Anora, Conclave and Rainbow Rowell

welcome to this mid-week's catchup!

Happy middle of the week to you! I’ve come to really enjoy writing these updates for you, and I hope you enjoy reading them too. I’ve had a somewhat eventful past week. It was my husband’s birthday and he chose a small at-home dinner party to celebrate. Which meant I had to come up with a big at-home menu for said dinner party. Actually— I must to admit, I do like coming up with menus for little dinner parties. My only problem is I’m not the greatest multitasker. My ‘neuro-spicy’ mind often conjures up a much more elaborate menu than it can handle making in real life. The key to this for me I’m learning, is to write everything down, make a list of sort and then, as Anne Lamont would say, take it bird by bird.

I’m happy to report back: it went well. I pulled the whole thing off. We ate a little later than expected, because all the mains were first time recipes for me and they took a little longer to make than I’d imagined, but we have an open concept kitchen/living area, and I enjoy cooking while chatting. And if my guests were left starving, they didn’t say a word, bless them.

All my husband really wished for was a Thai red curry. Now, I know my way around Indian cooking; I can do Austrian of course; Italian too; I can even pull together something East African, but my knowledge of the Thai cuisine is limited at best. So I did the best I could and used Thai red curry as the jumping off point.

☀︎ Here’s what I came up with as the menu for my little dinner party.

• I served veggie spring rolls for the starters, which I bought frozen and prepared in the air-fryer.

• As the main course, I made Panang Curry. I stuck to the recipe for the chicken curry,

• but then made a separate one for the vegetarians, where I used broccoli, snow peas and red peppers instead of chicken.

• I paired both curries with a coconut rice, which I make by using half water/half coconut milk. I used Basmati rice, although what I really should have used was Jasmine rice. Except I haven’t quite mastered the right ratios for Jasmine yet (mine turns out either undercooked or too mashy), and a dinner party wasn’t the right time to experiment.

• I added in this noodle dish— my first time using sesame paste.

• For dessert, I came up with my own matcha ice-cream recipe which was delicious because I finally figured out a good matcha/cream ratio for my Ninja Creami,

• and a mango ice cream too, that I sweetened with sweetened condensed milk because it goes really will with mango in an ice cream, and I’d already opened a can for the Matcha one. They were both yummy!

Did my husband like it? Did he think it was ‘birthday worthy’? Drumroll 🥁 he did. The next morning, he told me that the Panang Curry was now his favourite food I make. That’s what you call love.

This week was rather heavy on screen-media in terms of things to share with you. It started off with

☀︎ Hasan Minhaj’s new Stand-up on Netflix called Off With His Head

where I smiled when he mentioned Substack in the first six minutes, and then addressed the scandal of The New Yorker fact checking his routine, which I completely missed in the news when it happened.

On Saturday, I had a family pizza and a movie-at-TIFF night. Now that both my sons have their independent social lives, I cherish these outing more than ever.

There’s something so Toronto about eating a slice of pizza outdoors on a chill October evening.

☀︎ We watched Anora, directed, written and edited by Sean Baker, and the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or.

The film is about an erotic dancer who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. There were a couple of moments in the beginning where it reminded me a little of Pretty Woman. Although of course the story ends up being nothing like it—his parents, on discovering the marriage, send in their henchmen to make the whole thing go away. It’s a love story, but just not your typical fairytale, happily-ever-after one. Please go and watch it if you can. It made me laugh out loud so often. At the same time, all the while, beneath the laughter, I could feel a sadness building. Which, at the end, in the last scene, just exploded, and I found tears running down my cheeks. The person sitting in the row in front of me audibly sobbed. Both Mikey Madison and Mark Eidelstein gave an exceptional performance. I simply loved their characters! So far it’s one of my favourite films I’ve watched this year.

☀︎ And yesterday, I watched Conclave, directed by Edward Berger,

which is a film about the election of a new Pope. Its strong points are its pacing, the acting—Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini were excellent in their roles— and the twist at the end. Which of course I can’t reveal here. In our group of three, two of us thought the twist came out of nowhere (isn’t that what twists are supposed to do?) and didn’t fit the theme. One of us—moi—loved it. I did hear a number of gasps in the theatre when it happened.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten to give you a book to consider. I’m in the middle of reading:

☀︎ Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

about two people who start off as high school friends that deeply love each other but just can’t admit it, and end up years later, in their 30s, meeting again at another friend’s wedding.

I’d love to know what you’ve been reading or watching lately. A lot of the books I read come from recommendations, so I’m always on the look out. Please do tell me if there’s anything you think is worth sharing.

I’ll leave you with two things this week:

☀︎ a quote which I found in Maria Popova’s An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days

have great patience

with all attempts at changing

for patience is respect

bestowed on the present

and a kindness to time

☀︎ and a wish that patience blooms in your life too.

Until next time and thank you for being here,

XO Ingrid