July 15 to 18: The British Don't Eat A Lot Of Vegetables

In order to celebrate our childhoods, we continued our Harry Potter Marathon this weekend, truncated by a short trip to the local morning farmer's market to stock up on some fresh produce.

I was really proud of the poached/steamed fish thing I made. As usual, there is no recipe, but it involved sandwiching the whole, cleaned fish between a massive pile of veggies (including spinach, carrot, yellow squash, potato, onion, capers), season liberally, splash some oil onto the fish to help heat conduction get to the meat. For liquid I used half of a beer (neither of us drink beer) and some water just to touch the underside of the fish. Once you get a nice boil on the liquid, cover and steam for 10-15 minutes. This also makes a very rich, delicious broth/sauce.

We're going to see the final Harry Potter sometime this week. After watching these movies again, several years after they've come out, and even longer since the book was published, I have a new perspective on the content of these movies. They're really confusing. For the first 3 or so films, if you haven't read the books, you'll be totally lost. So much is not explained, so many conclusions are jumped to. At times it can be pretty incomprehensible. I think the later movies are little more focused and coherent, but only just. In the end, they are designed as a visual accompaniment to the books, but not stand alone films.

But still, as a child who adored the books, and faced the disappointment on my 11th birthday when my owl didn't come, I get a kick out of these movies. I'm excited to put a wrap on this Harry Potter experience, and bring it to its nice, logical conclusion. But it isn't all over. There is still the Harry Potter theme park, after all.