the first dinner my friend and I had in Albania, at an Italian restaurant. if you haven't read my other posts about Albanian fare, it is very much Italian cuisine. hence, the risotto pictured here (r).
the dish on the left was an Albanian cornbread appetizer, and while I was not hungry enough to finish everything, the two pieces I did have were really yummy. the cornbread was thinner and crisper, and also less sweet, than like american cornbread, which is fair. it had a walnut spread on top, which was a nice texture but tbh a little flavourless. but it balanced the crispness of the cornbread crust imho. garnished on top of the spread were tomatoes and green peppers, the latter of which I admittedly picked off...
if I didn't have a main of risotto coming after the cornbread, I would have eaten all of it. but risotto is one of my favs and I didn't want to fill up on cornbread xD I sure could have though! definitely did not nEEd both dishes - the food was very satisfying and filling.
9/10, highly recommend the risotto, and recommend trying the traditional cornbread.
alright so during into the spider-verse's introduction to peter b. parker, we see his wedding, and he stomps on the wine glass right? this is a jewish wedding tradition, which makes this version of peter parker jewish (further confirmed in interviews -- however, i believe this is enough by itself). it's a nice nod to the jewish roots of the character.
we get to see a bunch of peter parkers throughout the spider-verse films, and none of them have any explicit religious associations like peter b. parker. except for one!
here we have gwen stacy's peter parker and aunt may, from earth-65, saying grace over a meal. from my understanding, this is generally a christian practice -- in judaism, we prefer to say short prayers before eating, and save the long, in-depth ones for afterwards. so to me, this was a clear example of the character being coded as christian. i was a little disappointed that they didn't make peter parker jewish here too, but since across the spider-verse discusses variants and the differences between instances of the same person between different universes, i interpreted this as a continued commentary on peter parker's ethnicity -- although he was initially jewish-coded and one of his two creators, stan lee, is jewish, this is often erased, especially in more modern interpretations of the character.
and then i remembered that this peter parker also literally turns into the lizard.
I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them
People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human
“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”
“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”
“Yeah!!”
“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”
I’m too gullible with people. I’ll have encounters and be like “aw they seemed nice ☺️” and then everyone around me will be like NONONONONO THAT WAS THE DEVIL!!!!!!!