Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Turkey


Today for Thanksgiving I'm going to post the only thing I feel comfortable making for the holidays - home-made cranberry sauce.

Since I make it, it must be simple. The hardest part in my opinion is peeling the fruit (no smart ass, you don’t have to peel the cranberries).

Fruit? Why the hell is there fruit in cranberry sauce? I don’t know, but it really fills out the flavor.

When you pour in all the ingredients it really doesn’t look like cranberry sauce. Fresh cranberries are hard, and not all that attractive. But be patient. As you come back to it to occasionally stir, you start to see the berries breakdown and if you’re lucky you should be able to hear them burst. They look and sound like lazy, red popcorn kernels.

This is about when the great smell will begin to fill the house.

One note, if you make this recipe, you get tons of cranberry sauce, and I don’t know about your family and friends but none of mine love cranberry sauce enough to eat the 12 servings this recipe is supposed to make. So you can half the recipe, but that leaves you with half an orange, apple and pear. In previous years I would pour it over a block of cream cheese and serve it at a holiday party as a spread. Mmmmmm. But this year I’m going to try to make brownies with cranberry swirls.

If that goes well, check back for that recipe.


John’s Cranberry Sauce

1 cup water
1 cup white sugar

1 (12 ounce) package of fresh cranberries
1 orange, peeled and pureed
1 apple, peeled, cored and diced
1 pear, peeled, cored and diced

½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions
1. In a medium sauce pan, BOIL water and sugar until the sugar DISOLVES
2. Reduce the heat to SIMMER.
3. STIR in all ingredients
4. COVER and simmer for 30 minutes, STIRRING occasionally, until the cranberries BURST.
5. Remove from heat and let COOL to room temperature.

Monday, November 20, 2006

A Rocky Love Story



A Rocky Love Story recounts a perfectly good day at the beach ruined by rock throwing and falling in love

This low-fi short was 'filmed' on a winter walk on Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA. It was shot using the movie mode of our 2 megapixel Canon camera. An older version of this was cut using Sony Vaio's bad answer to iMovie, this version was editted and touched up in Final Cut Pro.

A Rocky Love Story features some of the worst acting by a male performer in the history of recorded media. (I was the male actor.)

The music is by an artist named Casperson from the Netherlands. Info and more of his music can be found at garageband.com/artist/casperson

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Another Comic


Click on image to make it bigger.

made by me at:

http://www.wittycomics.com

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Writers always look like that.

This is me on the set of "Toast" a 48 Hour Film Project Fall Shoot Out short film I co-wrote and assistant directored.

If you haven't guessed I'm not the one in the tub.

The film will be available on-line soon for voting. I will forward the details as they become available.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Fun












Click on image to make it bigger.

made by me at:

http://www.wittycomics.com

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Ch-ch-changes!

Turning over a new leaf here at themudthebloodthebeer. I've decided to branch out from the core idea of writing about filmmaking. Oh, heck yeah, it's my favorite thing in the world so I'll keep writing about it movies, script writing and film making, but I need a place to put down the ideas, stories and picture about me, my life and my writing/filmmaking. So there might eventually be a face lift, but now the unpleasant color change will have to do.

So for now, here's the best looking thing I've made in a long time.