Cooking, Film Making, and Walking

"I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there's another alternative, that's walking on foot." -- Werner Herzog

Walking

I'm glad we spent a lot of our Saturday afternoon at home, otherwise, I might have missed that lovely rainbow. Once I finally ventured out, I walked to Herbivore to meet Jennifer McCann, of Vegan Lunch Box fame, and to pick up a copy of her new book, available one day earlier than everywhere else, suckas!

It had been raining earlier, the kind of sweet Portland rain (not the more intense tropical rains from earlier in the week), but it stopped right before I was ready to go. The rainbow was gone, but the walk was still beautiful. Beautiful in its familiarity, beautiful in its dryness, and beautiful because I am ever-excited to have a vegan store and magazine in walking distance to my house.

Cooking

It was great to catch up with Josh, Michelle, and Kris again and run into all kinds of other local vegan types, and it was especially cool to get to talk with Jennifer. Jennifer is completely sweet and soft spoken and warm. We talked about knitting and about blogs and about anonymity (like how you are reading this right now and I might not know you). She signed my book "happy lunches!" How cute is that?

AA suggested I provide you with a quick preview of the book since I'm one of the earliest to get it. Well, it's adorable. It's organized by menus, and the book progresses from easier/quicker lunches in Chapter 1 to ones you would make earlier in the morning in Chapter 2 to ones you'd make the night before in Chapter 3 to my favorite, Chapter 4: Lunch Box Adventure! This chapter includes lunch menus inspired by cuisine from around the world. I'm most excited to make the Ethiopian, Greek, and Indian lunches! Chapter 5 includes menus for special occasions like birthdays, valentine's day, graduation, and holidays.

I also really enjoy the section entitled "Okay, I've got two pieces of bread. Now what?" cause I tend to get bored of sandwiches very easily. I'm hoping that I'll use the menus, or at least some of the individual recipes, in my lunches cause I really really like it when I get to eat a good lunch! I can see myself using the menus as a template for my own ideas, too. Of course, I'm completely jealous of shmoo's fancy- pants lunch box!

I'll say more once I've made some of the recipes!

Film Making

After missing the opening night of the Northwest Film Festival last night (see this post), I was extra excited to go the second day. We decided we weren't going to make the second set of Shorts without rushing too much, so we ate a kinda hodgepodge dinner of leftover mixed rice and tofu which magically turned out great along with a ton of steamed swiss chard with oregon dukkah and nutritional yeast -- kapow! Took the next bus and got there way early and got to listen to the Q and A for the movies we didn't get to see. It was still exciting to get to hear film makers talk about the film making process: money, grants, how they get it done, what they were hoping to do, etc. Every time I listen to a Q and A, I dream about film school.

Walking
On the way to the theater, AA and I started to talking about the pain in our feet. We've both stopped wearing our earth shoes a few days ago, AA cause his are fabric uppers and they don't hold up in the rain and me cause I wore mine in the rain and stepped in puddles and they got soaked and were still wet. Walking is one of our favorite things to do, and it hasn't been as fun lately. While we're having different kinds of foot/leg pain (nothing serious -- I have to say this cause sometimes my sister reads here!), we both agreed that we miss wearing our earth shoes and have to figure out a way to walk comfortably in the rain.

The movie we were walking to when we were talking about this was Walking to Werner, an interesting coincidence that I only remembered while I was watching the film. In the film, a Seattle film maker decides to make a pilgrimage from Seattle to Los Angeles in the hopes of getting to meet one of his favorite film makers, Werner Herzog! He was also hoping to model, in his walking to Werner, Herzog's own walking journey to his friend Lottie Eisner (film critic and author of one of my favorite books on German ExpressionismThe Haunted Screen) many years ago.

The story goes: Herzog learned that Lottie Eisner suffered a massive stroke and was dying. He was instructed to come quickly. At that moment, in a flash, he decided he would not get on a plane, and that he would walk. And in his walking, his friend would not die. Herzog's walk to Paris took about a month, and Lottie Eisner lived to see him visit her.

Linas Phillips journey has nothing of this high drama; a trip by me or AA to see Herzog could be just as likely, except for that we would need more comfortable shoes. Also, we would want to verify that Werner would in fact be in the country when we got there. That said, whenever you walk any length of distance, you find that there are interesting characters along the way. That might be one of the best things about walking and hiking, and it's the best part of this film. The people, and the beautiful scenery along the Oregon and California coast, make an otherwise pedestrian film (ha ha haHA) more watchable.

Phillips is no Herzog, but he does share his tendency to extremes: both share moments of rare gentleness and near violent aggression when the camera is pointed towards them. Both of them make films that say less about their subjects and more about themselves.

Since its unlikely that this film will get distribution outside of the Pacific Northwest, I'll tell you that no matter how much he willed it so, Herzog was not at his Los Angeles home when Philips arrived. Herzog doesn't appear in the film except for in some phone messages and recorded voice-overs. He suggests in an email to Philips that his appearance at the end would cheapen the film, but we know that's all bunk.

I would have really enjoyed a Q and A with the director cause I had so many questions for him, but he didn't make the screening. Over 1,000 miles walking to Los Angeles and he couldn't make the less the 170-something mile trip to Portland!