LaLa Land: Paean to the Car

Opening dance sequence: flying above gridlocked cars. Credit: Lionsgate

You can't set a movie in Los Angeles without involving cars. American Graffiti's thin plot even revolves around the teens who cruise on Saturday nights in their souped up cars.

But LaLa Land both embraces and makes fun of LA's car obsession. The musical starts with an epic traffic jam, one of those gridlocked days when you start thinking that you will never, ever emerge from this mess. Then a woman exits her car - and starts singing. And dancing. Others join in , and suddenly a traffic jam is a chance to actually jam.

Ryan Gosling, too cool for school in his convertible Buick. Credit: Lionsgate

One malcontent doesn't get caught up in the sining and dancing: Ryan Gosling's character, Sebastian, who is too busy fiddling with the cassette )!) player in his vintage Buick. The retro car is cool - it's a convertible - but it also establishes his character as a throwback.

And the other lead, Emma Stone's character, Mia, drives a Prius. This is mocked, too - when the couple leave a party, she says her car is a Prius - and the entire valet stand is filled with Prius key fobs.

Sebastian and Mia meet when she parks her car illegally, it gets towed and she walks into the club where he works.

Though I wonder why she didn't just call an Uber.

Forget Farm to Table: Buick Goes Road to Table

On a miserable story day, a bright spot emerged: a shiny new Buick Encore showed up at my door to chauffeur me and a friend to a Road to Table event. A group of about 15 met up on the rooftop of Brooklyn Grange for a yoga class.

The colorful chickens at Brooklyn Grange

But the tropical storm had other ideas. With gusting winds, sheets of rain and no sun to salute, we did a few stretches (under a canopy) and called it a day. For the yoga portion.

The even more colorful bee enclosures at Brooklyn Grange

We still walked around this incredible rooftop farm, where heirloom and organic vegetables supply chefs, a CSA, and a Saturday market. There are bees and chickens, and a greenhouse filled with micro greens.

Look at the rich leather used in the Enclave's interior. Heated seats in the second row!

Though the rain put a damper on our exercise, we were jazzed for our next stop, The Brooklyn Kitchen. For this short journey, we hopped into a Buick Enclave; we wanted to check out the smart slide second row for third row access and we marveled over the double sun roof (alas, it was still pouring, so we couldn't open them, or spend any time examining the exterior).

The point of having these Buicks ferry us around, we learned at Brooklyn Kitchen, is that designers at   Buick use food as their color inspiration.

We used the eggplant, tomato paste, onion and lemon in one dish

Think plum, eggplant and fig; these rich colors inform the exterior color choices chosen by the Buick design team. In fact, we used eggplants to create one of the vegetarian dishes we made for lunch.

First we had to take a knife skills. Turns out, not all of know the proper way to use a knife!

I went a little Sweeney Todd here, but our meal was vegetarian 

We made this gorgeous, very flavorful and healthy dish, but preparing the artichokes took a long time.

Thanks, Buick, for a fun day and inspiration: a new way to prepare eggplant. Plus, now on my bucket list - rooftop yoga when the sun is shining.

Caramelized eggplant, which we added to fresh pasta

Note: My friend and I were guest of Buick for the day. I was not compensated for this post and opinions expressed are my own.