Breaking The Dress Code

Something You Didn't Expect: Friday Night Catholic Pasta

Stop that laughing, just because I don't do a lot of cooking, doesn't mean I don't know how. My granny and my mother were/are both great southern cooking ladies. So I was raised around the kitchen I just spend much time there myself these days.

Then recently I realized that my girls probably think that dinner is something that comes from the freezer or a takeout menu and that cooking is something that happens primarily on FoodTV. My granny is sending me guilt vibes from her reward.

So I've resolved to do more cooking and realistically weekends are when that is most likely to happen. We're not catholic but here in the Perfect Neighborhood we're in the minority. This recipe came from my sweet neighbor down the street who first served it to me when she asked us over to dinner on a Friday Night.

I never would have thought twice about it but when we arrived she reminded us that it was Friday and there would be no meat. I fell in love with this simple pasta dish that night and I make it all the time now but in my mind it is always Friday Night Catholic Pasta.

So here is what you need:

 

Hmmm.. guess where I shop. As you can see I'm pretty happy with my store brand products. Never thought about it until you line them up like this next to each other. Basically, it's a bag of spinach, bowtie pasta, 8 oz of fresh sliced mushrooms, butter, lemon juice, whipping cream, garlic, and some fresh parmesan cheese (I like the long shredded variety I can get a the deli)

The recipe calls for 3 cloves of crushed garlic but in the interest of time I like to use minced garlic from a jar. Shoot me. I just take heaping spoonful and throw it in. But because I'm a good girl and I loved my Granny and want her to be proud of me always, I use real butter - 2 tablespoon's worth. Throw that in the pan together.

Now dump the mushrooms out in a bowl. And add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and mix them together.

Dump the mushrooms in the pan and keep stirring. They need a lot of stirring as they cook. Did I mention that you need to stir?

Now if you're me you realize that you've neglected to put the water on to boil. Not a surprise and the reason I bought a stovetop that had one of those fancy super elements that will bring water to boil in a nano-second.

Okay so now the water is on to boil, go back to stirring the mushrooms!!! (Note that is not easy to take a picture of yourself stirring)

Keep stirring until they've been cooking about 5 minutes

 

Then it's time to pour the whipping cream in - one cup.

Now it's time to confess that I'm one of those people who combines the salt and pepper in the same shaker for cooking.  So salt and pepper

 

And bring to a boil. Speaking of boiling - that water is looking ready right about now. So take the mushrooms off the burner and let them sit and rest. All that stirring has made them tired.

 

Time to put the pasta in the water. This a 16 oz box, I use about half so 8 oz worth. Oz or Ozs? ... whatever. Notice the mushrooms are now sitting in the back resting? There's not much fun watching water boil so let's skip ahead.

 

When the pasta is almost done and has just about a minute or so to go. Dump the whole bag of spinach in. Yes the whole bag. Shut up it's good for you.

It is at this point that I realize that fancy people living on fancy cattle ranches have other people helping them blog their recipes because there is just no way to dump boiling water into a strainer and take pictures by yourself. Just imagine that part in your head.

 

So now you've got it drained. But if your life is like mine, while your in the process of pouring boiling hot water into the sink and trying not to spill it all over creation someone in your house will start screaming bloody murder and you will have to run off to a bedroom to find that the cats have finally succeeded in knocking the butterflies off the ceiling fan. Their water will have spilled so you'll need to bring them back to the kitchen with you.

Assure your daughter who is crying as if it's a national tragedy that butterflies by nature can fly and falling 5 feet won't hurt them. Help her verify that all 10 of them are still alive and well. Go back to cooking.

Dump the pasta back in the pot and get ready to combine.

Combine. Then guess what! Stir. Get the creamy gooey sauce all over the yummy pasta.

 

This part if very important!! Don't forget to sprinkle the cheese on top after you plate it up. One time I forgot to sprinkle the cheese and we sat there at the table wondering what was wrong for quite sometime. It was very sad. The parmesan cheese on top makes a huge difference.

Now if you were my sweet friend down the street you would serve this with a nice Caesar salad and some lightly sweetened iced tea but frankly if I served something that sensible it might cause a rip in the fabric of the universe or at the very least cause our house would come crashing down around us.

So I to save us all, I throw in more carbs in the form of Yummy Asiago Cheese bread (Damn that Publix bakery and their artisan bread) and a nice white wine. I like a Pinot.

Enjoy. Friday Night Catholic Pasta.

Other Things That Kept Me Busy Last Week

You've seen hints of the latest project here at the Palace but it was finally completed. Ladies and/or Gentlemen, when you read this blog if you need to visualize where I might be sitting and I type these pithy little ditties... know that you would find me here on my new screen porch:

If You Buy A Man A New TV...

... he will build you a new screen porch.

 

But then he wants a new blue-ray.

Signs of Spring, that means Fall is right around the corner

The azaleas are getting ready to POP! In North Florida that means fall is right around the corner. We have seasons, just not like the rest of you people. True to the zaniness that is Florida we have spring sometime in February which is then followed by tons and tons of raking as the leaves fall off the trees in March.

Friends don't let friends poo and download

If you thought I was crazy for de-pinking my palace over the last two years, take heart. If you love pink as much as the previous owner of my house, you can now win my old bathroom all tricked out techie style. I do have to say that the laptop potty stand does hold a certain appeal although I'm wondering well the hell that wireless router on top of the toilet is plugged into? Supersecret powerbar? Win it from Roto-Rooter

(Reader people there's a video!)

Can you look a gift piano in the mouth?

Okay so that guest room post made me realize that I had never posted about the freakin piano that we unexpectedly inherited. Here is the back-story… My dearly departed mother-in-law, well, was an older type lady. She believed that all fine homes had certain things… China on display, Lace Curtains, … and a piano – whether anyone played piano or not.

She's been gone for almost four years now but my father in law is just now getting around to cleaning up and cleaning out the house (thanks to his new girlfriend but that is an entirely different post). So we get this phone call. "Do you want the piano for the girls because if you don't I'm giving it away to goodwill or something"

"What?" That's what he chooses to get rid of? Not the 3 china cabinets, or the closets full of old dishes, or the nasty feral cat that lives under a bed (again, another post)?

No sir, the piano has to go, so he can do yoga, break-dance, install a stripper poll, "have more room." But here's the thing. I don't have anything against the piano but I have no where to put it. My house is full, to the brim, with furniture. No place to put it. Brother-in-law has agreed to drive it up here if I want it, I don't.

But after a week of debate with the Dr. and hearing Beer-Girl's sage advice: "If you turn down this free piano you are guaranteeing that one or both of your children will want to learn to play it, love it, and you'll end up buying a piano. If they get to 12 and neither of them care, you give it away then. You don't have to keep it forever." With that thought in mind I agree – on the condition they put it upstairs, in the bonus room. Hidden from site.

Surprise Brother In Law! – you didn't think I'd say yes and now you have to bring it up here. And for once in his life, Father In Law is hot to get something done quickly and insists that it happen tout de suite.

So up the road it comes but it's so damn heavy that it's all they can do to get it in the house. All the Perfect Neighborhood men balk at getting it up the stairs. Next door neighbor engineer guy even goes so far as to say he thinks the floor over the garage won't handle the load and one day I would open my back door to see a piano sitting on my car. Fine! I throw up my hands in frustration. Put it in the front bedroom! Grrr!!! Out of tune and with two broken keys I now own a piano I never wanted.

So now our guests have it at their disposal to play but we ask them to limit it to between the hours of 10 and 2.

Room 12 – And finally the guest room

Because we just don't care how ugly the guest room is… it was of course the last to get done. As you can see this was formally the husband's "office" was his one and only escape from the pink. Basically builder white walls and nasty red carpet.

Before

After: I'm noticing that I still haven't hung the damn valence though… and the piano... that's another story in itself.

Room 11 The Master Bath

So I'm gouging my eyes out trying to think of something to write about.. New Year's Writers Block Yeah!!. And I remember that the holidays and heart attacks came along and I never finished the tour of the complete Pink Palace remodel! I still had two rooms to go so wahoo!! Two Free Posts!!!

When we last visited our Pink Palace we had just finished turning the master bedroom into an oasis of no-kids-allowed tranquility and next it was off to the master bathroom – where there lives a giant pink elephant tub. I love this tub it is the biggest tub I've ever been in. My six foot 3 inch tall husband can fit comfortably in this tub. I can lay down almost completely in this tub. I love this tub. But it is of course, pink. So I had to find a way to work around that… hence the tropical, fun, flip-floppy, Florida theme.

One of the reasons it took me so long to want to do this room is I couldn't decide what to do with the floor. It took months of looking and bringing home tile samples but I finally figured out that the problem was I didn't want tile. I wanted wood like the other parts of the house – but as you know

2 children + wood floor + world's biggest bathtub= Heartbreak and Mess

So I went on a quest for something I knew I had seen somewhere even if it was just my imagination. Wood like tile. I looked here and there and everywhere… and did I find it in the high end bazillion dollar a square foot designer tile places, No. Did I find it in the mega home do it yourself places, No. I found it in a discount tile warehouse. Floor and Decor, tile outlet extraordinaire!

It's from VitroMex, they have some amazing wood patterns if you are looking for something like this. The website is in Spanish but you can find the wood like tiles in the Productos section under Maderas.. they have amazing and beautiful products in all their categories so much nicer than all that bland old stuff I saw in the designer showrooms.

Before:

After

Room #10: The Master Bedroom AKA the Sanctuary

Okay so finally it was time to give myself a little love. Surprise the Master Suite is pink too!!

After the success in the bathroom we found a nice sort of pale green that from Kilz Color Casuals that covered the walls perfectly! OMG what I would have done to find out about this paint 18 months earlier! All those coats of primer and paint… I still have nightmares. But no joke people this room was painted in ONE FREAKING COAT!! Not Four…ONE!! It covered the pink and held its own color beautifully.

Before: Looking like a set from the Young and the Restless circa 1982 (only they would never have a brass ceiling fan)

After: We took a spare no expense attitude with the Master suite and purchased our first ever king sized bed. Are you married? You need one of these! Do not kid yourself, you need one of these! Oh my gawd at how much better we've slept since we got this huge bed. I am converted.

And I listened to my good friend Oprah and bought some kick ass high thread count linens and real pillows… not some foam jobs from Walmart but real pillows that cost too much but oh are they worth it!!! We sleep so much better now! The comforter and valences are Waverly from Target though so you see I'm not a total snob. But did I mention how much heaven this bed is???

Oh and notice the fluffy new carpet too! It's a oatmeal kind of color of that low pile shag that is so popular now. So soft and fluffy on your feet. I heart it.

Children are NOT ALLOWED in this room!!!!

Room #9: The Guest Bathroom

Okay back to the house. So now we are up to the spring of 2007. We hadn't done anything inside since Puddin's bedroom in October and I was anxious to get this house finished up. So I decided I would make a quick project of the guest bathroom.

Before – Just plain and boring… but with some interesting green tile on the floor. Where she came up with that idea I have no idea. Also contained the tiniest toilet ever made. It was so small that guests who came to visit us actually complained.

After: Lots of tone on tone blue to work with the green floor and of course a new big person toilet. I wish I could find a mirror to replace the one that is in there but I can't find anything that I like that is the right dimension. It has to be really skinny. Oh well something to keep me looking.

This by the way was the first room we did with Kilz Casual Colors. Even though we were only covering white, someone had told me about this product and I had high hopes it would help cover the pink with less labor when we got the master suite. So I tried it out just to see if I liked the paint and I loved it.

What I didn't like was having to go to Walmart for it. Let's just say they do not go to extra lengths to train their paint personnel… it's usually just one old senior citizen type fellow who can barely read the paint chip much less understand what he's supposed to do with the mixing computer.