Under a Red Roof ·

On Film

July 28, 2026 in Uncategorized by Colleen | Permalink

A Samurai in Time: Kosaka, from the Edo era, is about to engage in battle during a storm and is inexplicably transported to 2007 when lightning strikes. He initially survives on the kindness of strangers before “acting” as a stunt performer in period films. A love story to community and Samurai Films of old and new. So very good!

Burn, Burn, Burn: Two friends somewhat begrudgingly head out on a road trip to distribute the ashes of one of their dearest friends and confront their own most challenging truths.

Faults: A cult expert, keen to pay off debts, reluctantly agrees to help a couple deprogram their daughter, but nothing is as it seems. Totally bananas!

Good Luck – Have Fun – Don’t Die: A man, desperate to save the world, enlists help from a group of people at a diner, over and over again, until he gets it right. Edge of your seat and hilarious. Sam Rockwell at his most brilliant!

Hayseed: A disgraced cop, now employed by an insurance company, gets more than he bargained for when he investigates a priest who is murdered in his own church.

Hopscotch – the wonderful Walter Matthau (that voice!) brilliantly portrays a scorned secret agent out for serious revenge. Such fun!

A Little Prayer: A Father and daughter-in-law share a tender friendship in a rather tumultuous family.

The Man in The Hat: A quirky man in a Fiat 500 eavesdrops, escapes murderers, witnesses true love and near suicide, and gets awfully wet on a road trip in France. My kind of odd, plus Ciaran Hinds!

Nina in Rome: A dogsitter finds love among the beautiful buildings of Rome. Armchair travel at its best.

Omni Loop: Zoya, a woman with a black hole growing in her chest, travels back in time, over and over again, in an attempt to save her life. Fearing she is doomed to failure, she enlists the aid of a young researcher and begins again and again.

On the Wandering Paths: After a drunken fall nearly kills him, a man, scarcely recovered from his injuries, decides to walk to the ocean. Philosophical armchair travel!

Out and About: More wandering! A man roams his old neighborhood over the course of a day, pondering his life, his choices, and those he encounters along the way.

If God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya: An obstinate and passionate woman wins a contest historically reserved for men and turns her town upside down in the process. My first Macedonian film!

Project Hail Mary: A high school teacher and brilliant scientist must try to save the world, but really doesn’t want to. I tried to read this book and really did not like it, but Ryan Gosling? Both Greg and I enjoy just about everything he does! It did not disappoint.

Time Travel is Dangerous: Two best friends run a second hand shop, with access to the best the past has to offer via a bumper car time machine they found in an alley. It’s all fine until their world goes wonky and must fix what they’ve unleashed before it destroys everything.

Tags: Movies

Fringe

July 23, 2026 in Quoting by Colleen | Permalink

It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually–if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning– you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as–Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so–I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I’m that, too. But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it.

Alan Watts

Tags: Quoting

Outside

July 21, 2026 in Feeling by Colleen | Permalink

It is outside season, fully, unabashedly. After our weekday workout and dog walk, we make espressos, extra hot and steaming, in my case, before heading to the porch. We plug in the fountain and are transported, a distant creekside, the burble and rush meditative and most pleasant.

Some days I clumsily pile books and reading glasses, settling in for the long haul. Juniper stays within earshot, until each coffee mug is thoroughly dispatched and licked good and proper. We puzzle – each our own. I read and plant gaze. I read and bird gaze. I read and sky gaze. I have a cooling snack. I might even nap if the elements are right.

Saint

July 16, 2026 in Quoting by Colleen | Permalink

I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.

Nelson Mandela

Tags: Quoting

Pushing Buttons

July 14, 2026 in Cooking + Baking by Colleen | Permalink

Homemade yogurt! Greg and I are big fans and really hate all the plastic waste it entails, so I decided to make it with milk from a carton (better but not perfect). Rather hilariously, I searched the interwebs, tried a couple of slightly complicated variations in my giant Staub, with powdered starter purchased online, but neither was quite right. Then I found, on a comment thread for one of the recipes I tried, someone wondering if they did it “wrong” because they just used the “yogurt” button on their Instant Pot.

Friends, I am a frequent flyer in instant pot land, and never even noticed said button! Mix the milk with the starter, put the lid on, and press it. No babysitting while waiting for a certain temperature, for a certain amount of time, no keeping in an only barely warm oven to incubate. It’s amazing! I start it in the morning, then, just before bed, scoop about half of the finished product into a cloth bag over a strainer. It drains in the fridge overnight, and in the morning I have very dense yogurt and a decent bit of whey to use in recipes! I blend the dense bit into what finished the night before for delicious Greek style yogurt. Happy days.

In more button pushing, we had a great system for making rice on our gas stove. When we got the induction, we could not get it right (always crunchy, blech) and resigned ourselves to be a rice-free household. No big deal, as we don’t eat it frequently anyway. But then, well before the yogurt button, we spied it on the instant pot. We dad gum did it again (serious nod to AiC)! Of course it is great, and perfect each time.

How frequently it pays to observe the world with a bit of discretion, eh?

Now to our latest fun eats catalog. This is The Choi of Cooking (thanks Roy!) Green bean and chicken stir-fry. The sauce is his sweet garlic teriyaki, slightly labor intensive, but totally wonderful!

Somewhere on the web, I spied a picture of fish baked with crushed potato chips and was diggity down. Tastes like yum.

I love pudding, just about anyway I can get it. Except, traditional Southern style banana with vanilla wafers. Perhaps, if they were crushed moments before sprinkling on top, I’d be interested, but baked or layered in is just gross. Read: mushy. So, when I crave banana pudding, I candy a couple handfuls of pecans in some sugar, maybe adding a little ginger, and sprinkle them over top. Now that’s what I’m talking ’bout!

I made bagels! I’ve got some rolling and shaping to improve, but the texture and flavor was on point.

Gochujang marinated steak and salad with gochujang ranch. It’s a delicious theme.

Milk and cream braised pork chops! Salad!

I made pumpernickel and sliced it too soon! It was worth every bite. Also, did you know that much of the color and flavor is from cocoa powder? Chemistry!

We made open face fish sandwiches with the pumpernickel. They were the tops!

More pumpernickel! I also used the whey from yogurt making to brine chicken breasts, which is akin to buttermilk. They were the most tender I have ever made. Oh, and topped with Frank’s. Salad had apples and a nice vinaigrette.

Flank steak with miso gravy, homemade lemonade, and an approximation of coleslaw made with fennel and apples. Why an approxiation and not the real thing? I can not tolerate brassicas! Womp, womp.

When I was a kid, my mom made Brussels sprouts, and I became violently ill. Thinking it was just me being picky or maybe they were a little old, I bought them quite fresh, on a beautiful stalk, in Portland. I roasted them in butter and maple syrup, and topped the whole dish with bacon. They were so damn tasty, and I threw all of them right up. Case closed on the sprouts.

Not making any sort of connection, I ate roasted cauliflower, cabbage every which way, and my favorite broccoli in spicy garlic sauce at our local Chinese. I always got sick, but, but, but, I also always thought it was something else. Chinese food being rich, eating too much wheat, fill in the blank. Then, one not so fine day, I ate a big bowl of coleslaw, made fresh and perfect by yours truly and got awful sick. After literal decades, I put it all together and got very sad. So, only approximations, and what a difference!