Movie #1 - Treasure Planet

When I first decided to do this, my first obvious choice was Treasure Planet. A futuristic retelling of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, it is one of Disney's most underrated movies. It has always been a favorite of mine and I've never met a person who didn't like something about it. It has something for everyone--space pirates, alien creatures, a smattering of feeling, and a wealth of adventure. Like I said, the obvious choice. 
So, we came to the point where we had to make one of my biggest rules for these movie nights--the food must be something that could have been eaten in the movie. If they do not eat in the movie (you'd be surprised how rare it is to not find any sort of food in a movie), then you must find something that you think they WOULD eat and make that. I didn't want a gag food like pickle spears for a movie about Sparta. That just wouldn't do for my purposes. I wanted to feel as if I was in the movie itself. 
Thankfully alien movies tend to have a lot of food in them, so it wasn't hard to find food to eat. It took some work, but I carefully analyzed the food and attempted to make it as close as I could to the food in the movie. Warning: the following portion may contain spoilers, though they will mostly be spoilers of the food, not the main plot line or major character developments. 

First, we remembered that a character called Silver (based of of Long John Silver) is making something he calls Bonzabeast stew. In this stew are items that look like carrots, squash, some sort of alien meat, spices, and, the pièce de résistance, eyeballs. The professor describes the flavor as "delightfully tangy, yet robust." I started with a basic beef stew recipe, but I knew I had to have the "eyeballs" in there somehow. Prince Charming and I racked our brains for what food looked "eyeball-ey" and eventually we both said...green olives with pimento. So I searched Google for a stew dish that incorporate green olives and stumbled upon a West Indian beef stew recipe. I added in squash, carrots, and potatoes, and nixed the rice. I also swapped the beef for pork to make it more foreign tasting. It was incredibly simple. All you have to do is chop of everything and put it in a crockpot. I cooked it on high all day until it was good and "stewy." The fact that most of the ingredients were sort of non-descript at that point, made it more alien. Even Jeshua ate the vegetables because they were cooked down so much. Above all, it was a hit with everyone and my prince charming says we should make it all the time!

The original recipe can be found at this link: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/west-indian-beef-stew-108725

Bonzabeast Stew (Beef Stew Adapted)

• 1 ½  lbs. of pork stew meat*
• 2 tsp. of salt
• 1 tsp of black pepper
• 2 garlic cloves minced*
• 1 onion*
• 3 tbsp of tomato paste*
• 1 yellow squash*
• 1 bay leaf*
• 2 tsp of honey
• 2 tbsp of rum
• 10 green pimento-stuffed olives*
• 4 red potatoes, cubed*
• packet of brown gravy

It looks gross but it's so good.

Here's one of the eyeballs. :)

The next thing I found that they ate was some sort of dog-food looking dish called Alponian Chowder, which the professor said had "extra solara seed". I thought about actually making a steaming, savory chowder since that is what it appears he is eating, but we already had a steamy, savory dish, so I chose to interpret it as a dessert. I began asking myself, "What sweet dish looks like dog food?" It all of the sudden came to me. Puppy Chow is a favorite of every party-goer (you might know it as Muddie-Buddies.) Either way, it would be a perfect dog-food looking sweet to go with our alien meal. I found a fantastic recipe for it at LittleLeopardBook.com. The only change I made was that I added poppy seeds for the "extra solara seed."

Alponian Chowder with extra solara seed (Puppy Chow)

• 9 cups of rice chex*
• 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips*
• ½ cup of Nutella
• ¼ cup of butter
• 1 tbsp of vanilla
• 1 ½ cups of powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp of poppy seeds

The full recipe belongs to LittleLeopardBook.com and you can find it at this link: http://littleleopardbook.com/2013/01/13/whats-for-dessert-nutella-buddies/

Quite messy to make, but fun!

If you look close, you can kind of see the poppy seeds. Gave it an extra flavor.

I also needed something to drink with the food, and one of aliens continues to cry "My juice!" so we knew we could make that. They called it Perp Juice. In the movie, they actually show perps and they seem to be a bit firmer than plums but similar in color. With my Russian background, I knew we had to make Compote, which is essentially, boiled fruit and water, which you add sugar to, and then strain and chill as you like. It was a staple for me as a child, and now it's so nice to know how to make it. It can be made with any fruit so we chose plums and blueberries in an effort to make it taste like these so called "perps."

Perp Juice (Fruit Compote)

• 5-8 plums*
• blueberries*
• 1 cup of sugar

You can add as much or as little sugar as you like and one of my favorite recipes for this is found at this link: http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2013/07/russian-fruit-compote-a-summer-drink/

Beautiful color, and nice tart taste. That's Prince Charming's hand, there.

Over all, we enjoyed each dish and will definitely be making them again sometime. My little Puck enjoyed the movie, as did the four grown ups that were there. It was great fun and it definitely kicked off a family tradition we aren't soon to forego. Hopefully, your family will enjoy these dishes as well. 

How This Began

I hate cooking. I always have. The pressure to create something that everyone will enjoy in a short matter of time, usually accompanied by standing on your feet, chopping veggies and stirring pots, drove me mad. That was not who I was. I often longed to be that lovely 50's wife with her apron tied around her crisply ironed dress, a dab of flour on her nose, and her cheeks flushed from the steam. In reality, the scene was more similar to a horror movie--tomato sauce splashed across counters and small bits of raw chicken littering the floor, while I stand, eyes crazed and spoon poised, over an overflowing pot, yelling at it to calm itself down or else! My husband knew from the first time we met that I hated to cook and likely never would. So, he has graciously done most of the cooking in our household for almost 4 years that we've been married.

However, once in a blue moon, perhaps for his birthday or some other special occasion, the desire to bring forth a beautiful, tasty meal will awaken in my soul. Once, for his birthday, my husband had requested to do a Lord of the Rings marathon. This sparked my creativity and I decided that we would have a feast. I spent days planning and hours preparing. I made lembas bread from scratch and elven cordial from fresh fruit and spices. I made breakfast with tomatoes and mushrooms and second breakfast of apples and fresh rolls. I made lunch, tea, supper and dessert. It was my finest hour, if I do say so myself. When it came time to present my husband with his surprise, I was filled with pride at this great toil that I had undertaken for his sake. For that is who I did it for. My toddler, my little Puck, could care less what I made as long as cheese was involved. But my husband, my prince charming, looked at me in that moment and expressed sincere gratitude for this gift. It was then that I realized, I didn't hate cooking. I hated chores. If cooking was a normal evening activity then it held no interest to me. However, if it meant that I could traverse into a fantasy world and bring back food for my family, using every ounce of creativity I had in me, and creating a night worth remembering, well then...I would LOVE cooking.

It was my mother-in-law who first mentioned this idea as something I could do weekly. I thought it was an interesting idea, but again told myself that "wasn't me" and pushed the idea to the back of my brain. However, time went on and we added to our household. One of our close relatives came to live with us and now there were four people. At this point, we knew we needed to make sure that our eating out was at a minimum and that we cooked most of our meals at home. This would take a new level of creativity and will-power but we needed to do so to accommodate a new person. And now that we had our own family, we needed to start implementing some of our own traditions. Right then is when the thought that my mother-in-law had mentioned so long ago, sprang to the forefront of my brain. We could do something weekly. We could do dinner and a movie and make it a theme night.

So here we are, at the precipice of my journey. I plan on attempting to do this every Friday night, and posting about it over the weekend. This will be an adventure and adventures are never all pretty. Sometimes there may be horror movie moments, but my task is to have some fun. Let's see where it goes.