Long Weekend
Kate had a friend over yesterday for a play date that turned into a sleepover. Some Guitar Hero was played. Her new room set-up provided play and hang-out space so the girls didn't have to commandeer the living room. We made an abortive attempt to have dinner at Stellar Pizza because Kate wanted to introduce her friend to "the best mac and cheese in the world" but Stellar was closed so we routed up to Columbia City and improvised dinner at Geraldine's Counter instead. Then we made a run to the video store where the girls rented Lego Star Wars for the 360 (we only have the regular Xbox version) and Meet the Robinsons.
Today Pramas was scheduled to play SotC down at Tim's so Kate and I had a sort of Bed Day. Except I couldn't decide if it was better to have Bed Day in bedly comfort or have "bed" day on the new couch watching movies on the nice tv. In the end we opted for the nice TV.
It was all 80s all the time today. First: Adventures in Babysitting. Holy crap, I never clicked that Vincent D'Onofrio was "Thor" in that movie (and that was after Full Metal Jacket according to IMDB). I thought Kate might like it as a girly caper movie but her final verdict was "Meh." Then we watched Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome which I picked because it was rated PG-13. Kate hated it. "They gave you a character but no plot. It didn't make any sense." We also watched The Last Starfighter which TiVo had pulled down from SciFi for me. I had vague memories of that movie being decent but watching it again I found it pretty cringe-worthy. Kate was most interested in that one, though even she recognized it as a pale knock-off of Star Wars. That was enough 80s for me for one day, let me tell you.
For dinner I had failed to plan ahead and was looking to throw something together in a hurry for my hungry family. I remembered that I had all the ingredients on hand for Heidi Swanson's Toasted Wheat Germ Soup, from her excellent book Super Natural Cooking(and the blog 101 Cookbooks) so I whipped that up. It was so unearthly simple I could have kicked myself for not having tried it before. Seriously: a cup of toasted wheat germ, six cups of veggie broth, an onion sauteed and then simmered with a few red pepper flakes, some sea salt, a can of crushed fire-roasted tomatoes and four cups of white beans. To my utter amazement, after a few ultra-tentative sips Kate had multiple bowls of soup and declared it "pretty good" which made my night.
One more precious day of holiday.
Today Pramas was scheduled to play SotC down at Tim's so Kate and I had a sort of Bed Day. Except I couldn't decide if it was better to have Bed Day in bedly comfort or have "bed" day on the new couch watching movies on the nice tv. In the end we opted for the nice TV.
It was all 80s all the time today. First: Adventures in Babysitting. Holy crap, I never clicked that Vincent D'Onofrio was "Thor" in that movie (and that was after Full Metal Jacket according to IMDB). I thought Kate might like it as a girly caper movie but her final verdict was "Meh." Then we watched Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome which I picked because it was rated PG-13. Kate hated it. "They gave you a character but no plot. It didn't make any sense." We also watched The Last Starfighter which TiVo had pulled down from SciFi for me. I had vague memories of that movie being decent but watching it again I found it pretty cringe-worthy. Kate was most interested in that one, though even she recognized it as a pale knock-off of Star Wars. That was enough 80s for me for one day, let me tell you.
For dinner I had failed to plan ahead and was looking to throw something together in a hurry for my hungry family. I remembered that I had all the ingredients on hand for Heidi Swanson's Toasted Wheat Germ Soup, from her excellent book Super Natural Cooking(and the blog 101 Cookbooks) so I whipped that up. It was so unearthly simple I could have kicked myself for not having tried it before. Seriously: a cup of toasted wheat germ, six cups of veggie broth, an onion sauteed and then simmered with a few red pepper flakes, some sea salt, a can of crushed fire-roasted tomatoes and four cups of white beans. To my utter amazement, after a few ultra-tentative sips Kate had multiple bowls of soup and declared it "pretty good" which made my night.
One more precious day of holiday.
