I'm a child at heart and I fangirl over lots of cartoons, anime & manga, tv shows, movies, and video games. Banner features Team JNPR from the web series "RWBY".
The “world” only consists of US and parts of Europe, it seems.
For a show that is based off Asian influences, the utter lack of Asian cities is disappointing. And Australia, South America, Africa, are left out too.
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick. Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.
The OP version of this has become my go-to cookie for basically all things and I have a whole cohort of friends and colleagues who would murder each other to get them. Haven’t tried any add ons yet, since the base recipe is SO GOOD.
I’ve reblogged this before and I’m reblogging it again because I’m about to make it again tomorrow and I wanted to add my own tale of just how amazingly delicious it. it was SO incredibly simple to bake and with an extra dusting of brown sugar on top and served warm and soft they gift you with the taste of the nectar of the gods when paired with a small glass of milk. this image is from when I first made them a couple years ago:
i’ve seen several rounds of people mocking this post on account of this is a long fancy-sounding name for what is when you come down to it a vanilla shortbread, and i want to say, do you know how hard it is to find a really good recipe for something super common?
absolutely give your banger recipe for a reasonably common baked good its own very google-able name, good idea, I support it.
Saw the Spy x Family: Code White movie and I loved it!
Long spoilery recap below on what I can remember. Some scenes might be out of order but the general idea is still there.
Movie starts off at a fancy ball and people are dancing. A lady takes a sip of wine and almost collapses. Luckily, a man saves her from falling. They go up to an office where she propositions sex to the man. He pretends to go along with it but pricks her calf with his ring and she falls asleep, clearly drugged.
Obviously the man is Twilight in disguise. He proceeds to rummage through a desk and opens a drawer, unlocking a hidden compartment containing a notebook and he takes pictures of it with his watch.
Outside, the woman’s male companion sees the office door ajar and goes in, finding her asleep on the sofa. She stirs and says she drank too much but wants to continue partying. Both of them leave the room. The camera pans to the bottom of the desk and we see the woman tied up and still asleep.
A car is then seen driving on a road and we see the woman from before talking to WISE HQ. She pulls off her mask to reveal Twilight in disguise.
Elsewhere, Yor is shown surrounded by dead bodies in a warehouse. There is only one person remaining and Yor declares him to be a despicable company CEO before she slashes his neck. The blood spray forms the shape of a rose on the gate behind him.
Both Loid and Yor head home and greet each other outside their apartment. Anya and Bond meet them at the front door and are glad they are home. Yor offers to cook dinner but Bond has a premonition of Loid and Anya gagging at Yor’s dish. Anya sees Bond’s thoughts and tells papa to cook her favourite dish which is peanut butter pizza. Loid says okay and thinks of adding some meat on it.
Opening credits roll.
At Eden Academy, Henry Henderson announces there will be a dessert cooking competition which would be judged by the school’s principal. He says last year’s winner won a Stella.
Loid is also shown on a nearby rooftop looking through a spyglass as he lip reads what Henderson is saying. A carrier pigeon flies by and drops a note into Loid’s hand, requesting his presence back at the WISE hideout.
At WISE, the Handler, Sylvia, tells Twilight that he is assigned another mission and he reads through the briefing within seconds before declaring there is no time for it on top of Operation Strix. Sylvia says a guy named Deppler will be taking over Strix and Twilight expresses doubt over Deppler’s capability.
Sylvia says she understands Twilight’s reasoning and would have agreed but the higher ups in HQ has not seen much progress in Operation Strix. Plus, Deppler has HQ’s support as his father-in-law promised huge financial backing for WISE.
Twilight leaves the WISE hideout and bumps into Fiona who is dressed as an upperclass lady in a fancy looking dress and a wide brimmed hat. (In case you forgot, the entrance to the hideout is disguised as a photobooth in an alley way)
A gust of wind blows Fiona’s hat away and Loid jumps close to Fiona to catch it. This action makes Fiona’s heart skip a beat.
A few buildings away, Yor notices the commotion in the alley and it looks like Loid is kissing someone which makes Yor think he’s cheating on her.
Yor is currently on top of the City Hall building with her fellow co-workers to hoist a flag. The other ladies gossip on how they know a man is cheating.
1) They start going on more business trips as a pretence to meet their lover
2) Their outfits start to change to meet their lover’s tastes
3) They start buying gifts for their gf/wife because of their guilt
Yor starts to doubt if she’s a good wife for the Forger family even though she has played the mother role well so far.
Back at the Forger household, Anya announces the cooking competition and who is going to be the judge. Loid says he read in a newsletter that the principal’s favourite desert is “meremere” and he likes the meremere served in a restaurant in a town called Frigis, an area up North that takes half a day to travel to. Loid suggests to take a trip there to taste the dessert and learn how to cook it.
Alarm bells go off in Yor’s head as she thinks this trip is a “business trip”, the first sign of a cheating partner.
Loid feels this is a chance to earn a Stella for Anya and hopes this would prove to WISE HQ to keep him on Operation Strix so the Forger family can stay together or else they have to separate.
Anya is reading his mind and panics a little but relaxes a bit when Loid says the whole family (Bond too) should go together. Yor calms down once she’s invited.
The next day, they pack and dress up in winter clothes before taking a long train ride.
Hijinks ensue when Anya finds a key in the train’s washroom and Bond has a vision that the key leads to “treasure”. Anya goes to the luggage car in Bond’s vision and finds a suitcase with a small chest inside.
Anya opens the small chest to see a piece of chocolate and is disappointed that it is not the treasure she was promised.
Two suspicious men (Dmitri & Luca) enter the luggage car and Anya fumbles with the chocolate, accidentally swallowing it. She quick hides in an adjacent luggage rack. One of the men chides the other for misplacing the key. They think they might have to use brute force to open the suitcase.
Both find the key on the floor and that the suitcase has been unlocked. They also discover the item in the small chest is gone and both talk about how it’s “a priceless treasure the rest of the world would like to get their hands on”.
Anya overhears their conversation and realises the chocolate she swallowed could threaten world peace. She knocks over a suitcase, getting the two mooks attention, before she runs out of the luggage car into the adjacent lounge car.
However, Anya is unable to escape the lounge car as the two men already locked the door. Anya cries for her parents and just before the mooks can grab her, the door opens, revealing that Yor pulled off the door handle.
Yor is angry and asks Anya to cover her eyes as she beats up the two men.
The Forgers arrive at Frigis and both Yor and Anya are wary of their surroundings, to Loid’s confusion. They head to the restaurant that only serves families and order quite a bit of food, including meremere which happens to be the last slice the restaurant has for the day.
Back at Frigis train station, the conductor opens a door and Dmitri and Luca fall on him, one of them mumbling incoherently.
The restaurant owner talks to the Forgers on how he opened up this establishment after the war as food was something that was scarce back then and made people happy. There’s also a plane outside the restaurant that’s being put on display as a reminder of the war.
Loid tugs at his turtleneck, finding it a bit warm inside the restaurant. Yor notices this and thinks to herself that Loid never wears turtlenecks at all and his new outfit is the second sign he’s cheating on her.
Before they can consume their meremere though, Colonel Snidel enters the restaurant with other military men. Despite protests from the restaurant staff that they only serve families, the Colonel proceeds to seat himself at an empty table. He orders some food and meremere.
When the staff tell him that they are out of meremere, Snidel glances at the uneaten plate of meremere at the Forgers’ table and declares that he can have that plate since it’s still untouched. One of Snidel’s men walks over to the Forgers and grabs the dessert plate before handing it to Snidel.
Loid walks up to Snidel’s table and tries to reason with him, saying that they’re tourists who came from far away and his daughter really wanted to try meremere.
Snidel challenges Loid to a tasting test where they have to discern what kind of sugar is used in three types of desserts. If Loid can guess them, he would get the meremere.
Loid, having gone undercover before as a top chef, aces the tasting test. However, Snidel writes down the number of grams of sugar used for each dish. Snidel asks the restaurant owner if the amount of sugar used is correct and it is. Snidel declares himself the winner and eats the meremere.
After the military men leave, Loid says they can always come back tomorrow to try the meremere. The owner says the ingredients for the dessert will only be delivered on Monday, which is the day of the cooking competition.
Loid asks the owner for the recipe and he says there is no recipe, he makes it from memory. Plus, it’s also a secret.
Yor asks what ingredients are used and if they can gather them, would the owner be able to cook it. The owner agrees to their request and gives them the ingredient list.
The Forgers head to a festive market/carnival nearby and Loid manages to purchase majority of the ingredients quickly. He’s only missing orange syrup and cherry liqueur.
There’s a carnival shooting game that has orange syrup as a prize along with other toys. Anya tries but fails to knock down the orange syrup as the shooting game staff has rigged the game by installing metal plates behind each of the prize, preventing them from being knocked off.
Loid takes over and aims for the side of a teddy bear beside the orange syrup, causing the cork bullet to ricochet to the orange syrup and other prizes. He calls the staff’s bluff and encourages him to be honest.
They win the orange syrup and only the cherry liqueur remains but it’s somewhat rare and hard to get.
A pair of lipstick merchants persuade Loid to buy a lipstick for his wife. He chooses a colour that suits Yor and completes the purchase. When he passes the lipstick to Yor, she realises it’s a gift, the third sign of a cheating spouse. Despondent, she excuses herself to use the restroom.
Anya gets distracted by more carnival rides and runs off to play, with Loid keeping a close eye on her.
In the washroom, Yor puts on the lipstick and psyches herself to be brave enough to ask Loid if he’s cheating. She finds him at a drink stand, proceeding to pay and consume multiple alcoholic drinks for courage.
Yor becomes a ranting drunk and confronts Loid, who is perplexed by her behaviour. She almost passes out on top of him when they both stumble onto the ground.
Yor awakens on a bench with Loid and Anya looking at her with concern. She apologises for being drunk and Anya suggests they all ride the ferris wheel.
When they go for the ride, Anya pushes her parents into the cabin without her and encourages them to reconcile.
Yor asks if Loid has a lover as she saw him kissing a woman yesterday. He clarifies that it’s all a misunderstanding and that the woman was just asking for directions. He gets on one knee and tries to be romantic and reassuring but Yor gets flustered by the close proximity, smacking him in the cheek which causes him to fly out of the ferris wheel cabin.
Loid lands gracefully beside Anya but now spots a huge red welt on his cheek. Yor grabs Loid’s overnight bag and the paper bag full of ingredients and jumps out to join her family.
Anya is pleased everything is okay now despite her parents “violent flirting”. Loid asks them to head to the hotel while he tries to go around town to find the cherry liqueur.
Anya and Yor have fun playing good guy and bad guy in the hotel while Loid is seen infiltrating all sorts of places to find the cherry liqueur to no avail.
Snidel and his soldiers are at a hangar as they admire a magnificent military airship. Snidel then kills one of the soldiers, having found out that he’s a WISE spy.
Dmitri and Luca from the train are also under Snidel’s command too and tell Snidel they lost the microfilm that’s contained inside the chocolate Anya ate. Snidel asks them to put out an alert for the little girl while he orders the airship to prepare to fly to the Republic of Albo because “war is imminent” once the microfilm is retrieve.
Back in Ostania, Yuri receives info that the military is doing something shady in Frigis and he worries for his sister’s safety since she’s currently there. However, his superior tells him that the SSS does not meddle in military affairs and he is forcefully tackled by his colleagues to prevent him from going to Frigis.
In the WISE hideout, Sylvia learns all contact with the Snidel informant in Frigis has gone cold and she surmises he is dead. She knows Loid is currently in Frigis and wants him to help.
Fiona volunteers to travel to Frigis, despite Sylvia’s protests. Fiona is just excited to be on a mission with her senpai and runs out of the hideout.
Loid, having exhausted all options, calls Franky and asks if he can have the cherry liqueur delivered to Frigis the next morning. Franky says he’ll do his best and he is also frustrated as the phone call interrupted a moment he was having with a young woman who was patronising his newspaper stand.
Loid returns back to the hotel and asks Anya to go to bed as he’s going to travel to the next town to find the last ingredient. Anya is upset that her papa is pushing her away and shuffles off sadly to the bedroom.
Bond has a vision that the cherry liqueur is available in town and Anya wants to tell Loid about it but is afraid of revealing her secret of telepathy.
Yor tells Loid that when Yuri was younger, he was happiest whenever he spent time with her. Anya only wants to spend time with Loid and that they can afford to let Anya stay up late for one night.
Loid relents but is interrupted by a knock on the door. He looks through the peephole and sees a panting Fiona dressed in a chambermaid outfit. He goes out to the hotel corridor to talk to Fiona who gives him the mission details.
Yor goes to the bedroom to get Anya but discovers she and Bond are missing, the bedroom window is ajar.
Yor goes outside to inform Loid. Both parents frantically run around the town square to search for Anya while the military distributes wanted posters of Anya.
Anya successfully procures the cherry liqueur but encounters Dmitri and Luca who try to kidnap her. Bond bites one of their sleeves and tears off a bit of fabric before getting knocked away. The men shove Anya into a car and drive off.
Bond tries to run after the car but gets knocked unconscious by a flying tin can that got caught by the car’s wheels.
Loid finds Bond and pulls a scrap of fabric from Bond’s mouth, revealing a military insignia, and deduces Anya has been kidnapped by the military. Fiona drives past and Loid enlists her help.
Anya is brought to the command center in Snidel’s airship and she’s not pleased to meet him. Snidel asks if she’s gone number two yet and reveals that the chocolate Anya swallowed contains a valuable microfilm. Anya says she has not pooped but her stomach begins to churn, indicating she needs to go soon.
Meanwhile, Loid starts up the plane outside the meremere restaurant and intercepts a radio transmission where he can hear the conversation between Anya and Snidel on the airship.
Fiona is shown infiltrating a military compound and quickly takes down everyone inside the control room. She relays the coordinates of Snidel’s airship to Loid. He thanks her and the transmission ends as Fiona tries but fails to tell Loid that she should take over the role of his wife in the Forger family.
Even though Loid has asked Yor to stay behind, she sneaks aboard the plane as it is about to take off and Loid is not aware of her presence.
Snidel asks Dmitri and Luca to guard Anya while they wait for her to poo. Anya does some impressive potty dancing to stop herself from going and begins to hallucinate a very wild and colourful imagine spot with the Poop God who encourages her to just let it go. Anya awakens from her daydream to find that she has not gone yet and she still tries to hold it in.
Snidel enquires about Anya’s poop progress and when there’s none, he orders Dmitri and Luca to cut open her stomach to obtain the microfilm and dispose of her body.
Loid manages to fly close to the airship and makes radio contact, saying he is nearly out of fuel and requests to dock to refuel. Snidel orders his crew to shoot Loid out of the sky. When Loid skilfully dodges the bullets, Snidel orders anti-aircraft missiles to be used even though the usage of it is banned during peacetime. Loid dodges the missiles as well.
Both Dmitri and Luca are reluctant to kill Anya and play rock, paper, scissors where the loser will be the one cutting her open while the other holds her down. Just as they try to do the deed, Loid has no choice but to crash the plane into the airship to create an opening.
The commotion causes the mooks to fumble and Anya runs off with the men chasing after her.
Loid successfully infiltrates the ship but Yor is left stranded outside and can be seen on the airship’s CCTV system. Snidel mistakenly thinks Yor was the plane’s pilot and orders his men to shoot and throw grenades at Yor but she manages to subdue them, entering the ship via the gun turret. One of the grenades that Yor flung away bounces into the airship, creating a fire that slowly spreads.
Having ran away from her captors, Anya finds a toilet and finally relieves herself. She exits the toilet to find Dmitri and Luca waiting for her. They capture her once more and bring her up to Snidel who is trying to handle the fire and Yor.
Snidel orders the men to sift through the septic tank for the microfilm and that he’ll temporarily lock Anya away as he deals with the chaos. Snidel asks for “Type F” to be released to take care of Yor.
Loid overhears that Anya has been brought to the command centre and he knocks out a high ranking officer, disguising himself as him.
Yor tries to find Loid and Anya without any success and finds herself in a huge chamber that’s on fire. Type F locates her and it is revealed to be a cyborg with machine guns for arms. He begins to fire a Gatling gun at her. Yor runs and uses some knives she picked up earlier to try to carve up Type F. She only manages to remove his face mask and half of his shirt. Knives won’t work on him as he’s fully metallic.
Type F has a human head but his torso has been replaced with ammunition chambers. He mocks Yor and says her efforts are futile but Yor is more determined than ever to defeat him.
Dmitri and Luca talk negatively about Anya as Loid walks past them and he decides to beat them up.
Loid enters the command center in disguise and tries to provide an update about the fire. Snidel brushes him off as Loid glances around the command center but Anya is nowhere to be seen. She is shown to be gagged and tied up to a pipe in a hidden room.
Anya reads Loid’s thoughts and knocks on the pipe which reverberates slightly, catching Loid’s attention. He spots the pipe beside a hatch on the floor which would lead to the hidden room where Anya is held captive in.
Loid pretends to drop a button and it rolls to the hatch. Before he can reach the hatch, Snidel comments that he smells different and that his scent is similar to the man he challenged in the restaurant. A shootout ensues and Loid hides behind a control panel and fires back.
Anya struggles with all her might to break free from her restraints when she learns of Snidel’s plan to use a poison gas grenade to kill Loid as they are currently at a stalemate. Loid changes his strategy and makes the bullet ricochet around the room to hit the enemy soldiers.
Just as Snidel lobs the grenade to Loid, Anya breaks free and falls onto a panel, activating the switches and opening all the windows in the command centre. The poison gas gets vented out and Loid uses the smoke as a cover to get up close to Snidel.
As the smoke clears, two Snidels are revealed to be fighting each other. Loid has disguised himself as Snidel as both men try to goad the other soldiers in the command centre into shooting the impostor.
Loid successfully defeats Snidel in an impressive hand to hand combat sequence and declares that the airship is done for so everyone should evacuate. The soldiers follow the command and carry the real, unconscious Snidel out of the airship.
Yor uses a fire axe to carve off more bits of Type F but secretly uses the lipstick Loid bought for her to draw an intricate pattern around and on Type F (similar to a gunpowder trail)
She says half of the lipstick is made of oil and drops a lighted stick on the lipstick trail, causing it to ignite and setting Type F on fire, making him explode.
Loid rescues Anya and a bottle of cherry liqueur falls out of her bag. He realises why she snuck out of the hotel. Yor reunites with her family in the command center and they realise the airship is making its way back to Frigis, dangerously close to crashing into the town.
Loid takes control of the steering wheel and with his family’s help, manages to crash it into a river just outside the town. The Forgers all sigh in relief and take the moment to relax that they’re safe and together until a huge torrent of water falls on them, drenching them completely.
Anya feels cold and sneezes into her hand, finding a small black object in her finger. She realises it’s the microfilm that probably got stuck between her teeth and she hands it over to Loid.
They return back to Ostania and Loid decides to give a crash course to Anya on making meremere as well as giving Sylvia a bottle of wine.
Sylvia peels back the wine label to find the microfilm and she’s pleased with the result as not a trace of Loid was found at the airship crash site. She tells Loid he’s back on Operation Strix as Deppler was caught cheating on his wife and his father-in-law is unhappy with his conduct, withdrawing his financial support which causes WISE HQ to dismiss Deppler.
At SSS HQ, Yuri is peeved that the SSS has to cover up the military’s mess by announcing in the news that the crash was a training flight gone wrong. Still, he’s glad his sister is safe.
Monday rolls around and the children all get ready to make their desserts. There is some banter between Anya and Damian which causes Damian to get all flustered and storm off. A loud crash interrupts the cooking session and the scene cuts to the Forger household in the evening.
Anya returns home despondent and says the cooking competition got cancelled as the school’s kitchen oven blew up. The next competition will be judged by the vice-principal instead. Loid mentions that the VP likes a certain dessert found in the South where it’s warmer and near the sea. He suggests a vacation to the South.
Bond has a vision of the Forgers in swimwear and enjoying themselves at the beach.
End credits sequence plays and one of the subtitles says “Please stay for the post credits scene!”
In the post credits scene, Franky is shown to be waiting outside the Frigis train station with a package of cherry liqueur in hand. He’s cold and sneezing as he laments why Loid is late.
The movie ends there.
I super enjoyed it and I loved all the action sequences as I feel we don’t get to see Loid in combat that often. Fiona has impressive fighting skills too and we have not seen her kick ass in the anime so far. Yor is no slouch in action scenes either.
There’s also some heartwarming family moments that will tug your heartstrings. If the English dub for this comes out, I don’t mind watching it as I saw this with English subs.
I am always blown away by this. Like. This little girl was alive and laughing and wearing her little hat and in the sunshine over 100 years ago. And her cat was eating little treats from her hands and having a fun little time over 100 years ago. Like. Their existence in history is recorded as so much more than the moody and serious black and white Victorian family portraits. AND WE GET TO SEE IT AND FEEL AS HAPPY AS THEY WERE! I have so many feelings!
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