G’s Half Birthday Party
Saturday was G’s half a year birthday day, time for a party! Blee came to join us and our impromptu menu included:
- Lobster claw with autumn garden couscous;
- Steamed tilapia, asian style, with Asian hot slaw;
- Haw Fun with duck consomme & baby bok choy;
- Mango pudding, strawberries and Japanese-style birthday cheese cake; and,
- Veuve Clicquot, Mission HIll’s Five Vineyards Cabernet Merlot 2003 (which we brought back from BC with us) and an Anselmann Ortega Trockenbeerenauslese, 1999.
1) the table awaits; 2) steamed tilapia; 3) Lobster with couscous
4) oh-my-gawd-glorious duck consomme with haw fun and baby bok choy … to die for good; 5) mango pudding
6) too much Veuve Clicquot and Cabernet-Merlot for Blee me thinks
Monday’s Movie Reviews : Jasmine Women
Jasmine Women (Mo li hua kai). With thanks to willariah, who brought this along on Wednesday for me to view. Watched this on Saturday while the remnants of Hurricane what’s-his-name blew through. This 2004 film, directed by Yong Hou, was just ‘ok’ for me. Stars that Chinese ‘it’ girl, Zhang Ziyi, doing her usual bland acting (this girl is lucky she is beautiful) and the amazing, Joan Chen, who like Michelle Yeoh in Geisha steals every scene she’s in from Zhang. The thin storyline runs from the 1930s through to the mid-1980s following Chen and Zhang as they morph through 3 sets of daughters/mothers/grandmothers (an interesting concept yes).
Yong Hou directs well and there are a couple memorable scenes … strongest in the 1958 vingette when Zhang wanders the streets while the students march. A second when, after Zhang’s husband commits suicide by stepping in front of a train (which was all her fault I might add), Hou films her walking toward a train that veers last second to a sidetrack. I had problems with the end of the film. When Grandma Chen dies, Hou gives us three bad cliches in a row: the burning of the 1930s pin-up picture of Chen as an actress beside her corpse; Grandma’s bed collapsing by itself; and the dead hand dropping the perfume bottle. OMG, com’on please! Worse is yet to come as Zhang, her water broken at 3am stumbles out into empty Beijing streets (in teeming rain, of course) and not being able to find either 1) a taxi?! … com’on, there’s 20 million people in Beijing and even at 3:00am, or 2) a living soul to assist her. And why didn’t she just call before heading out?
My rating: 6 out of 10.
Monday’s Would You Buy This Product?:
Click on the image to enlarge then read the line under “Ham burger”. I found this oddity at a grocery store in Chinatown East, which is certainly gentrifying as there’s a very modern Spring Rolls going in there I’m sure. You just wait.
Monday’s Pet Peeve: Shopper’s Drug Mart
I find it sad and sorry that Shopper’s Drug Mart (among others) has taken to putting out Halloween candy for sale in late August … and places it directly across from the back-to-school stuff kids are in store to purchase. It’s an obscene practice and SDM should be utterly ashamed of its ploy. I will be sending an email to them complaining about such a practice.
shame shame on Shopper’s Drug Mart
AppsScraps 
Aww…dang it. There are always pictures of good food on your xanga entries =[. Now that’s even worse than putting candy across the back to school stuff =[. Haha. And I had those ‘ham burgers’ before. They were okay…but I wasnt too into those gummy snacks =]
The food looks delicious. Are you sure this was an improptu party. Actually, I begin to think you find any reason to have a dinner party. lol
wow, that food looks delicious! hehehe i’ve seen those “ham burger” things before, although i never bothered to read the package.
OMG, those meals look more professional than some restaurants!!! =)
The food looks great and so does the china! What’s a 1/2 year b’day?
i’m not very interested in the movie, probably due to the actress
It says rubber candy on the package..Happy 1/2 Birthday G!!..I don’t about halloween, we don’t really get to celebrate it..
I think I have to quit xanga if ppl keep posting amazing pictures of food on their blog! I just want to eat it all.I am a fan of Zhang Ziyi… mostly because she’s so beautiful. I even put “stalking ZZ for film fest” on my IM but then no one got it and thought i’m really a crazy stalker fan :)
Happy 1/2 Birthday G. That food looks so yum. Re. the Ham burger candies, my little cousin ate these all the time when she was young.