Soups and Scares

I've been continuing the clean-out of the recipe files. In addition to being a good way to procrastinate on other housework, it has turned up a few things worth trying. One was a green chile and cheese casserole that was sort of like a crustless quiche. It was okay - better reheated over the next few days - but not exciting enough to replace other things I make with similar ingredients.

The weather turning cooler turns my thoughts to soups and I made pumpkin soup yesterday. This involved cutting off the top and hollowing out a small pumpkin (about three pounds) and filling the interior with layers of toasted French bread and Swiss cheese. Cream gets poured on top of that, with pepper and nutmeg to season. Then it's baked at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for a little over 2 hours. The recipe didn't say to do this, but I put it on a pie plate, which was a good thing since the cream boiled over a little. You scoop out some of the pumpkin flesh with the cheese and cream when you eat it. This was pretty tasty, but not really worth the amount of work and time involved. I think I'll save my French bread and Swiss cheese for onion soup in the future.

After having my soup supper, I braved the metro to go to the Voices in the Glen Scary Stories concert. It was slightly challenging to get into he Vienna station, which was packed with people returning from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. (I am, by the way, glad that I did not attempt to go to this, as the people I know who did never made it onto the mall due to the crowds.) Apparently, large events on weekends don't cause trains to run more often. Combined with the track work on the Red Line, I got to Takoma just a little bit before the concert started.

Bill Mayhew started things off with a nice little jump tale, followed by a seasonal joke. He really should have had more time. He was followed by Jane Dorfman telling "Mary Culhane and the Dead Man," which she does very well, making this one of the highlights of the evening for me. She also told a local legend called "The White Dog." Ralph Chatham finished off the first half with excerpts from a novel by Jack Vance. This didn't really work for me, because there were too many things happening to keep track of mentally. I should note that, in my opinion, literary stories often suffer from the differences between written and spoken language. Ralph told well - but the material just isn't the sort of thing I can listen to well.

After a break for cookies and cider, the evening resumed with Anne Sheldon telling the English folktale, "Tibb's Cat and the Apple-Tree Man." She followed that with the other highlight of the show, a Robert Frost poem called "The Witch of Coos." It was definitely not what I was expecting from Robert Frost and was wonderfully creepy. We moved from creepy to just yucky with Tim Livengood telling "The Dissolving Rat." Finally, Margaret Chatham told Jane Yolen's "Mama Gone" (a literary story which does tell well, because Jane Yolen understands oral language) and "How to Turn Into a Witch."

All in all, it was a nice mix of stories and a fun evening, worth putting up with metro's inefficiency for.

A Fox on the Fairway

Today's theatre outing was to see A Fox on the Fairway at Signature Theatre. This is a new farce by Ken Ludwig, built around a golf tournament between two country clubs - Quail Valley and Crouching Squirrel. The directors of the clubs have a large bet on the outcome of the tournament. There's also the tricky matter of the engagement between the new Quail Valley assistant, Justin, and the club's cocktail waitress, Louise. Justin is going to represent the club - but his composure is upset when Louise loses her engagement ring (which had been Justin's grandmother's). There's also the sort of sexual shenanigans among the older generation that show up in pretty much every farce.

The weakness of this play is that a lot of the humor is pretty much a rehash of every farce ever written. The gags involve people chasing one another through multiple doors, playing salugi with a valuable vase, and making drunken confessions of love that get broadcast over a PA system. The Crouching Squirrel leader, Dickie, does provide slightly more original humor in the form of mangled proverbs ("a bird on the wing is worth two in the air"). But the best running joke involves Louise's night school study of classical literature, leading her to treat the golf rivalry as a Homeric tragedy, complete with Greek gods taking sides.

As for the performances, most of the critics have called out Holly Twyford as Pamela, the alcoholic man-chasing vice president of Quail Valley. While she played the part well, I have to admit to not caring for that stereotypical female role. Meg Steedle, as Louise, was innocently appealing and made the most of the proclaiming the Homeric material. I'll also note Jeff McCarthy as Mr. Bingham, the Quail Valley president.

Overall, this is amusing enough but predictable. You already know if you like this sort of thing and you probably like it more than I do.