Putanesca, Baby.

Whipped up a sexy pasta puttanesca tonight.

Here's how:

All ingredients from Trader Joe's.

Olive oil
Tin of anchovies
jar of capers, drained
jar of pitted kalamata olives, driained
red pepper flakes (some like it hot)
large can of diced tomatoes
jar of Trader Joe's Arrabiata sauce
about 12 large cloves of garlic, chopped
a fistful of Italian parsley, chopped
bread crumbs, toasted, about a cup
a pound of whole wheat linguine cooked al dente
Parmesan cheese

In a large, cold pan, mix the olive oil and anchovies, turn on the heat low and poke and mash at the anchovies until they start disintegrating. Throw in the garlic and continue cooking with very low heat. When the garlic softens and the anchovies are pretty shredded, add the parsley, and some red pepper flakes, keeping the heat low until the parsley is cooked a little. Turn up the heat to medium or so, not letting the garlic brown, and dump in the canned tomatoes with its juice, more pepper flakes to taste (plenty!), the Arrabiata sauce (or another can of tomatoes in puree), some black pepper, the olives and the capers. Bring it to a good simmer at medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes, then dump in the cooked al dente pasta. Lower the heat and toss it together , then add the toasted bread crumbs, and mix it all up some more. Serve with good parmesan cheese or a parmesan/reggiano mix, and a glass or three of red wine. You can also add some red wine to the sauce in the simmering stage.

Weep for the whores of the world.

Some Writing News

When I'm out and about in my car or grocery shopping* or walking the dog, I think of brilliant and witty blog posts, and resolve to get in here and turn the blog world on end with my shrewd and zany blahgspot observations, my pithy opinions. Then I sit in front of this thing and d'oh.

So, some writing news: I have a tawdry whirl of addiction called "Tango" that just came up at DOGZPLOT, and may I say that Barry Graham is one cool cat.

I'm another bridesmaid, pulling up as a finalist in Narrative Magazine's Fall Fiction Contest, and I'm as happy as lemon meringue pie that they will be publishing "Afterlife" as a Story of the Week in the sometime future.

And a short story "Gravitas" is forthcoming in Hobart 10.

Enough about me, let's talk about you for a minute. What do YOU think of me?**


*In this time of the New Frugality, I'm cooking a lot more and enjoying it too. Tonight I'm-a making a version of pizzoccheri: pasta with cabbage, kale, leeks, potatoes, sage and butter, fontina, Parmesan, gruyere.
Addendum: It was finger lickin' good.

**And apropos of nothing, may Bernie Madoff rot in hell.

Saturday Night Fever

Last night the BF and I went out on a date. We hit Zono Sushi for dinner, and I had the Seafood Soba Salad, an artful presentation of freshly cooked-to-order buckwheat noodles and mixed greens in a pungent wasabi/soy/lemon dressing and studded with tide pool shit, dee-licious always. The BF ordered the weekend special with teriyaki salmon and sashimi, and we kept to green tea in interest of staying awake (our beloved Sapporo is super but soporific).

Then we hied on down through Hollywood, but first, we hit the drive-thru Baskin Robbins for sugar cones of Jamoca Almond Fudge. Happily slurping these in the BF's shiny new Prius, we got to the Farmer's Market and walked around, incorporating the adjacent The Grove in our evening promenade. If you're not familiar with The Grove, it's a mega mall, Disneyland's Main Street, USA meets Shopping America. It's all done up for Christmas, complete with hordes and hordes of holiday shoppers of the white, affluent persuasion, and we got some coffee and people watched, feeling festive and even a little gay. We bought tangerines and pears and bananas (pomegranates were $3.98 each, why, you could buy a gallon of gasoline for that. Unlike Persephone, we passed on the 'granates), and then:

We hied our asses to the Regency Theater on Beverly and Fairfax to see He Was a Quiet Man starring Christian Slater, who plays a sick nerd, the kind that goes beserk and goes on shooting rampages, and that's pretty much what happens. I'm a jerk for quirk, but this one, this one, no.

Then we went home. The BF was horny, I wasn't, that was the end of that.