TracyFood

Monkey Monday: Ratatouille and other revelations. 6 August 2007 10:59 pm

Posted by Tracy in : cooking, dessert, eating, eugene, garden, reviews , trackback

I worked another three-day weekend this week, but I started writing my Monkey Monday thoughts on Saturday night, to make sure I’d get them done this time. Short version: saw Ratatouille (loved it), ate delicious desserts, woo garden, holy big tips on Sunday, some thoughts about my weekend at work, more garden awesomeness, and a really random idea about my fingernails.

Long version!

Peter and I finally saw Ratatouille this weekend, on Saturday night to be exact. I brought my notebook and pen, and I was all set to take notes, the better write about it here, only I was too distracted to write anything because the movie is awesome. I finally gave up on note-taking entirely during Remy the rat’s first entrance into the kitchen of Gusteau’s restaurant — a sequence which I had already seen, mind you; it’s up in its entirety all over the internet, including YouTube and the official movie website, but that didn’t matter (although, to be fair, it looks way better on the big screen). When that scene began to unfold, I put my writing stuff back in my pockets and sat back and let the movie transport me, which it did. Peter informs me that someone fell asleep a few seats behind us, and actually snored, but I didn’t notice, at all. There are good reviews of Ratatouille all over the place if you want to read one, and I may write something more cogent eventually, but for now I will just say: if my strongest complaint is that the badass lady cook really ought to be wearing her hair up, the movie must be doing a lot of things very right.

After the movie we were inspired to eat something deliciously self-indulgent, so we hit Sweet Life Patisserie for dessert. Yum. Peter had an éclair and I had the last piece of a delicious confection called a chocolate-hazelnut gianduja (I may not be remembering the spelling correctly, but at least I learned how to pronounce it: “john-do-ya”) made of layers of hazelnut-infused pound cake around fluffy chocolate-hazelnut goodness just slightly lighter in texture than Nutella, and all covered with chocolate ganache and (of course) more hazelnuts. I know I already mentioned yum, but yeah. Woo!

Yesterday Peter asked me a completely wonderful question, and answered it. “What’s better than fresh cherry tomatoes eaten right in the garden?” he asked, or something very like it. When I said I didn’t know, he said, “I don’t care!” Yay! I picked a pound of them today: red, orange, and yellow. Yum!

I’ve realized that I need to stop biting the fingernails on my left hand, because being able to hold on to things with a few meaningful edges on those fingers would really help me improve my knife skills.

We had a crazy busy Sunday at Morning Glory yesterday, and I made some freaking sweet tips, which is good because I’m sure I didn’t rock them today; it was dead slow. But that gave me time to ponder the thought that big parties at the café actually spend more on their meals than I earn in a day — before taxes, even. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I can’t decide if that seems like a lot, or not nearly enough. Either way, one more yay for freaking sweet tips and this week’s awesome specials menu (Jen is on a roll; I really liked all of last week’s specials, too).

Finally, remember my famous pole beans? I picked another three pounds of them today, and I’m still working on the last few stragglers of the three pounds I picked last week! The revelation (besides holy cats, three more pounds) is that those stragglers are still tasty at all, and in fact they taste sort of like slightly old supermarket green beans — but only slightly old. Which is to say that most supermarket green beans are probably almost a week old, which is yet another reason why homegrown ones are so very entirely awesome.