What I Am Thankful For

I just wanted to take some time to write about all of the things that I am thankful for, and also share the food I have made for Thanksgiving. This is not an all inclusive list, but I just wanted to share some things.

I am thankful for all of my friends and family.
I am thankful that I am living a financially stable life, I never knew how wonderful being financially stable was until I actually was stable.
I am thankful for my job, which I look forward to every day.
I am thankful for my dependable car, after dealing with lots of crap from my previous car, it is nice to have a car that I don't need to worry about.
I am thankful for my love of cooking, which I believe I inherited from my family, I enjoy cooking and trying to make new things frequently.
I am thankful that the value of learning was instilled in me as a kid, we would go to museums and zoos to learn about all sorts of things, and this has stayed with me to this day, I still enjoy learning new things whenever I can.
I am thankful for my health.
And last but not least I am thankful for my wonderful cat Astrid who I adopted a few months ago, she has been a wonderful addition to my life. For those who haven't seen here, this is what she was doing while I was cooking today.

She slept like that til I gave her some food, she then immediately got up and ate.

This is my Thanksgiving dinner, roast turkey breast, chorizo brown rice dressing, brussels sprouts with bacon, apple, onion, cream, and parmesan cheese, and some cilantro lime corn with garlic butter.

I brined the turkey breast overnight, which made it nice and juicy. All of the different elements worked so well together, I was surprised by how much I loved the brussels sprouts dish, but I wanted to try some new things and it all worked well.

For dessert I made some apple crisp which I had some vanilla frozen yogurt with. It was a good end to a great meal.

I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving!

Peter's Cooking Diary #26

Well it has been a little while since I have written about my cooking, I honestly haven't been doing that much cooking, or at least not that much of cooking new things. This week I cooked 2 new things, or at least variations of things that I had never done before.

The first recipe that I will be making this week is slow cooker chicken meatloaf. I have made chicken and turkey meatloaf in the oven previously but I have never made either of them in the slow cooker before. I took a recipe for a tex mex meatloaf in the slow cooker with beef and changed it over to chicken. I had forgotten to get the beef I had originally planned to use out of the freezer the night before, so I made a dash to the store where they actually had ground chicken on sale for an amazing price, so I went with that.

One of the things that I love about my favorite slow cooker cookbook does is that it includes different methods for using the slow cooker. In this case the foil collar will help to diffuse the heat a little bit from the heating element and move it all around the insert.

After the collar, you add strips of aluminum foil going perpendicular to each other to help with removing the meatloaf from the crock pot intact and it also helps prevent the meatloaf from burning to the insert, and it even helps with the cleanup afterwards.

This is the selections of produce that I am using for this recipe, I want to start doing more before shots of things. Those are poblano pepper for people that are not familiar with them, they are a little spicy with what I consider to be better flavor than green bell peppers. The recipe called for a red bell pepper but of course I don't stick to a recipe perfectly. The garlic cloves are the last of what I got from my mom about a month ago.

Chopped up onion and peppers in the big container and the garlic in the other.

The recipe called for vegetable oil, but what better fat is there to use for this than bacon grease? I cooked the pepper and onions in a pan for about 10 minutes on medium high heat before adding the garlic.

Stirred the garlic in with everything else, and cooked for about 5 more minutes.

Added the seasoning of salt, chile powder, and dried oregano as well as some tomato paste, stirred all of the ingredients together.

This is what the veggies looked like all together after cooking. I let them all cool and worked on the other elements of the meatloaf.

This bowl contains one soft kaiser roll torn into little bits, one cup of milk, and one can's worth of beans that I rinsed and drained. I mashed them all together in this bowl until the mixture almost looked like blue milk.

The bowl of mashed up milk, beans, and bread, alongside the ground chicken in its own bowl, I let it get a little bit warmer than fridge temp so my hands wouldn't freeze when I mixed it all together.

The chicken bowl to which I added the milk/bean mixture, cheese, corn, eggs, and the veggie mixture.

Mixing the whole thing together, it is a messy job, but I don't mind it at all.

I added the meatloaf to the slow cooker and evened it out. After this picture I added a layer of barbecue sauce to the top of this, I put the lid on and cooked it for about 5 hours on low.

This is what it looks like once the meatloaf was done, then you take the pieces of foil sticking out and pull them all together and you can lift the meatloaf out. I actually let it cool down a bit before removing it from the pot.

The other recipe I made this week, is something that I had never made this way. I have made roasted cauliflower in many different ways, but this one was actually brown butter roasted cauliflower. To start I preheated the oven to 425. I removed the stems and leaves from the heads. I then rubbed them with vegetable oil and stuck them into the oven to bake for 45 minutes.

After the 45 minutes in the oven, the recipe called for butter to be smeared all over both of the heads, I did this as best I could as they were hot. I then popped the cauliflower back into the oven.

During the last stage of cooking I took the cauliflower out and basted it with the browned butter that was in the pan. This made the cauliflower taste amazing overall, my favorite preparation yet!

Life update: 9/20/2014

It has been quite a while since I have written anything on here, and even longer since I have written about my life. I have honestly been trying to get out there and live life, I do miss writing though so maybe I will get back to doing it on a more regular basis. Honestly, this post is more about me venting about some things to try to get them out of my head.

I have been doing quite well for the most part, there have been a few hiccups with my depression, but they only lasted for a few days at a time. I have been getting out there and dating, and meeting new people some, which is something I really would like to do more of in my life. I need to find ways to get a little bit out of my comfort zone to meet people.

On the dating front I have dated a few people over the past few months, nothing really developed in a long term way for different reasons along the way. I have actually deleted all of my dating site accounts because someone  was accessing them and messaging people and blocking other people who I had messaged. I changed my password on every account a few times and even on my email address a few times. I just decided it wasn't worth the hassle to deal with. I will likely go back to them in the future, but we will see, I am honestly very tired of dating.

For those of you reading this who might not know me personally, I am a very logical person. I think my downfall will be wanting to understand things that I don't need to. Its the things that I don't control that I have the hardest times with. Back in April I was dating someone, honestly it was only for a few weeks, things could not have gone better, fluid conversation, chemistry on any level, I felt like we actually got each other, then one day she stops talking to me, a few days later she tells me she isn't over her ex and didn't want to be my friend or anything. I understand it, it just blindsided me. She didn't want to talk to me or try to be my friend or anything. I have honestly still not moved on emotionally. I really thought that I had, but I randomly ran into her, and the hurt and pain flared up completely, I have just been down the last few days since that. I just never learned how to let things go, and I really, really want to.

I need to learn how to let things go, and I need to learn how to cut myself a break. I need to learn to accept things as they are when I have no control over these things, especially in the case described above. I need to not beat myself up for things that are out of my control as well. I swear when my emotions get in the way I always wish there was an easy logical way to deal with them, but that isn't how emotions work is it?

I have not had much alone time in the last few months because I have been letting a friend of mine sleep on my couch pretty regularly, because she doesn't really have anywhere else to go, but I really miss my alone time. I really like alone time, it was once my worst nightmare, but I have learned to really enjoy my alone time, it can be very therapeutic.

I have been wanting to get some kind of pet in my apartment, I need to look into exactly how much extra it would cost to do that, because I think that will help me better deal with my loneliness, I would like to get a cat, but I am not sure if they are allowed in my building or not. If I get a pet, I will be sure to post about him/her on here on occasion and post some pictures.

I honestly just needed to vent about some things, I don't really expect to accomplish anything by writing about all of this, but I know for me it does help to get it out of my head at the very least.

Guardians of the Galaxy

This movie, oh man, this movie was a bit different than I was expecting, which I think was a good thing. In all honesty, I didn't know what to expect from this movie, but it did things that were quite wonderful. It is probably for the best that Marvel had waited until the end of their 2nd phase of movies to release this movie, it is based on a comic, but I honestly had no previous knowledge of the characters, although I did recently get a copy of the first Rocket Raccoon, I just haven't read it yet.

This movie does something that none of the Marvel movies to date had done by including lots of music, and I thought the music was very well selected as well, a list of the tracks can be found here. The music is a lot of 70's pop music, and I think the combination would be something that my mom would really like getting and listening to. None of the other Marvel movies have more than maybe one of two songs within them, and there are 5-10 songs played in part during the movie. I thought the music and the reasons it was so prominent helped the story and motivation within the movie.

This movie has been called the funniest Marvel movie in ads, and also on Rotten Tomatoes I will say that this could not be more true! Other Marvel movies have had humor in them, but this movie really has humor through the entire movie. There are so many good laughs, even within the action and fight scenes. This movie has such a wonderful sense of humor, but just because it is funny doesn't mean this movie doesn't also have heart. There is some sadness in this movie, in fact there is sadness in the movie for each of the main characters, some more than others, but some of them have extremely tragic moments in the movie. I was close to crying in this movie a few different times, that is just something I would not have expected from the funniest movie in the Marvel world.

I must say that this movie should be a launching platform for James Gunn the director. He has already done 2 movies that I own and love, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and also the scifi horror movie Slither, but this will likely enable him to make other studio films, that is if he wants to. Marvel announced that there would be a second Guardians movie even before the first one was released, and the movie beat projections by more than $20 million, which is crazy from a lesser known comic.

This movie was just so much fun, there really isn't much wasted time, and the pacing is fast, but just the right speed to allow the brain to follow everything that was going on. All of the characters have their moments, and also all of the characters are funny in their own way. The movie is extremely well written, with lots of funny jokes, each of the characters have their own personality which is more than can be said for some other comic book movies.

I don't think that there is a weak link in this cast. The 5 main characters are all amazing. Vin Diesel as Groot is great even though he has a limited vocabulary. I wouldn't have known that Rocket was played by Bradley Cooper from the voice, but he did such a wonderful job in that role. Chris Pratt is well on his way to being a star with 2 awesome movies out this year, and he will also be the lead in Jurassic World coming out next summer. There are also many wonderful actors in smaller roles including academy award nominees Glenn Close, John C. Reilly, and Djimon Hounsou, as well as one winner in Benicio Del Toro. Also for all of the Whovians out there we have Karen Gillan is also in the movie, with lots of makeup and prosthetics.

The movie has some wonderful 80's references in it, and it also makes fun of it self at times, such as when something convenient happens to help advance the plot. They also make fun of the fact that Groot only says "I am Groot" which is wonderful when it happens in the movie.

Because there is already a sequel in the works, I have a strong feeling that a lot of the things introduced in this movie will come back in the sequel. There are some lines that hint at more, but there so many of them it is hard to know exactly which direction the series will go. There is also the possibility of a crossover as sometimes in the comics some other marvel characters fight alongside the Guardians.

One thing that sets this apart from the other Marvel Studios movies is that these characters are not really superheroes. They are more along the lines of a ragtag group of losers than superheroes. I really look forward to where the movies go in the future, and I will gladly pay money to see the next movie.

This year has been wonderful for movies for me, I will likely buy all of the movies I have seen today, and that says a lot because I don't buy many movies anymore. This movie was just so engaging and moved at a wonderful pace that it just flew by. I have seen it twice and will gladly go see it again. Because of all of these things I had to rank it first for the year, and it is hard to imagine a movie beating it, but we will see.
2014 Movie Rankings:
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. How To Train Your Dragon 2
4. 22 Jump Street
5. X-Men: Days of Future Past
6. The Lego Movie


Rankings of the Avengers Movies:
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. The Avengers
3. Iron Man
4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
5. Captain America
6. Iron Man 3
7. Thor
8. The Incredible Hulk
9. Thor: The Dark World
10. Iron Man 2

22 Jump Street

Holy shit this movie was awesome, I think it actually outdid the first movie, and I quite enjoyed the first one. This movie earned my love early on when they had an open and blatant discussion about how sequels are never as good as the originals. I really enjoyed the self awareness and the meta moments in the movie.

The movie was a parody of action movie sequels while also being a great sequel to the first movie. I really thought the writing in this movie was really well done. Lots of the background things are jokes in themselves, such as the cadence the quarterback is calling out includes the words color and number in the actual cadence not colors of numbers. The movie also pokes fun at the buddy cop genre a bit, and their needing to make it clear that the people aren't gay repeatedly, the movie version of saying no homo. Someone in the movie says in Ice Cube's presence "that looks like a giant ice cube." There were also jokes in the movie about how they had double the budget, and also commentary about how they were running low on the budget.

The movie was able to have some quality action like the first movie, but also had many huge laughs. I actually teared up a few times from crying in this movie, and I guarantee that I missed some of the jokes from the movie because I was still laughing at the previous jokes. I will need to watch the movie again to get more of the jokes and possible background gags.

I don't want to give away any of the details twists and turns in the movie, I will say that some are much more predictable than others. I called one of them out right away, but one of the others was a little less obvious to me.

I think that all of the performances in this movie are quite entertaining, they even brought back some randoms from the first movie that you wouldn't have thought would be back in this one. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in particular really take over the movie, and Ice Cube is great in his scenes again.

I will say all of these positive things about the movie, but everyone should know what they are getting into, there are many low brow jokes in this movie. It is quite the entertaining movie, but it really isn't a high minded movie at all. If you saw the first movie, you will know what to expect from for the level of humor in this movie. There are a few call backs to the first movie, including a covalent bonds mention.

All in all I had to rank this movie in the middle of the pack of the movies I have seen this year, I would honestly see any of these movies in the theaters again. It has been a good year all around for movies when I didn't think there would be that many that I would like. I would rate all of these movies as a B or higher on a grading scale, now coming up I might see the new Transformers movie, but it depends on where the rotten tomatoes rating lies.

2014 Movie Rankings:
1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. How To Train Your Dragon 2
3. 22 Jump Street
4. X-Men: Days of Future Past
5. The Lego Movie

How to Train your Dragon 2

Wow, this movie really hit the feels hard! It was honestly a movie that would be wonderful to have seen with your father over this past father's day weekend. I was really excited for this movie for a few reasons, first I really enjoyed the first movie, it ranks up there as one of my favorite animated movies, I liked the performances, I liked the story, I liked the visuals. Second, they took their time with this movie as a sequel. Nothing is worse than a studio rushing a sequel into production because the first movie did so well. There was a gap of 4 years between the release of the first movie to the release of the 2nd movie, allowing enough time for actual writing to get done.

This is the first movie that I actually regretted not seeing in 3D, I didn't see the original in 3D either, but I feel like the movie would have looked great in 3D, I will have to see if any of my friends see it in 3D and how they felt. In general I find it a waste of money, but once in a while something could be good in 3D.

So the entire cast returned from the original movie as well as some new additions including Cate Blanchett and Djimon Hounsou not like they are famous actors or anything. Also joining the cast was Kit Harrington who is also known as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, who I thought did an amazing job with his character.

Because I am writing this so close to the release of the movie I really don't want to give away any of the details of it. There are lots of great twists and turns that were quite enjoyable, as well as emotional. Holy cow did I get choked up during this movie, and not just once, but several times. I am not one to get choked up or tear up during a movie, but damn this movie got to me. I may have teared up more during this movie than during any other movie I can remember, just go into it knowing that.

With all of that said, this movie was awesome, the action is beautiful, there are sufficient laughs, the characters definitely grow, and it might even rival the first movie in quality. I don't know if I could recommend this movie highly enough, if you have kids, take them to this movie, enjoy it with them, just make sure you are there for them during the emotional parts.

Unrelated to the movie itself, but related to movies in general, I was not thinking this year would be all that exciting when it comes to movies, but I have seen 4 very good movies already this year, with a few more that are in theaters now, I have been quite impressed with all of those that I have seen, hopefully that trend continues.

I put this movie in 2nd place for this year, I really could not think of anything I would change about it, it might not quite have reached the intensity of Captain America 2, this movie is a very good all around movie, and I would guess it is the front runner for the animated film Oscar as of this time.

2014 Movie Rankings:
1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. How To Train Your Dragon 2
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past
4. The Lego Movie

Garfunkel and Oates

Garfunkel and Oates are a comedy music duo that I have liked for quite a long time. They have had so many wonderful songs that I listen to quite regularly. The duo is made up of Riki Lindhome and Kate Miccuci both of whom are actresses that have been in many random shows and movies. I first heard of them on various comedy podcasts both playing songs as well as just comedy guests.

I wanted to write about them because they have a show coming out on IFC later this summer. I have been searching, but there is not a specific start date from what I can find. They are doing 10 episodes, and I trust in the creativity and humor that they will no doubt have in there show. Ben Savage is actually producing and directing the show, yes that same Ben Savage, he has become quite the comedy producer and director over the years including but not limited to episodes of Party Down, 2 Broke Girls, and Its Always Sunny to name a few. The limited series will allow Riki and Kate to write more of the stuff themselves while not changing the voice of the show.

I thought I would include a few of their songs in this post for people to enjoy for those interested they are NSFW and mom you probably wouldn't enjoy them so much:

I will stop at 4 videos, but feel free to search on YouTube for them, they have probably about a couple dozen videos out there, and I think the are hilarious as well as great at writing dirty rhymes.