- oven, preheat on 175 degrees, rack in the middle
- big roasting pan
ingredients:
VEGETABLES (you can vary these depending on what you have available or for some flavor fun, like swap the eggplant for slices of squash)
- 1 large eggplant, sliced thin
- 2 medium zuchinis(courgette), sliced thin
- 2 onions
- rucola or spinach, ripped up
- 1 clove of garlic, crushed
DAIRY
- 1 small container of creme fraiche
- 1 container of cottage cheese
- 2 mozzarella balls
- shredded mozarella
SAUCE (too little sauce makes the lasagna dry)
- 1 large can of crushed tomatoes
- some tomato paste mixed with water or tomato juice
- some chili pepper (very little)
- salt and pepper
- fresh or dry basil
- add thyme and any other spices if you want to
- olive oil
MAKING:
ROAST VEGGIES: The secret to having your lasagna cook all the way through is to cook the veggies first. Once you have sliced them all up, put them in a big baking pan, toss them with salt, pepper, olive oil and other spices and put them in the oven to roast. You can include a bit of chili if you want the lasagna a bit spicy. The vegetables should get soft, but not start to fry or dry up.
MAKE MARINARA SAUCE: Mix crushed tomatoes and some tomato juice or paste and a bit of water with 1/2 of the garlic and some spices; basil, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. Cook into a nice sauce and set aside. You need quite a lot of sauce for juicy lasagna.
MAKING THE LAYERS: First, in a big baking pan, lay out dry lasagna noodles, then put a small layer of vegetables, then marinara sauce, then slices of soft mozzarella, grated mozzarella, creme fraiche and cottage cheese. Choose the amounts depending on your baking pan size and leaving space to make this layering 3 more times. On the top put one last layer of noodles, some sauce, creme fraiche, cottage cheese and lots of grated cheese and drizzle some olive oil on top.
BAKING: Cover the pan with tin foil, try not to let it touch the top cheese too much. Cook on 175 degrees, with over and under heat, until things start to sizzle and drip in the pan (probably 20 min), then you can remove the foil and let it continue 5 or 10 more minutes until the top is beautifully golden and crispy.
ENJOY: Let your lasagna sit, covered, for about 10 minutes outside of the oven before serving. Don't burn yourself trying to eat it too soon even though you might not be able to control your drooling while you wait.
Hi, here, a very short paper I wrote on the topic of pain for one of my courses. Enjoy the video links!
September 15, 2010
NO PAIN, NO GAIN
"'No pain, no gain' is an American modern mini-narrative: it compresses the story of a protagonist who understands that the road to achievement runs only through hardship."[1]
Still far from the extreme of the Geisha's painful beauty rituals of footbinding, the practice of strenuous fitness in search of wellness and beauty remains full of pain. Many people think if they don’t feel pain, they’re not having a quality workout and they will not achieve their desired results. Phrases such as "feel the burn!" and "no pain, no gain!" have become commonplace in fitness culture. Valuing pain, sacrifice and self-denial have become culturally accepted. In this paper I will note the American 1980s aerobics scene and the propagation and subsequent withdrawal of the phrase "no pain, no gain".
The phrase is in fact a very old one, implying that the road to achievement necessarily contains hardships. "There is an allusion to ``no pain, no gain" in a 1650s Robert Herrick poem: ``If little labor, little are our gains, man's fortunes are according to his pains."[2] The same point was later made by Benjamin Franklin in 1733 in his Poor Richard's Almanac: ``There are no gains without pains"."[3]
No pain, no gain (or "No gain without pain") is now popularly remembered as an exercise motto that came into prominence around 1982 when actress Jane Fonda began to produce aerobics workout videos.
In 1971, Jackie Sorenson's "Jazzercise" studio opened in New Jersey and others including Judy Sheppard Misset quickly followed suit. By the 1980s, a major fitness wave obsessed with beauty, sex appeal and of course, also health, hit America. In this time, after the revolutionary '60s and '70s had transitioned into the "Me Generation", personal fitness industries of diet products, gyms and innovative exercise machines boomed.
The sexy, young and free-spirited body images presented by shining commercial fitness stars like Jane Fonda and "boy next door" Richard Simmons were immediately embraced by popular culture. For example, in pop-music star Olivia Newton-John's video for her 1981 hit single "Physical", the singer, an equally sexy, near double of Fonda, transforms fat men into hardbodies through strenuous exercise. Who wouldn't mind suffering a bit to make Olivia or Jane happy, or better yet, to be like them?
Being fit went beyond just feeling good (and looking strong and young). It became sex-appeal and everyone wanted it. The epitome of this within the fitness movement came with the popular "Aerobicise" videos where fit and sexy models were filmed at close camera angle, performing highly erotic exercise movements, some of which were in fact dangerous for the body.
"A 1983 Reader's Digest/Gallup poll showed that 47 percent of Americans exercised daily, compared to only 24 percent twenty years earlier. Home exercise equipment became very popular, with sales increasing from 30 to 65 percent a year between 1980 and 1986 on such items as rowing machines, skiing machines, and stationary bikes -- not to mention Gravity Inversion Books, an invention by orthopedist Robert M. Martin which allowed people to hang upside down from bars." [4]
Like numerous other companies, "In addition to opening nine physical fitness facilities, Xerox Corporation established its $3.5 million Fitness/Recreation Center, a private village on 2,300 acres in Leesburg, Virginia devoted to health management for its 56,000 employees." [4]
While Jane Fonda's intention was to motivate people to push past their fatigue and into the realm of aches to achieve fitness results, many people in the fitness and bodybuilding scenes took the call literally and worked towards pain, muscle tears and hardening - being hardcore.
Beyond the historic, global consciousness, going back to ancient Greek and Roman ideologies about the body, this modern image about what consisted of a beautiful, desirable body had become impossible to ignore. But what should happen to those people for whom attaining this perfect sexy body was a very difficult or impossible task?
Luckily some relief eventually arrived. Though the line between beneficially pushing yourself and having some aches and having actual pain is often blurry, the approach of believing that pain is necessary to reach fitness goals has been discredited. Scientific studies began to show the dangers of "high impact" activity and extreme diets. In addition, publicized events such as the heart-attack-while-running death of jogging book author James Fixx led many people towards moderation. Around the mid-eighties, Jane Fonda too finally abandoned her "no pain no gain" motto. In 2006, the still very "fit and beautiful" Fonda underwent a hip replacement and now in 2010, at age 71 still looking like a fit 40 year old, she has had a knee replacement.
In 2010, "extremefitnessresults" blogger Phil comments on the difference between a normal ache and a damaging, maybe tearing pain; "One comes from pushing your limits sensibly, the other comes from pride and stubbornness, where you push yourself past all the red flags. … stop before you hurt yourself! [5]
As the cultural sphere in 2010 is concerned to a different degree with fitness as in the 1980s, I will sum up this paper with a comment from the WiseGeek blog : The mantra of "no pain no gain" often motivates people to work through difficult situations or keep their focus on a higher purpose. Not all gains necessarily require pains, but few things in life are ever attained through disinterest or passivity. [6]
2/ Herrick, Robert; Alfred Pollardi, ed. (1898). The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2. London: Lawrence & Bullen. Vol. 2, 66 & 320.
3/ Franklin, Benjamin (1758). The Way to Wealth
4/ Manning, Jason (2000) Jane Fonda Works Out, from the series :The Eighties Club The Politics and Pop Culture of the 1980s http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id314.htm
in 1986 i traveled to Vancouver with my family and ever since I can't forget the Rainbow War film that I saw, shown on a giant wall of television screens at Expo 1986.
I saw this today, this is a pic form the web. I didn't have my camera with me unfortunately. It was incredible. So surreal. And Plutaras was completely doped.
this part on my moped is broken... does anyone know what's its called and how to fix it? Its a tiny bit of metal that sits in a groove and stops the flywheel from spinning around. Its essential to be able to start the bike. The little semi circle is broken in bits. I don't know what the original piece looked like.
I hope if I can if it then the bike will come to life again!
This part is obviously broken. The bike might have other problems too, but I'll start with this one and then go step by step. It was running well till suddenly something busted and the flywheel spun off, so this is a good place to start, I hope!
photo: Permutations 2: Berdan Forest, 3.2 by Fred Camper
By combining multiple photos taken from different perspectives, I have been trying to convey an ever-expanding sense of wonder at objects and places and spaces, driven by the self-invented myth that placing images in true and proper orders will help to heal this broken world. In more recent work, I have surrendered some control over imagery and ordering, in the hope of opening my work to the mix of order and chaos that fills the wider universe. - Fred Camper
Camper lives in Chicago. He's an artist, writer and lecturer, talking about experimental film. he hosts a nice website with Stan Brakhage resources.
"A 2.5 minute excerpt from 10 minute art installation by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. A computer controls the flow of water, the lights, the strobes, and the fans, etc. An ambisonic sound track plays through 8 hidden speakers and 2 hidden subwoofers. The piece begins as the storm approaches, with no water hitting the windows, then proceeds to the incredibly loud, floor shaking climax (sorry you can't hear this on Youtube). As the storm dissipates the sound of someone moving and coughing in the next room is heard and then the piece starts again. This work was created in a deserted dentist's office in a traditional Japanese house near the city of Tokamachi, Japan as part the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial 2009. "
(This is my rope. It's is a lot bigger than the one in this demo video.)
I'm got a large rope today and the ends were fraying quickly, so I turned to these sailor's tricks and ended up with really secure ends. Let's see how they hold up to the pulling.
maybe I'll try this sometime.
I noticed immediately that it feels really good to do some physical work, even just moving my fingers. The texture of the rope and the small twine felt rough and nice and holding up the tension while whipping the ends really helped my concentration.
basically, I want to be able to film like this, down the rope, so I'm looking at different possible camera mounts I can make.
ok so it seems like my blog is all about expressing grief over lost creative people lately.
But that is how things go....
Sad beyond belief, the incredible fashion designer Alexander McQueen committed suicide yesterday, at age 40.
His collection including fairy tales and wild animals greatly influenced my work a few years ago while I was studying textile and fashion design at Kootenay School of Arts. Through looking at a lot of McQueen and Belgian, Olivier Theyskens' works and nearing the dump of the year 2000, I created a body of clothing works that "could survive the apocalypse".
my favorite McQueen, Little Purple Riding Hood from the fairytale series :
TIME WAS BY FAR THE MOST ARTIFICIAL OF ALL OUR INVENTIONS, AND IN BEING BOUND TO THE PLANET TURNING ON ITS OWN AXIS WAS NO LESS ARBITRARY THAN WOULD BE, SAY, A CALCULATION BASED ON THE GROWTH OF TREES OR THE DURATION REQUIRED FOR A PIECE OF LIMESTONE TO DISINTEGRATE...
IN ORDER TO RECKON TIME WE HAVE TO DEVISE AN IMAGINARY, AVERAGE SUN...
you might have seen a previous posting, with amazing photos of colourful dolls. Unfortunately, Tsika, the creator of the dolls passed away recently.
Of all the people I have met in my life, Tsika was the only one that I truly believed was magical. For this reason especially, I feel a great loss at her death.
