I was up until after 3am last night studying for my chemistry test. Then I fell asleep sitting on the couch with my feet on the ottoman and my books on my knees. I woke up at 6:30am and my knees were killing me from being hyperextended. I crawled in bed and slept until 9am. Joey woke me up at 7am wanting something or other--I forget what it was. I think it was breakfast. Anyway, I took care of her and then she got out her drawing stuff did artwork until I woke up at 9. I missed A&P but I can go to the Thursday lecture. My test went well, I thought. I was happy with it.

After classes, I went to Nature's and loaded up on supplements. I needed more calcium supplements, and I got a few others that I was running out of. While I was there, I formulated a recipe in my mind and bought the goodies for it. I bought beets--red and orange--and a cipolini onion (a very flat, sweet Italian onion) with the intention of making a roasted beet salad. (I roasted the beets, thinly sliced the onion and then mixed the hot beet chunks and onions with extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and some incredible vinegar--Late Harvest Riesling vinegar by Cuisine Perel. It's thick and sweet and piquant and delicious!) Then I decided to make ravioli so I needed something to stuff it with, so I got some mushrooms (I wanted to get morels but they were $35/lb) and then got some ricotta. (I made a stuffing of finely chopped and sauteed mushrooms, garlic, onions, white wine, ricotta and goat cheese.) Then I picked up a few other random things and a crusty load of ciabatta and headed home.

I'm in some kind of zone or something. I want to cook and experiment and do stuff in the kitchen. Jaimie called and asked if I'd like to join her at Blimpie's for dinner so I invited her and her 3 boys over for dinner. She was my sous chef and it was great fun. I love cooking with a sous chef! I can't wait until Joey is older and I can do that with her. We made the ravioli together and I topped them with some of my pesto that I made and froze last fall. (I love doing that!) Dinner was really fun!

My throat hurts today. It's irritated and sorta tickles when I swallow. I've had this tickly little cough all day. I think I could be getting a cold. Wouldn't be a surprise--I've been around a lot of sick people lately. I wonder what that's all about--isn't cold and flu season over?

I wish I lived somewhere where there were actual butcher shops and fish markets and good bakeries. They don't have much like that in the 'burbs. There are some decent bakeries around, I guess, but not like those great European bakeries. And there isn't a fishmonger anywhere to be seen, unless you count Uwagimya, the Asian grocery store. They have some decent seafood. If I ever need some octopus or a live tilapia, I'm there.

I want a pasta machine. It's very hard on your wrists to roll out pasta dough because it's so stiff. I dropped some gigantic hints at dinner. :-) I also want a giant pasta cooking pan--the kind that has a basket inside that you put in the water and then you can just pull the pasta out and put it in the saute pan. Oh and that reminds me, I would like a big saute pan. I have frying pans but I don't have deepish saute pan that I can use for deeper sauces and things. Oh, and while we're at it, and roasting pan with handles would be swell. The All-Clad one I want is a measly $200. I'm pretty much ready to replace my entire cooking collection. It was nice for what I used it for but my needs have changed. I'm ready for the professional stuff. I wanted to wait until I had my dream gourmet kitchen but that's likely to be at least 5 years away so I might have to just pick a line and start buying one piece at a time. I like the All-Clad stuff, but it's *awfully* expensive. Calphalon is a little less expensive, so I might go that route.

I'm sorry if I talk too much about food and cooking and stuff like that. The problem is that my life is so uninteresting right now. I get up, go to school, do stuff at school, write papers, study, take tests, do assignments--boring to write about--and then I come home and make dinner. If I had more stuff going on that I could write about, I think I'd write less about what I cooked for dinner. Oh well.

I had planned to edit my WebVan order tonight before the 11pm deadline but I forgot. I needed to add a few things. That means I'll have to go to the regular grocery store and I hate that! Unless it's a specialty grocery store or a gourmet store, like Wizer's or Nature's Fresh Northwest. I love that store. I ordered veal cutlets on my WebVan order. (They're humanely raised veal.) I think I'll make veal picatta. I ordered some lemons, too and I already have the red wine and capers. I have brocolli and cauliflower that I can cook with it. If the order comes early enough, I can make the veal for dinner. If not, it will be something from the freezer that requires no ingenuity.

Oddly enough, I'm exhausted. I think I'll head to bed and watch Bobby Flay from the sack. Maybe I'll catch some Mario and I'll get an idea for Friday's menu. :-)

I'll try to do something interesting tomorrow so I'll have something to write about. (Because that's the only reason I would do something interesting.)

I have this huge urge to shop and I really have nothing to buy. I already spent a lot of money outfitting myself for Hawaii/summer so I'm good. It's just this transition weather that has me wanting to go buy some lightweight sweaters that I will wear for 2 weeks out of the year. I think I'll resist the urge.

BTW, I originally went to Nature's to buy some fish for dinner and spent $130 on supplements, vegetables, cheese, bread and a few other things but no fish. I think I forgot to even look at it after I decided I'd make the ravioli and beets.

Later...

--L