It's probably a little ridiculous for me to be as proud of making beef stew as I am tonight. But somehow I'd never actually made beef stew before and I got it into my head to make some today and all I needed was the beef (I even had turkey stock in the freezer from Thanksgiving) and then I just made it and it was great. Cooking!

And that segues into Tampopo, which is one of my favorite movies and I just got to share it with Erica (and happily she liked it, too). Tampopo is about food -- all kinds of food and all kinds of ways that food is important to people. There's a main through-line about some truckers (who are, sorta, cowboys) helping a widowed noodle shop owner transform her moribund noodle shop. The noodles she's making are not haute cuisine, but everyone involved treats the food with a deadly seriousness.

But Tampopo's quest is not the only thing going on in this movie -- the camera darts from vignette to food-related vignette. And there's a food-obsessed gangster who speaks directly to the audience. There's so much going on that it could be a big mess, but it all hangs together. I overuse "delightful", but this movie really does fill me with delight.

FuzzyCo grade: A+