Pictures!

R, you must have been pulling your hair out with my lack of pictures, the number of times you've yelled at me for it! (Oh I still forgot to photograph blanket shawl, but I will do that later.)



A while back now, I made a whole bunch of turmeric-colored pasta. So tasty! (Although the turmeric was kinda funny...) But it turned out that stereotypical 70s mustard yellow color, which I love! And yes, that is a trombone slide used as a drying rack.



That first night I served it with olive oil and cheese.



The second time (after I froze the pasta), I cooked the pasta with frozen peas, fried up some sausage and served it all with feta on top. Super tasty!



And me being crazy! I have a lot of cleaning to do today (note my lack of doing it right now :-P), I haven't showered yet, and mysteriously wound up watching a whole bunch of youtube videos from an Indonesian Muslim girl on wrapping hajibs in pretty styles. (That girl is beautiful omg) Since I'm too lazy to pin it in place, I just wrapped the ends of this turban underneath itself and it's been holding out for about 3 hours. I have to say, my head is warm! (Considering my hands, feet and nose are cold, I like this.) I've always been super jealous of those girls that wear headcoverings, mostly because I'm really lazy about my hair. Black girls, Muslim girls and Christians "dressing plain" often wear head coverings, and I've always felt super selfconscious whenever wearing just a bandana even. I don't see myself wearing this outside of the house, but it's fun to play with.

Also on the line of turbans, check out this amazing pic:



That is who I want to be when I grow up! Her name is Beatrix Ost and the pic is from Advanced Style.

Pasta Salad

Yesterday for dinner I made a huge batch of pasta salad based loosely upon this recipe. I used a pound of mezze penne, two handfuls of trimmed green beans, the remainder of the white beans from Mexican night, and one can of small black olives. The dressing was one-half cup of chive blossom vinegar, one garlic clove pasted with one tsp. salt, two tsp. Jack Daniels mustard all whisked together and with one-half cup of good olive oil streamed in while whisking. It turned out super tasty!

If you're wondering about the strange format of this recipe, I'm writing on the iPad and it's difficult to get things other than letters. :P

Ricotta!

So I had had some buttermilk chillin' in the fridge, creeping past it's sell-by date for a while. When I saw this post by Tigress in a pickle, I had to jump at it!

I lowered the size to one quart of buttermilk and one half pint of cream, and it turned out delicious!

In order to celebrate the ricotta, and my birthday present from my mom, I made home-made herb pasta (herbs being basil, oregano and rosemary finely chopped), cut it on the wide pasta setting, and served with fried garlic scapes, kale and ricotta on top. Absolutely delicious! My only problem with the meal was that since I had to roll it out by hand, I wound up using a lot of flour on the outside, and it made it a bit goopy when cooking. So I need to get around to buying the pasta roller, as homemade pasta was otherwise a breeze.

There will be pictures, I'm just too lazy to pull them off of the camera atm. :-P

Mac 'n' Cheese

My leftovers, reheated with more cheese and fried onions. :-P

Last night Mister and I had a delicious meal of baked mac 'n' cheese. This led to contention, as per usual, as Mister and I have differing ideas of what goes into said dish. But, we pulled together, and crafted this delicious dish.

Mac 'n' Cheese à la 12/6/10
Ingredients:
-- 1# pasta (we used small shells)
-- 8 oz. sharp cheddar (preferably Cabot! :-P)
-- 4 Tbs. butter
-- flour
-- milk
-- paprika
-- pepper
-- fried onions (TJ's brand)

Start by making a roux with the butter and flour. Add milk until it reaches a sauce-like consistency (you may need to keep adding milk throughout to keep said sauce-like consistency). Stir in cheese, cut into chunks, a little at a time until incorporated fully. Add spices, and let cook a little bit (make sure it's still thin enough).

Make pasta. Drain. While you're at it, oil your casserole dish and preheat your oven to 350F.

Mix pasta and sauce together, and pour into casserole dish, making sure to even it out. Pop in the oven for ~10 mins or however long you'd like, remove dish from oven, top with fried onions, and put back in the oven for another 5 mins.

Devour. Complain that your tummy is full. Package it up into leftovers for yourself and your dinner partner.