Battle of Ingredients #16: New Year’s Eve Hotpot

Welcome to Battle of Ingredients hosted by myself and Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road. As usual, we had our New Year’s Eve shindig. Just like last year, we decided to have a chinese fondue aka Hotpot. There’s not a whole lot of new things to share this time but its procedure to share a little of what we’ve been doing, even if its just sharing with you hotpot which is a really fun time to spend with friends and family, cooking and catching up.

Drinks

Kicking off the New Year’s Eve, our friends brought us Val Caudalies to try. The first was an ice wine of sorts which was pretty decent. It had lovely sweet notes that pleased everyone’s taste buds. The second was a vermouth which we tried to drink on its own and did taste pretty good but mostly mixed with soda (CocaCola, Ginger Ale) and then ended up trying some simple syrups that I had inherited from one of my friends when she moved (see below).

The Hotpot & Table of Food

Here’s the table spread of all the food (except two things which we opened afterwards).

Phoebe took care of vegetables and such:

• Nappa Cabbage
• Baby Bok Choy
• Watercress
• Coriander
• 3 types of mushrooms: Enoki, Oyster, Shimeji
• Winter Melon
• Tofu

I took care of the meat and other things:

• Udon Noodles
• Marinated Sliced Chicken Thighs (garlic, ginger, salt)
• Store-bought sliced beef
• Homemade pork dumplings (Filling: Minced pork, garlic, ginger, salt, pepper)
• Store-bought fish pancakes, cuttlefish balls, beef balls (not shown above)

With all that, we were ready for a feast! Hotpot is pretty much the concept of fondue so we all through things in gradually. We have a two sided pot. One side started out with boiled hot water and the other was with chicken broth diluted with water. Water is the key element here and needs to always have some extra boiled water on hand to fill it up whenever needed to keep things going. We did it in phases of tossing a ton of stuff we wanted in and then covering it until it boiled, eating all of it and then on to the next round, so on so forth. It was a pretty decent system and gave us time to sit down to chat and mix drinks and whatever in between waiting.

Dessert

So I’m not going to lie that at this point, I didn’t remember to take pictures as food coma was kind of in the midst of all this. My mom joined our little shindig and brought us a banana cake (which saved me from some baking), which I forgot to take a picture of because for me, its a normal thing.

Aside from bringing alcohol, my friend also brought an apple crumble which I also forgot to take a picture of.

One of the fun little things is that Phoebe found a little Japanese gummy making set for her little one to do under adult supervision and here were the results:

Some of us had a taste of it but I’m not sure it actually tasted that good. It was more of a fun little experience as a group rather than it being really meant to be eaten as I think the main consensus was the texture wasn’t too good and it was really sweet. Phoebe can weigh in on it in the comments as I believe she did taste it.

That’s it for this Battle of Ingredients!
It was a great way to ring in 2020 as we ended the evening as usual with more chatting and video games.

New Year’s Eve: A Long Way Down (2014)

I think I might have skipped this last year. I just might have…but I’m a little lazy to search for it now.  The holidays kind of murdered me a little but I’ve been thinking about watching a movie set around New Year’s Eve. I did watch one earlier this year called Jump that might have inspired this thought. You can check out that review HERE.   Its funny (well, not really) that New Year’s Eve inspires so many of these sorts of dramedy centred around suicide. While a lot of us are thinking about the new year bringing on new beginnings, some people just think its time to end it all before we let our failures continue on. I say this because Jump focuses on that sort of messed up night which starts in the same way and dramatically ends differently than this one does.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and check out the synopsis!

A Long Way Down (2014)

Director: Pascal Chaumeil

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Toni Collette, Imogen Poots, Aaron Paul, Rosamund Pike, Sam Neill

Four people meet on New Year’s Eve and form a surrogate family to help one another weather the difficulties of their lives.-IMDB

Dramedies are hard to master.  There has to be a balance.  Plus it has to embody the comedy and the dramatic style that works for the individual audience that its aiming for. I’m guessing its because of that IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes has such a huge difference in their scores. A Long Way Down may be a little cliche and could have worked harder to make you connect to the characters but the effort and message and heart that this story has is really great.  It doesn’t force you to feel anything.  You have to observe the characters and listen carefully to their dialogues and their reactions.  Maybe I think too much and read more between the lines than I’m supposed to but I watched this once and enjoyed it, then watched it a second time and got a little more out of it and turned it on a third time and realized that the message this one has is actually really good. Sometimes, wanting to watch a movie over and over again is not a bad thing and in this case, its because I wanted to get something more out of it, wondering if I missed something (because I do tend to multitask when I watch movies).

There’s a few things I truly love about A Long Way Down, which has me wanting to grab a copy of the book because I’m sure it outlines each of these characters even more thoroughly.  First, in setting up this movie, it gives time to showcase our four main characters here and their backstories to let us understand them a little more.  Whether you catch the reasoning of why they were on top of that tower is totally your experience but they do answer it in the end.  While showing them apart, it also takes time to build on their dynamic together and how their oddball relationship grows as they fulfill their pact of postponing their suicide attempt till Valentine’s Day. Second thing, I really like is the relationship between the characters Jess and JJ, played by Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul respectively.  They are almost completely different characters but they have a much deeper sorrow that weighs them down and they both live with it in a different way.  While it doesn’t make sense that they become incredibly affectionate and close with each other very quickly, I didn’t really mind because their chemistry worked for me.

The entire movie is pretty predictable but while Imogen Poots’ Jess is all sorts of unpredictable and crazy and desires attention. She really just has to feel desired and important but in the background, Aaron Paul’s character is the one we focus on.  He doesn’t talk much and many things happen but we soon realize that he is the one that is broken.  Something doesn’t add up for him.  We found him in the most casual on the roof at the start and he doesn’t really stick out during the movie but this leads to some of the best dialogues that he says throughout the whole movie. It gives the movie meaning and a look at what depression is, when there’s something that doesn’t quite work inside and there’s nothing that seems to help. While the other three all have reasons to be up on that roof at the beginning, we never really learn the reason of why he wants to be there until the very end. Maybe this is really spoiler-filled, but there are a lot of powerful scenes, a few bittersweet moments and a movie that holds some truth to what its trying to say, maybe because I’ve been implicated into a situation similar to this one that I can relate a little to it.

I’ve been going on and on about Imogen Poots and Aaron Paul but fact is Pierce Brosnan and Toni Collette are the older views with a much more mature situation that has lead them to where they are.  I have to admit that I’m still trying to coming to terms with Pierce Brosnan in drama/comedy and not the action James Bond that I see him in. It get a little cheesy feelings sometimes but that isn’t saying that he doesn’t have a good character and he does a decent at delivering the person who kind of grows a lot in his views.  Toni Collette is the one that seems most unlikely to get back on the roof.  The older characters have concrete solutions to their problems and they just kind of need to open up and see things in a different light.  They have good back stories but they are the supporting to the young two who seem to be a little more lost.

A Long Way Down is about finding hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.  It sends a message of the underlying depression that sometimes is the culprit to undefinable feelings. Its finding people that unexpectedly help you experience things that allow you to see things differently.  Its a journey of friendship, finding a second family who helped them find themselves or just see themselves a little more clear.  Its not a perfect dramedy that works hard at making how to feel obvious but its all about how much you can connect to these characters to fully enjoy A Long Way Down and since I was able to do that, I found this one rather meaningful and it pulled up some feelings that I have been tucking away for a while.  While it seems like it kicked up some bad feelings, this one does have a positive touch to it and its the ending of it that really brings meaning to what “a long way down” refers to.

Have you seen A Long Way Down? 

Have a great New Year’s Eve!!!
I’ll be back tomorrow with the New Year’s Special Weekly Adventures! 🙂