Alfredo & An Abundance of Noodles

I've had some shell pasta sitting in my cupboard for a while now, and it's been taking up space. So tonight, it was time to experiment again.

As I finished boiling the pasta, Jill showed me how to make alfredo sauce from scratch. I was surprised that it was much easier than it sounds; however, since obviously one needs milk and none of us in the apartment use milk, we opted for my rice milk. That would've been fine ("I've used my soy milk before and it was fine," Jill assured me)...except that after pouring a bunch into the pot, along with the butter and flour, Jill looked up at the container and frowned. "Um...is that vanilla rice milk?"

I looked at the carton. "Yeah, apparently it is. Is that bad?" Sylvia grimaced behind me and Jill smiled. "It'll probably taste kinda interesting...let's throw some salt in." Sylvia also offered a couple slices of her pepperjack cheese.

After cooking that, I decided to use my yam as well; Sylvia picked it up as she was cooking and said, "Matthew, you may want to use this. It might go bad soon." I've had the yam for a month; its time had come, so I threw some garlic, salt and butter on it, then threw it in the oven. (Two hours later, Jill came into my room. "Did you want to bake your yam?" I nodded. "Well, I'm about to bake my pies, and the oven isn't on.")

Then I made some lentil curry and rice to eat with the yam tomorrow for lunch and dinner at work while Sylvia was making her chicken and bowtie noodle soup. She decided to use the rest of her noodles, so she poured the whole bag into the pot. She stepped back, clutching the empty bag and staring at the pot. "That might've been...too much," she mumbled as I laughed. She split the huge concoction into two pots, and when the smaller one finished cooking, she and I split it between ourselves. Tomorrow I'll have the yam and the chicken noodle soup for lunch and dinner.

As for Tuesday, I'll be eating the lentil and rice soup, plus the leftovers of tonight's dinner: the shell pasta with alfredo. The sauce came out tasting pretty...interesting. I didn't think it was horrible, and neither did Jill as she popped a shell in her mouth. But when Sylvia tasted it, her eyes widened and she needed a glass of water. "I'd throw a bunch of salt on that," she advised.

I put some seasoned salt on it, which helped a bit. Chandler was just sitting on the couch shaking his head. "It's not horrible tasting!" I defeneded. Finally I admitted it was too much sweetened flavor in one sitting and stowed some of it in a bag. Hopefully that'll be good for Tuesday.

After cleaning the kitchen, Jill decided to make pie. "Yippie, I have a pie pan!" She drummed on the pan using her hand with her wedding ring. As I laughed, she said, "That's one of the advantages of having a wedding ring."

I laughed again. "You mean you get to bang things that are hard?" Jill nodded, then paused. "Wow, that sounded really sexual."

I smiled. "It was intentional."