Monday night, my stomach hurt from laughing for 2 solid hours. We saw Eddie Izzard’s show at the Majestic Theatre, and I think it was the very first stop on his pre-tour tour. His material was somewhat rough and he made jokes about “must… work… on… that… one…” (pretending to write in an imaginary notebook). He seemed to find his groove toward the second half of the show, and completely sucked us all in to that zone where you’re laughing so hard that you can’t stop laughing even though your stomach hurts and your face feels like it’s going to crack in half!
For instance, did you know that Charles Darwin wrote a book, called “Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, YOU!”
And that giant squid lived in the hold of Noah’s Ark, but were constantly asking for towels and trying to tune in “The Riches” on the telly? He said “My other problem with this story, is, ok. ‘Alright, tigers, there you go, hop on board, badgers, follow along, spiders, deer, more badgers?…. um, hey, who do we have on board now? ‘ ‘The tigers.’ ‘What, just the tigers?’ ‘Yes, just the tigers so far. They seem bigger!’”
And the bit about God inventing creme brulee for the badgers and then hand-feeding it to them…. LOL. I guess you had to be there.
He also kept whipping out his iPhone on stage to look up stuff on Wikipedia! It was really hilarious the first couple of times, until the audience started doing the same thing and finding the answers first.
Last night Doc and I went to a cooking class at Central Market, to learn how to cook Moroccan food. The food was great. Our classmates were interesting. The chefs were knowledgeable. But I don’t think I’ll be back. It was way too expensive for the experience. I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know, and I know how to follow a recipe, which is really all that we (sort of) did. I say “sort of” because we had printed recipe packets but the chefs kept saying “I don’t like the way they say to do this, let’s do it this other way.” And I was expecting more of an individualized experience. I thought that Doc and I would have our own station with ingredients, chopping block, stovetop, and we’d experience making all the dishes ourselves. Instead, we had a group of about five people and we all would find one little task to do… like Doc chopped some garlic. I grated the peel off an orange. Somebody put everything in the pot. It just felt very very basic. I wanted to learn about Morocco, the history of their food, what types of special ingredients they used, how they make phyllo dough, etc etc etc, and instead it was more like a lesson in how cooking almost never happens in reality: with 15 people in the kitchen getting in each others’ way and feeling like we’re not contributing.
This past weekend I bought some maroon-colored carrots (carrots such as “BetaSweets,” pictured at right and available at Whole Foods, Central Market, or other organic groceries, have 40% more beta-carotene, higher sugar content, cancer-fighting anthocyanin, and a much smoother texture than orange carrots… plus they just look NEAT when they’re cut open!), radishes, snow peas, and a variety of bell peppers. I cut them into sticks (except the radishes, which got sliced in my food processor, and the snow peas which needed no alterations) and tossed everything into a Ziploc bag.
Oh. My. God.
