Let's all go to the movies

Before last night, I knew little about drive-in movie theaters. I had an idea that people would go there to do things in their cars that seemed vaguely inappropriate but not yet definable to the elementary-school mind. Also, sometimes they sing and sometimes they think they might be pregnant. (Thanks, Grease!) Also, there is a movie and one can probably buy snacks.

This scattered and strange understanding of drive-ins made me a little jittery as we waited in line for the gates to open to Hull's Drive-In in Lexington last night. Would everyone in the cars around us be "making out"? Or *worse*? Would we not be cool enough if we didn't do it, too? Does one sit in the car, outside of the car, on the car, in someone else's car? Where does the sound come from? Can I get it on my iPad?

It was a little refreshing to be out of our element due to *old* technology, rather than something new and flashy that those Twitterers use to e-message and do the internets. Also, we were particularly excited because it was a double feature of True Grit and Rango for only $6/person.

First step was to figure out what this alien sound device was:

After getting some onion rings and a lime Sno-Cone, we spread out blankets on the grass in front of the car to watch True Grit. And then the intermission movie:

Aside from a brief moment of panic*, the evening was really fun. Admission and snacks were cheap, and the company was wonderful. Having a pickup truck would have been nice - if we had crawled into the back of my aerodynamic little hybrid and tied down the hatch, we would have been left with about 3 inches of space through which to watch the movie.

*Important cultural note: No one is going to take you seriously if you leave the restroom, return to the now-dark parking lot with the second movie playing, and start running up to random families while sobbing and yelling that you can't find your husband. Not that anyone did. Maybe some people just had to quickly remind themselves of this important cultural note, before they found their car and there were yogurt pretzels and everything was okay.

Attack of the Scones

Scones are tricky. You can make them sweet or savory and put just about anything in them, but they need a certain consistency to be a hit. I recently made cheddar-rosemary scones and orange-ginger scones for a brunch. Both were good, though definitely not very scone-like. I cut them very small to make more of them and substituted ingredients left and right, either out of necessity or because I did not want to give any guests an instant heart attack.

Then, more recently, I made Ina Garten's maple oatmeal scones:

They were both crunchy and soft, and just sweet enough to earn non-biscuit status. They were the best I have tried to make so far. Oh, and the recipe calls for four sticks of butter and four eggs.

With scones, there is not too much you can do to make things healthier. They need butter, cold chunks of butter, and lots of it. If you're going to throw in fruit and yogurt and flaxseed instead, just go ahead and make yourself some wimpy muffins. Go on, get out. Scones don't have time for this healthy crap. They're busy getting all flaky and heavenly-like.

I'm not sure whether to hang my head in shame or pat myself on the back about this, but I've never successfully been able to follow a recipe like this completely. In the end, I used half margarine and half butter, and put in a tablespoon of corn starch and three tablespoons of water to replace one of the eggs. Of course, no one knew the difference and there were certainly no complaints. I have only my inner turmoil to remind me of how much better these scones could have been, if I could only be true to their origin. Namely, butter. So. Much. Butter.

Signs of spring

We recently visited the Frontier Culture Museum, in hopes of seeing a sheep shearing demonstration. While that was unfortunately postponed, we still had a great time being greeted around every corner...

"Herro."

"Allo!" "G'day!"

"We sleepin'. Being a few days old is sah-WEET."

"I'll be more mobile when I'm more proportional. Until then, my plan is lots of sleeping, interrupted by awkward moments of trying to stand up and figure out where my back legs go."

"Nom nom nom..."

"Nom nom...huh? Oh, my..."

"Forgive me - I didn't see you there. Can I offer you some dirt? Or straw?"