A little of this...

So I came home from more heated orthography debate today, just in time to make some supper.  I had some pumpkin puree in my fridge (because, well, as you know, there are one or two pumpkins around my house these days!), so I thought I would try to make a bit of pasta with creamy pumpkin sauce from a recipe I saw online.  The recipe calls for the following ingredients:

• 12 ounces penne rigate (ridged), or other short pasta
• Coarse salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
• 1 can (15 ounces) pure pumpkin puree
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 cup half-and-half
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more for garnish (optional)

The actual ingredients that I had on hand are as follows:

• half a package of macaroni noodles
• plain old table salt (course, though, because the humidity makes it stick together)
• mystery "vegetable" cooking oil
• dried Italian seaoning
• a bowl of fresh pumpkin puree
• lots more than 1 clove of garlic (um, er, sorry if you can smell me from where you are!)
• a bit of almost 'off' plain yogurt
• diced onions instead of parmesan.  because, well, no parmesan in these parts, but how can you cook anything without onions?
• a schlooky of leftover white wine
• tabasco sauce (added by the dinner club who I cook for!

But actually, it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. And, the best part, is that it was really fast - boiling the water for the noodles took the longest time. And it did turn out nice and creamy and delicious and satisfied a bit of my craving for creamy and delicious carbohydrates!

 

I have also noticed a bit of a pattern.  Last night, after I had done my dance of joy, and neglected to plug in my computer or my iPod (on which I'm reading a really good book at the moment!), the city power left us at midnight.  It didn't come back on until 8pm tonight.  So... if it goes off again at midnight, then I shall know that we've got a pattern starting... why 8pm to midnight, I'm not sure.  But I'm certainly not going to complain, because any city power is better than nothing!