Tag: blog every day april

Film School on YouTube

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We’ve established that maybe I watch a bit too much YouTube, right? But hey, at least I’m actually getting a decent amount of education value out of my viewing! Not only am I learning recipes and cooking techniques (an excuse I love for watching Shokugeki no Soma!) but I also really love watching video essays about film.

Sometime at the beginning of high school, I started to watch movies differently. I think this was triggered by 2 things:

  1. My parents bought a box set of all the Best Picture Oscar winners and we had begun watching them for our weekly family movie nights. I suppose I began trying to see what set these movies apart from the rest.
  2. I watched a bootleg copy of Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride & Prejudice, which remains one of my favorite movies because of what was interesting about this copy of it. When I turned on subtitles because the audio was a little bit off, I actually ended up with the director’s commentary captioning the movie instead of the audio. The result was that having the curtain pulled back on the director’s choices and intent helped me start looking for these things in other movies.

It’s very easy to critique movies without knowing the language of film; all art is able to be consumed at different levels and therefore to be critiqued at those different levels. I have a parent who works with film so it’s a medium that is near and dear to me, and I have begun to learn how to evaluate films in a different critical way.Read More »

Friday Favorites (8)

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Has anyone else been struggling a bit this week? I’ve seen this sentiment on social media that this week in particular has been more difficult for a lot of people, whether in their work lives or their personal lives. Personally, I’ve been feeling it a lot at work, vacillating between period of virtually zero productivity and periods of highly rare focus but getting blocked by something or other.Read More »

14-Day Quarantine Workout?

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As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I am not great about working out and, when I do commit to it, I prefer doing classes because the external accountability keeps me on track.

Of course, with shelter-in-place and self-quarantines abound, the scant classes I was attending are no longer an option to me. So many fitness studios and individual instructors have made workouts available online, via YouTube and Instagram Live and IGTV and more, and I’m really grateful for it! However, I do feel overwhelmed by the choices that are available to me! Do I try dance fitness? Or a HIIT (high intensity interval training) class? Maybe boxing? Yoga??

It’s been a bit too much, which is a convenient excuse for me to just do none of them. 🙃

I’m learning a bit about what kind of home classes I like doing. For example, I don’t like spending so much time on Instagram, so the plethora of amazing classes on IG Live or IGTV don’t appeal to me as much. Live classes are still helpful for me because the external accountability of being on time and going through a full class help. (Although I will be honest and admit that I have just stopped partway through a too-hard tabata class, I’m grateful that I can work out with my camera off.) I’ve also had some success following along with YouTube workouts when I am looking for a specific type of workout, for those truly rare occasions when I actually know what I want.Read More »

Favorite Frozen Asian Foods

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Inspired by a post I saw on subtle asian cooking, the cooking offshoot of the famous subtle asian traits, I thought I’d share some of my favorite frozen items to get at the Asian grocery. I wish I had more of these in my freezer right now, but I’m glad that I started quarantine with a lot of these in my freezer already.

The most important and critical and essential item:

The Best Frozen Pork Dumplings | Taste Test | Serious Eats
Way Fong Chinese Brand Pork Dumplings

My family has been purchasing Way Fong Chinese Brand Pork Dumplings for as long as I can remember, and we’ve only ever ventured to other brands a handful of times. These are the best store-bought dumplings I have ever eaten, other ones pale in comparison, and they’re a high bar for many homemade dumplings to meet as well. I always have a bag or 2 (or 3… or 4…) in my freezer and I get quite anxious when I have one or fewer bags. (I currently have 5 dumplings left in my freezer and I don’t know when I’ll be able to buy more again. I learned later that the SeriousEats team came to the same conclusion after trying many dumplings, so I’m glad that I’ve really only ever tried the best.

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Pizza + Quesadilla = Pizzadilla [recipe]

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Did you hear chain emails are coming back into vogue? I got sent one the other day, but the intent was more wholesome than I remember them being when I was 11. It was a recipe exchange, and here’s the simple but satisfying one I sent as my contribution.

Pizzadilla! (Pizza + Quesadilla)

Pizza Quesadilla – Quick & Easy 4-Ingredient Recipe
Photo: Parade

Ingredients:

  • 1-2 tortillas
  • Sauce
    • I usually have some kind of pizza sauce just for this occasion, but you can use anything depending on the kind of pizza flavors you’re going for
  • Mozzarella cheese
  • Toppings of choice
    • Pepperoni and spinach are usually on mine
  • Oil (if frying)
  • OPTIONAL: Flavor garnishes of choice
    • I like red pepper flakes and roasted garlic/garlic powder
  • OPTIONAL: Something to dip the whole shebang in
    • Can be extra pizza sauce, can be ranch, go wild

Steps:

These depend a lot on how you prefer to make quesadillas. You can either do two tortillas stacked on each other OR fold over one quesadilla. I like doing the first way, so I’ll be focusing on that method, but you can more easily seal up the second way and I do like doing that for when I want a smaller portion. I’ll put those instructions in (parentheses)Read More »