My First Post

Enjoy with: Crackers with Maple baked ham, Monterey Jack cheese and a glass of milk and/or chai tea
Genre movie to see: 28 Weeks Later
Classic movie to see: The Tin Star

This is my first post of my new blog It Came from the Kitchen, which is based on the book I co-wrote with my friend Gord Reid. It is a cookbook we put together based on Sci-fi, horror and fantasy film-makers, writers and actors. Most of the recipes were compiled from celebrities from those fields and the rest were either written by me or chefs that I have known.

There have been many passions in my life but the book puts two constants together: movies and cooking.

I must confess that this wasn't supposed to be the first post. I thought I would do my own personal favourite shrimp and beer recipe from the book but someone beat me to it (Thanks Alana!) I was just about to pick another recipe but I saw my oven needed cleaning.

So I found an old can of fume-free (yeah right!) oven cleaner and wasted time coaxing the cheap stuff to come out of the can. It only looks like it does in the commercials after about five minutes of shaking or alternately banging on the kitchen counter. I grabbed my old painting gloves, an old t-shirt, face mask (to dampen the fume free fumes) and a pillow for my knees I set out to clean said oven.

Now my oven is all foamy and I have to wait two hours for it to set. Perfect. I can go buy groceries, make dinner, eat dinner, watch Battlestar Galactica, remove nails from bedroom wall, choose paint, clean shower, move furniture, paint bedroom and write my first blog post.

I forgot about the oven.

Hint for cleaning oven: make sure you use a laundry sink for dumping the water from dirty oven. If you don't have a laundry sink I recommend the sink or drain you hate the most. In my case, it's the bathtub which I then set out to clean.

If you're sensing a pattern here, it is that I'm a bit of a procrastinator when it comes to writing. It only took me eight years to finish the book but I somehow manage to write reviews and articles given a deadline so I promise to be good this time.

Classic movie seen: The Tin Star. I'm on an Anthony Mann kick so I started with this one. Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins star as a bounty hunter and sheriff respectively with differing views on the law. An over used western theme is made fresh again thanks to Mann's attention to detail plus Perkins' perfectly naive sheriff who tries to coax Fonda's hardened bounty hunter into helping him rid the town of baddies.

Genre Movie to see: 28 Weeks Later. Despite an average script, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's deft juggling of a frenzied hand held pace with and a heart felt veneer, makes this one of the better horror sequels in recent years. It's 28 Weeks later in the city of London which was ravaged by a plague of angry zombified (note: not actual zombies 'cause they're not dead -- very important!) disease ravaged people. A father (Robert Carlyle) comes together with his two kids. The kids are played by the aptly English named Imogen Poots and Mackintosh Muggleton and they're both quite natural.

The other plus is the way Fresnadillo handles London. He captures the vistas of old and new London (Isle of Dogs) that is both eerily dead quiet and stunningly peaceful like a Sunday morning after a huge block party. By some strange stroke of luck, I found myself sitting in the exact location it was filmed with friends only five days after seeing it in the theatre back home.