From Scratch

Ah, a holiday weekend with no gigs, no appointments, no traveling, and no obligations! I can think of little better. On Saturday, Chris and I decided to make homemade pasta. And by "homemade," I mean completely from scratch. Our noodles turned out ok (there are some things we'd do differently the next time), but it was really fun and the meal itself was delicious. We made pasta al vongole, which is a simple Italian dish of pasta with clams that were steamed in white wine and garlic. Belissima!

So, first you gather your ingredients and recipes and set up your work space:

Then, put the flour into the bowl. We used half regular, bleached flour and half semolina flour. We think that, next time, we'll try to find this special 00 Italian flour that is ultra-fine:

 Then, you form the flour into a little "well" or "nest." Crack a few eggs in there:

 Then, you mix the flour and eggs with your hands, making sure not to add too much flour (in Italian cooking, it's not about precise measurements. It's about doing things until "it looks right."):

 Then, knead that sucker for ten minutes:

 Then, drink wine and knead some more:

Whoa, scary ghosty reflection of the Busch sign!

 Aftering kneading for ten minutes, form the dough into a ball and cover it with a bowl for half an hour:

After half an hour, take the dough out from under the bowl. Separate it into four sections. Roll out and stretch one section at a time:

Then, it you don't have a pasta machine (which we don't), you cut the flattened and stretched-out dough into your noodles. You can make them however you please!

 

Our noodles!

The next step was to prepare the vongoles. We put some olive oil and garlic in a pan, then we added the clams and white wine.

 Meanwhile, chop some parsley. Give the leftovers to the bunny.

Meanwhile meanwhile, drink more wine.

 Then, cook your homemade pasta. Since it's not dried, it doesn't need to cook for too long.

 Pull the clams out of the pan as they open up. We got our seafood from a great local seafood place instead of the regular grocery store. EVERY one of the clams we bought opened (no duds!), which is worth a little extra. We've gotten mussels from Kroger before and had more than half not open (which means you can't eat the little devils).

 Yay! Our noodles all kindsa cooked.

 Then, you add the noodles and the parsley into the pan, and, a little later, you add the clams back in:

 Then, YOU EAT!

Bella! Buon Appetito!

Happy Memorial Day everyone!



Gulf Ball

I haven't written in quite a bit, and that's because I was on vacation in Florida this past week. I didn't do the whole internet thing at all, which I highly recommend you do for yourself every once-in-awhile. People were not made to stare at screens all damn day! Although, I came home to about a gazillion emails in my inbox. Blech. Anyways, a good friend of mine and Chris's let us come down with him and several other people and hang out in his family's beach house on the Gulf Coast for a few days. It was pretty frickin' sweet. Chris and I went on a really nice paddle on the bay side of the cape, grabbed a couple seafood dinners (oysters!), climbed the local lighthouse, and went exploring down the coast. All that was on top of much hanging out on the beach, playing games, reading books, and imbibing alcoholic beverages. Vacation is always way too short.

Here are some shots from the trip:

Chris Exploring

Tree Root Tentacle...

Crazy Beach Hair

Palm Tree Corpse

The Van and the 'Yaks

The House We Stayed In: Do Me Good

Now, back to work and the real world...

Hair-Brained

You know what I'm now addicted to? Short hair! I got my hair chopped again on Thursday, and man it feels good. Although, I kind-of look like a 12-year-old boy. When I got it done, the woman blow dried it and then straightened it (which I've never ever had done before), and it looked nice-ish then. Now, that I'm the one "doing" it (which, for me, means washing it and then brushing it and letting it dry and then maybe brushing it again), I look a bit like a small child. I'm afraid I may get carded the next time I try to go to a Rated R movie (I'll have to tell you about the last time that happened to me some other time), and I'm afraid Chris may get arrested for courting a minor...

It's funny because I used to be pretty concerned with having really long hair (end of high school into college). I remember trying to will it to grow. Back then, I thought that maybe it meant something to have long hair. But, you know what? Hair is hair: It means nothing. So why not try new things?

Here's how long my hair used to be:


Please also note Chris's long hair...



And so, here are the pics of me with my new short hair, as the hairdresser-lady did it:

Me giving you my best "Blue Steel" look...

Hello, you an call me Posh Spice.

Anyways, now my hair is still a bit traumatized from being straightened, so it's not quite doing it's normal puffy foofy thing it does, and I'm quite perplexed.

Internet, meet twelve-year-old boy Ryan:

And I know you're all wondering what ever happened to Sean from Boy Meets World... Well, at the very least, I can tell you were his hair went:

Nobody understands me and my 90's boy haircut...

So, despite my self-deprecating twelve-year-old boy jokes, I'm pretty happy with my short hair. It feels nice... and that means something.