At the Ropa. Ropa Vi-e-jaaaaa ....

Well, lets see: This past weekend I went to Pizza Luce for a rock and roll show. Twas great fun. Cars & Trucks, with an opening performance by a man named Hot Rod, who performed comedy ala Laffy Taffy. As one audience person said: "We were pun-ished."

Speaking of music: Things are shaping up with forming my own 80s cover band, which will be called "Christa [Pista] And The." [I think I made this up. But if I stole this band name from someone, please let me know before I get T'shirts made]. You may ask what I bring to the table, as I could barely fake my way through the school song on my ole battered alto sax in high school: Leg Warmers. I bring leg warmers. I have a guitar player, a harpsichord player and a leg-warmer wearer. I have a rumor of a drummer. Our covers will range from Belinda Carlisle, to early Madonna, Lita Ford, the Footloose Soundtrack, and other songs I have been studying during band practice. [Read: when I am alone in my car].

In other news. Here is how I spent the past week:

RAW FOOD SATURDAY.

Beat Ravioli with Pine Nut Goat Cheese: This week's experiment was a new level of raw food cooking. The previous two meals have mostly been combinations of chopped vegetables. This one was more labor-intensive, the taste was more interesting, and the end result had a gourmet vibe to it.

As I explained what we were eating to Chuck, he had to keep correcting me.

"Um ... That's not cheese."
"When you say 'Ravioli, I think Ravioli."

The Ravioli in this dish is just thinly sliced beets. The 'cheese' is a combo of pine nuts, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, lemon zest, which is smooshed between the beets.

And the sauce is a mix of the cheese and water and oil and Rosemary.

I liked it. It would be fun to put the fake cheese inside of actual pasta and use the same sauce, with some cooked beets in a nonraw version of this meal. Which is kind of why I am experimenting with raw food anyway, to glean new ideas.

So ... success. It actually almost tasted desserty, which was kind of cool.



Ropa Vieja: Okay. I've made this once before, but it has been awhile. I can't make the picture look good, but this is so friggin' delicious. Plus, it takes about 10 minutes of prep, then the crock pot incubates the meal for the next 4-6 hours. Awesome.

It's a part stew part meat party style Cuban dish, made with 2 pounds of meat, tomato sauce and tomato past, green pepper, onion, garlic, cumin ... paired with Jupina, of course.

MOVIE.
Sunshine Cleaners: Oh, I don't know. This movie about sisters who start a business cleaning up bloody crime scenes and the homes of dead hoarders is fine.

Purple Violets: Here is a strange thing. The "Made for iTunes" movie. I'm trying to figure out where that falls on the hierarchy of movie respect. Is it greater or less than a made for TV movie? And are these greater or less than the straight to DVD movies? It has all the blurry plot lines of a straight to DVD film (which it was, it was just exclusive to iTunes for a month). For instance, sometimes Selma Blair looks like a person who knows she is being filmed, but is trying to ignore the camera, unsuccessfully.

But, whatevs. It was dec. Blair hates her husband, runs into her college boyfriend, leaves her husband, leaves her college boyfriend, all while Debra Messing is ignoring the advances of Edward Burns, her college boyfriend. This creates a problem: Namely that Debra Messing is trying to convince an audience that she is 33, which -- as a former 33 year old myself -- I think she struggled to do when she was 33.


BOOKS
Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell: There is a scene, too close to the end for me to provide context, where our hero Dr. Peter Brown rips open the skin on his own leg, digs his fingers into the muscles and breaks free one of the less-essential leg bones to use as a makeshift knife against some Mafia thugs. Pass the garbage can, please, my sandwich just made a U-turn.

I freakin’ loved this book. Full review here.