homemade ricotta & a batch of baked spinach ricotta penne

I’m padding around my kitchen barefoot, late at night, on a rescue mission – making homemade ricotta from the milk that’s set to expire and cooking a batch of broccoli cheddar soup before the broccoli expires too. I love this quiet solo time in the kitchen. Pots on the stove. Fragrant aromas wafting through the house. Soft lighting. A shaft of moonlight falling across the dining room table. It’s a gorgeous August night. There’s a cool breeze, a waxing gibbous moon, and Neil Diamond singing “Stones” from the Hot August Night album on the radio. I’m on a massive trip down memory lane, remembering my beautiful best friend from high school, who succumbed to cancer way too early. We knew every single word to this entire album.

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fettuccine with leeks and why food writing matters

“Leeks are the softly-softly of the onion family.”

Anaïs Nin and a classic Italian Bolognese sauce

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” Anaïs Nin

memories of love: tortellini in brown butter sage sauce

My paternal grandfather was one of the great loves of my life. He introduced me to the concept of unconditional love, though neither of us ever used those words. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I never heard him use the word love and he wasn’t particularly demonstrative either.  But I knew he loved me – long before I knew much of anything at all.

the “Inscrutable Brilliance” of Anne Carson and a little pasta Puttanesca

“Who is the subject of most poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole.”

 ~ From Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson

de-constructed chicken noodle soup – hungry for home

Pug in the Kitchen’s homemade chicken noodle soup

OOOPS!  Apologies for my post yesterday which somehow did not work. I was attempting to re-blog (with permission) a beautiful looking chicken noodle soup posted by the lovely blog apuginthekitchen.

the next chapter and some serious comfort food: chicken lasagna florentine

“You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.”

Oh yes, the proverbial next chapter.

pasta that makes me cry with gratitude

Fettucine Lindy – photograph by Alan Clark

When I was at university, my roommate’s parents went on a cooking tour in Tuscany. They came back with a sheaf of recipes and invited me to dinner to sample one of their new dishes – fettucine with artichokes. It didn’t look particularly impressive but the first forkful nearly made me cry with gratitude.