My world revolves around food

I am posting this a day late. Sorry…

Yesterday, Sunday, as RMDave and I were talking, we decided to make dinner. This was no small endeavor. RMB joined in the fun and we came up with… Spaghetti and bruchetta. We had 2 sauces for the pasta, mozzarella cheese on the side and bruchetta to munch on. This coupled with a few bottles of wine, and it was a dinner for the books. The only thing we didn't make this time around was the bread. If we had started a little earlier, we could have gotten that done too. Next time…

It was an angle hair pasta, aaahhh angel hair pasta. It was fresh. Meaning we made it. Well, RMB made it. It takes a little longer, but it was sooo worth the effort. And when there are 3 people cooking, the timing works out ok. It is simple really, it just takes time. We are going to work on freezing it to see how long we can keep the freshness but still be able to enjoy it on the run.

I made the mozzarella cheese. Yes, we gave it another go and this time it turned out much better. Ok, non chlorinated water and less pasteurized milk does the trick. This time the mozzarella turned out pretty good. It was a little tougher and chewier than I would have liked, but had a wonderfully milky aftertaste. I think I can fix the texture on the next go around. I also need to come up with a new way to kneed the cheese under 185 degree water. It was HOT! Even though we changed out rubber gloves twice I was concerned about severe scaring. Wow, that is a deterrent to making cheese. Good thing RMDave was a surgical nurse for a while. He had the glove changing down to a science. I am quite sure we looked ridiculous soaking the gloves in cold water before plunging them, my hands included, into the scalding water to play with cooked milk. Imagine the sceane: a comedy of errors with RMDave, Sis and I jumping around the kitchen; me because I thought the gloves would sheild the heat better and he and Sis trying to get the gloves off of me and replace them so we didn't loose the mostly finished product. This is the precise moment when the salt should be added. We were side tracked. No salt.

RMB's next project may very well be a you tube reality show about doing things for the first time. It should be interesting. I'll let you know when it hits the internet waves. Back to food...

The pesto – it all started because our patio has been growing basil bushes. We have basil everywhere. It’s a good thing. We have to be careful where we mow, but we were able to get 2 batches of pesto made from the basil growing in the yard. Yippee!! BFFH got me started on the fresh pesto kick. It is incredible!!! Oh, by the way, fresh garlic is the only way to go in the pesto. I tried the stuff out of the jar in one of the batches and it just wasn’t working. Added the fresh, and it was an immediate improvement.

RMDave was our tomato guy. He made everything with tomatoes. I believe I mentioned that our neighbor gave us some fresh tomatoes so we used those for the sauce along with a bit of a spicy pepper from his garden. Truth be told, at this point I had dunked my bread in the sauce so many times I wasn’t really hungry any more.

RMDave also made bruchetta. It's one of those foods that if I were on a deserted island and I could choose one food, that would be it. It was that good. No, that incred…stupend…amaz…these words just don’t do it justice. Obviously I am at a loss as to how to describe this particular gustatory incarnation of heaven. You will just have to take my word for it.

All in all the dinner was very fresh. We made everything from scratch, and tried to use as much from the garden as possible. I couldn’t find my camera or there would be pictures. I love nights like this. Actually… after dinner it got even better.