Healthy Heath

All American, All Around April 21, 2011

It’s movie night, so Ruth, Lindsay, Chris and I chose an All-American theme for tonight’s dinner and a movie: Macaroni and Cheese, Apple Crisp and American Beauty.

Dinner was delicious, if I do say so myself. Macaroni and cheese is one of those great dishes that can be made ahead of time. It is always great to take a bit of time the night before in order to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. Now, I can’t give away the recipe as it’s my Mum’s secret, but I will say that when you’re making it be sure to use sharp cheddar cheese to make sure it’s a nice cheesy flavor. We had good amounts of green on the side… broccoli and asparagus. Just to balance the cheesy goodness.

For dessert, Lindsay found a recipe for healthy apple crisp.

The Recipe:

• 6 Macintosh Apples
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 1/2 tbsp promise light

Directions: Preheat the oven to 375*F. Spray an 8×8 baking pan with a non-stick cooking spray. Slice and core the apples, then layer the apples in the baking pan. Add all of the remaining ingredients in a mixing bowl and crumble over the apples. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the apples are tender.

It was certainly tasty, but a little drier than crisps usually are. We tried adding in a bit of water in the middle, but that didn’t seem to do much. However, dry or not, add a bit of vanilla ice cream and it turns to something outstanding.

For our film portion, we watched American Beauty.

As you can see, it did well at the Academy Awards in 1999. I’ve spent quite a while thinking about why it was such a big hit. Really, it was a sad look at American family life and the frustrations that can tear people apart. A lot of the film seemed to be revolving around the idea that everyone in suburbia is hiding something in order to keep up appearances.

Basically, I came out of the film thanking my lucky stars that my life doesn’t resemble the lives of those characters. The husband and wife who can’t stand each other, but are staying married because they look like a perfect couple and like that image. The military father who is willing to beat his son for any imagined infraction, only to discover it’s because he can’t stand himself.

All in all, I’m not sure that it was a great picture of what American suburbia life is like. If that was its goal, I hope that it misrepresented most people’s lives!