So this week I made two dishes a won ton soup and stir fried chicken. Both were extremely easy to make; the meal took about an hour to make. I shared this lovely meal with my good friend Kelsey Kirchmann!
Chili-spiced Shrimp Won Ton Soup
Ingredients
WON TONS
12 (or more) wonton skins- I bought mine from Dekalb Farmer's market in the freezer section
6 oz cooked, shelled shrimp
1 garlic clove, minced
2 scallions. finely chopped
1 TBSP soy sauce (I used low sodium)
1TBSP fish sauce
1 TBSP chopped cilantro
1 small egg yolk, save that egg white!
SOUP
1 TBSP dried red pepper flakes
3 scallions, chopped
4 cups chicken stock (or beef stock)
1 TBSP fish sauce
1 TBSP soy sauce
1 TBSP rice wine
cilantro, garnish
Chop the shrimp as finely as possible. Mix shrimp with garlic, scallion, soy sauce, fish sauce, cilantro and egg yolk in a bowl. That was easy! Now to the tricky part, the won ton skins. Keep the won tons refrigerated until you need them! Lay them out on a flat surface and put about a dollop (about 1 TBSP) of the shrimp mixture in the center. It's ok if its a little too much. You'll get the hang of it. Brush the edges with the egg white (ahh see I told you to save it!). Fold the won ton into a triangle and seal the edges. Next bring the bottom corners of the triangle around to meet in the center, secure with some egg white glue and Voila! You have a perfect/semi-perfect won ton. Mine were pretty irregular, but guess what it doesn't affect the taste!
To make the soup, place the stock, fish sauce, soy sauce and rice wine in a large pan and bring to a boil. I used stock cubes, which made a difference. My broth ended up being really really salty; but I just added some more hot water and it was perfect. Add the pepper flakes and the chopped scallions to the broth. Then drop the won tons into the pan and simmer for about 4-5 minutes. Plate/bowl it up and garnish that booger with some cilantro. BAM!! Done. This dish only takes as long as it takes you to fold a won ton and boil some water!
Stir-fried Chicken with Thai Basil
Ingredients
1 lb chicken breast, skinless, boneless
2 tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 scallions, finely chopped
1/2 TBSP dried red pepper flakes
1 red bell pepper ( I like red better than green; its up to you), seeded and thinly sliced
a heaping 1/2 cup fresh basil (Thai basil is recommended), coarsely chopped
2 TBSP fish sauce
steamed rice (as much as you want)
First, cut the chicken breast into thin strips. Heat oil in your pre-heated wok and add the garlic and scallions. Cook them for about 2 minutes and then add the red pepper flakes and bell pepper, cook for another 2 minutes. Add the chicken and cook until browned. Stir in the basil and fish sauce and finish cooking the chicken. Serve over rice. That was soooo easy right? And quick! It'll probably take you about 15 minutes, more or less if you're a fast or slow chopper.
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Paranormal Activity 4
My Score: 6.0
IMDB Score: 4.7/10 (it wasn't that bad)
Rating: R
Favorite Line: "He's weird" to say the least
Director: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Stars: Katie Featherston, Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively
It’s getting close to Halloween and I love my scary movies
so I’ll be reviewing creepy movies, both new and old, for my next 2 posts. I’ve
totally been sucked into the whole Paranormal Activity hype. I know some people
think the Paranormal Activity movies are stupid and not scary at all like “Oooh
the ghost or whatever just pulled her toe…not scary.” But you know what? Can we
be real for a second? Ok.
Real. Talk.
If any of these things happened to you, you would have
pooped your pants. Don’t Lie. How many times have you felt like someone was
watching you or that you weren't alone in your home?
How many times have you stared at that person shaped shadow
in your room and then breathed a silent sigh of relief when you realized it was
just that coat and scarf you left hanging on your chair?
When that thump in the night makes you pause because you’re
home alone! You know what I’m talking about. Don’t lie! Yeah you can chuckle it
off when you discover it was just a book falling off your shelf but you were actually
scared over something so “stupid”!
That’s why I think the Paranormal Activity movies are so
scary. They tap into what darkness or scary force might be behind the shadow in
the room, that feeling that you’re falling in the middle of a nap, or that book
falling off a shelf. All of these silly, momentarily creepy things just become
even creepier and actually dangerous when the characters in these movies try to
investigate and unveil what that force may be.
So now just a brief synopsis of the first 3 movies ***SPOILER
ALERT*** If you've seen all of the movies skip on to 4!
Paranormal Activity 1: Small weird stuff happens. Boyfriend
gets camera and tapes weird stuff. Boyfriend messes with demon/ghost thing
against Girlfriend (Katy)’s wishes. Demon/ghost thing gets bigger, badder,
faster, stronger. Demon/ghost thing possesses Katy. Katy eats her boyfriend’s
face. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Paranormal Activity 2: The movie is a prequel to the first
movie. Thus Katy and boyfriend are still alive. Her sister, brother-in-law and
niece have a new addition to the family, a bouncing baby boy named Hunter. When they bring the baby home the house is “broken”
into and a lot of their stuff is destroyed. So they install security cameras!
Weird creepy stuff starts happening, small at first and then stuff gets REAL. The niece is the main investigator
in this film. She discovers that her great grandmother was possibly a witch and
made a deal with a demon to give it the family’s first son in return for wealth
and power. Duh duh DAAAH. The demon is gonna get that baby. No one believes her
until her step mother (the sister of Katy) is possessed by the demon. Etcetera,
etcetera the only way to get rid of the demon is to send it on over to poor
unsuspecting Katy. So Red Rover Red Rover….the whole first movie happened. BUT
that didn’t work. Katy’s whereabouts are now KNOWN. She comes over to her
sister’s house and kills everybody but (the niece who was on a field trip; can
we say lucky?) and takes the baby. Katy and Hunter’s whereabouts are UNKNOWN.
Paranormal Activity 3: Yet another prequel to both movies. This
movie goes to the very beginning, well kind of. Katy and her sister are little
kids; their mother has a boyfriend who films weddings and bah mitzvahs for a
living. Katy’s sister has an imaginary friend, Toby, who isn’t so imaginary or
friendly. Weird stuff starts happening so the boyfriend uses his dated cameras
to configure makeshift security cameras. Stuff gets even more REAL than in all
of the other movies!! It was freaky y’all. Their mom doesn’t believe until her
whole kitchen table and chairs almost crush her (watch the movie if you want to
know what I’m talking about). So to grandmother’s house they go! This is the
first time any of these characters have made it out of the house in all of the
movies. But little did they know grandma IS a witch who made a deal with Toby?
I don’t have that straight yet. Grandma and her gang of old witch ladies, with
the help of Toby of course, kill the mom and the boyfriend. Katy and her sister
live happily ever after (?) with their grandmother and apparently forget all
that’s happened to them. Thus Paranormal Activity 1 and 2 exist.
So here we are with Paranormal Activity 4! I wasn’t sure if
I was actually going to see this one. For months after watching the previews
over and over I would either decide I was going to see it or I definitely wasn’t!
But I did. This was thankfully not another prequel; it picked up where the
second movie left off (Katy took baby Hunter and their whereabouts are
UNKNOWN). We have a new family seemingly
unrelated to Katy and her sister. A teenage girl, her little brother and her
parents live across the street from Katy and her “son”. The son is really weird;
no surprise there. He sneaks over to the neighbor’s house at all times of the
day and night and talks to his “imaginary friend”; sound familiar?
So suddenly Katy has to be rushed to the hospital and stay
there under observation for a few days. So the little boy has to stay with the
family across the street he’s been creeping on this whole time. The mother’s
explanation for allowing the little boy to stay at their house is that he has
no family (CHEA cuz they’ve all been brutally murdered by Katy and this kid’s
imaginary friend!). THIS MAKES NO SENSE. I would have just said “heck no lady I
don’t know you and I don’t know you’re life…” but out of the kindness of her
heart this lady opens her home to this child. The little boy creeps around the
house talking to his imaginary friend, TOBY, and it weirds the teenage girl
out. So naturally she wants to videotape her household. Her boyfriend has
apparently been videotaping all of their skype sessions, which is CREEPIER than
this little boy walking around the house. Can we just talk about how weird that
is for a second? Anyways, he changes the settings on the 3 apple laptops and
they set them up in the house to monitor the little boy. This is stupid. Number
one, why does a five year old have a MAC (computer #1)? I don’t even have a MAC;
and who uses a laptop just for recipes (computer #2)??? And can we talk about
how much energy they’re wasting leaving these laptops plugged in? Not to
mention no one moved the laptop once. Laptops are mobile! That’s their appeal
as opposed to a desktop. Yet everyone in the family, except for the teenage
girl who clumsily and awkwardly walked around with her laptop, left the laptops
alone (on the middle of the kitchen countertop). One cool and creative feature
they added to the personal camera filming was the XBOX 360 kinect night vision
setting. Once the lights were turned off and some setting was set on the game
system tiny bulbs of light filled the room. What’s the purpose of this? Duh, so
we can see the supernatural! For some reason this family also left on the XBOX
at all times. Made no sense; their electric bill had to be crazy.
Energy wasting aside, the movie actually started off really
slow and took forever to build up. I was actually FALLING ASLEEP, which I NEVER
do. I don’t believe in wasting $10+ on a movie and missing any part of it
whether it’s horrible or not. So on a particularly dull part, I got up, bought some candy and a
coke, stretched a little and returned to my seat ready to be thrilled. And it
did get better!
I won’t spoil anymore of the movie for people that are
waiting to see the movie. But you get to see a little more of Toby or I should
say you begin to understand the many faces and forms of Toby. Toby becomes even
more devious (how you say? Watch the movie); that was cool and scary. Also a
little more of the family history is discovered about Katy. You still don’t
understand some things about what happened between Hunter’s toddler years to
his 5 year old self. In the end, after watching this movie you’ll be more
suspicious of anything going missing in your house and spontaneously appearing
later on AND you’ll be watching your back while you skype with your friends. I actually
really liked Paranormal Activity 4! I might watch it again just in case I
actually missed something significant during the dull parts. I jumped quite a
few times. My face probably did look crazy like the people in the previews,
especially towards the end of the movie. AND YES I SCREAMED! I wasn’t the only
one, even though it felt like it because everyone in the theater screamed at
the exact same time I did. I went to see this movie with my two best friends,
so it definitely made it substantially more bearable as opposed to seeing it
solo and having to return to an empty house. But my scream was REAL and totally
justified. Yeah I laughed afterwards, but I was SKERD!
There WILL be a Paranormal Activity 5. That’s all I’m gonna
say. Go see it if you dare! Muahahahahaha.
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