It’s fall, and it’s time for season two of Ligia’s Kitchen! We returned to action with episode 19, which presents a way to make delicious guacamole in about three minutes. Guacamole is a naturally raw recipe, and when eaten with raw vegan bread, it makes for a wonderful raw meal.
LK-019-EN-HD with Romanian subtitles
Released 10/14/11
This episode was recorded in English, not Romanian, as has been the case so far. We did this for the sake of our international viewers. We also found that a lot of the Romanians who watched our show also knew or could understand English, so when thinking about how to reach a larger audience, English was the perfect fit. Romanian is now available as a subtitle track in the video (just click on the CC button to enable it).
We published the eighteenth episode of Ligia’s Kitchen today. It’s a delicious and refreshing summer recipe: mint ice cream, made from raw cashews and fresh mint, handpicked from our own garden.
This episode marks a first for me. It’s the first edited with Final Cut Pro X, the new version of FCP. I figured the best way to learn it was to jump right in and do some work, and this eighteenth episode is the result.
LK-018-RO-HD with English subtitles
Released 7/5/11
This (long-awaited) episode presents the story of Paul Hemmerth, a Saxon born and raised in Romania during Ceausescu’s regime, who emigrated to Germany with his family at the age of fourteen, and who came back, drawn inexplicably by the land of his birth, to spend as much time as he can, each year, in the Romanian countryside.
Paul has a website called SlowlyPlanet, where he promotes slow tourism — travel at a leisurely pace, where you can take in all that you see. We filmed the episode at Casa Noah, his B&B in Richis (Reichesdorf), a village near Medias in Southern Transilvania.
Various occurrences (some of which couldn’t be helped) delayed the release of this episode. The hard drive on my editing computer died, and the repairs took almost a week. We also had some scheduled travel abroad, and that delayed us by another week. Further shooting for the episode introduced an extra day or so to the workflow, and the extra editing time introduced by the show’s new format added another three full days to the schedule.
I really do hope you’ll enjoy the new format. It’s a lot more work for me during the filming and especially during the editing, because of the two-camera setup, but it makes the show more engaging. Just to give you a quick idea of the data behind the show, the raw footage comes to about 44 GB of 1080p video. The final version of the episode is 4.3 GB of 720p video, and it’s about 55 minutes long.
There’s an official Facebook page for the show, so head on over and give it a Like if you want to be kept up to date with day-to-day details about the filming of RTTE. There’s also an official website for the show. Also don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where the show’s episodes are posted, along with other interesting videos I create.
We published the seventeenth episode of Ligia’s Kitchen tonight. It’s an already popular recipe of Ligia’s, loved by all who try it at her culinary demonstrations. It’s already been featured on national TV in Romania, several times, so we thought it was high time to film it for the show. It’s raw spaghetti, made from zuchinni, though any member of the squash family will do. Naturally, the spaghetti sauce is also raw.
Bon appetit!
LK-017-RO-HD with English subtitles
Released 5/22/11
When I think of shaving razors currently on the market, I think of cartoon fights where everyone pulls out a bigger gun. Razor companies are constantly trying to outdo each other with more blades. If it’s not the blades, then it’s a “microcomb”, or a vibrating handle… which brings all sorts of other imagery to mind, the kind that has nothing to do with shaving, unless you’re into weird fetishes.
It’s the same kind of approach that software companies use these days. Their code gets so bloated, because they never take the time to clean it up, that all they can hope for is that hardware manufacturers can throw more RAM and MHz at the problem so they don’t have to optimize their code. Apple took a different approach with the Snow Leopard operating system: they took almost a year to clean it up, throwing out the junk. That’s why I admire Apple.
Made better through improved design? Not really.
On the other hand, companies like Gillette and their competitors lost sight of the art of shaving and figured everyone was a nitwit who couldn’t learn to shave properly and couldn’t take care of their razor, so they overdesigned their razors for the lowest common denominator. In the process, the razor became a plastic toy, not a tool, a crappy little thing you throw away instead of something you respect and maintain, because it keeps you looking civilized.
Designed for profit? Thank you sir, may I have another?
Because it became a throw-away toy, their profit margins increased. Because the razors no longer lasted a lifetime, they could sell more of them. You just look down the line of razor models from the Gillette over the years, and you’ll see they get more and more plasticky, with less metal parts. If they have metal in them, it’s not in the head (certainly not where the cartridges attach to the handle); that part needs to be plastic so it breaks after a while.
Don't let its flashy looks fool you. It just can't compare to a good safety razor.
The cartridges have started to cost more as well. A pack of eight cartridges for the Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor (the latest flashy gimmick from Gillette) runs about $30 at Amazon. That’s $3.75 per cartridge, and from my experience, they last about 3-4 shaves. By contrast, a pack of 60 assorted safety razor blades costs $18. That’s 30 cents per blade, and they last about 6-7 shaves. (By the way, I’d recommend that pack for those learning to shave with a safety razor, because it’ll let you try different brands to see which blades work best for your face.)
The real deal.
Wait, it gets worse
They also polluted the environment with all that disposable plastic crap. Now you throw away the razor, not just the blades. And the blades aren’t just steel, which is perfectly recyclable, but they’re plastic and metal, which is annoyingly difficult to recycle, because you need to separate the two materials from each other, and it’s just not worth the trouble.
It’s such a shame. I used to admire Gillette about 10 years ago, before I got disappointed with all the stuff they’re doing these days. I still shave with a classic Gillette Safety Razor, pictured below. I still keep my grandfather’s Gillette Heavy Duty Safety Razor, and plan to use that when my own breaks down. Things used to be simple and beautiful. Where did they go wrong?
The classic Gillette safety razor.
If you’d like to learn how to shave properly, check out my wet shaving guide. And there’s also a video, embedded below.
Image of ProGlide Razor courtesy of Gillette. Image of Merkur Heavy Duty Safety Razor courtesy of Wikipedia.
Raoul Pop 