Even though we were technically gone Monday-Wednesday, Mike and I really only had 1 full day in Vegas. We did what we could in that short amount of time - and had a great time doing it!
We got to Vegas fairly uneventfully (except having to beg TSA to not throw out my expensive face soap - I forgot about the liquid restrictions in carry-on). We got in to Vegas around 5.30 and headed straight to the hotel. A few people had said “eh” about Planet Hollywood, but we liked it. Our room was huge, the bathroom was gigantic, the staff was uber-helpful, and the hotel was very clean and well-kept. A few days before us Justin Timberlake was partying at Prive in PH, so apparently it’s up and coming. We didn’t see anyone famous, but we did see a lot of women with drink trays, lingerie and fishnets. Nothing special there - it’s Vegas.
Mike, not being particularly adventurous, went to Koi with me for dinner. I was so proud of him. It was definitely Asian, but he loved it! He had some weird skirt steak thing and I got a Chilean Sea Bass in an amazing chile cilantro broth. Our waiter was hot, but a little snobby at first when I asked too many questions. He got over it and my friends from my spring trip to Vegas will be happy to know that I used chopsticks AND did not break anything with them. Take that, Cathy!!!
We were pretty wiped out, so we headed back to the room and went to bed.
In the morning, Mike spoke at his conference while I enjoyd a leisurely breakfast with my book in the casino. After I headed to the Mandara Spa at the hotel. I had an excellent hot stone massage followed by some wicked exfoliating pedicure that remove the upper layer of my epidermis, which oddly felt wonderful. I heard from the women working there that they are all running at around 40-50% of their usual salary, so the economy is slowly sucking everyone dry.
Completely greasy and relaxed, I went back to the room and soaked in the bathtub til Mike got back. We headed out for lunch and chose a cafe in Paris, where I bored Mike to tears by talking incessantly about my spring trip with my online friends and how funny they were. I even got a little misty when I saw some girl walking around with a huge Eiffel Tower drink glass like Amanda had when we were there.
After lunch, I did a tiny bit of shopping (my earbuds fell apart on the way in) and we headed to the pool. The pool was great - it was on a middle level of the hotel, so we had a great view of a lot of construction and the Bellagio. We baked outside in the balmy weather and then got ready for dinner.
We had dinner with two of the doctors involved in the conference. I was annoying and made them explain all their medical jargon to me, and feasted on some delicious salmon and marinated mushrooms. Unfortunately the shoesI wore weren’t really the best choice for walking, so I was nursing a big old blister during dinner.
After dinner, we changed into more street-friendly clothes and toured the Bellagio (unfortunately I didn’t have time to recreate my favorite breakfast, including the Peach Bellini, there), watched the fountain show, and did some gambling back at the hotel. For the first time in my life, I won something. I was only going to be gamble with $20, because I’m such a big spender, and I ended up getting my earnings up to $86. I immediately cashed out and felt like I’d hit the jackpot or something. A whoppin’ $66! I was excited. Mike lost his $20 trying to figure out a poker machine, and by then, it was getting late.
Our flight left at 7.25 this morning, and we were in the air most of the day. I couldn’t wait to see the girls, and when we met up with them and my mother for dinner, we weren’t disappointed. Both girls were all over us. You’d think we’d been gone for years. I missed them, but I also wish we had a bit longer away. It was so nice being able to relax with Mike and not worry about anything. Vegas is still not my favorite place to go, but we both loved the mountains. If we go again, we’ll spend more time there and less on the strip.
In the meantime, it feels good to be home.
I’m a little cranky tonight so instead of blogging about it, I’m going to post a recipe or two from one of my favorite cookbooks. Julia wanted a copy and this is an easy meal you can make during the week. I’m also going to include a recipe for Carbonara. This particular recipe is freakin’ awesome and just don’t think too much about the raw egg it calls for. A little bacteria is good for the soul.
Both recipes are from from “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan. My sister hooked me up with this cookbook when she found out I was marrying a big greasy Italian guy. It has yet to let me down, though I bastardize her pesto recipe by adding cream cheese to it.
Red and Yellow Bell Pepper Sauce with Sausages
Serves 4-6
3 meaty Bell Peppers, 1 red, 2 yellow
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped onions
4 sweet sausages (I use an entire package cuz we like us some MEAT!) without fennel seeds, chili pepper or other strong seasonings, cut into 1/2 pieces. (I also remove the skins from the sausages because I think they cook better)
Salt
Black Pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up (you can buy them cut already, or, if you are a spaz and forget to buy this, I have used plain old tomato sauce in a moment of desperation and Mike didn’t notice)
Fresh pappardelle suggested below* or 1 1/2 pounds boxed dry pasta
For tossing the pasta:
1 tbsp butter (not margarine, Jennifer!)
2/3 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese, plus additional cheese at the table
Recommended pasta: Yellow and green broad egg noodles, pappardelle, is what this sauce was created for and no other pasta combination seems quite so perfect. Make pappardelle as described below, using a dough made from 2 large eggs and approximately 1 cup flour for the yellow noodles, and for the green noodles, 1 large egg, 3/4 to 1 cup flour and a tiny fistful of cooked spinach. Cook the yellow and green pasta separately.
Although it may not be quite so sublime a match, boxed, dry factory pasta would be delicious with this sauce. Try such shapes as rigatoni, or ruote de carro, cartwheels. Or be a loser like Cristina and use whatever the hell you can find in the pantry, like penne or that leftover nasty gluten-free crap Kristin told you about during The Cleanse.
1. Split the peppers into 4 sections, discard the seeds and cores, and peel them, using a swiveling-blade peeler. Cut them into more or less square 1-inch pieces.
2. Put the olive oil and the chopped onion into a saute pan, and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook and stir the onion until it becomes colored a pale gold. Put int he sausages, cook them for about 2 minutes, then add the peppers and cook them for 7 or 8 minutes, turning them occasionally. Add salt and pepper, and stir well.
3. Add the tomatoes to the pan and cook them at a lively simmer for about 15 or 20 minutes (or until the kids scream), until the oil floats free of the tomatoes.
4. Empty the entire contents of the pan over cooked drained pasta and toss thoroughly. Add the butter and grated Parmesan, toss one more time, and serve at once with additional cheese at table.
*Seriously, other than Tim Bereika, who makes their own pasta??? My friends mostly have kids and not a lot of time. Boxed pasta works fine. I’m including the fresh pasta info just for those of you who are freaks and like to do stuff like that.
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Pappardelle Instructions
In Bologna, the city where homemade pasta reigns supreme, this eye-filling noodle is one of the favorite cuts. Its larger surface accepts substantial sauces, whether made with meat or vegetables or a combination of both. It has to be cut by hand because the machine has no cutters for this shape. Cut the rolled out pasta strips into ribbons about 6 inches long and 1 inch wide. A pastry wheel is the most efficient tool to use for the purpose, and the fluted kind yields the most attractive results.
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Carbonara Sauce
(I’m including the story of Carb because it’s so cool)
An Italian food historian claims that during the last days of WWII, American soldiers in Rome who had made friends with local families would bring them eggs and bacon and ask them to turn them into a pasta sauce. The historian notwithstanding, how those classic American ingredients, bacon and eggs, came to be transformed into Carbonara has not really been established, but there is no doubting the earthly flavor of the sauce: it is unmistakably Roman. Most versions of Carbonara use bacon smoked in the American style, but in Rome, one can sometimes have the sauce without any bacon at all, but with salted pork jowl in its place. It is so much sweeter than bacon, whose smoky accents tend to weary the palate. Pork jowl is hard to get outside Italy, but in its place one can use pancetta, which supplies comparably rounded and mellow flavor. You can make the sauce either way, with bacon or pancetta, and you can try both methods to see which satisfies you more.
Serves 6.
1/2 pound pancetta, cut as a single 1/2” slice or its equivalent in good slab bacon
4 garlic cloves
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 large eggs**
1/4 cup freshly grated romano cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 1/4 pounds pasta, usually spagetti
1. Cut the pancetta or slab bacon into strips, not quite 1/4” wide.
2. Lightly mash the garlic with a knife handle, enough to split it and loosen the skin, which you will discard. Put the garlic and olive oil into a small saute pan and turn on the heat to medium high. Saute until the garlic becomes colored a deep gold, and remove and discard.
3. Put the strips of pancetta or bacon into the pan, and cook until they just begin to be crisp at the edges. Add the wine, let it bubble away for 1 or 2 minutes, then turn off the heat.
4. Break the two eggs into the serving bowl in which you will be subsequently tossing the pasta. Beat them lightly with a fork, then add the two grated cheeses, a liberal grinding of pepper, and the chopped parsley. Mix thoroughly. Add cooked, drained spaghetti to the bowl, and toss rapidly, coating the strands well.
5. Briefly reheat the pancetta or bacon over high heat, turn out the entire contents of the pan into the bowl, toss thoroughly again and serve at once.
**Make sure you use very fresh eggs. We’ve never had an issue with illness but I certainly wouldn’t want to use some nasty old eggs in there.
It’s been a scintillating weekend of breaking up the girls’ squabbles, food shopping (I had avoided Wal-Mart for an entire month, but I paid for it), and rearranging/tossing.
Come January 1, the combined forces of Right Angle Consulting, Nap Mats and More and Sassy Onesies will be living happily together in my house. About 6 months ago, I sat down and actually figured out how much it cost us to have office space between rent, phone, internet, and general expenses. It turned out to be a large chunk of change, one that would make a serious dent in the amount of debt we still carry from the start up days.
It’s weird though. I’ve always taken great pride in explaining very fervently, “Oh no, I don’t work out of my house. We have OFFICE space.” As if that sentence makes us more legitimate (I still think it does). I like the physical separation of my private life versus my work one, although my Crackberry is always with me and the separation is really just a facade. I have always liked “going” somewhere to work. When I first started Right Angle, I worked from home. Many times I’d find myself doing laundry or watching reruns of ER instead of billing. I’m still a little afraid of my never-ending to do list around the house, but then I remember the large amount of money being saved and I tell myself to suck it up. Lots of successful people work from home and it doesn’t mean they are big losers.
These changes have been good in one sense - I spent some time yesterday slogging through the office in our house rearranging and throwing out stuff. Why have I been holding on to Paul’s thesis drawings from RISD? Why do I even have them? And how many broken picture frames does one need? How many gift bags must one keep? And am I ever going to play Quake again? No. Upstairs, on the third floor, I rearranged both closets to make room for inventory. I was only sidetracked momentarily when I came across the box with my wedding dress in it. During one of the moves, the box had come open, so I pulled the dress out. The waist is impossibly small. I can’t believe I ever fit in that thing. Mike kindly reminded me, “Well, you did starve for 6 months to get into it.” And that was before I pushed two little nuggets out into the world, forever changing the shape of my hips and enlarging my feet a half size.
Today I’ll finish up the third floor and slowly start bringing things over from the office. Until I finish up the editorial calendar project, I need to work out of the space, but emotionally I’m already preparing. Our desks were sold, our files have been consolidated down to two boxes, and there isn’t a whole lot left that we don’t need. And the best part? I won’t have to share a bathroom with someone in the building who poops about 6 times a day and smells up the hallway to the office. Bonus!
