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a fun weekend
Jan. 24th, 2011 06:40 pmOn Friday a couple of friends came over for dinner and we watched a movie (in English) afterwards (I think I've now seen more movies in the two weeks since arriving here than in the past two years).
On Saturday I accompanied![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
archinonlive and a bunch of his friends to see a play. The nice thing about plays is that one may follow much of the story even when one can't understand the language because the body language communicates much. Particularly for this troop, which uses only male actors--so those who play female roles make it very clear from the manner in which they move that the character is female. Since I've a fondness for music and dance I always enjoy watching musicals, even when I can't understand the songs. This particular acting troupe is known for being willing to do mini-encores throughout the show--so after most songs when the audience clapped, cheered, and shouted enough the orchestra would start up again and the actors would resume singing and dancing. In addition to repeating songs they were also encouraged by the crowd to repeat a variety of other scene snippets, usually funny things, minor acts of violence, or romantic stuff.
On Sunday we went to the local fighter practice in the morning--met a variety of nice people there. After practice we stopped by a store to get more camping mats to make a larger, shareable yoga mat for the living room and while we were out we picked up a pie-plate (he didn't have one, and the white ceramic tart-plate we wound up with is similar to one I used to have but lost in the move to Italy, so it won't even be redundant when my stuff catches up with me. Then we went home for food before going to the folk music session at which he plays (yay for sewing time!), followed by a Swedish Folk dance class. I found the class fun in a very different way from just faking the dancing like I did at the restaurant last week. The class actually taught me the correct foot-work for the dances, which in some cases is harder than I would have expected, given how easy is was to sort-of follow along last week. For me the hardest part is that several of the dances require one to step heel-first. I am much too used to dancing and walking on the balls of my feet, not my heels. Oh well, I will learn!
This morning I did uni work before Swedish class, but after class I got distracted by cooking. I decided to celebrate the existence of the pie plate, and got carried away with a high-prep time dish. Pre-cooked some potatoes in a pot of water with a chunk of fresh ginger for 15 minutes. While that boiled I cooked a leek and some crushed butter in garlic. While they cooled I mixed up a butter pie crust (with an egg in it). I used the cooled water from the potatoes to start a bread sponge, and mixed the potatoes, leeks, spices, some chopped broccoli and finely chopped carrot with some ricotta and parmesan cheese. I put that into the pie crust and mixed some milk and corn starch and microwaved them for 90 seconds, stirred it and microwaved it again for another 90 seconds before pouring the sauce over the filling. I baked it (open top) in a 175 C oven for about 40 minutes. It was so nice I had to have seconds.
On Saturday I accompanied
archinonlive and a bunch of his friends to see a play. The nice thing about plays is that one may follow much of the story even when one can't understand the language because the body language communicates much. Particularly for this troop, which uses only male actors--so those who play female roles make it very clear from the manner in which they move that the character is female. Since I've a fondness for music and dance I always enjoy watching musicals, even when I can't understand the songs. This particular acting troupe is known for being willing to do mini-encores throughout the show--so after most songs when the audience clapped, cheered, and shouted enough the orchestra would start up again and the actors would resume singing and dancing. In addition to repeating songs they were also encouraged by the crowd to repeat a variety of other scene snippets, usually funny things, minor acts of violence, or romantic stuff. On Sunday we went to the local fighter practice in the morning--met a variety of nice people there. After practice we stopped by a store to get more camping mats to make a larger, shareable yoga mat for the living room and while we were out we picked up a pie-plate (he didn't have one, and the white ceramic tart-plate we wound up with is similar to one I used to have but lost in the move to Italy, so it won't even be redundant when my stuff catches up with me. Then we went home for food before going to the folk music session at which he plays (yay for sewing time!), followed by a Swedish Folk dance class. I found the class fun in a very different way from just faking the dancing like I did at the restaurant last week. The class actually taught me the correct foot-work for the dances, which in some cases is harder than I would have expected, given how easy is was to sort-of follow along last week. For me the hardest part is that several of the dances require one to step heel-first. I am much too used to dancing and walking on the balls of my feet, not my heels. Oh well, I will learn!
This morning I did uni work before Swedish class, but after class I got distracted by cooking. I decided to celebrate the existence of the pie plate, and got carried away with a high-prep time dish. Pre-cooked some potatoes in a pot of water with a chunk of fresh ginger for 15 minutes. While that boiled I cooked a leek and some crushed butter in garlic. While they cooled I mixed up a butter pie crust (with an egg in it). I used the cooled water from the potatoes to start a bread sponge, and mixed the potatoes, leeks, spices, some chopped broccoli and finely chopped carrot with some ricotta and parmesan cheese. I put that into the pie crust and mixed some milk and corn starch and microwaved them for 90 seconds, stirred it and microwaved it again for another 90 seconds before pouring the sauce over the filling. I baked it (open top) in a 175 C oven for about 40 minutes. It was so nice I had to have seconds.
