Culture Class | Fish and Freedom

So this week (ish, I'm behind, good start) has been dedicated to superheroes and fish. I'd mentioned to Nick a while ago that I do actually want to read Wonder Woman at some point so he went and got me the books for the current New 52 series, which has pretty pictures and scantily clad gods and goddesses. Cool.

Also, to my shame, we're continuing with our "Why do you like Avengers so much, the individual films are so much better" education. Having finished Captain America and Thor, we moved onto Winter Soldier this week.

I'm loving Wonder Woman. It's just the right amount of creepy and gory and superhero-y, and the designs are all weird and cool enough that I actually drew some fanart. So you know it's good by my book.

Captain America was pretty good, a nice balance of funny and "omg nooooo!", although the shine was taken off when a car chase/accident sent me into a panic after the slightly traumatic events witnessed in the summer vacation. [I'm not going into detail about that anywhere. I'll just say it was scary to see, and "road users on small vehicles, use your goddamn crash helmet and pads".]

Today's food is fish. Just fish. We decided to branch out and buy a fillet of what we thought was mackerel. I like mackerel. I don't think it was mackerel. There were a lot of bones...even on the outside?

But if you can get something a little bit more similar to mackerel, I just heated a pan with some oil in it, threw in some chopped onions and garlic, maybe a tablespoon full of soy, and fried it until they were nice and soft (can't tell about browning because of the soy).

Then I put the chunks of fish in, salted on both sides, skin side up. Not too hot, because I don't want things to stick and burn, but not too cool because I need this to cook quickly, haha.

Fish cooks quickly anyway, which is why it's good, so after a minute or so, if the colour of the meat has changed a bit fairly deep into the middle, I flipped it and turned up the heat to crisp the skin. Overall, I was cooking for about 25 mins, and the fish was in there for all of 10-15.

We just served it up with rice because, again, we're lazy ;p

Not many photos bc there wasn't much way I could make a pile of pan fried fish in a ricebowl look good. And nobody wants to see raw fish with bones everywhere. I've got a few more posts from vacation to do, so I'll get on that!

Culture Class | Starting Something New

To my shame, I'm actually quite a culturally uneducated person, in terms of music and movies. When I reached the age where most kids start exploring music, old films, and interesting TV shows, I discovered anime, J-pop, and asian dramas. And I stayed there.

For a long time.

As a general rule of thumb, if you have to ask "have you seen/heard...[insert very popular thing here]?" my answer will most likely be no.

Until about a year or so ago, I hadn't seen the original Star Wars trilogy, I've not seen Jurassic Park (that I can actually remember), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, Singing in the Rain, When Harry Met Sally, any Batman films (new or old), and other than the bits of Casino Royale we had to watch at A-Level...I've never seen a James Bond film.

So, with all the spare time we have in the evenings, Nick and I have decided to start a sort of "culture swap", largely inspired by Polly Adams' Culture Coach project, where every week a classic book, film, and album are doled out in a sort of book club for people who've been living under a cultural rock for their formative years.

This week, we watched When Harry Met Sally (so good), and I finally watched Dark Night Rises (REALLY good), two in one, aw yiss. I also listened to Bloc Party for the first time ever, and am very much sold on them.

"Oh! They sound kind of like Two Door Cinema Club. I like it!"
"No, Two Door sound like THEM. But without any of the conviction."
"Ah. Yes."