an already-halfway-wasted weekend

Let's just write Friday off. I spent it in bed—sick, tired, infected, and in pain. Every time I rolled the wrong way, I felt as if I were stubbing my swollen toe, so I had to figure out clever ways of arranging my feet to keep my toe off the mattress. By nighttime, my sleep schedule had been completely thrown out of whack, which is why I ended up writing that blog post about Bon Appétit's current scandal. I stayed up until past sunrise and didn't get back to sleep until nearly 8 a.m. I got up again a bit before 2 p.m., and here we are. My new air conditioner is already starting to blow rancid air, so I just spritzed the filter with a cheap Lysol surrogate I'd found at Daiso, the dollar-store chain. For the moment, the air from the A/C seems much improved. For the moment.

Having gotten up so late today (Saturday), I've already wasted a good chunk of my weekend. I need to do some shopping for an upcoming luncheon: this coming Friday, June 26, I'll be serving spaghetti and meatballs. I'll make my usual variation on what the Brits call "Spag Bol," i.e., spaghetti bolognese.* My version uses a somewhat smoother-than-ragù sauce, and instead of ground beef, it incorporates crumbled salsiccia italiana—homemade, of course. Also homemade will be the pasta. I've tried making spaghetti the old-fashioned way before, and I got it to the state they show on all the videos: fresh and tender, and needing only about a minute in boiling, salted water to cook to completion. My question, though, is whether it's possible to achieve al dente with fresh pasta. I think the answer is no: if the pasta goes into the water soft, it's going to come out soft. That was my experience when I made pasta by hand years ago: the noodles were soft to the point of not being very chewy, and I ended up feeling a bit empty. Obviously, I'd done something wrong in prepping the pasta; maybe I'd gotten some proportions wrong, despite having followed a conventional pasta recipe. Who knows? This weekend, I'll be trying again now that I have a pasta roller. And maybe I'll allow some of the pasta to dry so that I can boil it longer and possibly reach the al dente stage.** If it all turns out shitty before the 26th, I'll simply drop in some store-bought pasta. Giving my charges a good meal is more important than satisfying my ego by making everything myself.

[NB: I just found a Reddit thread on this very issue.]

So if I want to feel as if I've accomplished something today, at the very least I need to get off my ass and shop for luncheon ingredients. On the menu for this coming Friday:

• spaghetti with meatballs (the boss insists on the meatballs)
• garlic bread (featuring homemade bread)
• insalata caprese, featuring homemade pesto
• chocolate "mouce" (you've seen it many times before on this blog***)

I'm going to try making most of the meal this weekend, but I'm in no hurry. Some components, like the caprese and the garlic bread (and arguably the pasta, too), ought to be made as late in the game as possible so that they can be served fresh.

I didn't forget: a blog post fully chronicling my misadventure at Samsung Hospital (titled "Hell Samsung" in honor of the slangy Korean phrase "Hell Joseon"—a reference to how South Korea is an unforgiving place for young job-seekers and adult wage slaves) is on the way. I've already added photos, including a gross one of my big toe all lubed up with Neosporin, and I've included the precise timeline of my nine-hour stay in the belly of the bureaucratic beast. I won't soon forget that experience. It had a lot in common with the experiences of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

But first things first: you can't make up for a lost Saturday by running off half-cocked. A shower is in order, and then we can start haring around town.

ADDENDUM: a pasta how-to video from Tasty:

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*Also known as "Spag bol" (lower-case "b") and even "Spag bog," which sounds like some nightmarish, misbegotten Irish pasta.

**Yes, yes—I've already seen the strident admonitions that fresh and store-bought pasta are radically different animals. I am indeed aware of this.

***You may recall that the deliberate misspelling—mouce—is to differentiate my dessert from the French standard. What I make is a lot closer to an Italian panna cotta, but bubblier because I incorporate whipped cream into mine. The basic difference is that a French mousse au chocolat uses eggs for structure, whereas a panna cotta uses gelatin. I incorporate the whipped cream to keep the mouce from having an overly solid, flan-like texture. I like bubbles, I guess, and mousse is French for "foam" or "froth."