Annie de la Dolce

True Blood Season 5

Summer is almost here and you know what that means! True Blood, people, and it starts up again on June 10 with season 5. Though if I'm being honest, I'm just not as psyched about it as I was last year. I'm not sure what happened, but somewhere during season 4 things just got bad. While thinking about the new season I went back and read what I wanted to happen last season, and most of it actually came true, but the execution was just off. The sad thing was, they had all the parts to make it really cool, but it just wasn't.

There might be some book spoilers here so proceed with caution.

Good things:

• For starters, there were no more viking flashbacks. We didn't have to be succumbed to looking at Alexander Skarsgaard in a horrible wig sexing up the peasant girls in any clichéd hokey memories.

• I also was hoping that they'd clean Sookie's house up which was still a wreck from season 2 and lasted throughout season 3. Having Eric buy her house while she was in the fairy realm was cunning of him since he wouldn't have to be invited inside anymore nor could he have the invitation rescinded. Well played, Northman.

• They also got rid of Sophie-Anne and made Bill the vampire king of Louisiana. This was a pretty big departure from the book and one that I loved. For one, Evan Rachel Wood didn't do Sophie-Anne any favors, she was bland and uninteresting. I also had trouble believing she was a queen because she had no real menace or charisma (things royalty need to have), unlike Russel Edgington who had it in spades. And for two, it was great to see Bill in a position of real power which brought something different to his character besides being Sookie's obsessed protector and one true love.

Bad things:

• I wanted to see Tara get a story line where she gets to be somewhat happy for once. Over the seasons her character has gone from strong-female with a chip on her shoulder to whiny victim who never stops complaining. In other words, she's depressing as hell. She's had some pretty horrible things happen to her, so why not let her be happy for a little while? It was believable that she would join up with the witches against the vampires but in the end, I wish she would have gone rogue or stayed dark instead of being manipulated into yet another horrible and diabolic plan. And what does she get in the end? She gets half of her head blown off in a season finale cliff-hanger. Either she is dead or the vampires she hates will have to save her with their blood. Poor Tara, she's the show's punching bag.

• Jason's stint as a sex slave for the werepanthers was disturbing, even for this show. And unlike the book, his bites haven't led to him becoming a panther-man during the full moon. Maybe he will eventually, maybe he won't, but I hope we never see Hot Shot meth land again or its inbred inhabitants.

• Sam's story lines have always been pretty meh, but his last one takes the cake. His new romantic interest was pretty boring and I'm not really sure what the point of it was. We got introduced to "skinwalkers" who are shifters who can shift into other humans but only if they kill someone. Tommy accidentally figures this out but in the end it doesn't matter because they killed him off. At least we can say that Ma and Pa Mickens will never be seen again as they are alligator food at the bottom of the swamp.

• Book 4 has always been my favorite in the Sookie series so I was really looking forward to seeing Eric in the romantic role for the season, but the show killed it. As in murdered it. I loved the memory-erasing spell and his hiding out in Sookie's house, but I didn't like that having Eric's mind wiped also meant that his sarcastic nature and wit was gone as well. The book at least maintained some humor with Eric's brain-warp but the show just turned him into a sad mope. And the love triangle became the last thing I wanted to see on the show (well, besides the inbred werepanthers), which is so very sad because I flew through the book to get to these parts. Sookie and Eric were sadly, totally lame, especially when they were tripping out on vampire/fairy-blood in an imaginary snowy forest complete with an animal skin-covered bed. I mean, what was that? Maybe my expectations were high but it was really a huge let down. Another reason might be because Sookie and even to a point, Eric, are more likable in the books, which is the exact opposite for Bill as he's much more likable in the show.

Okay things:

• The witches were very intriguing at first. A spanish Inquisition-era sorceress (Antonia) inhabits the body of a modern day wiccan suffering from low self-esteem (Marnie). Together they used necromancy to compel vampires to rise during the day and meet the sun, which was a really cool idea. And in the beginning it seemed like they even had a good reason for doing it, seeing as Antonia was raped and burned at the stake by vampires hundreds of years ago. But somewhere in the middle of it all things got convoluted. At first it was Antonia using Marnie's body to enact revenge but eventually it switches and Marnie traps Antonia inside of her to use her powers while she takes things to the extreme. When or why the switcheroo happened is never really answered. Also, the big hurrah really bothered me with the dead citizens of Bon Temps coming back to help defeat Marnie, mainly because Gran was really depressing, talking about how we're all alone and wearing the same nightgown she had on when she was killed. So in the True Blood universe you have to spend all of eternity in the clothes that you died in? That sucks.

• Jesus's "brujo" story also had both good and bad parts. For starters I really loved that Lafayette got to enjoy having an awesome boyfriend who was genuine and extremely good-looking for awhile. And he didn't have a hidden evil agenda, which is what I was afraid of last year because I didn't want Lafayette to turn into another tara, someone who has one traumatic event happen to them after another. And in the end that's exactly what it was, because Lafayette stabbed poor Jesus while Marnie inhabited his body. That's beyond traumatic. That's sadistic on the writer's part. Poor guy. I'm really going to miss Jesus, even his weird blue demon head that pops up during spells. I am however glad that we won't have to watch him exorcise anymore ghosts, because watching him help Mavis and her baby cross over to the other side as he cast her spirit out of Lafayette looked like one of the cheesier episodes of Ghost Whisperer.

Things I hope for:

• I hope they explain why the fairy realm looks like Joshua Tree and why all the fairies turned into trolls. Is this their true nature? Or is it an illusion?

• It looks like Chris Meloni is on board for season 5 and fans seem to be pretty excited about it. I've never watched Law & Order so I'm not that familiar with him but I hope he makes for some fun TV watching.

• At the end of last season we saw that Russell Edgington had broken free from his concrete grave in a parking garage. It will be good to have him back because he is desperately needed. No one does evil quite like Russell.

• I hope Tara is just mostly dead and not all the way dead so that she can be saved with vampire blood. I didn't really like her character that much but I didn't want her to die ... I just wanted her to have a few sentences of dialog where she's not whining. I also hope she stays for Lafayette's sake because that poor guy just lost his hot boyfriend and he can't lose his cousin too.

• The triangle between Sookie, Eric and Bill is getting tiresome. I hope they stay apart for most of the season so some of that original tension could build up and make things interesting again. Or better yet, how about having her hook up with Alcide this season. He sure could use some love after his vampire blood-addict girlfriend got her head blown off.

• I hope the secondary story lines don't bring the others down like they have in previous seasons. There are just so many people on this show and they each have their own story arcs. I hope that in the end everyone comes together to fight for the greater good, much like they did with Mary Anne in season 2.

• And finally, I hope that Jessica and Hoyt Fortenberry get back together. I just love those two.

Please tell me your thoughts on season 4 and your hopes for season 5 in the comments. I'd love to see what other people are thinking.

The iced coffee of my DREAMS.

There's a few drink staples I must have in my fridge at all times for various reasons. I have three. #1 is some kind of diet non-cola. I am pretty addicted to this stuff ... I know it's basically a formula of chemicals and carbonated water but I care not. I love diet 7-up (option, cherry), diet Sprite, Diet Sierra Mist (okay, I think these are all the same thing) ... and Fresca. I LOVE Fresca.

#2 is my favorite adult beverage Strongbow (cider, dryer than Woodchuck). This love came from drinking cheap-ass 2 liter bottles of the stuff in the UK during a stint of post-college traveling. It's expensive as hell in the US but it started becoming more available in New Orleans recently and since this happened, my quality of life has shot up like 1,239 points.

But the thing that I dream about and gets me out of bed in the morning is #3 ICED COFFEE.

I love it so much and have been trying to perfect it for myself at home for years.

One of my favorite days of the year is when Starbucks makes their pumpkin spice lattes available and I go right down to the nearest one and order a venti ICED ... baby. Well, perhaps this year I won't have to.

Iced coffee has totally surpassed hot coffee in my beverage love & affection. I can't drink the hot stuff unless it's really cold outside ... and since that doesn't happen too often in New Orleans, iced coffee is my drank!

But what I used to do to get my fix at home was hopelessly flawed. I used to brew a big pot of hot coffee every week or so and stick it in the fridge to get cold. And it was good ... but never GREAT. It never had the depth of flavor that you could get at Starbucks or the like. Even if I brewed some expensive boutique coffee. Even if I made espresso. Didn't matter. Always weak.

I've also tried this stuff:

 

I had never seen "cool brew" coffee concentrate until I moved to New Orleans. I loved it at first, but it got expensive. This bottle was probably around 9 or 10 bucks and it doesn't last that long. And it's pretty weak. But it is great in a pinch and comes in lovely flavors like hazelnut and vanilla. Amazing for irish coffee. AMAZING. But I like my coffee pretty strong, so I was going through these things like mad.

So after trying these things for awhile and thinking that the brewing/refrigerating hot coffee and weak coffee concentrate were my only two options without spending obscene amounts of cash on my own barista bar, I stumbled on a few genius blog-posts.

"Craving Comfort" Iced coffee and Pioneer Woman Iced Coffee

They are both basically the same method using different proportions in a "cold brew". This will make you your very own and extremely flavorful coffee concentrate for your iced coffee pleasure. Apparently it's the best way since brewing coffee the old fashioned way makes the drink acidic, which is baaaad for iced coffee.

It made so much sense.

At the end of the day, I like to go more with the Craving Comfort blog's proportions. It's more concentrated than Pioneer Woman's and also makes just a gallon. The Pioneer Woman's recipe makes 2 gallons. I don't own a 2 gallon container nor do I think I'd really need one.

It's just me drinking this stuff because my husband hates coffee. He's weird. Sometimes I just don't understand him.

Anyways, here's what I start out with:

New Orleans-style chicory coffee. 12 oz bag. 1 gallon of H₂O. (slightly different than the other blogs, but this works for me, I like it)

BTW ... do you know why peeps in New Orleans put chicory in their coffee?

Because of the civil war. That's why.

Coffee was a big import for New Orleans back in the day and the union navy blocked all that. So peeps started adding chicory to their coffee to make it last longer and I guess it stuck. It's all the rage at Café Du Monde!

But use whatever you want, as long as it's good stuff. It can't be shitty coffee because it'll be concentrated and you don't want to concentrate shitty coffee.

 

I mix up the coffee with a gallon of water in my biggest bowl and leave it in the fridge for a good 12 hours. I stir it around every so often because I think this might help things along, but really I'm just being impatient.

While that's coming along I like to mix up these two things:

Evaporated milk + sweetened condensed milk. The Homesteading Housewife explains where she got the idea (sounds like the stuff we put on sno-balls here in NOLA).

I've tried it with just straight-up sweetened condensed milk, like Pioneer Woman does (vietnamese coffee-style), but mixing it with the evaporated milk first makes it blend better with the coffee. I put the sweet creamy concoction in a cool olive oil bottle I got as a wedding gift (THANKS!) and leave it in the fridge.

After 12 hours, ladle the cold concentrate over a fine-mesh strainer into a gallon pitcher/container. If your mesh strainer is fine enough, you might not need anything extra but to be safe, put some cheesecloth in the strainer to filter out the grit.

I've also used coffee filters before and it works, but it's a little more time consuming because you'll need to change them a few times. I've also heard paper towels work, but haven't tried it.

What you get is this beautiful black flavorful rich liquid coffee concentrate.

You can do whatever you want with it really ... it just depends on how you take your coffee. Fill up a glass with ice, pour in some coffee to taste, depending on how strong you like it. You can fill the rest up with skim milk + splenda or stevia if you're being good. Half-n-half if you're bad (which is the best way to be). You can use 2%. If you like strong black coffee you could even use cold water. The possibilities are endless. If you don't drink milk, you could use almond, rice ... or (gross) soy milk.

However, my fave alternative to milk is this stuff. Coconut milk creamer. It's my 2nd fave way to drink iced coffee, though those little cartons get expensive.

But my absolute favoritest is CREAMY and (real) milky. I use a few tablespoons of some of the aforementioned sweet cream mix + top it off with milk. My husband usually buys whole milk but I've been trying to wean him off the hard stuff to some 2%.

And of course, if you want it sweeter and creamier, use more sweet cream ... or even top it off with half n half. Ohhhhh, yeah.

I mean ... damn. It's so good. You get the depth of flavor that you would from a fancy coffee shop and for pennies. My bag of CC's coffee cost about 5 bucks and will last all month in the fridge. That's how much ONE venti iced latte will cost me at Starbucks.

And I can't wait until fall when I'll be making a "pumpkin spice" version. OMFG.

On another note, my "Olde Nawlins Cookery" glass is my favorite glass of all time. I used to have several from my weekend trips as a tourist, but they've all broken except this one. If anyone knows where I could get a few I will love you forever. I'm not sure what happened to the place but it's just not the same since after Katrina, not sure what happened to it.

ANYWAYS.

If you love iced coffee you owe it to yourself to try this method. YOU WILL LOVE YOURSELF for it.

I promise.

Happy imbibing ;-)

 

 

My recent obsession with Loki ...

This:

And this...

Makes me all ...

Guilty Pleasures

What makes a pleasure a guilty one? Is it because it's too "mainstream" or because it's over-saturating pop culture? Is it because it's viewed as sophomoric or unsophisticated? Cheesy as hell?

Well, whatever the reason, there are definitely things out there that I feel are guilty pleasures of mine, mainly because I feel a slight (or a huge) twinge of shame for admitting that I like them. But why should I feel like that? I sometimes feel like things that are viewed as sophisticated are just big phonies while something that's seen as a "guilty pleasure" is at least genuine and unpretentious. For example, in the music world, bands like Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear get all the blog love and near-perfect ratings on Pitchfork, but listening to them just doesn't exactly inspire you to get up and dance like something Madonna just put out.

I just got (or rather, spotified) Madonna's new album and I love it. Does that somehow diminish my indie-music cred? Or is liking Madonna hip in that I'm being "ironic", like my friends in college who listened to underground techno music almost exclusively except for The Spice Girls?

Well, today I'm not going to pretend that something I like is a "guilty pleasure" when it's honestly just something I like, even love, because it's good. And maybe it's accidentally good. Or maybe just parts of it are good. But for whatever reason I just dig it. Here are my major ones:

TV shows:

The Vampire Diaries, True Blood and Revenge.

Honestly, right now I'm not sure that there's a TV show that's on that I look forward to more than The Vampire Diaries. Maybe Mad Men, but that's about it. Even the title, The Vampire Diaries, sounds like the cheesiest show that ever was, and on many levels it is ... but it's also fast-paced, filled with eye-candy (hey there Damon), suspenseful and above all, surprising. The season finale last week blew me away and I had no idea that they were going to go where they went. It was awesome.

Most of the "critically acclaimed" shows have powerful season finales as well, but they mainly just piss me off, like Boardwalk Empire or even Breaking Bad where they turn your favorite characters into assholes with no redeeming qualities. It's not really fun for me anymore if there's no one to root for, which is why I ultimately gave up on The Holiest of All TV Shows, The Sopranos.

True Blood is in the guilty pleasure category because anyone who chooses to still watch the show after last season is most certainly guilty of something. Which of course will be me. And Revenge was just some show I had on while I was organizing the thousands of photos I have on my computer, but got hooked on it and strangely invested in Amanda Clarke's misson to take down those horrible Grayson people and screaming at the TV to tell Jack the yummy bartender who she really is.

I also love Game of Thrones and the thing about that is, I can't really make out whether or not it should be seen as a "guilty pleasure". It's on HBO which automatically makes it "deep" on some level, and it's based on one of the most read and beloved series of books in nerdom, but have you seen it? Watching it makes me feel dirty sometimes. And I can't view it in front of other people, or at least when Theon Greyjoy is onscreen ... I have to leave the room.

Music:

Madonna and other female pop stars from my childhood like Whitney Houston, Wilson Phillips and ... Tiffany.

My favorite band of all time is The Rolling Stones and I love bands like Radiohead, The White Stripes (and the myriad of Jack White's other projects), The National and Tori Amos. But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for 80's and 90's pop music.

I also think, and I hate admitting this, that Justin Timberlake is quite good and should quit the acting thing so he can make another song as catchy as "Sexy Back" already.

Movies:

My husband thought I was kidding the other day when I made him a deal that I'd go to the pub with him even though I was perfectly comfortable in my pajamas, if he'd take me to see Think Like a Man. He still thinks I was kidding as he refuses to take me. I wasn't kidding ... I actually want to see it. I think it looks kinda cute. So sue me!

Books:

I've read most books and series of books that infect the mainstream with movies, action figures, happy meals and T-shirts that say "Team Jacob" or "Team Gale". I've read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and okay, even Twilight ... but nothing is as bad as the Fifty Shades of Grey series. It is literally Twilight fan-fiction. I flew through the first book after reading about it on my favorite feminist website that said it made feminism and literature take several steps back into the dark ages. I still read it.

It was horribly written. Every page made me shake my head and laugh at and not with it. And I couldn't put it down.

It made me want to cry in the shower and wash my brain out with soap. Like the industrial soap they have with special exfoliaters.

I'm now reading Jane Eyre to rectify the unbalance I created in the literary universe by reading such filth. And I promise it has nothing to do with watching the newer Jane Eyre depiction the other day on HBO starring Michael Fassbender as Mr. Rochester.

Food:

McDonalds.

I know I'm supposed to eat food that is lovingly prepared, locally sourced, seasonal and healthy. I know I'm supposed to shun restaurant chains and companies with backgrounds of unethical treatment of animals. But you know what? Sometimes I want a heaping pile of McDonalds french fries.

Whenever I've been traveling and feeling somewhat homesick, all you have to do is go to a McDonalds and their food tastes exactly the same as it does in your hometown. It's strangely comforting. It might be kind of sad and wrong that their food in the U.S. tastes the same as their food in Japan or London or Rome, but whatever, their fries are effing delicious.

I also seriously thought about buying a pack of Cherry Dr. Pepper (I never drink regular pop) because Loki from Thor and The Avengers appeared on the cans. I have a strange crush on him and I think I might go back to the store and buy one.

New Orleans:

Sometimes you just want an overly-sweet drink that might tip you over the edge. On these occasions there's nothing quite like getting a hand grenade or a hurricane from tourist-havens like Tropical Isle or Pat O'Briens. Several weeks back my friends and I sat at the bar at Tropical Isle on Bourbon St. and the bartender looked genuinely surprised when after he asked us where we were from, we said ... here. We live here.

For locals who most certainly know the hip and off-the-beaten-path night-life of New Orleans, these places could be certainly viewed as guilty pleasures.

What are some of your guilty pleasures? I'd love to hear about what you love and maybe get hooked on a new series of books or a television show.