I cut up the turnips before I could take a picture!
Instead of writing a blog post last Friday, I watched the
1995 version of A Little Princess. I know watching a children’s movie shouldn’t
take all day, but you have to build in time to go onto IMDb after to discover
what happened to Sara Crewe (she grew up to be a rather wealthy lady) and learn
that the director of the film (Alfonso Cuarón) went on to direct (are you ready
for this?) Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Paris,
je t’aime, and Children of Men.
A Little Princess gets lumped together (often in a DVD
double feature) with The Secret Garden for obvious reasons: Frances Hodgson
Burnett authored the books the movies were based on, and both are about rich
girls from India. However, to me, Sara Crewe will always reign supreme because
even though she was so rich that she required dozens of trunks to transport her
clothes and toys and could afford to give fur-lined, leather shoes (those
shoes!!) to Becky the maid, she was kind and fun (unlike a certain Mary
Lennox…).
Arguably the best scene in the movie is the morning after
Becky and Sara imagine an impossible feast and wake up to find themselves in a
sunflower-filled Anthropologie catalog.* The mystical Indian man
(apparently named Ram Dass), who is involved in the series of coincidences that
allow Sara to reunite with her father (“Papa!”…“SARA!!”), somehow snuck in
during the night and performed a gut rehab on the attic without ever waking up
the girls. Ignore the specifics or it’s a little creepy. Just concentrate on
the steam coming from the sausages and how happy the girls are…while R.D.
watches them. It’s okay though, because R.D. is the same mystical Indian man
who saw Sara and her father dancing on the boat en route to New York. He also
happens to work for an old man who lives next door to Sara’s school. On top of
that, he found the wounded Captain Crewe in a hospital and convinced the old man
to bring him home. R.D. is frustrating (you know he’s Sara’s dad! Just get them
together already!), but essential to the plot that dispenses of Frances Hodgson
Burnett’s original ending.
The morning after I watched A Little Princess, I made toast
from my homemade bread by spreading butter on it and then sprinkling on a
mixture of sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom. I put it in the oven at 375 until the
butter melted. Served with a side of mango, it made for a vaguely exotic
breakfast that I’m sure Sara, Becky, and Ram Dass would have enjoyed. The meals
I’ve had since then have been less cinematically inspired, but just as
comforting. (See what I’m doing? Trying to tie in the CSA to the rest of this
post…is it working?) Last night, I chopped up the rainbow chard and sautéed it
with garlic and then tossed it with spaghetti and parmesan. Tonight we are
having a spinach and cheese strata.
Let your heart kindle my heart.
*Thanks to Flickr user ljohns32 for the screenshot of the
orange attic!
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