weekend update

Friday night I made "Pan-cooked vegetables with crunchy fish" from The Food Matters Cookbook for supper.  (I forgot to add the curry powder until after the vegetables were done cooking, but it seemed to turn out ok.  I was also surprised that the fish actually did turn out crunchy.  It's very similar to his stir-fried sweet potatoes recipe, but with the breaded, fried fish on top.  Very easy.  Fish, as it turns out, are actually quite easy to cook: not quite sure why it took me so long to learn that.)

We also watched Once from Netflix.  (You might remember it as the film that won Best Song despite all of Enchanted's nominations.)   As Morgan pointed out, it was the most wholesome movie we've seen in years (no sex, no violence, no crime, no bad role models at all), and yet it's rated R, because the characters speak in the way people actually speak.  I think it's high time to abolish the MPAA: we don't have some board telling us what books are safe for our children to read, so why do we need someone telling us what movies are safe for our children to see?

Saturday we biked to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and back.  I made "New Orleans-style BBQ shrimp with vinegary black-eyed peas" (also from The Food Matters Cookbook) for a sort of early supper (I had a late breakfast, and thus didn't get any lunch).  I liked it, but, having never been to New Orleans, I'm afraid I don't know how authentic it was.

Saturday night we went to Evan and Alison's and met some of their friends.  Morgan very cleverly brought our copy of Apples to Apples: Alison had never played it, so it was a winner.  It's a good party game, in that the rules are very quick to learn and it doesn't require much concentration, but on the other hand it's a lot more fun with people you know.  I submitted "Humphrey Bogart" for "brave" (because, after all, just about every Humphrey Bogart movie I've seen ends with him reaching deep down into his selfish, cowardly self to find the true hero within), and Shereen just about broke my heart when she asked, "Who's Humphrey Bogart?"

Sunday we finally made a trip to Goodwill to donate all of the refuse we've been generating over the last few years: we just about filled the entire trunk.  I got a haircut (because I've been getting headaches once again) at the Great Clips next door (who knows how long that's been there, because I distinctly remember looking for such a haircut place in that shopping center before and not finding one), and then we perused the Goodwill.  I may never buy from any other retail store again.  We picked up a $10 rolly chair that is distinctly superior to the one we picked up from Target a few weeks ago (we'll probably complete the cycle by taking that one to Goodwill next).

Sunday evening Vince and Laura came over for their last night in Baltimore before they move to Portage.  We went to Jack's Bistro to live the double dream of the bacon burger (not a beef burger with strips of bacon, but an actual ground-bacon burger) and poutine.  (We read about this in an article about indulgent food The Baltimore Sun, but their search function seems to leave something to be desired.  If you find the article, please let me know.)  (Of course, Vince, who has family in Canada, was less impressed by the poutine than I was, but at least we were able to get him some mac and cheese and chocolate.)  Then we finally used our Living Social deal (along with the rest of the city, as it seems) at Pitango Gelato.  We started to walk around Fells Point, but then Laura's flip-flop exploded.  Fortunately, she was able to get a replacement at Party Dress (kudos to them for being open Sunday evening), and we headed back to our house to watch The Little Mermaid.

I think The Little Mermaid is a really well-done film, but, as with so many Disney films, it chokes on the ending.  It expresses adolescent angst as well as any other literature I've seen (I, at least, have a much easier time identifying with Ariel than with Holden Caufield), and it doesn't try to explain too much.  Why does Ursula have such a beef with Triton?  Why did she use to live at the palace, but doesn't anymore?  Does it have something to do with the fact that she eats seafood?  The answers are left to our imagination, and so much the better for it.

Also, as Morgan points out, in the actual films, most of the members of the Disney Princess Franchise spend their time trying not to be princesses (going on adventures, etc.), but somehow that gets lost in the marketing.