blue artichoke

Yesterday GC stayed home sick from work. Though he had a fever, he thought he could stay awake and alert enough to carry on with our new Tuesday night D&aM tradition. What a trouper. We watched The Matador and marveled at how much we like Greg Kinnear, though we never expect to. It was a good movie with a bit of an unexpected (well, to us) ending. For dinner I made soup (for the invalid) with a Spanish bent (for the matador, even though the bullfighting scene wasn't in Spain, but in Mexico. Who knew?). It was a traditional Basque white bean and cabbage soup. It seems that the ham hocks I used in the soup had splinters that broke off into the soup; all ended up in my bowl. Luckily, I am a savvy eater and spit out the shards before they caused any damage. I also made black pepper cornbread, which was thin and crispy and interesting enough to keep as the best savory cornbread so far in my informal Cornbread Snackdown. I tend to like sweet cornbreads; this one doesn't even compare to my Kickass Cornbread, but I'll keep the recipe for those rare occasions when sweet cornbread won't do.