Tuesday Movie Night: Crash (2004)

X did it again. She convinced me to go out on a Tuesday night!

Ok, let's take things from the very beginning. As I returned back home from work yesterday, had my lunch (fish & courgettes btw) I found the most magical moment of the whole day to get some rest. I had no plans for the evening and the grey skies where pushing me to bed. But no! X wasn't feeling that way. She had already made her plans and she couldn't accept my excuse for some rest. I enforced my will and courage, dragged myself out of bed and got ready to pick her up. Her smile and hug convinced me that I had made the right choice.

Anyway, once we arrived at the box office we were both sure that we wanted something complicated to watch and not something 'light'. Crash came as the sole option of the theatre's available movies.

PLOT
The film is a skeleton of stories, where people living in the US are exposed to their opinion and feelings regarding racism. Life, in one way or another, brings them in a combat with their fears and reinforces or completely changes their way of thinking.

CRASH is a very well made movie based on characters (and not on a strict plot with a beginning, a middle part and an ending) and let's us understand how people react on their individual life experiences regarding racial differences.

Both myself and X enjoyed it and we both agreed that the film deserved its existence. It is the kind of films that helps you receive messages and lets you judge for yourself if they are correct or false. And I highly recommend anyone who has an opinion on the issue to go and watch this film.

Verdict: Definately one of the best movies of 2005
Rating:****/5

Praline Ice Cream: May I have mooooore?

Ice cream was/is/will be my ultimate weakness. I just cannot live without eating (at least) once a weak a few (I won't tell how many) scoops of deliciously mouth-melting ice cream. I just can't. Even if I'm on a diet, eating ice cream will never be restricted.

All these feelings can be traced back to my early childhood. When me and my sister where little kids, my parents wouldn't want to spoil us and we were only allowed to eat ice cream every other day. One day ice cream was allowed (heaven) and the other was not (hell). I remember eating my ice cream and once it was all in my stomach I used to get sad cause I would have to wait for another two days until the next ice cream. The day that we weren't allowed to eat ice cream we both felt that everything around us was meaningless and the only thing that mattered was the eve of the following day that we would eat our favourite dessert once again. At the end of the summer we would have summed up all our ice creams we had eaten and we would compare this number with our friends. As you can imagine I was the kid with the less eaten ice creams during the summer :(

Let's come back to the present. This weekend I was at X's country house and we knew that time won't go by if we couldn't have something refreshing to cheer us up (excuses!). That's why I dropped the idea of buying all the ingredients needed to make our own home-made ice cream. After a quick brainstorming we ended up on three flavours: dark chocolate sorbet, milk chocolate & cookies and chocolate praline with gaufrettes. Yes, we are both chocoholics.

I really wanted you to be there to taste this magical combinations but I will be kind enough to give you my recipes.

Let's start with the chocolote sorbet.

CHOCOLATE SORBET
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
250 gr dark chocolate.
1 little pot of vanille

Pour water and sugar on a saucepan and bring to boil. Add the cocoa and the chocolate (broken to pieces). Stir until the mixture becames a little bit thick. Remove from the stove and let it cool. Pour it on a metal container and put it in the freezer. Remove the container from the freezer every hour, for the first 2-3 hours, stir well and put it back into the freezer. This will help it stay smooth. Let it there overnight.


CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM (GENERAL RECIPE)
2 cups cream
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
800-900 gr (milk) chocolate
2 little pots of vanille

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan, let it until it gets a little bit thick and then:

1)Add 3 big spoons of Nutella and a pack of gauffrettes to make the chocolate praline au gaufrette flavour (devilish!) or
2)Add a box of soft cookes chopped to small pieces for the chocolate & cookies flavour.

Let it cool and follow the same procedure for freezing as the one mentioned for the chocolate sorbet. The ice cream is ready to enjoy.

Be warned: Try to enjoy your ice cream now cause you'll never know when your next one will come...

Limoncello: Italians do it better!

As yesterday was my birthday, my sister had the idea of going out for dinner (with our couples) and celebrate the event for one more time (see previous post on my birthday party). Once we decided the place, the food, the dessert...then came the idea of something that will help us digest everything we had devoured. And what's best than a (few) glass(es) of limoncello.

Limoncello is one of the gazillion italian gourmet trademarks that has a really old origin in the neighbour country (Italy, duh!). Every family has its own recipe to prepare limoncello and reserve it for every happy occasion. It's really refreshing and ideal to finish a meal.

I did a quick research for limoncello and I came up with a big number of different recipes. All of them include only 4 basic ingredients: lemon zest, vodka, sugar & water. What differs between recipes is the quantity of each item and the time you will have to give limoncello to rest.


Here's a typical recipe:
10-15 lemons from which you will take only the yellow zest (not the white part or the juice)
1 bottle of vodka (750ml) and an extra one to taste
4 cups of sugar
5 cups of water.

Take out the zest of the lemons and place them in a pincher along with one bottle of vodka. Cover the pincher and let it rest for 1-2 weeks (yes weeks!!!). Once ready, mix sugar and water so that they will become syrup. Combine the syrup to the previous mixture (don't add it all at once, maybe you'll find it too sweet so you won't have to use the whole portion) and add extra vodka to taste. Let it rest again for about a week (within covered pincher). Once ready strain the zest from the mixture, place limoncello in bottles and store it in the fridge or freezer. Enjoy!

Party Update

Hey sweethear: smile!

Well, as I promised, I am back with details and photos from my birthday party (actual birtday tomorrow but I threw the party prior to my birthday).

At frist I have to state that I am really happy cause almost all of my friends showed up (thank you all) and thus, my party had 30 happy faces to be there with me. Then, I am happy cause the weather was really perfect and we could stay outside at my veranda without our jackets on.

My party, concerning myself, started at 11 o'clock in the morning when I went shopping with my mother for food and various other little stuff for the party. Cooking started at 3pm and finished six hours later at 9pm! This year I prepared two trays of pizza, my famous mushroom pie, chicken with back and mozarella, shrimp noodles, aubergine sandwiches filled with tomate and feta cheese, and two types of potato au gratin. Of course there was plenty of salads and wine to accompany food. The meal ended with a chocolate praline millefeuille, strawberry panacotta, mastiha and tangerine pannacota and creme brulee (recipes to follow shortly). But it was the birthday cake that stole the show.

So enough about talking, let's just see the photos:

Let's start with the infamous birthday cake. Imagine all the guys betting for the 'best' part to be given to them!

Here's the birthday boy ready to blow the candles.

That's X being proud of me.

Friends enjoying the night and the food.

My friend Christianna and her beautiful son Peter!

My b'day party is approaching...(hooray!)

Here's me and X on my name-day (23rd of past April)

Well my birthday is just around the corner (21st of September) and this year I decided to throw my established party on the Saturday preceeding my actual birthday. That's why tonight is my big day.

My preparationσ started yesterady when I was preparing the desserts. I did a little blog-search and found some good (???) recipes for a panna cotta (italian for cooked creme) with strawberry coulis and a creme brulee. As far as my birthday cake is concerned, the chef of Septem restaurant has been put in charge of takening care of it. I just gave him the number of my guests and my craving for chocolate hazelnut (praline). Tonight me and my guests will test and give our verdict on my sweets and of course Jean-Yves Carattoni's cake (which is definately going to be a success, he's a genious).

When I wake up (it's 2:30 in the morning right now) I will go shopping for the savoury part of my party. I'm thinking of making a 'flower' pizza, potatoes au gratin or a potato tart with mushrooms, chicken mixed with veggies, shrimp noodles, 'tower' aubergines and something last that I still have to figure out.

In the following day I will come back with photos from the event, the food and the comments of my guest. Until then wish me luck for my preparations (I always end up showing up later than my guests in my own house!!!).

Bougainvillea: Adding colour to Greek landscape

After spending some quality time in X's house catering and nurishing her trees and flowers, today I feel like writting for one of my most favourite plants/flowers: bougainvillea.

According to Wikipedia:
Bougainvillea (sometimes Bougainvilla) is a genus of plant. It is a thorny, woody, flowering vine native to the Amazonian rain forest of South America. Its name is derived from that of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, a French military officer who discovered the plant in Brazil in 1768.

This beautiful 'flower' (i prefer calling it a flower than plant) is always present in most of the Greek houses (outside Athens!) and is always there to give its precious and vivid colour to white and blue trademark landscape of continental & insular villages. Just look at this beautiful picture (I found it on the net, thanks to whoever took it) and you can see what I mean.

X's 'country' house has 4 of them. Two mauve, one white and a special mauve with yello/green flowers. All of them try to find a way to climp on the walls and we are there to help them do so so they can provide us with shadow and privacy!

The Island: My two cents on the film

Well, it was long since my last time to a cinema but yesterday I took X along with two friends and we headed to Village Park to see 'The Island'. The movie is about a clinic where people are made to believe that this is the only non-contaminated place on earth and they are made to live according to strict rules, fully supervised. At the end of the day one lucky person has the chance to leave the clinic and travel to 'The Island'. But, are they really protected from environment contamination? Is there actually an Island or is it an excuse for something ulterior. Ewen Mc Gregor's and Scarlett Johansson's characters aim to solve the mistery and free themselves.

The movie is rather intersting (if you see behind the symbols of surveillance and mass deception) and has been created in the mood of a blockbuster (big similarities with AI) . The Island lasts something more than 2 hours but time flies through big chases and explosions. Actors do their best to promote their anxiety and critical thinking when there's a huge number of private detectives and policemen after them. The end is somehow expected and elaborated without big difficulties for the two main characters.

Final verdict: Worths its money to watch and definately easy to follow.
Rating: *** / 5

Lolita: My Eternal Obsession

Let me introduce Lolita, the most beautiful / clever / sexy / crazy / fun dog in the entire universe. Approved and certified! Here's my beauty. She's a mixed Pointer / Labrador in white & orange colour celebrating her 4th birthday in about one week. Yes she's a virgo and she has the charisma to steal everyone's heart. Lolita has a been a member of my family from the first day we got her. Everyone is treating her like a human: we have long talks with her, we go on holidays together, we play/eat/drink together, we even sleep at the same bed. Yes, all our bedroom doors are left open for her to come and pay a visit during the night (so none's left unhappy). In short: LOLITA RULZ (my family's universe)!!!

Yahoo! Widgets

Hey, have you heard about widgets? Well, it’s something like a craze that started about 6 months ago with Mac computers (yes, there’re always pioneers). They're mainly small applilcations you can add to your desktop and make use of them for various reasons. For instance there are clocks, weather/news bulletins, traffic reports, web cameras, games, comics and various others. I am sure that you still don't have a clue of what I'm talking about. Well, look at my desktop. I have added an analog clock, a magic 8-ball, a board game for my free time, a hawaian girl to cheer me up, felix the cat, a talisman, a frame to show my photos and a weather report billboard. There are dozens more for you to add. Widgets can be removed & re-appear from your desktop while working by pressing F8 hotkey. All you need is to download the main program from yahoo and then try the widget gallery. Have fun!

Korres: Greek nature in a bottle

Here's a tidbit on cosmetics. Many of you may know that Greece has the Parthenon, beautiful beaches, tzatziki, souvlaki but almost non of you may have thought that an international acclaimed cosmetics line would have been Greek.

Korres is a line of only natural products aimed for both men and women. Each bottle contains jewels from the Greek flora and can help you feel and smell perfect.

Line has a big variety of products for the face, body, hair, sunblocks even traditional nostrums for the cough and good breath. All products are tested and come in ecological packaging.

Some of you may think that I am getting paid to write all these stuff (it would be great though) but I have tested or gifted most of them.

My personal favourites are: cedar showergel, vanilla-cinammon body cream, guava body butter, mastiha shower gel, mint and mastiha mouthwash, lemon chewing gum...

To take a look to the complete series of products log on to this website and be sure that Korres products are sold to drugstore/pharmacy near you.

Kos Holidays

Let's go back on my summer holidays for once again. A little before going to Rhodes, me and X took a one day trip to Kos island. It is situated in the Eastern part of Greece, above Rhodes and below Samos. Kos is one of the upcoming hotspots within Greek islands. It is also part of the Dodekanese. Kos can be described a 'sample of Rhodes' since it also combines Greek, Roman and Islamic instances of culture and a big variety of entertainment alternatives.


Beside you can see some monuments found within the town of Kos. Among the beautiful churches, baths, and big gardens lies a city full of life and beautiful spots.

An interesting sightseeing is the tree of Hippocrates, a tree with a 12m perimeter believed to be 2500 years old!



The town is also devided by big walls, testifying the existence of knights on the island, surrounding the main castle of the town. The castle is definately worth visiting if you stop by the island. You can take a look of the life in the medieval times where the citizens were living within the castle and they were protecting their territory from the invaders' ships.



Last but not least, after visiting the main town, the beautiful villages and beaches, don't forget to come by the 'Asklipieion' monument, the first university of medicine founded in the ancient times by Hippocrates (information in greek)

Google Picasa

Google strikes back (well sort of since picasa came earlier than google earth) with Picasa, a fantastic photo archiver / viewer that can help you sort your photos and watch them as a photobook. So what? (Someone might say). You still haven’t seen anything yet. Picasa can help you tweak your pictures (crop, red eyes, contrast etc), create beautiful collages / screensavers / slideshows / videos even order your photos to be printed and delivered at your place (US and UK only). Well, try using Picasa and you won’t need anything else then. Finally, Picasa works seamingly with Hello (sort of msn messenger but mainly for trading photos) and Blogger (you are currently watching a blog, duh!). Download it here.

New Google Earth!

Have you noticed new Google programs? I have been crazy lately for the new Google earth. It is actually an interactive globe where you can zoom in until you see the roof of your house! It can also be used as a map since every road and public transport route has been included. The program offers a variety of additional information (currently restricted to US territories) such us hospitals, hotels, restaurants…Here’s a screenshot of the Acropolis. Try finding your house at Google Earth’s official website.