Que me des tu cariño...

So, Mi Cariño's birthday is coming up, and I've been toying with different presents and what not. One idea, since her birthday falls in the middle of the week is to cook for her. But that sounds cheesy, not to mention that I think she wants a shindig (a quiet one) with friends around that are not me.

Since I have no big plans for this beautiful Saturday, I decided to just cook while she's away working on her poetry. This has not been at all influenced by all the talking she did last night while we were at her Line Sister's home - you know, where she's talking about how I keep talking about knowing how to cook but that I've yet to cook for her and what not. This was unfortunate because indeed, I tried to cook for her on one of my days off last week, but it just didn't work out. In any case, this was my idea, don't you let her tell you any different.

This was quite the nerve wracking experience, and I wasn't sure as to what to cook. I decided to go for something easy and that I've often cooked: Locrio de salami. Now, Mi Cariño is not a habitual salami eater, but I figured she would eat it if I cooked it and so I went along. Locrio de Salami is special for me because it was one of the first meals I learned to cook, but most importantly it was one of the first (if not the first) meal I cooked that I was proud of.

In any case, the day began with shopping ingredients for the meal: rice, salami (of course), the appropriate seasonings, bananas, cabbage and tomatoes. Once back it was a matter of pre-cooking the salami, adding the seasonings, water, and when that boiled, the rice. Then it was just to cover it and wait.

Cooking rice is horrible. I never get the ratio of water to rice right it feels, but I got really lucky this time I think. While the rice was cooking I prepared the salad, which consisted of cabbage, some carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes. When Mi Cariño got home, I asked if she wanted maduros as well, but I think she wisely wanted to take it slow.

Here's the finished product:

If I do say so myself, it was pretty tasty. I think Mi Cariño enjoyed it, too. So, not too bad.

Team Jacob

Ida and I bought our tickets early, chose a place a little out of the way so that we wouldn't run into a whole lot of people, and we were nice and ready for a midnight showing of Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part I.

Before hand we went for some Thai food, because we both love it. We went to Laut, which was close to the theater, and began the meal with some singha beers. We followed the meal with some veggie steamed dumplings.

I decided to try out their tofu pad thai, although I thought of getting something new, but couldn't be bothered about it. Although it looked terribly appetizing, I was incredibly disappointed with their pad thai. Ida, however, was happy with her meal.

After, we stood in line in the freezing cold with a bunch of a lot more women (and girls) to wait until it was time to be in the theater. We purchased a special deal that allowed us to see the previous movie and already be in place nice and warm by midnight when the new movie began - a similar deal to what we did for Harry Potter, but we didn't care enough to watch all three movies before hand.

In between movies, the theater played a bit of a trivia game, which was fun, since I won a prize. I no longer remember what question I answered, but it was kind of obscure. We tried to win a prize for Ida as well, but couldn't think of the answers fast enough. I chose me a Jacob shirt as my prize, since he is all kinds of cute and adorable.

The movie itself was... okay. I mean, it's not like the source material is that great to begin with, right? As much as I enjoy making fun of the movies and books, I think that they are just a nice enough plot, that plays on the desires of women that have accepted the fairy tale bs - you know, meet that one man that will be sooooo perfect and sooooo awesome, etc., etc., throw-up-cakes. I find it good fluff. The movie stayed pretty close to the first half of the book, and it was interesting to see how and what they chose to cut out.

The sad part of walking out of the theater and grabbing a cab around Park Avenue was knowing that I won't be watching the next movie with Ida. These things are infinitely much more fun when you've got someone that enjoys them as you do by your side.