Weekend Notes Part 1: Food

Friday night, I made a sweet potato curry with coconut milk and the addition of tofu browned in mushroom soy sauce, steamed bok choy, and crispy shallots. This was extremely good despite the number of pots it used. Totally worthwhile and I will make it again.

Sunday night, I made a very simple carrot soup for dinner, which we had with grilled cheese sandwiches and sauteed spinach. Carrot soup: cook two onions or leeks, plus a sprig of thyme, in butter until soft. Add a lot of carrots (about two pounds, maybe more), peeled and sliced, and cook everything together for another five minutes or so. Add about six cups of stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for about a half hour, until the carrots are soft. Puree and eat. It was so good! The carrots that the box brings me, I am told, are sweeter and more delicate than the usual commercial U.S. carrot, and maybe this made a difference. I am pleased at how easy this was. I fried a few cumin seeds in oil for a fancyish garnish; one could also swirl in some cream or yogurt (or creme fraiche) and garnish with snipped chives or tarragon or parsley.

P.S. While we're on the subject, a random note from two weeks ago (the goat feast): not peeling the carrots made the carrots have a more interesting, "concentrated" flavor. See above about the variety, however.

Also, G. cooks a mean cheese steak, which is why there is no Saturday entry here.

Weekend Notes Part 2: Movies

Basically, I spent this whole weekend staying in and watching movies. I invited friends over for Saturday night, but otherwise I wasn't very social. I skipped a class, again, and a benefit. It was nice to have a relatively quiet weekend hanging around the house. Now if only I'd gotten more writing done :)

Friday night, I watched Crash and The Pillow Book. Both for the first time. Yes, I know, hard to believe.

What I learned from Crash: The characters, taken on their own, were pretty flimsy. But their relationships to each other (and to cars) were rich, nuanced, and complicated. And that was enough -- in fact, that was way more interesting than many movies and similar media where the characters may be richly drawn, but their relationships with other people are entirely simple and schematic. This is an interesting writing lesson that I am going to continue to ponder at leisure.

Saturday night many friends and I watched lesbian vampire movies together, specifically Daughters of Darkness and The Vampire Lovers. There wasn't enough bloody cleavage in the former, although I thought that the Dietrich-esque lead lady vampire was, indeed, pretty damn hot, especially in her deliberately anachronistic way. But, you know, that's me.

Sunday night my household was disappointed to learn that you cannot watch Ratatouille in French. But we started it anyway, and we watched all the DVD extras too, to make up for it. We will probably finish it tonight, after another hot domestic interlude involving a comforter and some laundry detergent. Sexay.

Weekend Update, Part 3: Museums

Sunday afternoon I did actually leave the house, to go with my household to the Dia de los Muertos exhibit at the Oakland Museum, as has now become a yearly tradition.

I think perhaps the exhibit was smaller this year, but nonetheless very moving. There were altars for community members like Chauncey Bailey and Antonio Salazar. There were hand-tinted photos of Oaxacan altars. There was a central community installation of RIP t-shirts on crosses, made by children from a local school. There was a very striking piece about the day the birds fell out of the sky in Mexico City, victims of air pollution.

For me, the intersection of high art and folk art expressions is what makes this annual exhibit so moving. All together in one room, all expressing grief and connection.

It was the perfect crown for what turned out to be a quiet, introspective sort of weekend.

Geeky, literal, idle thought of the day

Where did the expression "healthy as a horse" come from? Horses are, after all, notoriously fragile and prone to illness and injury.