With the time zone difference, the Academy Awards started at something like 9:00 Monday morning but was thankfully rebroadcast Monday evening.  Tawn and I made a date of it: I prepared dinner, using the rotisserie feature in my oven for the first time.

Our menu:

• Pomelo and avocado with lemon vinaigrette
• Roast pork loin in mustard-horseradish glaze
• Gratineed baby cauliflower
• Herbed fingerling potatoes

This was accompanied by a demi-bouteille of Paul Goerg non-vintage Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne, a gift from our friend Bill K in Florida when he was visiting this winter.  Thanks, Bill – it was perfect with the right acidic notes to cut through the richness of the avocado and the mustard glaze.

For dessert, I baked an apple and rhubarb cobbler complete with a little Oscar statuette on the crust.  Maybe the picture doesn’t show the details very well, but I thought it was a nice touch.

Left: Detail of the cobbler.  Can you see Oscar on the crust?

Things turned out quite nicely and I was more than a little surprised that the rotisserie feature actually worked so well.  I’m not necessarily a big “let’s have a slab of meat” person, but it adds a greater variety of potential menu items to future dinner parties.  I was originally going to do a roast chicken but when I arrived at Villa Supermarket they had dismembered all of the chickens for the day.  All I could have was parts and I can’t rotisserie parts very well.

What about the show?  The show!  The show!

Thankfully, when we watch American television, it usually has no commercial breaks, so the Oscars moved much more quickly.  However, some odd editing had been done and it looked like maybe a few other parts had been inadvertently edited, too.  The second award that Will Smith’s son was presenting jumped directly to the winner suddenly being on stage – no idea what the award was for, nor who was nominated.  Nor, for that matter, who that winner was.

Ellen?  I like Ellen, but I didn’t think she was very funny at the Oscars.  I thought most of the audience’s laughter was just feigned politeness.  Could we have Billy back, please?  Or maybe Steve Martin again… he was funny.

I’m glad to see a more international group of movies and actors being honored and hope the future looks more like that.  My question about The Departed, though: why wasn’t Infernal Affairs ever honored?  The original movie was much better than the remake, despite Scorsese doing a fine job.  Can we get a rule put into place where you can’t do a remake of a movie for at least twenty years after the original?

In the end, I went to bed before it was all over.  Maybe if we throw a big party next year, or go back to the US in time to attend Albert’s annual soiree, then it will be more fun.