Dinner and a Movie
Movie night at PoppaDeuce continued this week with Paul’s pick of 24 Hour Party People a mockumentary of sorts about the music scene in Manchester in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the movie, it was interesting but nothing amazing. I was however very happy with dinner.
This was the second week we made dinner before watching a movie. Big communal dinners are one of the things I miss most about not living in a co-op any longer. Sitting down to dinner with 20 or so people to eat and talk about your day was always really nice. More than sharing communal meals with friends and housemates I’ve missed cooking, big meals with others for a lot of people. For six months Elena and I cooked together every Sunday afternoon. At first it was stressful and we’d get anxious about it, not knowing how things would turn out, never having a real recipe or all the ingredients we felt we needed, but we’d get creative and experiment and things usually turned out ok. I think some of my best conversations with her were while slaving away in the Zami! kitchen.
So the other night we had dinner before the movie, a big all vegan feast. We’d talked a little bit about it, coming up with a general idea of what we would make, but no recipes, no specific plans. I showed up and there were tofu, swiss chard and bell pepper rolled tacos being made (which nearly burned the kitchen down, tofu has a lot of water in it we learned, and when you start to deep fry it all that water comes out, and water and oil don’t mix well, but we survived). The rolled tacos were eventually baked and turned out delicious. We rehydrated some TVP with various spices as the meat substitute for tacos/burritos and then sauteed some nopales with all sorts of spices and goodness. Everything turned out wonderfully, with everyone doing their own thing and contributing to the meal in someway. At one point I think all six of us were in the tiny kitchen at the same time — it was great.
Afterwards we all cleaned up, washed the dishes and sat down to watch the movie.
I’m looking forward to plenty more communal meals and creative cooking with friends this summer.
