This morning, on the drive back home from the farmers market, the conversation turned to eyes. According to Akemi, one of the instructors at her English language school: “Has eyes like Husky!”. Clearly, them’s some lovely eyes. But, apparently, they don’t hold a candle to those of my writing partner. “Munyu Munyu’s eyes [her nickname for Paul] have more power.” Yeah, he gets that a lot. Akemi likes his eyes. He wins the male category. When it comes to the female category, Robert Cooper’s wife, Hillary, is the big winner: “She has beautiful eyes. Like flowers inside!” Like flowers!
In addition to her unique turns of phrase, Akemi has produced some equally inspired creations in the kitchen. Check out these Stargate cookies:
Cacio e pepe…
Her sage and brown butter sweet potato gnocchi…
And this homemade eggnog for yours truly:
Inspired by her inspired creations, check out my oven roasted egg-in-an-avocado-hole…
And roasted chicken meatballs (hiding melted cheese centers)…
Akemi flexes her culinary muscles…
Continuing our Book of the Month Club discussion of Terms of Enlistment…
Kathode writes: “And did anyone else get annoyed that we never learn Halley’s first name? WTF? She calls him Andrew, and he refers to her exclusively by her last name, even in his thoughts? That’s kinda fucked up, no?”
Answer: Wait, I thought Halley WAS her first name. No? Then that is mighty strange. We made this a gag in the SG-1 episode 200 when Jack calls Sam “Carter” on their wedding day!
Katholde writes: “I only brought it up because Grayson himself felt the weight of what he’d done when he saw the floors above the grenade impact site pancake one on top of the other. He told us he felt bad that he’d been responsible for the deaths of so many innocent people. If he’d really felt entirely blameless in his actions, he’d have had no problem telling Halley about it via email.”
Answer: Well that’s what I found so strange. He expresses that initial regret, clearly doesn’t want to discuss it in the email, but we delve no deeper into his conflicted feelings. Sure, he feels justified for his actions, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still feel conflicted or somewhat guilty.
Line Noise writes: “Re: Andrew being at the right place at the right time. I think that’s a limitation of first person narrative. Because you only have the point of view of one person in the story the author needs to contrive situations that gets that person to where the next part of the story goes. If the story was third person and following several characters then I think it would have been structured differently (Andrew staying on Earth and Halley encountering the aliens, for example).”
Answer: The need for something to happen is not an acceptable excuse for coincidental or contrived development. There are other, albeit trickier, ways to get there. They just require more thought and effort.
Line Noise writes: “Re: soul searching and self- torture. One of my least favourite book series that I read was The Seafort Saga by David Feintuch. The hero starts off as a Midshipman in the space Navy and through a series of events over many books makes lots of hard decisions that kills a lot of people in order to save many, many more. He is so consumed with guilt that I ended up hating him because of his self-pity.”
Answer: I’d argue there’s a fairly wide-ranging middle ground between feeling guiltless and consumed by self-pity
Akemi needs to be on a cooking show.
All the food looks wonderful but I might kill for “oven roasted egg-in-an-avocado-hole…”. How long do you bake it?
“True Detective Awesome show on H.B.O.” Been hooked since EPP #1and the Executive producer’s are the show’s 2 star’s….Matthew and Woody…..
Akemi is indeed a culinary tour-de-force! I would love the recipe for those Stargate cookies (although I guess you could make any kind of round cookie and decorate it as such. How did she get the icing chevrons so triangular?
I always thought my eyes look kind of dimwitted and glassy. Although occasionally I hear that they look like they could possibly emit death rays. I can’t imagine, though. 🙂
Wow! Akemi is extremely talented! That eggnog looks amazing! Great. Now I’m craving eggnog. The egg/avocado concoction looks unbelievable too.
I need to go eat my boring food now.
Trish
Yeah, I’ve said it many times, Paul has beautiful eyes.
Chef Akemi looks like she is putting together a menu for a fine restaurant. Is she?
And for the people playing the fantasy pilot league, Junior Masterchef was picked up for….get this….season 3. We haven’t even seen season 2 yet. I missed the boat on this one. I said cancelled.
if her food tastes as good as it looks, or as well as she turns a phrase,you are enjoying some good eats.
I liked the cookie; good job Akemi! And Joe, your Avocado-Egg got me craving a scotch-egg, so being left by myself tonight (Barb and the kids are off at a teen dance), I put my idle time to use and made myself some scotch eggs:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/55871901@N05/13023290463/
Of course, if I was going to have pub-fare, I needed to have a proper bitter as well (at least as much as one as I could find at the local super-market).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/55871901@N05/13022846275/
It was the perfect wrap-up to a day of engine parts wire-wheeling, paint-stripping, and sandblasting (we’re getting ready for engine re-assembly on the Corvette project).
Now I’m going to finish my scotch egg and bitter and watch some NCIS episodes.
@baterista9:
Sorry I’m slow up the up-take…I’m praying for you and your friend and I’m sorry for their loss. How are they doing?
@arcticgoddess on speaking my mind to Ford:
I had just driven to Detroit (5-hours) in a brand new Ford Explorer. The infotainment system had crashed twice on the way and I was a little peeved, so I was really just blowing off steam. At the time, I just knew I was going out to lunch with a colleague and a friend of his, but I didn’t know where he worked, let alone the fact that he had worked on the infotainment system. It would be nice to say I was courageous in bringing up inconvenient facts, but it would be closer to the truth to say I was simply clueless.
In subsequent years, Ford has corrected a lot of the issues, and the new systems are much much better, so they’ve made a lot of progress.
March 8 Joe = IVON BARTOK’S BIRTHDAY! No birthday wishes? If anyone wants to leave a birthday message you can do so on his fansite – no need to log in, just reply in the comments. I only have two so far, I need some more.
Go to Ivon Bartok – Birthday messages
I promise he goes to the page to read them. He even posted last year.
Thanks, Chev
Regarding eyes, it’s tough to compete with blue or green eyes. I’m sure if there was an eye contest the winner would have that eye colour. Stargate has lots of people with beautiful eyes – J R Bourne, BamBam, Ben Browder, Paul McGillian…. can anyone refresh my memory and suggest some more?
Cheers, Chev
I’m totally making eggs in an avocado hole. I eagerly await the perfect name for it.
——
I thought the main contrivance was that Grayson encountered the aliens, but I give one free pass on the contrivance of encountering something spectacular in science fiction. Otherwise, we could have followed his mother’s story and nothing worth telling would have happened.
It was a little odd that he got into the navy. But Unwerth was being threatened by his sergeant and he interjected his idea at just the right time. Though the navy was a better assignment, he got in through a program that specifically doled out non-choice assignments.
I don’t think seeing action in a PRC was a contrivance. I think the point was that the TA encounters plenty of it in PRC’s and if he had any expectation that it should be rare, that was his world’s propaganda doing its work.
Getting onto Halley’s ship wasn’t a contrivance. He traded a choice assignment for it. He took some initiative in suggesting the trade and sacrificed to make seeing Halley happen.
It still felt like the kind of story that’s full of contrivance. That feel of the main character kind of drifting through events was there. The things that mitigated what could have been contrivance happened very quickly, like it was added after he received a round of notes.
Happy Birthday to Ivon 🙂
Paul does have gorgeous eyes. They are striking with his dark hair; it is still dark, isn’t it?
The stargate cookies are so cute. I’m salivating over the roasted chicken meatballs with melted cheese. *drools*
And roasted chicken meatballs (hiding melted cheese centers)…
oooo!
to ivonbartokfans;
Stargate has lots of people with beautiful eyes – J R Bourne, BamBam, Ben Browder, Paul McGillian…. can anyone refresh my memory and suggest some more?
michael shanks. another in the blue-eyed department.
my own eyes are basic, boring, brown. i was once told they were very nice, but it was by a old lady with bad eyesight. so i don’t give it much weight.
Happy birthday to Ivon! Joe, did Lulu get him anything?
The cookies and gnocchi = delicious
The egg in the avocado = nothing I hate more in the world than a soft cooked egg yolk *shudders*
To take my mind of that food nightmare = Michael Shanks blue eyes
Yep..all good now
Pretty proud of this present I made… photo mosaic of Toronto I made with photos of Ivon. Thanks Joe for continually supplying us with awesome Ivon photos.
Took over 22 hours to process… but worth it… Anyhoo if you haven’t left a birthday message for Ivon there’s still time… go to birthday messages and leave a comment… Thanks to those that have 🙂
Cheers, Chev
Oh yes archersangel how could I forget Michael Shanks haha… lovely eyes… I myself have brown eyes too.
Cheers, Chev
Happy Birthday Ivon!
@Chev HOLY COW! THAT’S SO AMAZING! I love photo mosaics! I have no idea how you do that. So cool!
yay Akemi…keep flexing them muscles!
Now after drooling over all the nice foods…the avocado looks good.
I’ll go have my boring jimmy john’s turkey sandwich…sigh
Happy Birthday Ivon!!
@ Chev – That mosaic is awesome! Great job! A lot of work there!
unrelated to the topic::::Neil deGrasse Tyson just rocked the house on the new COSMOS! He is one cool cat.
And it appears that it is Ivon’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Ivon, whose name always has reminded me of a fabulous Russian composer.
to PBMom:
i said yes for junior masterchef (for some reason) so that’s some form of points for me. but someone (was it you?) said the michael j. fox show was canceled & i went yes for that. so i have no idea where i am in this race.
Ok, that sage and brown butter sweet potato gnocchi looks and sounds un-be-lieve-a-ble! I’m writing that one down as one to try. Normally I just default to a variation of an Alfredo sauce I do sometimes, but this should be fun!
Thanks for the inspiration Akemi!
-Mike