Day 35 - A New Sauce

Mushroom Ragu (pg. 228)

Pasta

It's in the sauce chapter! Alice says, "This is a rich, deep-flavored pasta sauce, like Bolognese - but meatless." Indeed, it would be a feast for vegetarians. And it was a feast for us. I wasn't paying total attention and forgot to chop the mushrooms after cooking them. It was okay. To me, it was obvious that top-quality ingredients would really make a difference in the end product. My carrot was mediocre at best. It would have been fun to have a more exotic blend of mushrooms. I had a bag of sliced brown and a bag of sliced white. Guess what!? The ultimate product was still delicious. Rich and deep-flavored just as Alice said. I made the version with peas. Alas, frozen. Not a purist. I am not a purist.

Randy and I brought up the very, very, very LAST items from the storage locker! Even though there is a lot of work ahead in unpacking everything and finding homes-within-our-home for it all, I am thrilled that all of our stuff is here. We're just one more (giant) step closer to being settled in. We also took a whole lot of cardboard to the recycling center, and ate lunch at Fig. I had a lovely lamb sandwich with fig chutney. Now I want to make about a gallon of fig chutney!

I'm all caught up on laundry, and have "cat-proofed" my closet a little better. Hannah Marie Pearl, our little white green-eyed feral angel, loves to sleep at night high up on the closet shelves. Which is okay except that everything up there tends to get coated with short white furs. So I'm trying to make special places for Pearl to hang out, thus discouraging her from sleeping everywhere.

And, I'm feeling sad tonight. A little. I've gotten a new report about my mother. It isn't good. It's never good. And there isn't a thing I can do about it. It's a long story. Just upsetting. Just upsetting.

Now I'm going to reveal a "secret". Day after tomorrow, Randy and I are going to Madrid for a few days, then Barcelona for a few more. In Barcelona we will board a cruise ship and spend 2 weeks at sea back to Miami. A very well earned trip. It will be pretty low key as Randy continues to nurse his damaged knee and I continue to (hopefully) heal my neck and butt. That's fine with me. We need to recuperate from all the stress and hard work we've undergone. Hopefully, when we get back we'll have our lives back. Of course, this means putting my cooking project on hold for 3 weeks. It also means that I can take some "making stuff" projects with me to work on, at least for that last entire week totally at sea.

I also plan on getting back to photography for my blog when we get back. Seriously.

Life is good.

24 recipes completed, with 281 challenges to come -- bring 'em on!