blue food, and everyone on the ship will sing Jim Croce songs until a murderous E.T. rips them apart.

Is that too much to ask?

All petty bickering aside, Alien is a great film and one of the best in the horror/science fiction category. Sometimes, the movie feels like an old monster flick, but Boris Karloff never had an alien parasite smash through his chest.

Alien involves a group of miners heading back to earth. The ship automatically changes course when it intercepts a distress signal, and the ship’s computer revives the crew from cryo-sleep.

When the crew land on a dismal planet, they move out in search of the signal’s origin. Instead of finding people in distress, they find a downed ship.

Kane, played by John Hurt, strolls around in his spacesuit and falls off a platform. When he gets up, he’s surrounded by several large, grimy pods.

The alien pods look like enormous avocados. Kane, for some reason, is fascinated by the pods and wants to take a closer look. Even when the pod slowly opens from the top and gurgles at Kane, the genius moves his head closer to the opening.

The gurgling increases, and an alien that looks like a combination of a crab and a scorpion springs onto Kane’s helmet. It’s a scene that’s intended to make you jump, and it does. It scarred the heck out of me when I was a kid.

Young Ripley… look into the light!

One night, in a hotel room in Pell City, Alabama, in 1981, I tried to watch Alien while I pretended to be asleep. My family was traveling to Texas, and we stopped in Alabama at the halfway point.

I remember my Dad telling me to go to sleep when he saw me watching the beginning of Alien. He didn’t change the channel. He sat on the other bed and watched the movie while I practiced my best impression of an obedient, sleeping six-year-old.

Telling a young kid, not to watch a movie with spaceships, aliens, and Sigourney Weaver is like asking Lenny the arsonist to burn with care when you hand him a flame thrower at a paper factory.

I watched the first space shuttle launch from a television wheeled in by my kindergarten teacher. Of course, I wanted to watch an R-rated killer alien movie.

However, my tolerance for horror and gore was at a low point when I was six. When the alien attacks Kane, I gave up trying to watch the movie and settled for viewing it in my nightmares that night.

Until the alien makes an appearance, Alien is slower-paced, but the last half of the film is a marathon of suspense and terror. There is a lot of running, sweating, alien drool, loud alarms, flashing lights, and milky android vomit.

If you want to take your mind off of the current state of gloom, try watching films where people deal with unbelievably horrible situations like Alien. It always makes me feel better.

Absurd comedies can also take your mind off of things, and another option is the American DaVinci, Bob Ross. Horror, comedy, or a brilliant artist with a huge afro. Take your pick. All three are distracting.

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