Valentine's Day. New Plates!
Feb. 14th, 2022 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerToday was Valentine's Day. Hawk and I put little stock in traditional expressions of it. It's a made-up holiday, anyway; a consumer event crassly promoted by greeting card companies, florists, and candy makers. That said, we try to do something a little special to mark the day, even if it's something we do often enough anyway, like go hiking.
This year Valentine's Day fell on a Monday, so we didn't travel anywhere. We almost didn't do anything out of the ordinary; but then I remembered this afternoon that I could cook something for dinner. I made ziti.
I've been meaning to make ziti for a while. My last batch was in August 2020. I used to make it more often in my college student / grad student days. Maybe that was because with more people in the house it got eaten faster? Alas, that's the challenge with the ziti recipe: it makes 8 filling servings.
This time around I figured I'd cut down the portions, primarily by not using a full container of ricotta cheese. I'll use the rest of the ricotta making calzones. I used about 2/3 container (10 oz.) of ricotta here and scaled down everything else in proportion.
If this were an everyday dinner I might just bake the dish of ziti and call it done. But since it's Valentine's Day we decided to go all out, matching it up with green beans and oven-warmed sourdough bread. Then there's the bottle of good red wine.... Well, I would've opened that Valentine's Day or no. 😉
Also in this picture you can see the new plates and bowls we bought this weekend. Yes, these are the plates we went to 8 or 9 different stores looking for. They're dark cobalt blue with light flecks.
This year Valentine's Day fell on a Monday, so we didn't travel anywhere. We almost didn't do anything out of the ordinary; but then I remembered this afternoon that I could cook something for dinner. I made ziti.
I've been meaning to make ziti for a while. My last batch was in August 2020. I used to make it more often in my college student / grad student days. Maybe that was because with more people in the house it got eaten faster? Alas, that's the challenge with the ziti recipe: it makes 8 filling servings.
This time around I figured I'd cut down the portions, primarily by not using a full container of ricotta cheese. I'll use the rest of the ricotta making calzones. I used about 2/3 container (10 oz.) of ricotta here and scaled down everything else in proportion.
If this were an everyday dinner I might just bake the dish of ziti and call it done. But since it's Valentine's Day we decided to go all out, matching it up with green beans and oven-warmed sourdough bread. Then there's the bottle of good red wine.... Well, I would've opened that Valentine's Day or no. 😉
Also in this picture you can see the new plates and bowls we bought this weekend. Yes, these are the plates we went to 8 or 9 different stores looking for. They're dark cobalt blue with light flecks.
no subject
Date: 2022-02-16 04:18 am (UTC)And gosh damn, that ziti looks _delicious_. Well done!
no subject
Date: 2022-02-16 06:52 am (UTC)Thanks for the compliment on my ziti. I always strive to make food that doesn't just taste good but also looks good. Technically that's because appearance indicates a lot about how well food it made. Poetically it's because I taste with my eyes before my tongue.