So there has been a lot of darkness since Friday and so I wanted to post something light and inconsequential today to brighten the air, just a little.
How to Cheat Your Way to The Most Amazing Brownie
Normally I bake from scratch, but occasionally I try out the box mixes just for the hell of it - usually if they are on offer, because otherwise it's a ridiculously expensive way of baking a cake (most of the time). I've also found that some box mixes are a bit meh.
However, on Friday morning when I was shopping in B&M I came across this Thorntons Salted Caramel Brownie box mix for 99p (I believe ASDA have it on offer for 1.50 at the moment).
I thought to myself, why not.
Now, I have no doubt that just making up the box per instructions would have made a lovely brownie, however, here's the tip.
You cannot have enough chocolate in a brownie!
Hence I grabbed a bar of dark choc (semi-sweet) I had in the cupboard and chunked about a third of it into bits. Then I added those to the dry mix before I added the melted milk choc and butter.
I managed to produce brownie heaven. It was nearly as good as my friend Jennie's brownies, which are in fact the epitome of brownie making in their squidgy, chocolatey goodness.
P.S. the instructions said to cook for 20 mins for really squidgy and 25 for a firmer texture, but with the extra chocolate, 25 is a must. I checked at 20, but the brownie was still completely molten in the middle and at 25 it was just set.
Also, these were good as soon as they had cooled, but they were even better the next day (I made them Sunday and Rob and I finished the last two yesterday for pudding at dinner time).
Anyone else have any ridiculously easy cheats for delicious things to share?
Saturday, 14 November 2015
Images from Tumblr
My thoughts and prayers to Paris and all those who suffer under terrorist attacks.
It's Friday again and so I get to geek out and share another of my favourite classic TV shows. Welcome to Fan Fridays 10, where I have chosen to talk about Sapphire and Steel; I hope you enjoy.
For those who have never seen Sapphire and Steel, you have missed something superb. It ran from 1979 to 1982 on ITV in the UK and was made by ATV. It stars Johanna Lumley as Sapphire and David McCallum as Steel, two agents from outside our own dimension who are sent to stop incursions from Time.
Each episode begins with the same voice over, from which I took the title of this post:
All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension.
Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life.
Medium atomic weights are available:
Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
Sapphire and Steel is one of those series that just has that little bit of difference about it and it makes you remember it.
Sapphire is the personable character, gifted with the power to reverse time, empathy and to analyse objects and people simply by touch.
Steel is the gruffer, practical character, with great strength, thermal and conductive properties and willing to make the hard decisions.
Both are telepathic with each other and other agents.
They balance each other and back each other up to make the perfect partnership.
Lumley and McCallum play off each other so well with perfect chemistry and I simply love both characters.
However, what really hooked me as a child was the plots. There were six adventures filmed and I don't think I saw them all first time round, but those that I did see, like Two and Four really stuck with me. All are brilliant except the last one which I refuse to watch because there is a huge cliffhanger that has never been resolved.
Adventure One: A mother and father disappear from a remote farm house while reading their daughter nursery rhymes in the top room of the house. Sapphire and Steel have to prevent Time breaking through using the old house and everything in it. 6 eps
Adventure Two: There are ghosts gathering in a disused railway station lead by a World War I soldier. Sapphire and Steel must find out why, while distracting a human ghost hunter called Tully. 8 eps
Adventure Three: A time capsule sits invisible at the top of a modern block of flats, an experiment from the far future to investigate how humans used to live. Something malevolent has travelled with them and Sapphire and Steel must enter the capsule to find out what it is and stop it. 6 eps
Adventure Four: Ghostly sepia children run around an old junk shop, where the original landlord, whose hobby was playing with old photographs, and one of the tenants have disappeared. Sapphire and Steel must discover what is going on and how to stop it. 6 eps
Adventure Five: Lord Mullrine is hosting a party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his company. He has made sure that everything is authentic, from the clothes to the test match on the radio. Time has used his attention to detail to break through, regressing everything back to 1930, killing the guests one by one, for its own nefarious purposes. Sapphire and Steel pretend to be party goers to prevent Time succeeding. 6 eps
Adventure Six: Sapphire and Steel are called to an abandoned service station to find out why time has stopped.
All the adventures are superbly written and they are all slightly different. I can never decide which is my favourite. I love Adventure One because of Steel's gruffness and the introduction to the characters. I love Adventure Two because the ghosts are just brilliant and we find out Sapphire and Steel are not completely infallible. I love Adventure Three because it's just so skin crawly in places. I love Adventure Four because it makes me want to never have my photo taken ever again. I love Adventure Five because its so intricate and the way Sapphire and Steel enroll a human to help them is brilliant.
However, I think they dropped the ball on Adventure Six.
The whole series is available on DVD at Amazon UK and Amazon US as well as being on Amazon Video US. I have the original DVDs they brought out a few years ago, but I keep eyeing the repackaged versions because I hope they changed the menus. The original DVDs have possibly the worst menus system I have ever come across on a DVD - it's shocking :).
I see there is supposed to be a remake coming as well - I look forward to it. I think Sapphire and Steel could be brilliantly rebooted for the modern era.
So have you seen Sapphire and Steel? Who is your favourite character?
It's just a short entry today to remind everyone that you are important and you should make sure to take time for yourself, even if it is only a short time.
Sometimes life is good, but sometimes it's hard and there seems no time to do anything but work or look after someone else or sort things out. No matter which, try to remember that you are as important as everything going on around you. Take a moment to give yourself what you need.
Depending on what you love and how much time you have you could:
Watch a sunset
Stargaze
Stroke the cat
Play with the dog
Read a page of that book you've been meaning to finish, or a whole chapter
Go to that website you've been missing because of work commitments
Have a nice mug/glass of your favourite coffee/tea/hot chocolate/wine
Bake a cake (and eat it ;))
Kiss your significant other
Watch the next episode of your favourite TV show
Talk to friends
Whatever it is that makes you happy, let yourself have it, even if it is just for a minute in a well of chaos. You may be needed by others, you may be under a pile of work, you may have exams coming, but remember to bolster yourself too. Thirty seconds or an hour, whichever you can spare, give it to yourself.
So I'm hip deep in Harry Potter at the moment for NaNo (I'm writing fanfic this year while I try and finish an original book at the same time :)) and who is the biggest bad from the Wizarding World? The Dark Lord himself of course, hence today's choice of topic: Voldemort.
Voldemort
Tom Riddle the Monster
If I am totally honest I find the Voldemort of the books far scarier than the Voldemort of the films. This is not to say Ralph Fiennes did not do a superb job, it's just that the imagination is a far darker place than the Harry Potter movies will ever be and JKR conjured him fantastically. That's why every one who can should read or listen to audio books of whatever they care to enjoy as well as watching other versions because words are so powerful.
Voldemort is a very sad character really. An orphaned boy who, due to the neglect he suffered as a child, can no longer understand the power love. If he hadn't decided to take it out on every around him you'd feel sorry for him.
This is a man who created his first Horcrux at the tender age of 16, an act which requires murder to split the caster's soul and store it safely in another object. He created seven in all, splitting his soul each time, damaging himself more than he could possibly imagine. Voldemort is the only wizard known to have created more than one Horcrux and there is said to be only one book, Secrets of the Darkest Art, where the method is explained.
The Horcruxes are the only reason Voldie survive his first encounter with Harry Potter, when the Killing Curse rebounded because of Harry's mother's love. It doesn't really seem that he was particularly sane the first time round, but 14 years in virtual limbo is likely to have scrambled his marbles even further. He is a superb strategist, but he has blind spots thanks to his hatred.
Thanks to splitting his soul he has removed himself even further from human empathy and is, basically, a monster of the first order. His biggest weakness is his inability to comprehend self-sacrifice in those around him. He demands loyalty with fear and in the end it is his undoing.
Voldemort is described as an incredibly powerful wizard and, by all accounts, was a charismatic leader the first time around, but his obsession with immortality is his undoing. Being so afraid of death, he assumes that is everyone else's greatest fear as well. In so doing he miscalculates and is destroyed by Harry James Potter as his own curse rebounds once again. A fitting end for an evil monster, no longer a man.
His damaged soul remains in Limbo, neither able to pass on or return as a ghost. A monstrous eternity for a monstrous being.
JKR's creation of Voldemort and his background is simply superb. In the first book a reader can be forgiven for thinking that maybe Voldie is a simple villain with little depth, but reading on, he becomes more and more complex. He is a worthy opponent and deserves his place as a superb monster. The rest of us dream of coming up with a character as interesting.
Rob and I are mainlining the boxset of season 1 of The Blacklist at the moment and it's turning out to be awesome, so I thought I would use it as this week's Fan Friday.
The Blacklist - James Spader is Awesome!
I have been a James Spader fan for a very, very long time. I first saw him in a made for TV movie called Starcrossed (more about that later), that my sister Sophie and I bought as a previously viewed video tape from our local Blockbuster while we were at school. This was in the 80s and I have been a huge fan ever since. I prefer him as the hero, but he plays a great baddie as well.
However, even with this fact, I had held off watching The Blacklist. The adverts for it hadn't grabbed me and I didn't need another show to watch, so I didn't bother. What the previews told me was this was another Silence of the Lambs, only not so bloody or serial killer-ish because it's prime time TV. I wasn't really interested in that, but, as it turns out, The Blacklist is far more complex than that.
You do have the dynamic of the seemingly unstoppable, genius level criminal and the younger, just starting out, female FBI agent, but the connection between the two is not the same as with Starling and Lector.
Raymond Reddington (Spader) is not a bloodthirsty criminal, he is a mastermind who has built an empire on facilitating enterprises and gaining information for governments and criminals alike. Anyone who can pay him. While doing this he has come across those he feels deserve to be punished for their crimes, people on his Blacklist, some of which the FBI have never heard of. Turning himself in he offers to help the FBI bring these people to justice, but he will only work through agent Elizabeth Keen (Megan Boone).
What I find that I really love about The Blacklist is that in this show, it is not the heroes I trust implicitly to end up doing things right, to sort out the problems, it's Reddington, who is, in fact, a bad guy, kind of. He is the centre of trust to move everything forward, to get it right. In fact over the first four episodes (as far as Rob and I have reached so far) is seems the FBI are far more likely the screw things up than sort them out.
James Spader is superb as Reddington. He is confident, self possessed and very, very clever and I never doubt him for a minute, which I love. One of the reasons I had to stop watching Scorpion (a TV show about a team of geniuses saving the day) is that I could never trust the characters not to screw up, in fact the opposite was true and it was annoying. I love Reddington, because he is so much in control. He also has the most incredibly sexy voice ;).
Megan Boone is also very good as Elizabeth Keen. She's thrown into a situation she doesn't understand and yet she forges on. She's afraid, she's vulnerable, but she still finds her path. The fact that her personal story is so completely part of the plot is also brilliant. Watching the pilot I was worried that it was heading in a certain direction, but it turned out it was so much more interesting that I first thought. I still have no idea what is really going on and I love it.
This is spies and action and mystery all rolled up into a really well written package. I recommend it.
So I mentioned I am a James Spader fan and I want to share with you a couple of my favourites from his back catalogue that are less well known than some of his more famous roles:
Starcrossed
Joey (James Spader), a mechanic, meets Mary (Belinda Bauer) when she is running from two men. He helps her, only to discover she is an alien and the two men she was running from are also aliens sent to kill her or drag her back to her home planet.
This film hits all my buttons and I have loved it for a long time. It's a bit corny, some of the lines are terrible, but it has a wonderful feel about it and I love Spader in it. I only have a VHS rip from the original tape Soph and I bought these days - it has yet to be released on DVD.
Jack's Back
John Wesford (James Spader), a young doctor, apparently commits suicide in remorse for recreating nearly all of Jack the Ripper's murders one hundred years later. However, his identical twin brother saw him die in a nightmare and he knows John didn't kill himself. Under suspicion himself Rick tries to find out the truth with the help of John's friend Chris Moscari (Cynthia Gibb).
This was another gift from the bargain bin at Blockbuster, but has, thank fully, been released on DVD since and I have added it to my collection. I love it because it has twins and that slightly paranormal edge with the twin connection, even though the main plot is very much a murder mystery thriller. Spader is also inordinately sexy in this.
So there you have it, my review of The Blacklist and a couple of James Spader classics to keep anyone who loves 80s movies happy. I hope you enjoyed my post.
When I was sitting down thinking about what topic to cover in this post it suddenly occurred to me the NaNo has just started and so I had to pick that. These are my tips on how to survive and thrive.
8 Tips on How to Survive NaNoWriMo Sane (Mostly)
So I have been doing NaNoWriMo for several years now since 2011 (my NaNo page beren_writes). What this insanity is, for those not in the know, is a whole host of writers coming together in a bid to each write 50,000 wrds of a novel in 30 days.
For some this is apparently incredibly easy, for others it looks like an impossible task. However, for the majority I think it's simply a challenge. I find it very good for focusing the mind on the task and finishing things I have been meaning to finish for a while. Which is why I do it.
Here are my tips for surviving November as sane as you went in:
Pick something you really want to write. Last year was the first year I actually just went for something completely new that I hadn't been thinking about for a while and it didn't really work for me. I made it, but only just, and I didn't enjoy the challenge anywhere near as much. I also haven't touched the piece since because I ended up hating it. Some people like to go in completely fresh, but I find it is much better to go in with something that has been percolating in my brain for a while.
Don't let yourself get behind. The NaNo site gives you a very handy daily word count to achieve and shows you how you are doing. Do your very best to reach this total every day. You can afford to miss a day here or there, but always make sure you make it up the next day. Seeing yourself behind is disheartening and can be the worst cause of lack of productivity in my experience.
Make that cup of coffee first, close all your web browsers. When you are going to write remove possible distractions. Have your cup of coffee sitting there so you don't decide to go off an make one. Close all other windows on your computer so you don't end up starting mindlessly at your twitter client. Brains are unruly places so it's best not to give them options when you are trying to plot :).
Don't force yourself to write from beginning to end if it isn't working. Sometimes you hit a spot in a story where writing words is like pulling teeth. If you need to, put in a little marker and skip it. It is always easier to fill in holes in a scene or chapter when you have the rest, than to bang your head against the keyboard at a really tough part. I never write a story from beginning to end anyway, but the principle holds at the smallest level of scenes as well as the top level of the whole thing.
Let the inspiration flow. You may have planned your novel completely and yet your characters are telling you they want to go on a side trip. Let them. NaNo is about writing. If you have to edit half of it out next month, don't worry, you never know what gem you might be producing that actually helps the plot.
Listen to music or white noise while you write. Sound can keep that unruly part of your brain that's stopping you concentrating occupied while you work. I like music, but that's too intrusive for some people, so white noise type sounds work better. Some kind soul on Tumblr gathered a list of sites that can provide such noise here at this link. Experiment with what works best for you.
Reward yourself. When you reach your daily word count, pat yourself on the back, give yourself a little reward. Eat the Ferrero Roche that has been taunting you all day. Make yourself the cup of hot chocolate you have been craving. Go and read that web site you've been avoiding while you write. Just do something to tell yourself, well done.
Tell everyone who will listen how well you are doing. Use the word count widgets they give you, post to your blog, your LJ, your Tumblr, your Facebook and tell the world what you are achieving. Crow about your word count and wish other NaNo'ers luck. It will make you feel good and help you stay motivated.
If you are the new Enid Blyton then 50K words in a month is nothing, but for many people, such focused creativity on one output is very difficult. But don't be put off, it can be so very rewarding and fun as well. People go into NaNo every year who don't think they can do it and they pull it off.
Rob and I saw Jurassic World last night for the first time, so of course, how could I not use today to talk about the big bad monster of the piece, the Indominus Rex? Please be aware there will be spoilers for the movie in this post right from the start.
Indominus Rex
Silly Name, Coolish Monster
So the Indominus Rex, a dinosaur with cuttlefish and tree frog DNA that give it the ability to camouflage and change it's body temperature to fool thermal sensors. It's probably the cuttlefish that gives it its brains as well, or are we supposed to believe that's the raptor part? It was obvious the whole raptor revelation was coming from the moment they refused to say what dinosaurs it was based on.
I enjoyed the film, a lot. but I have to say, although the idea of the Indominus Rex was cool, I was not overcome by the execution. In fact I thought she was rather over designed as a monster.
We learned in Jurassic Park that because of the frog DNA the dinosaurs had changed sex and and started breeding. I liked the mirror in Jurassic World where unexpected things happened because of the new DNA, except that is wasn't unexpected actually. That's the bit that really annoyed me. No way could you have got changes like that past a whole development team without them asking questions, which means either the whole team were on the take or no one is writing their reports properly.
Also what was all that about keeping the actual DNA choices from the owner of the company?!!! Who thought that was a good idea?
Anyway back to the actual beastie.
I don't think she should have had camouflage and temperature abilities - the temperature part was unnecessary and silly. You have a giant, really violent, dangerous dinosaur in a holding area and you have temperature and implant systems to know where it is, so when one fails, you check the other one, for heaven's sake - you definitely don't send people in! That part was moronic, hence I think the temperature part was redundant. The camouflage would have been enough.
Since she was intelligent enough to make the claw marks and intelligent enough to claw out the tracer and set an ambush, why wasn't she intelligent enough to simply lob the tracer implant over the wall? Same end result.
For that matter how is she intelligent enough to known regulating her body temperature will stop the humans finding her? This is one very smart dinosaur.
You could say she scratched out the tracer because it was used to shock her too, but then how did she know how to set the ambush? It doesn't make sense.
In Jurassic Park the T-Rex and the raptors were terrifying because they were dinosaurs with lots of teeth and claws. In Jurassic World the Indominus Rex was supposed to be terrifying because she had all these cool abilities, but I think they over cooked it a bit. I really did enjoy the film, but thinking about her after watching it, the Indominus Rex seems a little too good to be true.
What do you think of the Indominus Rex as a monster?
In honour of Halloween last night, my husband and I decided to pick a horror movie to watch and we saw a new one had popped up on the Sky box: Let Us Prey. This is my review.
Liam Cunningham ... Six
Pollyanna McIntosh ... PC. Rachel Heggie
Bryan Larkin ... PC. Jack Warnock
Hanna Stanbridge ... PC. Jennifer Mundie
Douglas Russell ... Sgt. MacReady Summary:PC Rachel Heggie is the newbie at a remote police station and on her way to work see a local hoodlum hit a mysterious man who disappears. With the hoodlum in custody PCs Warnock and Mundie are ordered to find the possibly injured man and when they bring him to the station strange things start to happen. People start dying.
This is an Anglo-Irish production and it's doesn't have the highest budget with lots of CGI and A-list actors and it is all the better for it. It is brilliant. I was gripped all the way through.
First a warning, this is a horror film that earns its 18 rating. It is bloody and very nasty in places. If that is not your cup of tea, then definitely do not watch this film.
This film does not have a cast of thousands, in fact the entire cast list at IMDB is 11 and mainly there are actually nine actors doing all the work. They do it splendidly.
This is a film about the characters. The horror is the people, not the mysterious forces at work conniving towards midnight. Yes there is gore and blood, but what is truly horrific are the characters littering the small town and what some of them have done. That is the whole point.
Be prepared to suspend your disbelief that so many horrible people are in one small space, and sit back and enjoy.
Liam Cunningham is a brilliant actor, I've never seen him in anything where he wasn't, and he is superb in Let Us Prey. He is the mysterious stranger who speaks rarely and with purpose and finds the dark centres of those around him. At times he is menacing, at others almost amusing, and always merciless.
Pollyanna McIntosh also shines as PC Heggie with her tattered past and desire to be a good police officer. She is the newbie, the outcast among the closed community that she doesn't really know and our gateway character into the film. She's tough, but also vulnerable.
All of the rest of the cast hold up their parts just as well, being arseholes, sadists, nutters and vaguely normal people in various degrees. This is a film of extremes, it's a horror movie after all, and the characters are done beautifully as the community we see goes from normal to nightmare in a few hours.
The set is limited, being mostly two rooms, which makes the claustrophobic ending just perfect. This is a stifled community with it's vulnerable, disturbing underbelly being revealed to the world and the main location reflects this perfectly. It's almost as if the presence of Six has taken the protagonists out of reality and time without them realising it, leaving them in their own world to make their mistakes.
I also thought the script was superb. It's gritty and real and has gems like this littered through it:
Dr. Duncan Hume: This is such a one-horse town. Six: And now it's a pale fucking horse.
Every single character is damaged in some way and they show it through their actions and their words.
The plot is driven by the people and the people are the plot. There are no high octane car chases, no wailing phantoms, no poltergeists, no grisly monsters, but just a touch of the supernatural as Six touches each of the gathered cast of characters. The way alliances shift and change is beautifully done and subtle in places. Realisation about the depths certain of the characters have gone to comes bit by bit and it is wonderfully paced. I enjoyed every second of it.
For once I also thought the ending to a horror film was perfect. I very rarely enjoy the end of horror films, they mostly annoy me even when the rest of the film has been good. Not so in this one. I loved the ending; it was just right. Have definitely added this to my wishlist.
