food, and other musings

A Blueberry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I awoke this morning to a sunny San Francisco day and decided that, instead of a boring old everyday egg sandwich, a special breakfast was the thing to drag Mr. Food Musings from bed. He's a pancake man (who isn't?) so I measured flour, whisked eggs, washed blueberries and warmed syrup until he peeked into the kitchen, hair mussed, eyes brighter than they usually are at that time of the morning. A quick run to the corner coffee store and then we sat down to our stack of steaming, plum-colored flapjacks. When we were finished and I was washing up, I realized this should become a new tradition, one more small joy nestled away among many, come holiday-time next year.

Broken Record

I'm thinking ahead to our Christmas eve supper. In my family, it's tradition to serve pasta. My mother says it started when she had three little ones running around, dying to get through dinner so they could open a few gifts from under the tree. She needed something quick to make that everyone liked, and she settled on spaghetti with tomato sauce. Later years saw updated versions, and for a while when the Olive Garden seemed like a great place to eat (can you imagine?) we'd get their salad and breadsticks to serve alongside. When my sister and I are in town we make variations on the sauce; I love the bite of an arrabiata. This year is my first making Christmas eve dinner by myself, and I'm planning on a mutant version of a very simple tomato and artichoke sauce I throw together. To add a bit of decadence I'm going to use some smoky pancetta, and I may use a gooey cheese on top like fresh mozzarella. Mr. Food Musing is picking out the wine, a Villa Antinori Super Tuscan he got from a friend, and we'll settle in for a heaping plate of noodles and glass after glass of wine. Can almost hear the jingle bells now...

Pasta Schmasta

Harumph. There's a reason that the Italians add a healthy dousing of olive oil to their pastas. It separates the starchy strands so they don't clump up in a big ball on the plate. (Sigh). Were I to make this pasta again, I'd at least add some oil to the cooking water, weight loss be damned. The crunch of the parsnip and the sweet squash was a lovely combination, though, and the cumin and coriander added an other-worldly dimension to the dish.

Autumn Pasta

Tonight I'm making a vegetarian pasta. The sauce is a broth, spiced with cumin and coriander, the kind that warms me up way down deep and makes me want to curl up on the sofa with a book. Slowly roasted butternut squash, parsnip and corn release their aromatic sugars and combine nicely with mellow onion and sugar snaps that do just that when I break them in two with my teeth. A bowl of this, a plate of lettuces slicked with olive oil and a squirt of lemon, and I'm in business.