Days 37 and 38 - February 6 and 7

I apologize for the massive updates that will be happening. I fell behind, as you can see. This means I am bombarding this blog with updates. I think I'll group them into days, but then instead of many short posts it will be fewer long posts. I do not know which is better.

So! American dinner! I had several helpers, including a Canadian and an Austrian, and not a single American. Ironic, eh?




First-timers rolling cookie-dough balls. They started getting bigger...and bigger...and bigger.

Things turned out very well. The courses:
Appetizers – PB&J Sandwiches and Chicken Noodle Soup



I did not try the sandwiches (to be honest, I’m getting rather tired of them, especially with terrible Danish peanut butter), nor did I make them, so I’m not sure how they tasted. It was my new flatmate Dori’s idea to make them, as we were worried about the amount of food since people kept asking if they could bring new friends or roommates or whatnot.




The soup, however, was a major success. I’d never made it before, but it was so good. Such a simple recipe, but seriously delicious. That one’s going in my cookbook!

Main Course – Macaroni and Cheese and Meatloaf



Not sure how the macaroni went over, but I feel like you have to either really love cheese, or be American to really appreciate it. I wasn’t really around for the eating of it, though, because I kept having to run back to the kitchen to check on the cookies. Truthfully, I prefer Kraft, but I’m a strange one, and Conrad told me he liked my version better.

Nothing terribly interesting to say about the meatloaf (and I am apparently lacking in a photograph). It turned out alright. For some reason, I can never get it to taste like Mom’s, but that’s how it always is, isn’t it? Marcin kept telling me how much he liked it, which made me laugh – makes sense that a Polish guy would like it!

Dessert – Chocolate Chip Cookies


(Also a horrible photo)

I’m not sure if it was the butter or what, but the cookies completely flattened out. This has happened to me in Boston as well, though, so I’m not sure. We also didn’t grease the aluminum foil (silly me, trusting someone who’s never baked cookies before who told me “they’ll be fine!”), so they were completely stuck on and people ended up having to more like eat them with a fork. But hey, they tasted good! Also, seeing how they were stuck and flat, I left one pan unbaked so everyone could be a REAL American and just eat the dough. A few people looked at me like I was crazy, but they don’t know what they were missing. The Americans (and Canadians) just said “They don’t understand” and the non-North Americans who tried it did tell me it was amazing. That’s because you can’t go wrong with cookie dough.

Claudia and I decided to head over to the Polish guy’s after dinner to watch a movie rather than go dancing because cooking made me rather exhausted, not to mention that American food does not tend to be the type of food that propels you with energy. So we headed over, but instead of watching one movie, we ended up watching three movies.

The first was a Serbian movie called Black Cat, White Cat. The first half was…interesting. We weren’t sure what was going on or why we were watching it. I felt bad for poor Andrzej who had really recommended it for us. Marcin A. also had seen it and really liked it. It’s always hard when you really like something and the people you show it to don’t like it. Claudia stopped watching, but Marcin F. and I kept watching, and I don’t regret watching it. The second half was better, and though I could not say it was one of my favorite movies, it was entertaining. Or at least I felt a little more cultured for having watching a non-English movie.

We then started talking about Slavic culture, why Andrzej and Marcin had wanted us to see it, and Polish films. They asked if we would want to see a Polish film, and I said definitely, but I did not realize they had meant at that very moment. So though it was 2 AM, we watched a movie called Pregi (“The Welts” in English, but I think it sounds cooler in Polish). It was a pretty intense movie, but it was really, really well-done. I would certainly recommend it. It’s about a boy who is abused by his father in childhood and how that affects him throughout his life. Very, very good.

Then, as it was now 4 AM, and the buses start up again at 7, Claudia and I decided it would be better to just stay for another three hours rather than walking to the nearest S-train stop, especially since we did not know when the S-trains stopped and/or started running. So, after we had an impromptu breakfast, we wanted to watch something “light and fluffy”. We ended up watching My Best Friend’s Girl. Not really my kind of romantic comedy, but on the plus side, it took place in Boston, which made me incredibly happy and probably annoying to my dear friends who tolerated me getting excited whenever they showed cityscapes (or when they showed Old South and I gasped and Claudia said “Do you know that place?” “I WORK there!” which then made me miss my adorable preschoolers).



At one point, I was really worried that I may have broken some Polish custom by refusing a shot. They’re all so polite that I felt really bad and I really, really hope that there’s no custom in which it’s incredibly rude to say no. Marcin A. had poured us all shots at the beginning of the movie, and I took the first one because he had poured it before I could say no, but then I tried to tell him as he was pouring a second round a while later but I probably did not speak very loud, so I had to refuse once it was already poured. If it was just not liking the taste of alcohol, I would have taken it just to be polite, but I really don’t know how much alcohol I can take with my medicine. So, I hope I did not look like a terribly rude American. Or even just a terribly rude friend.

In the end, we got home at 8 AM. I think I have now beaten my record of staying up during the night – possibly I have gone to bed later after a Relay for Life, but that’s cutting it close and that was for a reason. I was absolutely exhausted on Sunday and spent the entire day watching British talk/comedy/game shows, finally watching QI, which people kept telling me to watch, and getting immediately hooked. What could be better than Stephen Fry, British accents, random and interesting facts, and comedy?

Thankfully, we did not end up having a Super Bowl party. Turns out all of us had calculated wrong, and kick-off was at 12:30 AM. Not going to happen.