New Years Resolution Week Four: Grand Hotel

Welcome to week four of my New Years resolution!  I've been very excited about this week.  This is the first week that I found a recipe from Movie Night Menus to go with the film from 52 Must See Movies!  I could not wait!  PLUS! I get to watch Grand Hotel.  Crawford!  Beery!  Barrymore(x2)! Garbo! Stone!  Woop!  I've seen this film before, but couldn't remember much about it except that it I really enjoyed it, so this was like a fresh movie.

So Movie Night Menus called for German Pancake with Ham and Gruyere, a Louisiana Flip to drink, and German Pancake with Berries and Cream for dessert.  They also recommended an arugula salad dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and salt.  This was going to be pretty easy to make vegetarian and alcohol free.  I have never made German Pancakes before, so I had no idea what they were supposed to look like.  One of the problems that I have with this book is that there often aren't pictures of the food!  How am I supposed to know that it's right?  But the instructions are pretty easy to follow, so I just kinda guessed that was doing it right.  Here we go!

The German Pancake with Ham and Gruyere, I just replaced the ham with vegetarian lunch meat.  It does not look appetizing.  I gotta be honest, most veggie meat doesn't.  The Louisiana Flip, well that was a bit harder.  It required a raw egg, orange juice, grenadine, rum and triple sec.  Well, I just ended up omitting the booze...and the egg.  Sorry, I was not going to drink a raw egg without some alcohol to kill the germs.  Not gonna happen!  So I served just orange juice and grenadine.  The salad, well, I did add some walnuts, dried cherries, and parmesan cheese.  I wanted more flavor than just olive oil and lemon.  I thought it would be too sour.  Finally, dessert, easy!  Berries and cream.  No replacement needed!

So how did it turn out?  BEAUTIFUL!  Check out what I did:

Fluffy beautiful German Pancakes and salad with a virgin Louisiana Flip!

Everything was so good!  The pancakes were light and fluffy and crunchy.  They were perfect!  There's so much you can do with these.  Gruyere cheese(which I've never had before) is stinky but really has a smooth flavor, and the veggie meat worked out very well.  It became crunchy and almost like bacon.  The salad was sour, but it was a perfect contrast to the savory pancake.  The dessert pancake was the best part, but maybe it's because I love whipped cream and berries so much and I haven't had it in forever.  It was the same exact recipe, you just swap the savory and sweet ingredients.  Really easy!  The pancake was a perfect addition to the berries and whipped cream, it was seriously like pastry.  My virgin Louisiana Flip was very sweet, but I haven't had OJ in a long time, so it was a nice change.  Great great dinner, and it was fun to make.  I got to use my cast iron skillet, which I haven't used in years!

On to the movie!  I love all of the actors in this film.  I really don't get the Garbo thing, BUT I do enjoy watching her a lot, there are times when she is just luminous.  As for her acting though...meh.  I did love her with John Barrymore, but I think John Barrymore makes everyone better.  Barrymore was his typical charming self.  He does roles like this so very well.  

I know it's cliche, but that profile.....

Lionel Barrymore was his usual reliable self.  He just is whatever character he plays.  He never stands out for me too much, but he is always believable.  Wallace Beery, my dear Wallace Beery.  I just love him.  He's always gruff and loud and lovable to me.  Yes I know he was a jerk in real life, but I can't help it.  He did so well in this part, his interactions with Crawford and John Barrymore were very powerful.

Finally....Crawford.  OK, I'm not very objective when it comes to Crawford.  She is flawless.  In everything.  Even Trog.  I just appreciate how much she put into her characters.  Even the crap she took seriously.  She steals this movie.  Everyone else fades into the background when she is on the screen.  There's a scene where she's walking around a crowded room of screaming men closing the windows and she is what you notice.  Dunno how she does it, but she does.  Her character has the real arc and goes through so many changes and weird situations and emotions.  She masters each one.  I know I'm not alone in my opinion on this one!  Watch this movie just for her.  

Such a powerful performance.

Seriously?

That face!  No one else exists when Crawford is on the screen.

OK enough Crawford love.  Overall, the movie was pretty darn good.  I'm not so sure that it is do die for, but I did really enjoy it.  It was a bit long, but so much was going on!  There really was no way to make it shorter.  This was the first film to have multiple story lines and an "All Star Cast".  It was very skillfully done.  And dinner was fabulous!

Can't wait for next week!

Love, 

Olive

New Years Resolution Week Three: City Lights

Welcome to week three of my New Years resolution!  This week I get to watch Charlie Chaplin's City Lights.  I've never been a huge Chaplin fan.  I've seen quite a lot of his work, so be assured, I'm not basing my opinion on just one or two films.  They're good.  They're really good, just not my cup of tea.  I like The Kid.  But who doesn't like The Kid?  You need professional help if you don't, cause there is something wrong with you.  I don't think I'm sensitive enough for Chaplin.  He's a little too subtle and gentle for me.  I do appreciate him though.  So this was a film that I really didn't mind having to watch.

I was left on my own again for the menu for this one.  I couldn't find a thing in Movie Night Menus.  Since I'd never seen City Lights, I was at a bit of a loss for inspiration.  I did look up the cast and saw one of the characters is an eccentric millionaire, and I know that Chaplin is British.  Put those two together, and what do you have?  High Tea!  Hey, it makes sense to me!  My resolution, my rules!  And I'm a total anglophile, so this was gonna be fun!

High tea usually involves finger sandwiches, crumpets and scones with clotted cream and fancy jam/preserves, froufrou pastries(FROUFROU isn't used enough!!), champagne, and of course tea.  I have beautiful flowering tea and a teapot to go with it and tea cups and saucers that I never get to use, so I couldn't wait to get on this one!  So pinkies up people!  Let's do this!

I decided to serve two different kinds of finger sandwiches, egg salad and cucumber.  I make fantastic egg salad.  Really light and refreshing.  It has hard boiled eggs, peppers(any kind but green, I used orange cause this is what I had), green onions, celery, olive oil mayo, little bit of dijon mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.  All the veggies in it just make it to die for.  It's all crunchy and good.  Sometimes I even serve it with crackers and have guests use it as dip.  I cut the crusts off of some thin bakery white bread, cause that's what you do, and loaded up the sandwiches with deliciousness.  The I made some really simple cucumber sandwiches.  I managed to score a mini loaf of rye bread.  It was adorable, and I thought it might make the sandwiches a little tastier.  All I did was smear(I love this word) whipped cream cheese on each side of the bread, sprinkle it with dried dill weed(I couldn't find fresh ::::sigh:::), and put a slice of cucumber in between.  I mostly wanted the cream cheese to be honest.

I wasn't in the mood for scones.  I thought they would be just too heavy.  Scones are like a meal onto themselves.  I do love them though and I make some killer scones.  So I decided on crumpets!  Now I have never had crumpets, but they looked much lighter than scones.  I found them on Amazon of all places and had them delivered!  Convenience!  Love it!  I had clotted cream on hand(anglophile), but had to buy some fancy preserves.  I choose cherry preserves because I love cherry.  I just popped the crumpets in the toaster.  Easy!

I bought a couple of different kinds of pastries.  Not as froufrou as I wanted, but they were what I could get. I wanted petit fours, but didn't have time to go to a real bakery, so grocery store pastries were it.  I got a chocolate eclair and a red velvet creamy thingy.  Good enough.  The eclair got a little smashied though.

As for the champagne, since I can't drink, I got some sparkling white grape juice.  Close enough for me.  Plus I got to use my depression glass champagne glasses!  Never got to use them before.  Makes the sadness of no real booze a little easier.  Kinda.

High Tea with my fancy flowering tea and mismatched depression glass!

That's a lot of food!

Now on to the movie!  Like most Chaplin, this movie was very very sweet and very touching.  To me it was the supporting cast that really stood out.  First Harry Myers who played the Eccentric Millionaire was hysterical.  He reminded me a bit of John Barrymore in Grand Hotel.  He had great comic timing and wonderful expressions.  Chaplin played off of him, not the other way around.  He really made me laugh.  He was a wonderful balance to the main kinda sickly sweet story line.  Added a bit of salt.  

Even Chaplin thinks Harry Myers is awesome!

Then, of course, there is Virginia Cherrill. The absolutely lovely Virginia Cherrill.  She was exquisite.  Chaplin had spotted her at a boxing match of all places and noticed her gaze.  He said, "She could look blind without being offensive."  And he was absolutely right.  I can't even describe it.  She was staring but not staring.  Weird, perfect.  And when her sight is restored, well, she looked like a sighted person.  Dunno how she did it.  She was so elegant and gentle, you just fell in love with her.  You could see why The Tramp just adored her from beginning.  I wanted to buy all of her flowers too!

Lookit that, Virginia Cherrill does everything just right.  

One scene that stands out for everyone is the boxing scene.  The choreography is amazing!  Watch the film just for this part.  Really.  It's funny and skillful and really impressive.  If I saw more of this in Chaplin's films, I would love him more.

This really is genius!

                       
But lets face it, Chaplin's movies were all Chaplin.  He controlled every single aspect, so I give him real credit for what he got out of his actors.  He also choose the actors perfectly for this film.  So I give that to him too.  However, the ending to this film left much to be desired for me.  It seemed to just kind of end.  Like the last episode of The Sopranos.  I was like, wait, what?  Everyone raves about the ending.  And I agree the acting was great here, but what happened?  The girl just realizes he's her savior, but then what?  Nothing.  The End.  Hmmmm.  I didn't like it.

Virginia is just as confused as I am about the ending.

That and Chaplin's smile kinda creeps me out.  It ain't right.

Just a little creepy....

I really enjoyed this evening.  The meal hit the spot, and movie was much better than I thought.  I don't think it is the sheer perfection that everyone says it is, but I have some pretty strong opinions about Chaplin.  Maybe it's unfair and just because everyone raves about him.  I will totally watch this movie again though.  It's really good and I got a lot out of it.  It made me appreciate Chaplin more.

Love,
Ollie
PS:  I highly recommend crumpets!  They're like chewy spongy english muffins.  When they're warm they just soak up anything you put on them.  Gonna try them with butter next.  Cause butter.....  ::::drool::::
             

New Years Resolution Week Two: All Quiet On The Western Front

Welcome to week two of my New Years Resolution!  I have to admit that I was not looking forward to this one.  I have been avoiding this book and movie since my high school days.  I managed to dodge it several times.  Now here it is in my lap.  No more avoiding.  So here we go!

Again I couldn't find a suitable recipe in Movie Night Menus, so I was on my own again.  I decided to research what soldiers ate in the trenches.  Turns out that the staple was a stew.  It was comprised of beef, turnips, onions, potatoes, beans, and carrots in a thin gravy.  It was produced in tins by a company named Maconochie.  So the stew was just called Maconochie.  They also had hard biscuits and an allowance for alcohol.  I can do this!  I have to make it vegetarian and non-alcoholic, but this is totally doable.    

So I found these wonderful vegan dehydrated beef strips.  I'm not a vegan only a vegetarian, but that's what I could find.  Perfect for the stew!  I boiled them in vegetable stock seasoned with garlic and onion powder.  Then I added red potatoes, onions, turnips, great northern beans, and carrots.  I added a lot of salt and pepper.  Then some flour to thicken the gravy.  Easy!  For biscuits, I just made some canned flaky biscuits.  And to drink, sparkling grape juice.  Closest I could come to wine.  I know they didn't have wine as a staple, but it was periodically available.  Maconochie, in reality, was actually really gross and eaten cold out of the can because lighting a fire to heat it would draw enemy gunfire.  The biscuits that they ate were old and hard and full of bugs.  I'm not going that far.  My troops are going to be better fed!

                               Vegetarian Maconochie and Non-Alcoholic wine(Sparkling Grape Juice)

I've never made stew before, so I was really nervous about how this would turn out.  Come to think of it, I don't even think I've ever had stew.  However, it was awesome!  Really simple, comforting, warm.  Filling!!  Even the fake beef was tasty!  And biscuits, well, you just can't go wrong with fresh biscuits.  Same thing with sparkling grape juice.  It's not wine, but whatcha gonna do?  And I served it again on my beautiful mismatched depression glass.  :-)

Now onto the long dreaded movie.  I cannot believe that I avoided this film.  I was so good!  I gotta be honest the acting sometimes was a bit unnatural and overly dramatic, but everything else was so beautifully done that it was just a momentary distraction and you could get right back into the film.  The direction was amazing.  Beautifully shot with great camera angles.  The choreography during the fighting and explosions was particularly impressive.  Not that I've ever been to war before but it seemed really realistic.  The explosions were remarkably close to the actors.  I can't believe that no one was hurt on set.  It was stunning.

                                The action was really incredible.                      

The story was very poignant.  It had appropriate highs and lows.  Not every second was miserable.  It showed the realities of war and comradery between the men.  A very balanced honest film.  I'm not so sure that I would say that it was antiwar, it was just honest.  War is not a pleasure cruise.  When you are in the trenches rules don't apply and what you have is your buddies.  It's horrible.  People, young people, important people, die.  They just exist and go from day to day trying to get the most out of it.  Small pleasures that they have taken for granted and everyday things that were once important become ridiculous.  It also seemed that no one really knew what they were fighting for.  They were just going and doing what they were told.  That made some of the scenes even harder.  The deaths were pointless when you looked at war at a closer level. That's the message that came across to me.

I'm so glad that this movie was on the list!  It was a wonderful film.  And my dinner was really good too!

                               This is my favorite shot.  Still a ghoul!!

Love,
Olive

New Years Resolution Week One: Metropolis

I completed week one of my resolution yesterday!!  My first essential film is Metropolis.  I’ve never seen Metropolis before, so I was very excited to see it.  It’s one of those legendary films that every film buff is supposed to have seen. The version that I watched is not the latest or the most complete version, but I choose the 1984 copy because Freddie Mercury.  Enough said.

For dinner I couldn’t find anything suitable in TCM Movie Night Menus, so I decided to come up with my own.  I choose to make a vegetarian version of ploughman’s lunch.  A ploughman’s lunch typically consists of cheese, bread, fruit, pickles, meat, hard boiled eggs and some veggies.  And served with beer.  It was English farm workers lunch of choice, so I thought it would be appropriate for this film. Workers unite!

   

Vegetarian Non-Alcoholic Ploughman's Lunch! Yum!

I had grape tomatoes, orange peppers, apple slices, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish cheddar cheeses, Tofurky turkey slices, pickles, hardboiled eggs, grapes, and a hunk of bread.  To drink, O’doul’s.  It was perfect!  Even the non alcoholic beer was good!  And yes, I served it on my beautiful mismatched depression glass plates and bowls.  They make everything more delicious.

The movie was beyond amazing.  I knew that it would be good, but I didn’t know it would be *this* good.  I was prepared for the story line because who doesn’t know the story line, but the way it was conveyed was so captivating.  I was just glued to the screen, which is unusual for me, I tend to wander way for a little bit.  It was shot beautifully and the sets were so intricate.  Everything was perfect and the direction really escalated your emotions.  It was all so clever and really delivered Lang’s message.  Hard, cold, mechanical, inhuman, unfeeling.  The special effects were beyond.  I can’t believe how advanced they were.  Part of the reason that I love and treasure old movies is that people really had to do what was filmed.  They really had to figure things out.  You couldn’t just program a computer to do the work for you.  I really admire the directors and actors for that reason.  I know I say this a lot, but it’s true!!

I really enjoyed the modern soundtrack for the film.  Not just because of Freddie Mercury, but that didn’t hurt.  I thought that the music made the film more powerful.  I usually ignore the soundtracks. They fade into the background for me, but this one really added to the film.  Giorgio Moroder did a wonderful job! I really recommend watching this version if you can get your hands on it.

However, the best part of the film was Brigitte Helm.  If you’ve seen this film you will completely agree.  She stole this movie.  Her expressions and her acting were just incredible.  I just couldn’t get over her!

I mean really!!!

Then I found out this was her first role and she was only 18?!?!  I must now watch everything I can with this woman in it!  Everything!

I love her.

I had the best time!  This is going to be a fantastic resolution.  It was so inspiring.  I got to involve all of my favorite things.  I learned stuff, got to see a fabulous movie that I hadn’t made time for, got to be a bit creative with food, got to eat food, and I wrote about it all!  I know it’s only week one, but I have high hopes for this resolution!

Love,

Olive

PS:  I know this blog kinda sucks.  I’m hoping that my writing gets better the more I do it!  I’m telling ya, I used to be good!  I am really proud that I figured out how to add pictures!  Small victories!!

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I’m doing the bestest resolution ever!  I wanted to pick something that would make me stick to it but would also be fun.  I don’t want to fail again this year, but I want something that will inspire me and help me grow.  I tend to be a bit scatty.  I start something, get really really excited about it and then it becomes overwhelming and I quit.  And then proceed to feel terrible about it forever.  This happens even when it is something that I enjoy.  Somehow it starts to feel like pressure.  And that’s no good!  I need better habits and that what this should help with as well.

I love classic movies.  Love love love.  I love learning the stories behind classic movies.  I love seeing patterns and meaning in classic movies.  And I love food.  And cocktails.  

I got a copy of TCM The Essentials 52 Must See Movies and Why They Matter and a copy of TCM Movie Night Menus.  I’m hoping that this will keep me focused.  Kinda like a syllabus.  

I have really high hopes for this and I’m super excited.  I get learn stuff and cook and I’m going to be exposed to movies that I never would have taken the time for before.  I have seen quite a few of these movies, but I think the book will shed new light on them.  And, well, they’re fantastic and I’ll just adore seeing them again regardless!  Especially with a good dinner!

I’m just using the Movie Night Menus as a guideline.  Not all of the movies are in there, not even close, and I have some pretty strict dietary requirements myself.  I’m a vegetarian and I can’t drink.  ​​ ​I​ ​can​ ​replace​ ​most​ ​meat​ ​with fake​ ​meat,​ ​so​ ​that​ ​should​ ​work.​ ​​ ​Maybe.​ ​​ ​As​ ​for​ ​the​ ​cocktails….well​, ​I’ll​ ​see​ ​what​ ​I​ ​can​ ​come​ ​up with. But it will be inspiration!  If that week’s movie isn’t in the book, I can find a movie that’s “like” the one I’m watching that week, or maybe I can match the stars, or I can come up with my own movie inspired dinners.  Doesn’t matter, this is supposed to be fun!

I’m also hoping(and I’m just whispering this, because I might fail at this part) to blog about each of these.  Writing is so important for me.  I gotta do it more, I don’t want my brain turning to jelly!  

So wish me luck!  Happy New Year to everyone!

Love,

Olive