One Night With The King

Another busy busy (but, sadly, kid free) weekend....although I did get to see my son for about ten seconds Friday afternoon. Just long enough to give him some stuff he'd left over here last weekend and say "I love you." Not living with your kids really, really sucks.

Tonight was another first for casa Southern Man - I actually cooked a meal, of sorts, for someone else. Now recall that this is Southern Man talking here - any time I have to open more than two cans or turn on a burner, that's "cooking." But it worked out well. I've had half a dozen can of beans sitting by the cooktop for about a month now, waiting for an opportunity to make what I call taco soup. It was surprisingly easy:

Brown a pound and a half of hamburger meat. When it's nearly done, stir in a package of taco seasoning. Drain the grease before using. Try not to burn your mouth while sampling the goods.

Dump five or six cans of beans into a stock pot. I like a mixed variety - pinto, ranch, black, kidney, you name it. Add a jar of salsa and a can of tomato paste. When the hamburger meat is ready, add about a pound. Simmer on low heat for an hour or so. Mmmm, mmmm, good!

Then use the rest of the meat on a couple of plates of super nachos - chips, cheese, jalepenos, black olives, tomatoes, sour cream, spicy hot hamburger meat...yum. Add a couple of beers for the perfect casual dinner. And I now have four tupperwares of delicious taco soup in the freezer for lunches next week. Next time I think I'll drop some dried onions in as well.

The dark side of a late evening feasting on nachos and taco soup was that I was then up until two in the morning doing homework for my Saturday tax class. And when I got to class the next morning I found out that I did half of it wrong. Oh, well. Next week will be the end of that particular burden. Hopefully I'll pass the damn final exam and get on as a part time tax preparer and will make enough extra money for all this to have been worth the effort. They keep asking me if I'm going to take the second six-week course. The answer is a firm "no." I want my Saturdays back.

But the fun never stops with Southern Man - after class and a nap I got an invite to see the new movie about Queen Esther, One Night With The King. This time the link goes to the movie home page, not rotten tomatoes; the tomatometer didn't much care for this one. And for good reason - the production was a bit uneven, and headliners Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif never shared the screen (in fact, O'Toole appears only briefly in a 500-year-previous flashback as the prophet Samuel). But one of my favorite actors, John Rhys-Davies, is just wonderful as Mordecai and James Callis was equally terrific as Haman. In spite of the raking it's gotten from the critics, I give this one a thumbs up.

We ended up at a local pub-and-grill for drinks and snacks and got to hear a few minutes of a local band that called themselves "Yes, No, Maybe." They did some nice Eagles and Zepplin covers. Alas, they came on as we were about to leave and we didn't stay for their entire first set. I kind of wish I had; I'm kind of a sucker for halfway decent cover bands.

The forecast for tomorrow is rain, rain, rain all morning long. I'm already planning to sleep in.