Par-padelle For Course

Today I spent a great deal of the day out and about. Well, a greater deal than I'd prefer to have spent. I walked Jen to the doctor which is only seven blocks away. Normally this trip isn't so bad but today's journey was decidedly arduous. On crutches, Jen is not as fast as she once was and when the sky opened up and began pouring down large globs of hard rain onto us this made the trip that much less enjoyable. My idiotic neglect to bring an umbrella made traveling through those seven blocks more like traveling through the seven circles of hell.

After Jen's appointment I got the car, picked her up, and drove her to work, which with traffic took about an hour and a half. An hour and a half in damp clothes is enough to make one a little more than cranky.



After riding my crankiness out through the afternoon I set out to use the remaining pasta dough in the fridge. I wanted to make parpadelle but my pasta maker only had attachments for fettuccine and spaghetti so I opted for fettuccine. When Jen came home she asked why -- if I wanted parpadelle so badly -- I did not simply cut the noodles by hand. 15 years of cheffing and a degree in culinary arts could not produce an answer to that question other than, "Because I'm an idiot."



I made another parrano, muscat grape, and hazelnut salad. This salad is getting a little old, soft of like the hazelnuts which I suspect have arrived at destination rancid town.



Last night I'd made a tomato sauce with some sub par heirloom tomatoes. These heirlooms were not the greatest I've ever seen, but it is April. I'm starting to think that they're growing some ugly looking tomatoes year round now just so they can sell them as heirlooms to dummies throughout the winter. They were okay in flavor and the reason I purchased them is because they were actually cheaper than their vine-ripened brethren.

Today's lousy start had an okay wrap up. Jen got to take her first bath/shower in a month and the new episode of Chuck is on tonight. I predict a much better close today than opening.

Now, if only I could not be such a big, stupid idiot and remember to cut the parpadelle next time!