The Pasta Precursor

Yay. Back to the Trail walking today for about the first time in four days. V. Bad, as doubtless Bridget Jones would say. Felt both good and virtuous to get back to it today.

This evening, d and I went down to Cardiff for a past making class at our most local Carluccio's restaurant.

Bear in mind, if you will, that the last time I cooked, I cooked like a bloke - boil spaghetti. Boil canned tomatoes. Serve on on top of the other. (It's probably important to understand here that I never, when I cooked pasta, believed in leaving half a packet till next time - we're talking a whole packet of spaghetti...at a single sitting, here).

Anyhow, d and I have now been married nearly ten years. During which time, I've never made a meal. Principally this is because d has a palate, and I'd quite like her to still at least vaguely entertain the idea of sleeping with me, something which would I fear go up in smoke if I cooked her my bloke food. Also, cooking is something she loves to do. So that worked out jusssst nicely.

But tonight, we were faced with bare ingredients - flour, eggs, butter, sage, stock, cheese, spinach, seasonings. We were instructed on how to make our own pasta from scratch, and while d was undoubtedly a star of the class and I ran into early trouble by virtue of having small eggs (apparently!), with a steer here and there, I ended up with pasta - which we then cut into ravioli, cut and shaped (no less) into tortellini, and ribboned into linguine. Cooked a simple sage butter sauce, boiled the pasta, co-mingled the ingredients and then essentially scoffed the lot for dinner tonight.

Now: was this the kind of thing I should have done, the night before a weigh-in? Probably not. Would I do it again in a heartbeat? Oh hellyeah. The fun of doing something creative together, of just having a go, and having it come out right (or at least edible by this bloke) was thrilling, and I got the point - to take something from ingredients and making something edible is a fantastic thrill.

We'll see in the morning whether it's scuppered my distinctly dodgy and patchy week's Disappearing work, but whatever will be, will be, as Doris Day sang. Tonight, I had fun with food - not always an easy thing to say, or admit to one's self when one is 5ft 6 and over 18 stone.

Now - must sleeeeeeeep.