I have been doing a lot lately, I just haven’t had time to write about the things I’m doing.
I’ve been knitting away on my work project, making pretty good progress, but I don’t really have the time or desire to work on anything else, be it knitting, weaving, or spinning. I have been knitting all day, from about 10am until after midnight, only talking breaks to eat or cook or do other little things around the house. Not that I’m complaining, it is pretty great to knit all day and get paid for it, but some variety would be nice. There just isn’t any time for anything else right now. All the knitting does give me a lot of movie watching time, though, so I’ve been voraciously watching Chinese movies. The project I’m working on is something I have to pay attention to so I end up missing a few of the subtitles, but I’ve found some really good movies. Here’s a little list, the links go to IMDB.
- An Empress and the Warriors
- The Banquet
- Empire of Silver
- Shinjuku Incident
- The Warlords
- Red Cliff I and Red Cliff II (I’m actually going to watch Red Cliff II tomorrow)
These are just the movies I’ve watched this week, I have a pretty big collection of Chinese martial arts movies (that’s something a lot of people don’t know about me, I love kung fu movies, especially of the Wuxia genre) but I’ve been branching out into historical dramas lately and Shinjuku Incident (which stars Jackie Chan as a Chinese gangster living in Tokyo) is more of a modern ganster movie, it takes place in the ’90′s. They were all really good movies but I think my favorites were The Warlords and Shinjuku Incident.
The weather has cooled down and it’s really feeling like fall now. This weather makes me want to eat lots of warm, hearty soup, so I made a huge pot of Stormy Black Bean Soup from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen Blog. The soup is delicious, very filling and has a great, spicy taste. I used the minimum recommend spices and it’s still got a big kick to it. I also used one can of diced tomatoes with cilantro and lime juice instead of two cans of plain tomatoes. You can really taste the lime before the spice hits and it just gives it an extra layer. We’ve been eating cornbread muffins on the side (I use Jiffy cornbread mix, not vegan, but tasty). I also made up a batch of butter pecan cookies from Baking Bites. They are so good, like a crispy pecan shortbread. I really love all the cooking I’ve been doing, it’s so nice to have a real hot meal instead of something like a grilled cheese sandwich or a veggie burger for dinner. Tomorrow I’m going to heat up some pre-made cheese tortellini and sauce since the soup is gone.
I’ve been craving tea and hot lattes, too. I made some pumpkin spice syrup (1c sugar, 1c water, 2 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice. Heat on the stove, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and store it in the fridge) so i can make my own pumpkin spice lattes since I can never get to Starbucks. I also ordered a bunch of tea, since I’m down to one bag of chamomile. I thought I would try a bunch of different teas, so I got some samples from Adagio, since their samples are huge and cheap. I picked out some blood orange herbal tea, which tastes just like blood oranges, a little sour, a little sweet, very citrus-y. It would be good iced. I wanted to try some white tea, so I got some silver needle, it’s very earthy tasting but the taste is really subtle, it’s very good. What I really wanted was some chai, so I got the chai sampler. It came with six teas: a masala, chocolate, bengal green, spiced apple, rooibos, and thai chais. I haven’t tried any of them yet but they smell really good. And I got a free sample of their Scorpio tea which is a blend of sweet vanilla rooibos, mango, and chocolate chip tea, it smells heavenly.
So that’s been my week. All working, obsessing over Chinese movies, cooking, eating and drinking tea. I can’t really complain. Oh, the picture at the top? That’s my dad and his 1941 Ford rat rod that he built. I felt like a post this big needed a picture and it’s the best I have right now.
