I’ve been in a baked-pasta tear mood. Monday night was a quickie lasagna, using some noodles that were in the back of the cabinet. It was good, though I think in the future I’ll do something a wee bit more complex.

Last night, though, I did baked rigatoni with Béchamel. I had forgotten about Béchamel — how simple it is, how delicate it is, how versatile it is, and how readily it absorbs auxiliary flavors — so I was pleasantly surprised to taste how well this particular approach turned out. (The quickie version: Make Béchamel — stir in grated fontina — stir in thin strips of prosciutto — stir in partially cooked rigatoni — pour into dish — top with more cheese and some dollops of butter — bake — eat.) Lovely flavor aside, it also had a velvety, comforting texture that was perfect for a cold night. I may have to experiment with Béchamel some more.

I’ve been neglecting this category — and my mad-scientist cooking skills — far too long.

My new food love is sugo all’amatriciana over bucatini. It’s impossible to go wrong when there’s that much pancetta involved, but the short ingredients list, simple prep, and easy wine pairing (dry, fruity red) just makes the sauce completely kick-ass. It’s seriously about to replace the garlic chicken stir-fry with quinoa, peppers, and basil as the default dinner for non-vegetarian company.

As the weather continues to cool off, I’m tempted to go on a mashed potato rampage. First up will probably be bangers and mash, then a tangy/spicy steak-and-pepper hash over cheddar mashed potatoes, then maybe a shepherd’s pie with ground turkey or something. I don’t know. In the meantime, though, I’m craving fish and chips with lots and lots of malt vinegar. (Not sure where the sudden fascination with English cooking came from.)

Baking-wise, Trader Joe’s’s pumpkin bread mix is back in stores. It’s glorious stuff, especially when you swap melted butter for the vegetable oil and double-strength coffee for the water, or when you mix in some dark chocolate chunks. (Just don’t do coffee and chocolate in this mix; the coffee and chocolate together overwhelm the subtleties of the pumpkin bread itself.)

Trader Joe’s also has a brownie mix that had Fred moaning in ecstasy over the weekend. I’ll let him discuss that one, though I do confess eating a couple brownies for breakfast Saturday morning.

Finally: it’s APPLE SEASON, and it’s a good one at that. As a recovering apple junkie, who used to go through ten pounds a week (seriously), this is a dangerous time of year. I’ve only purchased one half-peck of McIntoshes so far, and it was quite difficult to keep from devouring the entire thing in one sitting. (Thanks to my inimitable self-control I was able to parse it out to four or five sittings.) Fred got to have a couple of those apples, too, but I think he’s more excited that I found his favorite hard cider in town. (mmm, cider.)

So I’m picking up where I left off.

McCaskill won in Missouri, Jon Tester won in Montana, and Jim Webb won in Virginia. The Democrats won a majority in both houses. w00t.

The weekend before election day, as promised:

• Saturday night we attended the St. Louis HRC Gala at the Chase Park Plaza. It was a good time — got to meet Joe Solomonese, who is shorter than I pictured him and who enjoyed making jokes about the dramatic centerpieces, and got to meet a few people Fred knows, and got to run amok in a tuxedo and look all suave.

  The theme this year was Vegas, so a (female) volunteer dressed as a showgirl (replete with huge headdress) milled around before the dinner started. As Fred and I milled around the silent auction items, she accosted us and asked if we were single. Apparently, had we replied in the affirmative, she would have given us each an HRC button with a blinking blue LED in the center; we replied in the negative, though, so she said “Oh.” and abruptly moved on. (It’s just as well, those things got annoying FAST. Also, at the end of the night, there was a definite vulture-feel of desperation in the presence of some be-blinkered men. ICK.)

  Kristine W performed at the dinner as well, and she was spot-on and energetic in her songs, but I’d just like to state for the record that the crowd was not very responsive to her exhortations to “get up!” or “dance!”. As was the case with almost every Big Fancy Dinner <tm> I’ve ever attended, people seemed to be chained to their tables. Perhaps a less frenetic act is in order for next year?

• Sunday we went to the UCC ordination of one of the members of our chorus. It was a beautiful affair, held in the vast 1920s sanctuary of a near-North Side congregation. As part of the service, the chorus performed the “Hallelujah” from Beethoven’s “Christus am Ölberge”; we allegedly sounded wonderful even though none of us could hear any other parts.

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Skipping ahead a bit, Thanksgiving… after a bit of family drama (the first EVER regarding this holiday, seriously!), Fred and I agreed to do T-day with my family. We brought some Manchego smashed potatoes, which were a) delicious and b) weighed a freakin’ TON. I think we might get stuck doing those again, but I won’t complain, as the recipe is disturbingly easy.

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Skipping ahead even more, the chorus show (entitled “Fruitcakes”) was a smash hit. We threw in some classical pieces (the aforementioned Beethoven), some irreverent pieces (a song about Mexican food set to Handel’s “Hallelujah” and entitled [what else?] “Jalapeño”), and some more standard holidayish pieces. Then, to finish the first act, Martha Stewart and Julia Child joined us on-stage for a rather raucous song about fruitcake… those two had scripts to follow, but they sort of improvised a few things.

The second act started with the Chipmunks song, performed with the aid of helium-filled balloons, then the Elmer Fudd carols, as mentioned here.

And then the small group performed a naughty version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. Featuring ME.

The song was musically complicated, with lots of tempo changes, key changes, tritones and other odd chords. As far as I’m concerned, though, the highlight was when I pulled a microphone out of my pocket and started commenting on the size of Rudolph’s… nose.

“The antlers are reindeer, yes. But everything else is HORSE.”

Pair that with some suggestive movement, especially around the “you’ll go down in history” part (wink), and we had the place rolling.

And then, a couple songs later, Fred and some rather swarthy chorus members danced balletically to “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”.

In tutus.

One of which was removed at the conclusion of the piece and thrown into the orchestra pit.

I shouldn’t forget to mention the Village People, though, or the sexy rollerskating Santa in red velvet fur-hemmed short-shorts throwing little gifts out into the crowd, or the woman who ran down the aisle on Friday night and threw a comically large red bra at Santa, but yeah, Fred stole the show.

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The holidays were, uh, interesting. We trekked to Fred’s parents’ place for a Yule gathering, and invited my parents who became lost in a shady part of the East Side, and had a brief ritual before dinner and gift exchange. Fred and I did some of the desserts, including a dragon’s layer cake (which turned out damned good, even without the Cointreau).

Next day, we did the whole Christmas Eve service thing at the church of our recent belonging. (Naturally, we sang the cantata with the choir.) Afterwards, to my parents’ for the usual Christmas Eve quiche ‘n’ gifts bit. This year had a different twist; we each drew names for the exchange instead of buying for everyone.

Gift-wise, we are now set for quite some time as far as DVDs go… Also got some nice dishes and such from Fred’s family and some well-chosen gift cards from mine (H&M, w00t). In the exchange, Fred got a gift certificate to his favorite bookstore and the Amazing Race DVD game, and I got an alarm clock with an iPod dock.

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I’ll have to save the next week for another post. More later, including BIG BIG BIG stuff.

In the meantime, would you go update your anti-virus definitions please? Spam is killing the Internet because you won’t keep track of that sort of thing.

… because i have no time for a real post at the moment.

Want to watch international soccer matches online but only have telnet access? Don’t fret! There’s always ASCII-fied World Cup coverage!

OUPblog combats “marriage protection” FUD.

YouTube loveliness: first, Stevie Wonder sings his own heavily funkdafied version of the Sesame Street theme, then we go back and watch him perform “Superstition” for the kids. And we wrap up with the geekiest mashup I have seen in aaaaaaages.

Pride STL was over this past weekend, and I’m still recovering from the festivities. A more complete recap later, and perhaps this time there’ll be pictures.

Learned recently that not only does my mother read this blog, but also that she wants to go to “Showtune Tuesdays” at a local gay bar. These revelations came within minutes of each other, and it took Fred and I a solid hour until the second one really sunk in. (in the car on the way home: “Wait — did your mother just say that she wanted to go to Showtune Tuesday?” “Whoa. She did.”)

I won a cryptex from Google for being a superawesome puzzle solver. w00t. It’s cool even though you only have to solve the last two characters to open it. Too bad I didn’t win their grand prize, though.

My current musical obsessions are Gnarls Barkley “Crazy” (fast becoming this year’s summer song), the Pointer Sisters “Pinball Song” (scroll down a bit; anybody who has ever watched Sesame Street knows this one), and Miranda “Don” (a fun bit of Spanish-language pop I found on Fluxblog a few months back).

Food-wise, re-discovering pan sauces… after successfully adapting one printed on the back of a package of frozen tilapia fillets, I found an even better one online, which is hereby recommended both for its flavor and for its simplicity.

Work? Heh. Ask me later.

Backing up the iPod to my home file server even as I type this. It’s a long process — 18GB doesn’t get there in the blink of an eye, even through fat pipes — but I’m making serious headway. Once the initial backup is made I plan to run Unison every so often to keep things up-to-date.

And now, to the homework section: go read Perge Modo “Found Objects“, Joe.My.God “My Gaydar is Not 20/20“, and anything from AngryBlackBitch but most especially “ABB’s planned discussion with the sorta-gentlemen from Missouri“.

Talk more later. Sorry ’bout the delays.

Tuesday night I cooked dinner for Valentine’s Day — it’s cheaper and less crowded, everyone. Just wanted to recap.

A year or so ago, I impulsively grabbed a box of quinoa from Trader Joe’s. It had been sitting in my cabinet ever since, because I was a bit intimidated by it (thinking “oh my God what did I get myself into?! I’m totally unfamiliar with Incan cuisine!”). Last week, though, as Fred and I planned a trip to our friendly local wholesaler, we did our best to try to re-claim space. As a result, I volunteered to cook the quinoa.

On the back of the box was the recipe I wound up making for Valentine’s dinner. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful, so I’d like to share it here…

Garlic Chicken Stir-Fry with Quinoa, Peppers, and Basil
• 1 cup quinoa, well-rinsed in cold water or soaked (as appropriate: unprocessed quinoa has a bitter and mildly toxic outer hull that can be removed by soaking, but some commercial brands [including Trader Joe's] already have that hull removed)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 4 tbsp garlic-flavored olive oil
• 1 ½ pounds chicken breast tenders, cut into one-inch sections
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
• 1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
• 1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• ~20 leaves fresh basil, finely shredded (do a chiffonade!)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Grated or shredded Parmesan cheese

In a medium saucepan, bring quinoa and stock to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 to 12 minutes. At the end of this time, the quinoa should have little rings throughout: this is the germ of the seed separating from the rest of the seed, and indicates that the quinoa is finished cooking.

Heat a large skillet over high heat. Add oil, then sauté chicken until golden brown, ~5 minutes. Add peppers and onion and sauté for another minute or two; then add garlic, salt, and pepper and sauté until peppers are limp. Remove from heat. Toss in basil and cooked quinoa until basil wilts.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve immediately. Serves four or so.

We had this with a light salad and a crisp white wine (a blend of Ugni Blanc and Viognier), and followed it with frozen strawberries with cream dipped in white chocolate. (yes, most of this menu came from Trader Joe’s. and no, I am not affiliated with that company in any way.) Quite lovely, especially by candlelight, and especially with the pink tulips I had surprised him with envased nearby.

Needless to say, I am no longer afraid of quinoa. It’s a piece of cake to prepare and has a lovely texture, almost like al dente couscous. It’s also high in fiber and protein, and triples in volume when cooked so I felt it was a good value. I’ll be cooking it again sometime.