Almond-Apricot Chicken and Dilled Cucumber Salad

For Friday night, Zack and I planned on making dinner and taking a short walk to Esquire theater to see the newly-released movie The Break-Up. I wanted to have enough time to work out, make dinner and get to the movie on time, so I picked out two simple recipes from Everyday Food. For salad, I chose the dilled cucumber salad. I don't think I've ever used fresh dill and it was pretty good. While the first step may seem time-consuming, I think it's important to draw out the water from the cucumber so that the salad won't be too watery when tossed with the yogurt dill mixture. This way you get crunchy cucumbers.

For the main course, I made almond-apricot chicken with mint pesto. The chicken was delicious becuase of the goat cheese/apricot/almond filling. The sweetness of the apricot and the tangy goat cheese went very well together. The almonds also add a nice crunch.

I also made the mint pesto (see link to chicken recipe above) but I have to admit that I'm not a fan of it. The mint flavor was too powerful for me. I sort of felt like it was a waste of mint. It could have been put to better use in any number of ways.

After dinner, Zack and I arrived at Esquire about twenty minutes before the movie showing. Of course, the movie was sold out and that was the last showing there. We knew that it was also playing at River East so we made our way there hoping to see the 11:20pm showing. Again, it was sold out. So, we ended up seeing the movie at midnight. By the time we went to bed, it was 3am.

I had read a bad review of The Break-Up in the Wall Street Journal that said the movie was unrealistic and not worth seeing. I completely disagree. First of all, it seemed like the critic wrote the review with the conviction that the movie is a "romantic comedy" and then proceeded to make all of the arguments that make a romantic comedy so crappy. His arguments were pretty weak. I think that romantic comedies usually have a happy ending (i.e. the couple lives happily ever after) and I don't think that this movie perfectly fits the "romantic comedy" mold. I'm not going to go into details but it doesn't live up to the expectation that the couple is going to get back together. I'm not saying that it's the greatest movie in the world, but I thought that the movie addressed some realistic relationship issues in a comedic way and was well done.