Yay for entering the blog world!

I really like reading blogs.  I don't "follow" many because I didn't realize you were supposed to until recently.  And until last night when I started designing this blog I didn't realize that people pay money, real money, to make their blogs look cute.  Well sorry people, this is a template design, a.k.a. free design.  I did pick colors and fonts.  

I was thinking last night about lunch at school for some reason.  I taught first grade for eight years and pretty much every day I felt really happy to make it to lunch.  I loved my job, but before lunch is the really intense teaching time and after lunch was usually a little lighter.  Also, lunch was that 5-10 minute window of adult talk during the day.  We ate in the cafeteria with our kids of course, but we had a "teacher table."  So in between taps on the shoulder to inform us that so-and-so was showing his food, we would inevitably talk about food.  The food we brought, the food we had last night, the food we're eating tonight, the fact that we're just in a rut with cooking, etc.  Sometimes we would exclaim like it was the best idea ever, "We need to do a recipe exchange!"  It never happened of course.  But I do think about what people have for dinner each night.  I wonder if I would like it or if they would like what I'm making.  I generally like what I make and so does my husband Daniel.  He says he likes it even when it's a disaster.  Sophie is our almost one year old daughter and she occasionally likes what I make.  Yogurt is still top on her list.

So that's where the idea for this blog came.  It won't be as long-winded as tonight (maybe...Daniel would say, "Yeah right!").  I'm just going to tell what we had for dinner tonight...the good, the bad, the healthy, the terribly unhealthy.  If I can, I'll post the recipes so if you see something you like, you can try it too!

So (drum roll...) this is the food we ate tonight: Classic Ragu Bolognese

Note: I have a Cool Pix camera (so basically that means everything will look mediocre).

Here's the recipe and how it looks in Bon Appetit

I have cooked just about everything in "The Italy Issue" of Bon Appetit.  I'll cook them all again probably and post them here because they were all amazing.  This was delicious!

I forgot to buy veal, so that's my only alteration of the recipe.  I did use fresh pasta, which I've done a lot recently and it truly makes all the difference.  I figure if you make one good pasta dish a week then you can spend $4 on pasta instead of $0.89.

For dessert (and I ALWAYS have dessert), we had chocolate chip cookies and ice cream.  I usually just have ice cream, but every now and then I get the urge to make cookies too.

I forgot to take a picture before I finished.  It was good.  The recipe for the cookies is from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins.  They are supposed to be really thin. (The cookies, not the authors.  Maybe they're thin too, I don't know.)

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
8 tablespoons (1stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
6 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 cup semisweet chocolate morsels 
1.  Preheat oven to 375.  Lightly grease baking sheets.
2.  Stir the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a small bowl.
3.  Combine the butter, both sugars, and vanilla in a mixing bowl, and beat until light.  Beat in the egg.  Slowly add the flour mixture, beating until smooth.  Then stir in the chocolate morsels.
4.  Drop the batter by rounded dessert spoonfuls, 3 inches apart, onto the prepared baking sheets.  Bake 5 minutes.  Remove the baking sheets from the oven, rap them twice on the counter or stove top, and return them to the oven.  Bake until the cookies are dry on top and golden, about 4 minutes.  Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
2 dozen cookies

Well, that's it for Tuesday, May 10, 2011.  I can't believe I just missed most of the 3 hours of The Office on TBS to start a blog.