I love it when there are enough odds and ends laying about that I can create dinner without having to really do anything.

And tonight was a perfect case in point.

Yesterday I had grilled pork chops.  Not the two thick chops I thought I had pulled out of the freezer, but 5 thin chops I had cut and thought I’d use for pork scallops or some such thing.  After they had thawed and I realized they weren’t quite what I was expecting, I marinated them all in some red wine, garlic, and olive oil and then grilled them.  We ate the two larger ones and the remaining three went into the ‘fridge.

Also in the ‘fridge – sitting in a lovely tupperware container – was a couple of cups of sauce left over from Sunday’s Lasagne.  It was a great homemade sauce – we eschew jarred sauce in our house – and was just crying out for some pasta to cover.

And lo!  A half-box of pasta on the shelf!  Could this have really been planned all along?

Well.  No.  It’s just what our kitchen is like on most days.  We can always cook dinner without going to the store.

So the pork cutlets were cubed and dropped into the sauce.  The pasta was dropped into the boiling water.  The end of the wedge of pecorino romano cheese was grated.  Yesterday’s bread was sliced.

Dinner was served!

And while dinner was a bevy of leftovers, dessert is fresh – fresh blackberries in a homemade custard.  It’s cooling in the ‘fridge right now…

Mother’s Day is a bit different your mom’s no longer around.  It’s even more so when Mother’s Day and Mom’s Birthday fall on the same day.

Mother’s Day and Mom’s Birthday were always the start of the month-long May Birthday Celebration in our house.  All four of my sisters are May-Babies, as well.  Yes, it was a crazy time.  But none of those birthdays topped Moms.  She was the Queen Bee.  And even though they were often just days apart – when they didn’t fall on the same day – they were two separate occasions.

My father set the mood by having stacks of presents on the table when she got up.  He had a great eye and bought a good portion of her clothes.  He knew what she looked good in and she loved what he bought.  She very rarely returned anything.  And shoes…  Her father and brother both sold high-end women’s shoes.  Back in the day she had every matching shoe/bag/belt/hat-combo there was. Imelda Marcos sought advice from her.

Mama had six kids but Mama had style.

And while she ooed and awed over her gifts, she spent extra-special attention on the things we made her.  Every picture was a Michelangelo original.  Every card, every 29¢ bottle of perfume, every inedible cake we baked, was greeted with praise worthy of an Old Master or chef de pâtisserie.  And she saved every one of those scribbled cards.

Victor’s mom and my mom were born 2 days apart, on opposite coasts, in 1926.  Friday we took his mom out for dinner at the local diner – her choice – and yesterday we had his family over for a combo Birthday Mother’s Day dinner.  Since I’ve been doing through Mom’s recipes for our Mad Men Mondays I’ve kept eying her Chinese Casserole.  It’s a dish she made up back in the ’60s and feeds an army.  I haven’t made it in years and years – because it feeds an army.  I decided her birthday was the perfect excuse to introduce it to the east coast family.

My mom never really followed recipes and never really quite had her measurements down.  It’s a trait I totally understand, so I never have a problem following them.  You can go with them as written or play around a bit.  They always come out great.  For the casserole, the only things I changed were the soups and the mushrooms.  I used organic cream of soups – I just couldn’t do the national brand and she probably used Lady Lee brand from Lucky Market, anyway… and I added a package of exotic mushroom blend to the mushroom mix.  As I said, mom would experiment all the time and as new things caught her eye she would include them when she could.

The Rice-A-Roni Wid Rice mix was a bit different, as well.  It’s now labelled “Nature’s Way” and calls itself “all natural.”  Strange… But it worked.

In fact, all of it worked quite well.  It was Mom’s Chinese Casserole.  No doubt about it.  The only things missing were her – and the huge Corning Ware casserole she made it in.

And then we had the rest of the meal…

I made a huge lasagne.  And I do mean huge.

Lasagne is something I have never used a recipe for.  I simply worked in too many Italian restaurants and made too many of them to ever think I needed one.  And I don’t use no-boil noodles.  I think they make a gummy lasagne and you can’t encapsulate the filling with them.  Lasagne is a wrapped package of goodness – not a semi-layered gooey mess.  Spend the extra ten minutes cooking your noodles.

The filling for this lasagne included cooked ground beef, hard cooked eggs, porchetta, speck, prosciutto, buffalo mozzarella, ricotta, and lots of shredded cheeses – mozzarella, fontina, asiago…

I baked it covered Saturday night for 1 1/2 hours at 350° and then re-baked – also covered – it Sunday for 2 hours at 300°.

For the last 30 minutes I raised the temperature to 350°, uncovered it, and added shredded cheese to the top.

It made much more than we needed.  Even with doggie bags leaving, I froze a goodly amount for another day.

The meal didn’t stop there…  We also had Chicken cutlets.

I breaded them with panko breadcrumbs and corn meal.    It gave them a nice crunch.

We also had another huge fruit salad – in Mom’s 1960s Salad Bowl…

And the pièce de résistance was a Coconut Cake!

This was a much simpler cake than the monstrosity I made last year.  Last year was good, but it was really a one-time cake.  I don’t see another one of those in my future.

This cake was much lighter and actually more enjoyable because of it.

I made a lightly-flavored coconut whipped cream for the filling and top and sprinkled shredded coconut on top.

The recipe will make either three 8″ layers or 2 10″ layers. I chose width over height and used 2 10″ springform pans.

Coconut Cake

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup whole milk
• ½ cup unsweetened coconut milk
• ¼ cup Coco Lopez or other coconut cream
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 8 large egg whites

Preheat oven to 350°.  Butter two 10″ or three 8″ pans.  Line with parchment, and butter parchment.  Flour pans and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Mix  together the flour, baking powder and salt.  Stir together the milk, coconut milk, vanilla, and coconut cream.  Add the dry and wet ingredients to the butter mixture in three increments, starting and ending with the dry.

Whip the egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter until evenly blended. Divide the cake batter evenly among the two or three prepared cake pans.

Bake for about 30-35 minutes for 8″ cakes or 40-45 minutes for 10″ cakes – or until toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in pans about 15 minutes, remove from pans and set on racks until completely cool.

For Whipped Cream Icing:

Whip 1 1/2 cups whipping cream with 1/4 cup Coco Lopez.  Place about 1/3 whipped cream on first layer.  Top with second layer and spread remaining 2/3 cream on top.  Generously top with shredded coconut.

This was an easy one to make and really took no time at all.  I can see it – and a few variations – becoming a part of the repertoire.

All-in-all It was a good day with a lot of good food and fond memories.

And Mad Men Monday?!?  There’s a 1960s Chinese Casserole in the ‘fridge right now.

Leftovers.  What a concept!

We are coming into my favorite time of the year – fresh fruits and vegetables season!  I am just so tired of seeing produce from New Zealand and tomatoes from Florida.  I want stuff grown and raised locally!  Or, at least, on this continent.

I know I’m getting old when I lament the fact that one can buy fresh strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, etc., 365 days a year.  I remember as a kid biting into those first strawberries of the season, the first peaches, watermelon…Biting into a juicy peach and having the juice run down your arm.  Being a sticky mess – but it was okay.

It was gastronomical magic.

Food is so taken for granted, today.  We have everything available every day.  The only thing lacking is flavor.   We’ve paid a price to have blueberries in December and blackberries in February.  Not just the ridiculous environmental cost.  They’re flavorless.  Produce is now grown for shipping and storage – not flavor and eating.

Bah.  Humbug.

So I’m bah humbug-ing but just made a salad that literally came from around the world.  The cheese was from Italy.  The beef from the midwest, lettuces and strawberries from California, tomatoes from Canada.  Pineapple from Costa Rica, blackberries from Mexico.  I have no idea where the watermelon came from – probably California.  The only thing local were the Pennsylvania eggs.  The olive oil and vinegar came from Italy, as well.

Evidently, I’m a bit of a hypocrite.

I can always say that if it wasn’t there I wouldn’t buy it, but… it is there.  And my not buying it isn’t going to change that.

I think what I really miss is the anticipation.  Seeing the first strawberries of the season come in and having to wait – because we never bought the first ones.  They weren’t ready.  And kids today will never know the joy of that first really ripe and perfect plum.  How as the months rolled along we went from one fruit to another – having your fill and then moving on to the next. With everything available all of the time, nothing is special, anymore.  It’s all the same.

So I guess I’ll just be my normal crotchety self and bitch and moan about the good old days.

The reality is, of course, they weren’t always all that great.

But the peaches were.

So…  Are ya watching Mad Men on TV?!?

It is pretty much the only show I am watching.  I don’t care about Real Housewives of anywhere, I haven’t seen Dancing With The Stars since Victor’s cousin Kelly won the first season, and the rest of it really is a vast wasteland…

But Mad Men?!?  Brilliant.  I get to relive my childhood every week.  It’s a lot of fun.

So…  I thought another bit of fun would be to dust off my Mom’s Cook Books from the ’60s and see about recreating some of those fun and fabulous meals from yesteryear.  Oh my goodness gracious some of the recipes she collected!

It’s really been a hoot going through them.  I have quite a few I want to make, but tonight I thought I’d start off with something really simple.  It was a chicken pie with a rice crust.  With turmeric. How exotic!  I really resisted adding things to this  and switching things around.  The only real change I did do was to saute the onions, celery, and bell pepper before stirring it into the sauce.  I just had to.  Otherwise, it was made as written!

I tried to make it look just like Mom would have…

And it really did look great just before going into the oven…

Alas… It did not slice into neat and lovely slices.  It completely fell apart.

But it really did taste good.  The predominant flavor was the turmeric from the rice.  I really would have jazzed up the filling and definitely would have added cheese to the filling.  But…  It was fun the way it was.

And then we had dessert!

My mom was Queen of Desserts.

We had dessert every single night.  Sometimes it was just cookies, often cake, but she also did lots of bars and other things she could make a lot of and cut up for six kids.

These were the Chocolate Chip Coconut Bars.  I think at some point I have had all of the various bars pictured.  These just called my name, today.

Very simple to pull together.  And what’s really nice is they’re not overly-sweet.  A nice balance.

The recipe called for chocolate chips and – OMG – I was out!  I had white chocolate chips, but that just wouldn’t do.  I chopped up a bit of semi-sweet chocolate bar.  Mom would understand.

We also ate them from glass plates – unheard of in the ’60s in our house.  Melmac reigned supreme back in those days.

We did have glass in the house, though…  Like Mama’s salad bowl with matching cruets…

We used it for our fruit salad…

On Sunday – Mother’s Day – I’m making her famous Chinese Casserole.  Besides Mother’s Day, it is also her Birthday.  She would have been 86…

I think it’s a fitting tribute…

Okay.  I admit it.  It’s a cheap play on words.  But as gay as I am, even I remember that poster!  The girl was definitely hot!  I had already reached the quarter-century mark when the poster came out and was living up at Lake Tahoe.  I knew of Farrah – but had never heard of Farro.  And probably wouldn’t have been interested in either.

Well… not entirely true.  I’ve always liked grains and I definitely could have used some hair tips…

Tahoe was a time of whole-grains-and-back-to-nature-in-a-’70s-pot-smoking way.  Wheat berries were plentiful.  Whole-grain brown rice was everywhere.  Lots of sprouts.  On everything.  No boxes or mixes.  It was back to nature at its finest.  Granted, we moved from the little house in Tahoe Vista to the big house up above Kings Beach with the 20 foot ceiling and wall of glass overlooking the lake after leaving the little coffee shop and going to work for the glitzy hotel casino, but it was still The Mountains.  We started off with a parachute for floor-to-ceiling drapes and ended up with a huge section of Christo’s Fence, compliments of our new roommate, Susan.

Christo’s Fence was a 24 1/2 mile long 18′ tall fabric fence that ran through Sonoma and Marin before ending at the Pacific Ocean.  It was pretty awesome to behold – and pretty cool to have in our living room.

But back to Farrah.  Er…  Farro…

I probably started reading about farro in Bon Appetit magazine in the ’90s sometime.  I honestly don’t remember, but after getting out of the hotel business in 1989 and getting into health care, I started eating better, again, and I really started paying attention to what was in things.  Aren’t you glad?!?

One thing I did learn right away is farro is not spelt.  There is still a lot of controversy over this but… farro is Triticum dicoccum and spelt is Triticum spelta.  (Common bread wheat is Triticum aestivum.)  They’re all related – they’re not all the same.

Botany lesson is over.

I picked up some farro a while back and decided last night it was time to cook it up – in a risotto!  My first thought when I picked it up was for a wheat-berry-type salad.  I’m glad I held out.

Unlike spelt, farro really needs to be soaked prior to cooking – 30 minutes to an hour usually suffices – so start thinking about this early in the day – not 30 minutes before you want to sit down to dinner.  And it can soak longer – even overnight.

It probably took about 40 minutes to cook – and that meant a lot of stirring and attention – but the final result was worth it!

I served it with a lemon chicken breast.  Really easy!  I mixed 2 eggs with the juice and zest of 1 lemon, and a bit of salt and pepper.  I then floured two chicken breasts and dipped them into the lemony-egg mixture and then quickly browned them in a skillet.  The skillet then went into a 350° oven for about 20 minutes.  I could have cooked the whole thing on the stove, but it was easier to pop them into the oven than to have to watch it while stirring the risotto.

Farro Risotto

• 1 cup farro
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 cup onion, chopped
• 4 oz mushrooms, sliced
• several florettes cauliflower, sliced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
• 1/3 cup mustard seed and ale cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley

Soak farro in cold water at least 30 minutes.  Drain.

Heat the broth in a small saucepan and keep warm.

In a large skillet or wide pan, heat the oil and butter over medium heat. Add the onion and mushrooms and cook until onions are wilted.  Add the drained farro and cook, stirring constantly until toasted.

Add the wine and stir constantly until mostly absorbed. Add 1/2 cup of the hot broth and stir constantly until completely absorbed. Continue adding the remaining broth, 1/2 cup at a time, until the farro is creamy and cooked through, 30 to 40 minutes.  Remove from heat and add the raisins, pine nuts, parsley, and cheese.

Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper, as desired.

I used cauliflower and a mustard ale cheddar because that’s what I had in the house.  A cup or so of just about any vegetable would work, as would just about any cheese.  You don’t need a lot – just enough to add a bit of creaminess.  And obviously you can switch the chicken broth for vegetable broth to make it vegetarian, and omit the butter and cheese to make it vegan.

It promises to be good no matter how you do it!

Besides the obvious things like family, friends, and liberal politics, two things I really miss about San Francisco are Chinese food and Mexican food.  There just aren’t a lot of decent ethnic restaurants out here in the Wonder Bread Suburbs.

Andy’s Excellent Chow Mein or Gordo’s Burritos are things I dream about.  Especially since both of them were within walking distance from our front door.  ::sigh::

Nowadays, if I want Mexican, it’s easier just to make it, myself.

So last night it was Mexican.  A tamale pie. Not the most authentic of recipes, perhaps, but the flavors were there.

The filling was a combination of chiles, onions, green peppers, ground beef, garlic, cumin, roasted corn, a can of pinto beans (rinsed and drained) and enchilada sauce.  The topping was a tamale masa.  As I said – not exactly authentic, but it worked, well.

I do make tamales every now and again and have a (now nearly empty) bag of Maseca Masa Flour in the cabinet.  Corn flour is very different than cornmeal and is quite reasonably priced – even out here in ‘burbia.  The recipe for making tamales is very simple – equal parts of masa and water, a third as much lard (yes, lard!) a pinch of salt and a bit of baking powder.

I cooked off the onions, garlic, and peppers, added the cumin, chipotle powder, and then the ground beef.  When it was cooked through, I added the corn, beans, and the enchilada sauce.  I tasted and added a pinch of S&P and then spooned the masa topping over everything.

I covered it and placed it in a preheated 350° oven for about an hour.

I topped it with some shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream.

It wasn’t Gordo but it worked.  And it was really good for lunch, today!

Lovely.  Bright.  Colorful…

No, I’m not talking about myself.  I’m describing a really good Bean Salad I made Monday.  Really simple and really easy. (No, I’m still not talking about myself!)

Yes, I know all about the controversy surrounding canned beans and have at least a half-dozen different dried bean varieties in the cupboard that I use regularly.  But I also have a half-dozen canned varieties.  They’re one of my guilty convenience-foods.  Everyone needs a couple, and I always rinse them well.

Bean salads, rice or grain salads, pasta salads, can all come together the same way.  The parts are all interchangeable.

Bean Salad

• 4-5 cups cooked beans, rinsed and drained  (3 cans of different beans rinsed well and drained or your choice of dried beans that have been soaked, cooked, cooled, etc.)
• 2 stalks celery, chopped fine
• 1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped fine
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
• Fresh herbs, as available, chopped
• handful of raisins
• white balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

Mix beans with celery, bell pepper, parsley, and fresh herbs, if using.  Drizzle with while balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  Mix well.  Taste, and add S&P, if required.  Serve cold or at room temperature.

The beauty of salads like this is they are great for getting rid of those little leftover containers in the ‘fridge.  Any and all vegetables can be added.  Diced cooked meats, cheeses, a handful of chopped nuts… Really…  anything can go in.  And the beans can easily become rice, wheat berries, lentils, pasta… Whatever you have or feel like having.

Parsley and/or other fresh herbs are really good because they add a fresh pop and really do freshen up older leftovers.  And different vinegars can really change the complexion, as well.  The white balsamic is great for Spring and Summer – as are fruit vinegars or white wine vinegar.  Fall is perfect apple cider vinegar time, and Winter can handle a heavier balsamic.

It really is that simple!

The guy who disdains television – who actually has problems figuring out the remote control – is hooked on Mad Men.

It’s true.  I absolutely love the show.

I think the first reason is that it is so true to life.  It’s my youth being broadcast on TV every week.  I remember everyone smoking everywhere.  In elevators, in the movie theaters…  Hell…  my pediatrician would have a cigarette going while examining me.  It was a normal part of life.  Cigarette advertising actually touted certain brands as being healthy.  Doctor recommended. And the booze.  It really was everywhere.

It was definitely a fun time to be growing up in the Big City.

So fast-forward 50 years and I get to relive my youth every week.  On Mondays because we tape the Sunday show.  Tape.  Did I just show my age?  We electronically record it on our Digital Video Recorder.  We used to tape things. Last century.  I used to smoke, also.  I started when it was still good for me.  Before Surgeon General warnings were even thought of.  I was pretty cool.

But back to Mad Men…

We’ve been watching it on Monday, right after dinner.  So today I had the brilliant idea of doing Mad Men Monday and recreating some of those recipes from the golden years of canned Cream of Whatever Soup and frozen Veal Cutlets.

And what better place to find recipes than my mom’s cook books from the ’60s and ’70s?!?  Two huge binders of recipes she created, cut out from magazines and newspapers, as well as recipes written out by my grandmother, great-aunts, family friends…  They’ve been my own personal Mad Men for years.

I have referenced these books forever, but I have to admit that I have rarely really read a lot of the recipes or ever really followed any of them exactly.  I would more often glance over pages, see something that caught my eye, and then used it as a starting off point to get the creative juices flowing.  And after really reading a few of them tonight, it was a little scary.

I can’t imagine cooking boneless, skinless chicken breasts for three hours even if the oven temperature is 275°.  On a bed of chipped beef, no less…

But there are a lot of them I really do want to have a go at.  And I think it would be fun to eat them in the living room while watching Mad Men.  We never eat dinner in front of the TV.

Time for a change!

So… I’m going to go through the books and start planning a few meals.  I don’t promise to make them exactly as printed, because as low as they may be, I do have standards.  But I am going to try to be as authentic as I can be.

No cigarettes and no Scotch – those days are behind me – but a Bacardi Rum Cake for dessert is a definite possibility…

And maybe even some Heinz Beans…

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate writing out recipes.

I still love cooking and creating and all that, but the actual process of sitting down and trying to write out what I think I may have done for dinner is actually difficult.  My measuring skills are imprecise at best.  Well…  not exactly true.  If something calls for a half-cup of milk, raisins – whatever – I can eyeball a pretty precise half-cup.  But if I’m making a sauce for scallops of pork tenderloin… Was it a half-cup?  Three-quarters?  I dunno.  The finished result was a smooth, creamy sauce.  I can tell you the ingredients, but amounts vary.

I used to love creating recipes commercially – the real science behind cooking.  And taking a base recipe and expanding it to 20 – or 200 portions. I first learned the concept from the AFRCS – The Armed Forces Recipe Card Service.  It was relatively new when I was in Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club.  Standardized recipes printed on cards set up in 100-portion quantities.  One of the first things we learned in “A” School was to multiply them out to 5000 people – or to divide them down to 30.  It was only through working with the recipes that one learned how to manually adjust things like baking powder or yeast – and salt and other spices.  Even though ingredients are the same proportionally, they do not multiply out.  A quarter-cup of salt in a recipe for 100 would not call for 12 1/2 cups of salt for 5000.  Trust me on this.

And speaking of varying…  You’ve surely noticed the trend in many cooking magazines to give you the weight of some ingredients in place of measurements.  The theory – according to the magazine publishers – is because of the variables in measuring. They wish to be precise.

However…  the recipes generally will state something like “15 1/2 oz flour (3 1/2 cups)” yadayadayada ingredients, and then state something like “1 cup water, or more.”  with instructions to add the 1 cup and then add more, 1 tbsp at a time, to get the desired consistency.

HELLO?!?  Where is your “precision” now?!?  I certainly understand the science of baking vs the art of cooking.  The variables in baking are legion.  They include the type of flour, the moisture content of the flour, the weather and relative humidity along with in cake baking – the proper ratio of flour,  sugar, eggs, and fat…

But if the recipe calls for weighing your flour – approx 4 1/2 oz per cup – and NOT weighing your sugar – about 7 oz per cup – it’s nothing more than something written by an elitist snob.  Be precise – or within acceptable guidelines – but please don’t pretend a precision that isn’t true.  Whether it be 3 1/2 cups of flour or 15 1/2 ounces, you still have as much as a 20% variable to play with within the traditional parameters. Generally speaking, a teaspoon of flour either way is probably not going to ruin your cake.

Rant over.  For the moment.

So for those lovely pork scallops up there?

Really easy.

I sliced a pork tenderloin and then pounded the slices between sheets of plastic wrap with my wooden mallet.  I sauteed them in a bit of butter and olive oil and then removed them from the pan.  I added sliced mushrooms and browned them well, and then added a splash of sherry.  I then added a splash of chicken broth and a splash of heavy cream.  I cooked it all down, added the pork scallops back, and heated it all through.  If it seems too thin, you could add a bit of cornstarch.

As a side dish, I did cauliflower in a cheese sauce, baked in the oven.  No crumbs on top, but it was yummy.

And then Sunday…

Beef Stroganoff.

I bought a whole tenderloin a while back and after cutting up steaks and a roast, set the tail, chain, and other smaller pieces aside for a stew or something.  The something was stroganoff.  A really simple recipe that literally just takes minutes to prepare.

The beef doesn’t get a lot of cooking or braising time, so you want to use something reasonably tender.  I sauteed beef and mushrooms, added a splash of marsala, a pinch of sage, about a cup of sour cream, and a teaspoon of grainy dijon mustard. I heated it all through and served it over wide egg noodles.

The whole dish was cooked in the time it took to boil the water for the noodles.

Simplicity.

It’s Victor’s birthday.

His favorite meal?!?  Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas.  Birthday dinners at our house are so easy.

Ya gotta love a guy who wants basic comfort food for his annual main meal.  Over the years I’ve played with it…  A couple of years ago I made a Rustic French Meatloaf that was really good, but as good as it was, basic still reigns supreme.  Mushroom gravy.  Simple.

I did make a nice chocolate cake last night.  It was the day before his birthday, but we were dessertless and I figured we could start celebrating early…

Basic chocolate with chocolate filling.

It came out really good, too.  I have 8″ cake pans that really do make for a great layer cake. But we’re passing on the cake right now, because we’re off to see the 70th Anniversary showing of Casablanca!

It is playing in 500 theaters across the USofA tonight only.  This is one film I really can’t wait to see on the big screen.  It’s amazing that you can’t drag us to the theater on any other occasion.  Newest blockbuster movie?!?  Eh.  Yawn.  Whatever.  But a 70 year old flick we’ve both seen a bazillion times and can recite the dialog to?!?  We’re there.

It has nothing to do with getting old.  Really.

Off we go for $40.00 popcorn.

Happy Birthday!