Heavy Rotation: Glee, Glee and more Glee

I love Glee. Love love love it. It's fluffy, fun escapism and I can't get enough of it. So, now that they've
released more soundtracks, I got my hands on Glee: The Music, Volume 3 Showstoppers (Deluxe) andGlee: The Music, The Power of Madonna and they've been rotating in my car for the past week.

Let's start with Volume 3:

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Adventures in Cooking - Easy spicy apple muffins

It's Winter, and I'm trying to fight the flab, so I was browsing some cooking websites last week looking for some healthy snacks to make. I came across a recipe that originated on the Reader's Digest wesbite and it sounded like it was right up my alley: spicy? Yum. Apple? My favourite flavour. Muffins?Mmmm...carby goodness.

So, on Sunday night I baked some. It was super easy. Check it:

Ingredients!
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 cup soft brown sugar
2 sachets (about 40 grams each) apple flavoured instant porridge
2 tbsp olive oil spread (or margarine)
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 jar (250 grams) unsweetened apple sauce
2 tbsp canola oil
2 medium eggs
1 medium green apple

The good thing about this recipe is that it's dairy free - the apple sauce reduces the fatty content that would be there if you used butter, and there's also no milk, so that keeps the dairy-free peeps happy. You can also use wholemeal flour to be super healthy.

Total prep and cooking time: 30 - 40 minutes

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Spotted....

In the Thomas Dux gourmet grocery store at the end of Bay St, Port Melbourne:

One of my absolute favourite American brands has landed in Australia! Well, just Sydney and Melbourne specifically.

Although they have a limited number of flavours available, you can find out which delicatessans, providores and gourmet grocery stores near you stock this delicious, delicious ice cream right over here.

In case you were wondering, the above flavour was a blend of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, with big chunks of chocolate brownie and choc chip cookie dough in it. Mmm-mm.

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Autumn weekends

   

 

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Movie review: Date Night

The Movie: Date Night

The Players: Steve Carrell, Tina Fey

The Makers: Shaun Levy (director), Josh Klausner (writer)

Run time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carrell and Tina Fey) are a married couple from New Jersey with two kids and a daily routine so exhaustingly dull they can barely summon the energy to go out for dinner together on a date night. However, the news of some friends’ divorce forces them to re-evaluate their own commitment and they quickly realise that special spark is missing, and has been for a while.

Determined to reignite their feelings for one another, they head into Manhattan for a special date night at a trendy eatery. The restaurant is so trendy that they are unable to get a table, and take someone else’s reservation, the Tripplehorns. Halfway through their meal, they are escorted out into the back alley and threatened at gun point by two criminal. Clearly a case of mistaken identity, Phil and Claire agree to give the goons the missing flash drive they’re being questioned about, despite not knowing anything about it. They quickly become embroiled in a war involving a mobster, a stripper and her lover and a politician who isn’t as squeaky clean as everyone thinks, getting help along the way from an ex-intelligence Adonis with super cool gadgets.

Carrell and Fey are a match made in comedic heaven – they play well off each other, but also manage to properly convey both the dissatisfaction and affection of a long married couple who are stuck in a rut. They also portray a realness that is quite sweet and amusing, as they bumble through New York City’s elite nightlife, fully aware that they don’t fit in. As Phil and Claire become involved in bizarre set-ups, car chases and amateur criminal activity, the storyline, which is totally implausible, moves at a consistent pace (although someone’s Husband had a LOT of issues with the car chase scene: “Those cars would never fit together like that!” “Can’t you just suspend your disbelief? It’s a COMEDY”) and the throwaway lines and impromtu, attempted bad-assery from both Fey and Carrell’s characters keeps the audience chuckling most of the way through the film.

I really enjoyed Date Night, and while it’s not exactly high-brow entertainment, it kept me laughing and was an easy night’s entertainment. There are some great ensemble cast members (Mark Wahlberg, Ray Liotta, William Fitchner) and it's definitely worth checking out the DVD when it’s released, it’s well worth a watch.

In a word: Funny.

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Autumn weather + Esprit = Argyle

It's Autumn in Melbourne, which means crisp mornings, cold nights and sunny, fresh days that require more than a light cardi for warmth. Conveniently, all the shops are bringing in their glorious knits, coats, hats, scarves and gloves. I love Winter clothes. LOVE LOVE LOVE.


Anyway, I was at the local shopping centre and wandered into Esprit to have a look around. They had so many things I wanted. SO MANY. They've bought in all their jumpers and coats and corduroy pants and it's all so Autumn-y and cosy looking. I don't normally shop there because I find it a tad over-priced, but I couldn't walk past all the sexy, sexy argyle jumpers without stopping to drool over them.


In the course of my meandering through the shop I walked past the sale rack and a couple of jumpers caught my eye. They had new season stock on the sale rack, including these:

Now, these were both $79.75AUD. I bought the blue one a couple of weekends ago for $54.95, which isn't a bad saving. BUT last Thursday night the shopping centre had a VIP night and they had further reductions. I went back to the Esprit shop and had another look at the jumpers. And of couse I went back to the sale rack and saw that they had added the pink jumper to the rack. I pulled it out and it was marked down to $39.95. Yay!

I took the pink jumper to the counter to buy it and when the girl scanned it she told me there was a further 25% off the marked price, so it came down even further to $31.92. WOOT. Two jumpers, both originally priced at $79.95 were purchased for a total of $86.87. For jumpers that aren't wool, that is an incredible deal.


Did I mention how much I love argyle? I LOVE IT. It's so preppy and crisp. I've been pairing the jumpers with blue jeans and white loafers, and some pearl earrings to make the look a bit Ralph Lauren fancy-pants.

I love it so much that I'm a little bit jealous of golfers because they can wear it whenever they like. I never thought I would admit to being jealous of a golfer.


It's also worth noting the shop has argyle patterned vests in a variety of colours, which are perfect for work: pair it with a white shirt, black pants and some flats and you'll look fab. Pin It

Book review - The best book I've read in a really long time.

Title: The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Publisher: Fig Tree/Penguin Group

Year of publication: 2009

Page extent: 400+

In her debut novel The Help, Kathryn Stockett manages to perfectly capture the atmosphere of a town at the brink of civil rights uproar from the perspectives of three different women living three very different lives.

The setting is Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 and the story begins with Aibileen, a middle aged black woman who works as a maid for a wealthy white woman about twenty years her junior. Aibileen has raised eighteen children in her life and only one of them was her own. She then introduces Minny, a fellow black woman who also works as a maid, but moves from job to job because of her hot temper and quick tongue – white women don’t like to be spoken back to in Jackson. Finally, we meet Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman fresh out of college who has moved back into her childhood bedroom on her daddy’s cotton plantation.

Skeeter has no job, no suitor and no hope. She spends her days playing bridge and serving as the secretary/editor for the local Junior League with her friends, a group of well-to-do, uptight white women who have all managed to marry into money and pop out a couple of babies before their twenty fifth birthdays. Desperate for some sort of writing career, Skeeter takes a job at the local paper writing a household tips column, despite never having run a household in her life. She turns to Aibileen for help with the column, and a quiet friendship forms.

Alongside Skeeter’s interactions with Aibileen, Miss Hilly, Aibileen’s employer and Skeeter’s friend, begins campaigning for separate bathrooms for the “coloured” help, calling it “the home help sanitation initiative.” Appalled, Skeeter refuses to publish Hilly’s propaganda in the League’s newsletter, and begins to more closely observe the injustices and abuse white women subject their black maids to.

Skeeter quietly begins interviewing Aibileen about her life as a maid for white families with a view to getting the story published. A publisher in New York agrees to look at the story, but only if she can include at least twelve maids in her book. Enlisting the help of Aibileen, Skeeter begins secretly interviewing other maids in Jackson, on the condition of anonymity and her book begins to take shape.

A fragile friendship between Aibileen, Skeeter and Minny forms as they work on the book, with the understanding that they are never to speak of their project outside the walls of Aibileen’s house. Stockett’s depiction of these three women is incredibly realistic, with the tonal shift in voice from chapter to chapter making the characters leap off the page, often feeling as though the character is there, reading her chapter aloud to you and allowing you a glimpse into her life. Stockett moves seamlessly from the poor neighbourhood of the maids to the upper class houses of the white women, and manages to perfectly portray every character, from the three main protagonists to the secondary characters scattered throughout.

What Stockett also manages to convey, besides the daily injustices and racism suffered, is the love and compassion the maids have for the children they raise, and sometimes even for the women they work for. The novel is a heart felt and well constructed story, full of emotional ups and downs as the audience travels alongside these three women with separate voices and separate lives, but one common hope: equality.

I couldn’t put this book down – I read it in about three days and every time I opened it I was instantly transported to Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. Every word written was thought provoking and evocative. It was a truly great read and I cannot recommend it enough – you simply HAVE to read this novel!

In a word: excellent.

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