Rating: 💋 💋 💋
Okay, these past few weeks have been absolute insanity. I am all over the place. It's exciting, because a lot of projects are in the works and I prefer my world in motion, but sometimes it is dizzying. As a consequence, I put myself in timeout this past weekend. I needed a moment to do nothing. It really was great because - besides the fact it trapped me in my apartment, which is currently boiling at 98 degrees for mysterious reasons my landlord will not divulge - I got some sleep, scrubbed the apartment til it sparkled, developed a new peanut sauce recipe, and finished the first draft of my third screenplay. Weee! Now I am not even allowed to look at the script for a week or two before I start attacking it with a red pen.
In the meantime, we had the Super Bowl to celebrate. I had decided to cook Shannon a Sunday dinner to make it festive. I know that traditional Super Bowl menus consist of wings, buffalo chicken dip, chips and salsa, hoagies, and all those fun foods, but that is not quite what I had in mind.
Instead, I developed a culinary experience of a sausage, fennel, and arugula fusilli pasta dinner paired with a bottle of rose. While I cooked, Shannon watched the Puppy Bowl. If you don't tune into the Puppy Bowl before the big game, might I ask what on earth you are doing instead? It is so worth it. We fell in love with that little fluffer, Linus, and don't even get me on the pygmie goat cheerleaders and halftime cats. I should probably issue an apology to my neighbors for all the squeals. Then again, it's no different than when I get lost in deep youtube videos of bunny rabbits jumping...So apologies and flowers.
Shout out to Shannon for wearing her Eagles Super Bowl shirt from 2018. They might not have been at the game this year, but there is always hope for next year. In the Eagles' absence, I did not have much invested in the outcome of the game. Honestly, I was just excited it would not be the usual, boring team stealing the trophy yet again (cough cough). Between the two, I decided to root for the 49ers, because it's no secret that I'm enamored with California. If it couldn't be the Eagles, gotta give it to my second love.
So, back to the food. My mom sent me this recipe a year ago and I was psyched to finally get around to making it.
While the oven preheated to 425 degrees, I chopped a medium red onion and a fennel bulb into 1/2 half inch wedges. I could not stop hearing Colette from Ratatouille scolding me that this was not mommy's kitchen and I had to cut cleanly, quickly, and precisely. Now there's a phenomenal movie with a lasting impact. Thank God I was not cooking for Anton Ego. Shannon deserves the finest quality, but she is not nearly so formidable. The fennel made me a bit nervous, because when I bought all these ingredients Friday night, the cashier rang it up as 'bok choy.' This was nice in the sense that bok choy was priced slightly cheaper than fennel, but it was not the ingredient I needed. I was too tired from the work day to do anything but grab my grocery bag and make my way home, but all weekend long I fretted. It made me question everything. Do I really not even know what fennel looks like?
Never fear. I do know. She just rang me up incorrectly and saved me some money. Peace was restored to my kitchen.
After adding the veggies to the pan, I topped them with sliced Italian chicken sausage. It was that or Italian vegetarian sausage, and I was not so sure how Shannon would feel about that. Chicken it is. Hopefully her reading of this is the first time she notices it wasn't pork. They didn't have pork! I'm sorry, Shannon. After slicing it up, I sprinkled it amongst the onion and fennel, mixed the whole pan up with two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and popped the pan into the oven to roast for thirty minutes.
Distracting myself from watching for the pasta pot to boil was a tough task. I set the table. I lit my white pepper candle and placed it on the dinner table all pretty. I washed the dishes. I mixed four tablespoons of olive oil and two of lemon juice to make the sauce. I waited. Hm hm hm.
FINALLY, the pot started to bubble, and I could add the fusilli to boil for ten minutes. I stirred it occasionally and took the veggie-sausage tray out of the oven.
We drank a bottle of rose I got from my family's White Elephant gift exchange. I had no idea the brand, but it was rose and had Paris and California - my two most favorite places in the world - in the name, so it seemed promising. Shannon had to open the bottle for us. I cannot. If it is a twist-off, sure. Cork screws and I do not see eye to eye. One time, senior year of college, it took me three hours to open a bottle of red wine because I kept getting frustrated and had to leave and come back to it. To be fair, our cork screw was broken so it was tricky to use. Still though. It's nice to have a sister who knows what she's doing.
While she took care of that, I drained the fusilli and mixed it with the veggies, sausage, sauce, 1/3 cup of reserved cooking liquid, and six cups of arugula. I topped each plate with cracked pepper and parmesan and voila! Dinner was served.
So, here's the review: The wine had a sharp after taste but was overall smooth. The pasta was yummy, peppery, and light. It didn't weigh us down with a heavy sauce and I was not in pain afterwards, just comfortably full and satisfied. In the future, I'll use more cooking liquid to make it a bit more flavorful, and I'm kind of thinking red pepper flakes might be a fun touch. For clean-up purposes, I am definitely going to line the baking sheet with aluminum foil next time. I'd rather not have to use my biceps quite so much when doing the dishes, especially considering my biceps are fairly tiny. I am definitely going to make this again. Go team!
Now, we kept the puppy bowl on in the background while we ate, but by the time we finished it was time for the kick-off.
The Game: I mean, it didn't really matter to me either way. I would've been happy for either team. I sang 'If You're Going to San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)' a lot this weekend, so one team clearly had the superior soundtrack, but that's no matter. It was kind of nice to watch a football game anxiety-free. I am a human knot of stress when the Eagles play. Then again, I didn't have the attention span either. The emotional investment wasn't there so I was more liable to distraction. I'm sorry for the 49ers, but happy for the Chiefs. Enjoy the glory. I'm grateful to them both for giving us a much more interesting game than last year.
The Commercials: This is consistently the real reason to watch, can we agree? Chrissy Teigen and John Legend were fabulous as always. The Google commercial with the man remembering his wife, Loretta, definitely tugged at my heart a bit. I'm sorry. I'm a sucker. The Budweiser commercial celebrating Americans was a classic, inspirational move. Go us when we are nice humans. Let's be more of that. Last but not least, baby peanut. Weird, but it turns out even cartoon version of peanuts are cute in baby form. !!
The Halftime Show: Yasssssssss. Oh my God, this made me so happy. It was one of the best halftime shows in a while. Shakira and J-Lo killed it. It was so great to see. Shakira was one of my earliest music obsessions. I love her. In third grade, I would come home from school and dance to Oral Fixation, Volume 2 in the garage. I asked for her CDs for Christmas and my birthdays. I downloaded her music videos from iTunes ('Don't Bother' is still my favorite of all time). In sixth-grade, we had to write a paper on someone influential for my Spanish class. Yeah. I wrote mine on Shakira. She's a queen. She's so freaking talented too. Watching her perform live was incredible. I danced for sixteen years, so as you can imagine, J-Lo and/or Shakira had a feature in every single recital. It made it easy for me when I studied abroad in Florence and we went to the clubs, because they always played Latin music (and Kanye West, for reasons I do not know). Jennifer Lopez was big, and I already knew the songs well enough to dance to them. Plus, I went to college in the Bronx, so obviously we loved J-Lo. Sophomore year I had to do a group project condemning gentrification in the Bronx and what we can do to stop it for a Poli-Sci/social justice class. The 'Jenny from the Block' music video concluded our power point. It was a power move. Shakira and Jennifer Lopez are the definition of badass women, and the NFL made a phenomenal decision when picking them for the show.
Such role models, ugh.
On that note, happy almost weekend! I'm excited about my plans and I hope you've got some fun stuff coming your way too. Catch ya next week!
XX,
MK
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