We just finished watching the movie, Son of Rambow, a British coming of age film about two misfit boys who decide to make a movie. One of the boys is a member of the brethren, a very strict religious organization, and the other kid is essentially parent-less while his mom is cavorting around the continent with her old-folks-home-owning boyfriend. They use a video camera to make a movie starring the religious kid as the son of Rambow. I love this film! We saw it when it was first in theaters back in 2007 and we loved it then. It lost nothing in the six years since we last saw it. Bloody brilliant, it was! I whole-heartedly recommend it.
OK, now that the movie review is out of the way, we can talk about the 8-week challenge. It was a very good food day today. I started with a piece of chocolate banana bread and a glass of Fez tea. Both were quite tasty. I ate them while reading my British spy novel. (Spoiler alert: everyone dies happily ever after and all action taken was either pointless or poorly thought out. It was somewhat depressing, but of so exciting!) I read so long that I was hungry again, so I had a small bowl of cereal before taking the dogs over to Forest Park for a hike.
Hiking in Forest Park is always fun because my brother sometimes took me hiking there over the years when I visited him. It has been lots of years since we went over there, but I've been visiting him in Portland for 26 years (once every few years, whether I needed to see him or not), so the trails are vaguely familiar. As Brian and I walk along, I'll remember a conversation I had with my brother when we walked in the same area years before. It is a cool deja-vu experience, and I have it every time Brian and I try a new portion of the trail.
After the hike, we came home and Brian made burritos. They were spectacular: pinto beans, guacamole, corn, red bell pepper, onion, tomato, lettuce and cous-cous. They were perfectly spiced, both from the Penzy taco seasoning and the spicy guacamole he used. Yum! For dessert, we had apples and a square of dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt. Quite tasty, indeed.
Once I cleaned up the very messy kitchen, off we went to the Portland Japanese gardens. Wow! None of us had ever been there before and we were all impressed. It is yet another park in the city of Portland (16% of the land in Portland city limits is park land or green space), yet unlike any other park in the city. It is on the location of the old Portland zoo, and has been in existence for 50 years. There are five different garden designs that make up the park, all of them traditional Japanese designs. The first two garden areas have "human-sized" trees; not bonsai (which requires pots) but simply well pruned, very old trees. The second area added pools and koi to the mix, along with a Japanese tea house. The third garden was a "natural" garden, which means that the gardeners have to do a whole lot of work without anyone being able to recognize that work was done (very difficult!), Those trees were much larger and more wild looking than their neighbors in the other gardens. The last two gardens had a Zen garden feel, with the large raked sandboxes with stones, moss gardens and trees. Lovely Margaret, YES, we still want to go with you and your family - the day was just too beautiful not to take advantage of!
For supper, I sliced up the rest of the ciabatta bread and topped it with two kinds of pesto: a traditional, basil and Parmesan based pesto and an arugula and hazelnut pesto. Both were delicious. I added grape tomatoes and a touch of mozzarella cheese to the mix, then roasted the whole thing for 10 minutes at 450 degrees in the oven. It was excellent. For dessert (yes, I'm totally sugar snacky today) we had thin slices of banana bread topped with the rest of the strawberry compote I made a couple of weeks ago. The only sugar in the dessert was from the handful of dark chocolate chips I put in the banana bread, which is not much. As we munched our chocolate/strawberry/banana dessert, we enjoyed Son of Rambow. I believe this is where we started.
Be happy and healthy!
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