today's spaghetti

Two shots of a plateful of spaghetti similar to what I ate for lunch today (forgot to take a pic at the time):

You see the one lone meatball. I must have miscounted the number of meatballs today because we certainly didn't get five each. Luckily, my Korean and American coworkers both asked for fewer than five meatballs, so my boss was able to have five, and so did I.

I also prepped berry sauce for cheesecake; I bought the cheesecake from our building's first-floor bakery (a chain called Emma); the lady warned me the cheesecake was cold and needed time to thaw, so we office proles waited a bit more than an hour for that to happen. The cheesecake's insides were still somewhat cold when eating time rolled around, but overall, dessert wasn't bad. The berry sauce was tasty but still a little runny; I should have let more water boil out of it when I was making it.

There was a little worry about some meatballs' being slightly pink in the center, but I put my reputation on the line and declared that level of pinkness (baaaaarely pink from what I saw) to be okay. No one got sick, so I think I made the right call. An entire package of pasta proved to be just enough for all of us when divided into four roughly equal portions, and while no one used the phrase "food coma" (I get a $200 bonus every time someone utters the phrase in relation to my cooking), everyone pronounced themselves full. 

Oh, yeah—there was garlic bread, too; I went to Paris Baguette looking for baguettes, but of course, the bakery didn't have any (Paris Baguette sucks at anything baguette-related). They did, however, have these little loaves that looked a hell of a lot like American-style Italian bread, so I bought three small loaves, sliced them up and slathered them in garlic butter, and baked them at 375ºF (191ºC) for about twenty minutes. The bottoms ended up a little too suntanned, but not burned. No one seemed to care, luckily; I heard no complaints. That said, it's frustrating to realize how little I know my own oven even after all these years. Every baking session is a negotiation. Maybe I'm just not paying close enough attention.

So I'm done with office cooking for the year. If all goes according to plan, it's beef on Weck next week. My coworker said the reason for the delay had to do with his family's being tested for COVID after a scare at his daughter's preschool. That's done now, so bring on the beef!