weird al yankovich

This weekend was fairly uneventful. Other than venturing out to Avondale with Kathleen Friday night (and staying out way later than I intended) and attending Becca’s housewarming party Saturday night (and eating way more than I intended), my weekend consisted mainly of lounging by the pool, reading Game of Thrones, going to the gym, and watching Breaking Bad on my couch with dinner.

I did cook some pretty delicious italian-style turkey meatballs Friday night though (I should have the recipe up sometime this week) that served as my main form of sustenance throughout the weekend. I had a bunch of ground turkey that needed to be cooked, and this seemed like the simplest way to make use of the resources in my fridge.

I also FINALLY finished Game of Thrones, book one. I feel like I’ve been reading that book for months. Well, really only like a month and a half, but that included three 4-hour plane flights, plus layovers, and reading during my lunch hour at Blue Ion since the beginning of June. It’s hard to get through a book when you watched the movie/TV show first and you know what’s going to happen. Watching a movie/TV show after you’ve read the book is great, because you can see how the actors and directors make the words come alive, and how everything matches up with how you see it in your head. Going the other way is much harder, because you’ve already seen how everything is meant to look so you don’t want to waste your time reading paragraph after paragraph of descriptions of castles, landscapes, and physical appearances of various characters. It didn’t help that the first book matched the first season word-for-word for the most part. I hear the second book differs a lot from the second season, so I’m thinking it’ll go by much quicker.

In honor of finishing Game of Thrones, this week’s quote comes from George R.R. Martin in the foreword of A Feast of Ice and Fire, the Official Game of Thrones Cookbook, which, of course I own (technically I bought it for Ben, butttt I’d totally take it back in the divorce). It’s a bit lengthy and verbose (whaaat?! George RR Martin, length and verbose? NEVER!!!), but I really like it.

“All the paragraphs and pages I’ve devoted to food in my books and stories over the years all my loving and detailed descriptions of dishes both ordinary and exotic, all those fictional feasts that made your mouth water…I never actually cooked a single one of them. They were made of words. Big meaty nouns, crisp fresh verbs, a nice seasoning of adjectives and adverbs. Words. The stuff that dreams are made of…very tasty dreams, fat free and calorie free, but with no nutritive value. Writing I’m good at. Cooking, not so much.”
— George R.R. Martin