I don't recall it having a really strong focus on female characters, but Glen David Gold's Carter Beats the Devil is a pretty fun alt-history set at the point when theater & vaudeville was about to be eclipsed by television. You could also try Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a fun time-travel story about a pair of researchers stuck in the 19th century, trying to work their way through a drawing-room farce to untangle a knot in time...both of these are really pleasant ways to spend a few hour...

Have you tried Allen Steele's Coyote series? They're collections of novellas that tie together to tell the larger story of a group of outcasts who have escaped to the one habitable planed humanity has found. They're trying to establish a colony in an environment much harsher than expected, and simultaneously prepare to defend themselves against the retaliation they know is coming...the politics are pushed a little too hard in the very first story of the initial volume (and this is coming from someone who would empathize with them!) but after that, the series gets really engaging...

Harmonica's arrival at the train station in Once Upon a Time in the West is pretty fantastic, as is the opening sequence of Raising Arizona.

I'm not sure where in the city you're looking, but I love Sub Sand in the ID, near 6th & Jackson...the sandwiches taste great, are beautifully made & most are about $4.

I have no ideas (and it seems like its already been answered), but thanks for reminding me of this stuff - it was great!

The other thing that I really miss from Peru was Alpaca meat - I had it several times while down there and thought it was fantastic, but you ask an alpaca farmer up here whether they sell their animals for meat, and they look at you like your some kind of serial killer...

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown"

When my library of cookbooks fail me (or they're just boring me to pieces), I usually head to Epicurious.com . They've got a pretty deep library of recipes to pull from, and the community does a pretty good job rating the dishes (and offering suggested changes). It does, however, pull a lot of its stuff from the mainstream cooking magazines (Gourmet, Bon Appetit, etc.) - if that isn't your speed, it won't be as useful to you, but you may still find some value there...

The pasta water is nice and starchy, and it helps bind the sauce to the noodles. As an alternate to taking the noodles directly from the pot, you can collect a 1/3 of a cup of the liquid before you drain the noodles, then toss the noodles and water just before you add the sauce.

The Third Man
It Happened One Night
Tampopo
Tinker, Tailor, Solder Spy + Smiley's People (technically miniseries, but oh well)
Once Upon a Time in the West

I suspect there's some kind of caching going on. When you first arrive at Slog & see out of date content, press Ctrl-F5. This will force a cache refresh for most browsers. It always resolves the issue when it happens to me (1-2 times weekly).