A Little MD in Minerva

Last week, my roommates and I started having weekly dinners together. This is something we should have started at the beginning of the year, but this is the first term where we all have the same night off. It is definitely my favorite night of the week!

Each week, one of us plans and cooks dinner with the help of the others, if needed. We eat and have conversation and then we watch a movie. Last week, Mike made Pho (pronounced "fuh"). It's a Vietnamese soup with noodles and beef, and then you put other things into it if you want like limes, soy sauce, and onions to give it flavor. He also made potato scallion pancakes, which were delicious. We had a great time giving Mike advice about his upcoming date and talking about dating and the different moves we have all pulled/experienced over the years. Then we watched Transformers, a great movie.

Last night was my turn, and I decided to bring a little Maryland into the house by making crab cakes. I had never made them from scratch before, but wanted to give it a try. I looked up the recipe online and surprisingly, every web site had almost the exact same recipe. So I decided it was a great sign that it was the right/a good recipe! And it's not too hard, either. You basically get lump crab meat and mix it in with bread crumbs, mayo, mustard, Worchestershire sauce, and eggs, then fry on each side for about 5 minutes. They turned out delicious (to my delight)! I also made asparagus and fruit salad.

Everyone enjoyed the dinner and we watched a movie called "Across the Universe". It was something I had seen previews for and have been wanting to see, but never knew when it came out in the theatres. It is kind of a musical based in the 60's, about the revolutionary time period, the war, and of course, a love story. The neat part was that it was all told through Beatles songs. The director carried it off very well. The whole time all I could think was "wow, so this is what it would sound like to have someone re-do a Beatles song well! (as compared to the American Idol Beatles episodes.)" I think the American Idol singers are great, but seriously, the arrangements and the way the songs were sung in this movie were way better than on Idol.

Here is the trailer:


All in all, it was a great night hanging out with my roommates. We were informed by my roommate Eric that next week will be Chilean Day. He is from Chile and will prepare a traditional Chilean meal that apparently takes a few days to cook. And we are having Chilean wine. I don't know if we will watch a Chilean movie or not, but I asked if we have to speak in Spanish. I think we should try it!