I’m Just Here For The Food: Food + Heat = Cooking

Written by : Alton Brown

If you really want to learn to cook, then this is the book for you. Most cookbooks consist of a list of ingredient, instructions for combining the ingredients, and temperatures and times for cooking your concoction. That’s all you need if all you want to do is prepare that one recipe, but what if you want more then that? What if you’re missing an ingredient and want to substitute something else or what
if you just want to be really bold and create your own recipe from scratch?

That’s where Alton Browns book, I’m Just Here For The Food - Food + Heat = Cooking, comes in.

I’m Just Here For The Food goes way beyond the normal cookbook. It not only teaches you how to cook something, but also why you are doing what you are doing when you cook something.

The book is divided into sections based on the various methods of cooking, such as searing, frying, braising and roasting and in each section Brown describes the physical and chemical processes that take place when your cooking food using the method. He tells you why you would select one method over another when cooking a specific dish and at the end of each chapter includes a number of recipes …

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Some time ago, I purchased a 40GB Apple IPod. My original plan was to take it to work with me during the day so that I could listen to music and then use it at night to play audio books during my hour workout on the threadmill.

This never really worked out.

The IPod was heavy and a bit bulky for carrying around during the day and the built in battery would be pretty much discharged by the time that I arrived home, requiring me to recharge the unit before using it during my workout. I also worried that the jostling that occurred during day-to-day use might damage the hard drive. Given these factors I decided that the IPod would be retired from daytime use and only be used at night during my time on the treadmill. I lived with this arrangement for over a year, but recently decided it would be nice to have a second MP3 player to use during the day.

The first step was to decide which features were important to me. Here’s what I came up with :

1. Must be able to play MP3 and WMA files. Audio book format would be a plus but would not be a requirement because the primary use for this device was going to be music.

2. Light weight and small. I wanted something that I could carry with me at all …

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Fever Pitch

Drew Barrymore : Lindsey
Jimmy Fallon : Ben

Fever Pitch, the latest effort by the Farrelly brothers, is somewhat disappointing. It’s a story about a woman Lindsey Meeks, played by Drew Barrymore who meets a man Ben, played by Jimmy Fallon, who appears perfect in just about every way. Things are going well in their relationship until Spring rolls around and Lindsey discovers that Ben is an obsessed Red Sox fan.

The Farrelly brothers have attempted to mix romantic comedy with Red Sox obsession and the results are luke warm. The romantic comedy part of the movie never really takes off in part because the script was lacking but also because Barrymore and Fallon have very little chemistry together. I never once was convinced that these two people were really in love.

On the comedic side, the movie also suffers. It appears the Farrelly brothers attempted to “clean up their act” to appeal to a more mainstream audience and lost something in the process. Gone are the strange characters and offensive sight gags so prevalent in their other movies, and in their place are jokes and characters more fitting for a network sitcom. This is a real let down because the Farrelly’s are at their best when they are pushing the envelope.

The movie was pleasant enough and there were a few really funny moments, but it …

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Cinderella Man

Directed by Ron Howard
Russell Crowe : Jim Braddock
Renée Zellweger : Mae Braddock
Paul Giamatti : Joe Gould
Craig Bierko : Max Baer
Paddy Considine : Mike Wilson

Cinderella Man is the story Jim J. Braddock a down on his luck, depression era boxer who looses all of his money in the stock market and faces the end of his boxing career due to a string of bad fights.

Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, is a good man. He and his family, like so many others during the depression, have hit bottom through no fault of their own, and are struggling just to survive the times. Braddock does his best to take care of his family, taking temporary work when it’s available, but no matter how hard he tries, things keep spiraling downward.

When it appears that he’s hit bottom, he is given one last chance to make it as a boxer and with everything he cares about on the line, he makes the best of the opportunity by winning the fight. His comeback serves as inspiration for many down on their luck Americans, who rally behind him as he goes on to win additional fights. His resurgence, leads him to a match against the heavy weight champion Max Baer, a larger then life brutal figure who was famous for killing …

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The Closer

Brenda Leigh Johnson : Kyra Sedgwick
Will Pope : J.K. Simmons
Captain Taylor : Robert Gossett
Agent Fritz Howard : Jon Tenney

The Closer, a new police drama on TNT, is about a police detective Brenda Leigh Johnson who transfers from Atlanta to LA to head up a special unit handling sensitive high-profile murder cases.

The first episode introduces us to Johnson and lets us know about her talents and quirks. Johnson, it appears, is a world-class interrogator but has some severe personality problems. Her first day on the job she introduces herself to her colleges by barging onto an crime scene, taking over the investigation and treating all of the other detectives on the scene with total contempt.

Johnson’s underlings, not appreciating her methods, all request transfers that she handles in a sensitive fashion by one by one dropping their transfer requests in the trash. She obviously has never read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

Throughout the rest of the commercial free hour episode Johnson continues to offend and intimidate all, but slowly wins the respect of her people, because she proves to be so very good at her job.

The case under investigation, involves a murdered women, a missing high tech genius, believed to be the murderer, and his “emotional” platonic lover, a young Catholic women. The case is …

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