Monday, May 26, 2014

Premiere Night: The Aristocats

Week 1:

Hello All (or mother since she might be the only one reading this)! My fiancé and I decided we were going to the happiest place on Earth to celebrate the most magical time of our lives. This is code for Walt Disney World/Disney Cruise Honeymoon, or a Disneymoon for short! I am an EXTREME Disney fan (and Harry Potter, so we are stopping by Universal Studios…I know, scandalous) and my fiancé, being the caring guy that he is decided to take me there. Gotta love that (and I do, of course)!

I went crazy of course customizing MagicBands, making a Disneymoon wedding registry (shameless link to be found here,www.theknot.com/wedding/Justice-and-Meredith,along with our other registries on our wedding website), ordering trading pins, and booking us holiday parade tickets (we will go in December). However, with all this mousey madness, I was still looking for a cute, and memorable, way to count down the days to the honeymoon. Our wedding website has a “days until wedding” countdown and I didn’t want to buy a Disney countdown I might only use once (although I hope this wouldn’t be the case and Etsy had some cute ones), so I tried something else. Thus, this blog was born.

Every week until we leave for the Sunshine State, my fiancé and I decided to watch a Disney movie (probably doubling up in places, because I have a lot of movies) and have a themed meal to go with it. So that I can be surprised by the order too, I wrote the titles of all the Disney movies I own on yellow and white paper and threw them into a popcorn bucket. Every week, we will rotate who draws out of the bucket and picks the movie for the next week (this way we can plan, shop, etc.). This week we drew twice, since it was “premiere week”.

I let Justice do the honors of drawing the first movie and, to my delight, he drew the Aristocats. I had been singing some of the songs in my head for a while, so it was a cool coincidence (or maybe not) when he drew that out of the bucket. For our themed meal, I went French. The movie was based in Paris, so I thought this was fitting. Our menu was

Justice brought out the wine glasses we used for the first dinner I made for him (we, also, had sparkling grape juice that night). I thought Croque Monsieur and Madame (same as Monsieur with a fried egg on top) were fitting, because 1. They are made with cheese (for Roquefort) 2. They are French (reference above) and 3. They tip their hat to the dear “Madame” who loves Duchess and her kittens so much she is willing to give her estate to them. I have included two of the three recipes I used. Le Choco Fondant can also be found online but, at the risk of sounding less awesome, they are basically brownies with a fancy name. This was my first time eating any of this food, except the brownies of course, and Justice and I were pleasantly surprised. It may look unappetizing in the picture, but it was the Crème de la Crème (and not the “a la Edgar” version).I highly recommend it for your next Aristocat night (or any other night)!

We drew twice this week because we were getting started and, this time, it was my turn. I will tell you I am very unlucky. There was only one movie I was nervous about getting and guess what? I drew that very movie. It was The Princess and the Frog. I love this new, New Orleans version of a classic fairytale, but I wasn’t keen on drawing this movie. It had a lot of recipes I have, but have never tried making before and involved ordering some special supplies (a.k.a. beignet mix from Café du Monde, because is there any other way really?). However, Justice and I made a deal to never back out of what we drew (he called it cheating), so I dutifully got on Amazon and ordered what could be the tools to my own demise. Fingers crossed!

Until next week, Bonjour and, as Napeleon says (I let him say it through picture, because he is the leader), “The End”!