Friday Meals on Reels: Special Womb to Tomb Edition!

To link a pair of Hollywood actors not only through the roles they’ve played and the costars to whom they’re connected; and to do so through the fact that one of them was born and the other one died on this! very! day!; and to also connect the relatively small criteria that one of these movies has to not just include a scene with food, but also be found in my somewhat limited DVD collection; if all of these complications strike you as being absurd and capricious, well, you’re probably right.

But I aim to please you, gentle reader, so I will accomplish all of the above and more – because our pair of actors featured in today’s Womb to Tomb-Friday Meals on Reels crossover post also happen to have names with food references! Now just find that kind of foolishly complicated and specialized content elsewhere in the bloguverse. I triple dog-dare you.

On this day, April 4th, Barry Pepper was born in British Columbia. With a Wikipedia entry that begins with “Barry Pepper spent much of his early life traveling the world in a homemade ship”, one might wonder what kind of kooky, fairy tale life the 37-year-old actor might have lived so far. Alas, instead it’s one sprinkled with the expected highs and lows of a young actor’s filmography: highbrow TV movies, a few acclaimed directors, some obscuria, and at least one needlessly frantic Tony Scott film.

• Pepper earned a seat at Hollywood’s table when he costarred in Saving Private Ryan as a sharpshooter in an ill-fated WWII platoon under the everyman gaze of Tom Hanks.
• Hanks enjoyed delicious astronaut food – and Tang! – in Apollo 13 cramped up real close-like to a sweaty Bill Paxton.
• Paxton fulfilled his contractual obligation as Jim Cameron’s Bitch in the 1986 actioner Aliens.

And in the kind of strange coincidence that only happens in movies, Aliens is where we find today’s foodgrab, chest-bursting onto the screen at the 30-minute mark:
(by the way, Aliens also continues what I’m convinced is a certifiable cinematic eatables trend: cornbread.)

• To continue: Paxton starred in Aliens with Lance Henriksen, who had a small – but tasty! – role in Damien: Omen II with screen legend William Holden.

And finally, Holden probably considered it no picnic getting downstaged in Sunset Blvd. by ready-for-her-closeup Gloria Swanson, who passed away in New York City at the age of 86 on this day, April 4th.

Ready to eat? Find out what the uncommonly dazzling and flagrantly scintillating Mrs. Burbanked has thrown together for you, after the jump.

Today’s Friday Meals on Reels: Beefy Marine Corps Slow-Bake BBQ Beef Roast

• 3 lbs. boneless chuck roast with the fat removed
• 1 11-oz. can of cream of mushroom soup
• 1 packet of dry onion soup mx

BBQ Sauce

• 1 cup ketchup
• 2 tablespoons prepared mustard
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon tabasco sauce

Preheat your oven to 300° F, soldier. Then place a double-thick layer of heavy-duty alien acid blood-proof aluminum foil in about a 9″ x 13″ baking dish. Toss your meat onto the foil and mix the mushroom soup with the onion soup mix and barbecue sauce. Mix all of that up all nice and pour it over your beef. Seal up the foil tight, leaving a little bit of space inside between the meat and the foil. Bake for about 2 1/2 – 3 hours or longer until the meat is falling apart more than a sleezy corporate lawyer’s duplicitous lies. Remove from the oven and let it sit for 10 minutes before slicing. Serve with the sauce over noodles. Or potatoes. Or cornbread.