Flaxseed and chocolate chip cookies

What I love about this recipe is that the cookies come out not so hard as most oatmeal cookies. Also, the combination of healthy fiber(oatmeal and flaxseed) and treat(chocolate chips) is great.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1.5 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups oatmeal

1/2 cup flaxseed

1 cup chocolate chips

Tools:

baking sheet

two medium bowls

wooden spoon (optional)

aluminum  paper

Ready? Then lets begin to make some cookies that will blow your mind.

Set oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

Mix sugars and butter together. You want the butter to be soft. I usually take it out of the fridge about 1 hour before I start making my cookies. Add the eggs and vanilla, mix well. In a separated bowl mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and combine. finally, add the oatmeal, flaxseed and chocolate chips and mix with the hand or a wooden spoon.  I really recommend to refrigerate your cookie dough at least 24 hours before baking. This last step helps to set the flavors and textures. Take your refrigerated dough and get  the baking sheet ready by covering it with aluminum paper. I like to this since it is easier to clean up, but if you do not have aluminum paper handy, it is fine. Place spoonfuls of the cookie mixture over the baking sheet two inches apart from each other and from the edges of the baking sheet.

Place the spoonfuls of cookie dough in the hot oven and bake for 11 to 13 min. depending on you oven. I recommend to check on the cookies around the 12th minute, if the cookies seem to need another 3 or 4 min. more, TAKE THEM OUT NOW!!!! Over-baking the cookies harden them.  Take my advice, I have made like 100 batches of cookies, therefore I have some kind of authority. 

I love movies

    I really do not know why I love to watch movies. I guess I like to be entertained, but some time I like to be entrained with movies that depresses me, makes me sad or makes me anxious. I was trying to figure out why I like so much to watch movies and I came with the conclusion that I like to see how other people carry their lives and how they live, how they think, how do they reflect over the issues.  I some times see movies as a window, a passage to the world of another person, actually another world, with different perspectives, priorities, values. Another time movies are passage to lives, ideas so similar to mine that I feel identified with them. For example, I felt a lot of empathy with Ada McGrath, the character that interpreted Holly Hunter in The Piano. I also felt empathy with the character that Juianne  Moore  in The Hours.  Movies are I way to communicate each others about how we feel and that we can learn about feelings we did not know about or we can feel empathy about those movies that talk about somethings that we have experienced too.

The Band's visit

i like this movie. It is a movie about a Egyptian police band that has a presentation in some town in Israel, but they got stocked in the airport due to bureaucracy or God get to know what.  When trying to find the way by themselves, they got lost in a small desolated town of Israel in the middle of the desert. The story evolves from a small shop owned by Dina(Ronit Elkabetz), where the leader of the Band; Tewfiq( Sasson Gabai) asks for directions.  I just got stunted by the acting of both Ronit and Sasson. Since I saw the movie I have put in my blockbuster queue the movies Or and Late Marriage where Ronit performs.  What I liked the most about the movie is the fact that the film is all  but cliche. I do not like the cliche in movies where it is explained the arab vs Israeli conflict  and the reasons underneath it. the script  is so original, funny, and it flows so natural. I like The Band’s visit because I felt how it tells the story of deep and shallow human interaction and how we enormously need that human closeness, so bad that we try to grab it from anyone that show little need too.  

Tropical Thunder

I loved Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr., they are hilarious, so funny and creative. I was sceptic of this movie since I am not the type that likes this type of comedies, but later I realized that I had liked some of the Ben Stiller comedies such as “some thing about mary”,  “meet the parents” , “meet the Fockers” and “the night at the museum”. In tropical thunder Ben acts and directs. The movie is a satire about how Hollywood makes war movies and the actors producers, producer assistants, agents and explosive effects expert in them.  Tom cruise plays an annoying, over the top producer and Robert Downey Jr. impersonates an Australian actor who plays a role of a black soldier in the “war movie” that takes place in this movie

The Dark Knight

On Thursday my husband David and I went to see the world premier of Batman "The Dark Knight" at midnight. I am not a fan of the Batman movies but the last two movies really impressed me. The Dark Knight is the best batman movie of all and one of the best movies I have seen this year. The Dark Knight specially astonishes me for its great performances, direction, score, script and ideas. 

 The most impressive aspect of the movie is the great acting of Heath Ledger. The interpretation of the Joker by Heath is really scary, strong, original and deep. The performance of Heath Ledger is far  better and different from Jack Nicholson's.  I define a great actor or actress by rating their abilities of really making you feel the way they are feeling in their performances or the way they are making the character of the movie feel. For instance, the Joker want to generate and perpetuate chaos, desolation, uncertainty in Gotham, well, that was exactly how I felt when watching the movie and some time afterwards. Heath was a really gifted actor and even though I do not like the superficial, idolization of public figures after their dead, but in the case of Heath is a fact, he had a long way to grow in his acting career. 

With the direction of  Christopher Nolan and an unpredictable script, the movie gives a more human perspective  of friends  and foes who ideas about existentialism, humanity and morality are more deep than I would expected. I have never given comics the attention they deserve, but after watching batman I really give them all my respect .

The Piano

Writer/director Jane Campion  tells story of a mute woman's rebellion in the recently colonized New Zealand wilderness of Victorian times. Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute who has willed herself not to speak, just expresses herself trough her piano.  Ada McGrath and her strong-willed young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) find themselves in the New Zealand wilderness, Ada is the imported bride of dullard land-grabber Stewart (Sam Neill). The story evolves around the piano and the rebellion of Ada against her situation of being forced to be a wife to a man she did not know neither she could love.  

The main reason I love The Piano is the way Jane Campion tells the rebellion of Ada in such a tantalizing, genuine  way.  The acting of Anna Paquin, Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel is supreme. The music by Michael Nyman is delightful, so romantic and poetic. I think Jane Campion deserved to win the Oscar Award for best director but she did not because of the misogyny of  some academy members.

Having trouble going potty poop?

My both children have trouble when it comes to pooping. They suffer from constipation constantly. I have tried ground bran from rice but it works just with a gigantic glass of water. If the humongous glass full of enormous quantities of liquid is not drunk with the bran then the situation could get worst. I also tried papaya which works for my older child David, but not for Derek. I tried oatmeal which Derek likes, but it is just not enough. Derek likes bananas, oranges and grapes for snacks. Those fruits are good to have healthy bowel movements but they are not making all the job.  We do our daily exercising of dancing  and going to the park but it is not making them go pooping as good as I would like. I finally found I great thing that they both like and work for them wonderfully. I give the a small cup of half cranberry juice and half of prune juice before breakfast of with the breakfast and as a bed time drink. The cocktail juice works great. Try it if you are having troubles with your children’s tummies. Regarding the bran; I use it when baking,cookies. I also use ground flax seeds which have a lot of fiber but you have to remember to drink a huge glass full of enormous  quantities of milk or juice with your cookies full of fiber.