Some essays to recommend

teasel has written some short essays on visual structuring devices in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies; the essays include side-by-side images of comparable moments from the films, including many that I never saw myself at all, but I gasped out loud when I saw teasel's pairings and realized, yes, of course!

Highly recommended.

ETA: Link corrected. If that doesn't work, try:

http://members.aol.com/Brumblepop/essays



or go to them from the dedicated portion of teasel's LiveJournal here.

pameladean's Vegan Chocolate Silk Pie

is indeed worth all the raves. I tried it today, and my pickiest eaters gave it a thumbs up. Delia rated it an A+. Rob said he wouldn't have been able to tell that it had tofu in it at all. Here's the recipe:

1 baked 9-inch pie crust, basic pastry or graham cracker or crushed cookie or whatever you like.

1 14-oz box of silken tofu, soft or firm but not extra-firm (extra-firm is very hard on the blender).

12 oz bittersweet baking chocolate or chocolate chips. The better the chocolate, the better the pie.

1 teaspoon vanilla extract


Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave. Set it aside to cool. Dump the tofu and any attendant liquid (there won't be much) into a blender. Blend until it's creamy. This takes longer than you think it will. When the chocolate is warm, not hot, pour it into the blender with the tofu and blend some more, until the color of the mixture is uniform. This will also probably take longer than you think it will. Add the vanilla; blend again until you get tired or are sure that the vanill is well mixed in. Pour the mixture into the pie crust, smooth the top, refrigerate for an hour or so, serve. It's good with whipped cream or a vegan equivalent.