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Hey, so I was thinking that there might be a need for a Canada fandom community to serve as a clearinghouse for all of the different segments of the 'Canada=Yay!' crowd. Is there a need, or is it just that there are only a few people I need to friend who I haven't? *flails around a bit lost and confused* And, uh, if we need one - anyone interested in comodding and helping me come up with a clever name? Or if we already have one, god, can somebody show me where it IS?

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Also, inspired by VH1's "One Hit Wonders" (which was running late last night on Classic) I've pulled out this old Crash Test Dummies album and god, memories from the early 90s. Ahhh, being an undergrad. *cuddles my happy decade, filled with tech money and Bill Clinton*

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Saw "Pan's Labyrinth" yesterday afternoon and am still working on it. I think it was amazing, I just don't know what ELSE I think about it. After it was over we wanted to see something else, but I was looking for a story that didn't actively endanger the lives of children (because ( cut for spoiler )

) and we ended up seeing "Music & Lyrics", which was cute and mostly worked because they got an actual songwriter to write the songs so they were well-integrated into the storyline. I was thinking about romcoms, though, and the notion of "villain" in them. It seems to me that there should be romantic comedies where the primary obstacle to be overcome is some person who has to be dealt with/disposed of (like, say, Steff in "Pretty in Pink") but I think far more likable is this set-up where you just genuinely LIKE all of the characters. If I'm going to a romantic comedy, I don't want to burn energy on dislike - I want to think that they are ALL pretty lovely. Does that mean I need to fall in love with all of them and not just the couple in question? Does that make it easier to get behind the romance in general, that kind of all-is-right-with-this-world feeling?

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When I was in high school I spent a couple of summers in Mexico and Guatemala. We stayed in small towns and took accommodation and meals in small, cheap, family-run establishments. We snacked on triscuits and peanut butter and canned cheese that we'd brought from home and most of our restaurant meals were built around Zucaritas, jarritos and cokes (poured out of small glass bottles into plastic sandwich bags with a straw for drinking), and a lot of scrambled eggs, frijoles, and tortillas (both corn and wheat flour). And then I went to college and was broke, so by the time I finished my first year as an undergrad those trips, combined with having lived in Texas for my entire life, meant that I never wanted to eat a meal built around just beans and tortillas ever again.

I'm so, so over it. My mom's here and she brought fresh flour tortillas from Texas, so for the last two days I've been eating pinto beans and hot, buttered tortillas for lunch. GOD, THEY'RE SO GOOD, and it's a pity I've not been able to enjoy them more for the last 15 years. My kids are addicted to pinto beans so I make them pretty often, but it's the combination of the two that I haven't been able to face and have newly recovered.

( Rambling about pinto beans in a vaguely recipeish way )

Anyway. I've never made flour tortillas because I've always lived somewhere where every supermarket has their own in-store tortilleria and they're always fresh and very tasty. There's a restaurant here that has v. good inhouse tortillas, but I don't make it by to pick some up all the time. I think it's time to start making my own. Anybody ever made them before or have a good recipe to share?

There are many, many things I don't miss about Texas but one thing I do miss is the food - especially in east Texas, we're caught between the influence of the Cajun and Creole cooking traditions and traditional southwestern cooking, and we have our own style of cooking and food and it's important to us. One of my colleagues is another Texan transplant and she and I are scouring DC together for the right chili, passable barbecue, and workable Tex-Mex. One of my favorite food blogs, Homesick Texan, is from a woman in NYC talking about the food she grew up with. (And jlh, that photo at the top ought to look familiar - I'm pretty sure that's the place we stopped for barbecue when we were driving to Austin a few years back.) So, you know, it's an odd sort of comfort to be able to enjoy that most basic of hearty meals again, especially when it's so cold here.