Lots of movies and a little cooking

Friday, November 27, 2009

I slept till 11:30…well I of course woke up early because of my crazy bladder. It thinks it has to relieve itself around 6am now. Great! It was a lazy day. I stayed in my jammies…well, with additional layers. I watched Home Alone 2 on my computer. It gave me some wonderful Christmas spirit. It hasn’t felt like the Holidays around here much. They still have not lit the lights. Most of them are up, but nothing is ever lit.

iTarheel is still my homepage on the computer, and today I actually stopped to look at the weather for Chapel Hill. It just made me sad to think that I would normally be walking around Carolina’s campus right now in my pretty black coat with crisp NOT DAMP air maybe even going to see the Nutcracker ballet and going home to a decorated apartment.

I was about to pull a double feature and watch the Goonies, but Monica called and asked me to come over and help her put together a gingerbread house of her own, so I got dressed a hiked over to her place. I called her and asked if she wanted to make pizza, so I picked up a can of tomatoes (the only ingredient she was lacking) on the way over

She had already prepared the dough and was rolling it out to bake when I got there. The Grinch was playing on her computer, so we watched that while we cut the pieces out. Her gingerbread was lighter because she used syrup instead of molasses. She also used caramel or melted sugar to glue the house together instead of icing. She decorates with the icing. The caramel (if you add cream) was crazy! It hardened fast…no hairdryer needed. It stuck to everything and took some time to get out of the pan, but it worked.

When we got hungry, we threw together some dough and cooked the pizza. It was a pepper, red onion, garlic pizza with mozzarella cheese and it was excellent. As soon as Monica started cutting the onion and I started wailing….red onion is the worst for my tear ducts, but it tastes the best cooked. I hate this impediment to my cooking skills. I will have to start wearing goggles to deal with onions!

I would like to say that these last two months have mainly been a cooking experience/school for me and it has been great!

While we ate dinner we watched Mr. Magorium’s Emporium. I wasn’t too fond of the movie. I liked some individual parts, but overall I didn’t think it was well developed or at least I felt like there was much missing.

As we were washing dishes Monica said, “There are so many things that just don’t work as well as home”. She is so right. You would think Ireland could be a little more advanced since they’ve had to deal with these things so long. I told her that I was glad to know Norway isn’t stuck in the Dark Ages!

When I left Monica’s I meet everyone else on my way home, so I could get a key. They had called and told me to stop the Dail where you could learn to make a mojito for free…and yes you got to drink it. It was kind of a cool promotion that I haven’t seen anywhere else, so I stopped by and we stayed for a little bit in a corner booth upstairs. It was a nicely decorated place.