Dinner and a Movie

The first cold weather of the season has been lingering since Saturday so I’ve been thinking of warm food! If I try a new “experimental” recipe that is a little iffy, I always make a batch of these scones. Phil loves them and I know he’ll at least eat the scones, even if he isn’t too thrilled with the rest of the meal.

Serve scones hot out of the oven with a big bowl of chili and honey to drizzle over the top.

The recipe makes a small batch. You may want to mix up 2 batches and bake them at the same time. If you have a Pampered Chef pizza stone use it – the bottom of the scones get nicely browned & crispy.

Dinner
Savory Chili Cornmeal Scones

Ingredients
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. chilled stick butter or shortening, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup fat-free buttermilk
Cooking spray

Directions
Estimated Total Time: 35 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine first 7 ingredients in a bowl; cut in butter with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk; stir just until moist. Pat dough into a 6-inch circle on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray, and cut into 4 wedges. Bake at 400° for 20 - 25 minutes or until golden. Serve warm.

Movie
Bicycle Dreams (2009) (run time 107 minutes) [We watched it July 23, 2009]

“Bicycle Dreams” captures the highs and lows of the 2005 edition of the Race Across America.

The Race Across America is an epic, 3000-mile bicycle race from the Pacific to the Atlantic. First held in 1982, RAAM is considered the most challenging sporting event in the world. Top riders, such as Jure Robic, finish in under 10 days, riding over 300 miles per day and sleeping only a few hours per night.

Amid the sleepless grind, riders must endure the searing heat of the Mojave Desert, the agonizing climbs and descents of the Rockies, the driving winds of the Great Plains, and the twisting switchbacks of the Appalachians before the final sprint to the finish line in Atlantic City. With little prize money at stake, the fundamental goal of the race is simply to finish, a challenge half of all riders fail to meet.

**Spoiler Alert** In the 2005 edition of RAAM, one of the most respected and loved ultra endurance cyclists in the US was killed. If you’d like more information on the rider and the accident, click on this link.




To quote another movie reviewer: “It's an impressive, inspirational, and yet also deeply sad film, and I'd happily sit a non-cyclist in front of this, although it might enforce the impression that we're all completely mad.”

Like Running on the Sun, the movie about the Badwater Ultra Marathon, Bicycle Dreams is inspiring. The mental toughness of the competitors is amazing.

However, if we ever start talking about doing this event, just shoot us.

Really.

Don’t ask any questions. Shoot first, and get us into intensive psychological counseling immediately!

4 stars (for cyclists)
3 stars (for rational people who will spend the entire movie saying “Why the heck would anyone do that??”)