House update: Wednesday

My aunt reports:

For lunch today, Dan, John and I had tortierre and avocado salad.
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I made dinner last night. ("Ooh!" you say.) I was all busy making spaghetti alla vongole and was in fact nearly ready to add the clams to the tomato sauce when I remembered The Ham, the remains of which are still sitting in my fridge.

"Hey!" I said. "I still have the ham!"

"You could do spaghetti carbonara!" said crankygrrl.

"I was just thinking that!" I said. "If you don't mind missing out on the clams."

Mad rush ensued, which would have been a slightly less chaotic undertaking if I had any spare counter space in the kitchen (really need to get that under control), but it actually worked out pretty well. I bought Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking a while back on deep discount, and hadn't used it until a couple of weeks ago when I found myself with a quarter of a spiral-cut ham on my hands and a pressing need for a pasta carbonara recipe better than my old "throw an egg and some ham and cheese into the spaghetti and see what happens" version. Hers is really good. I didn't have any parsley and I only had parmesan, no reggiano (she calls for both), but I did open a bottle of white wine specially and really it all worked out very nicely. A carbs 'n' fat extravaganza. I froze the tomato sauce.