Sat, June 14 - home made mozzarella!

9.50am - green juice, at home.10.03am - blueberry-flaxseed-aloe vera smoothie, at home.

11.38am - Nady bread works as French toast! With maple syrup, at home.

11.38am - and this is how Ritesh likes his Nady bread - with his favorite combo of, ahem, peanut butter, jelly - and fried egg.

12.26pm - fresh lemongrass-mint tea, at home, with Ritesh. Turned this into an iced tea, which came in very handy during the major house cleaning we did today.

14.49h - Nady bread also works toasted and dipped in olive oil!

15.45h - rose blossom tea, at home. After hours of cleaning, we were exhausted (we don't do this enough, apparently). We were supposed to leave for Ritesh's dissertation advisor's year-end get together right about now. In fact, it's because of this get-together that we had to reschedule dinner w/ Nady et al. But did we make it there? Ah well. It didn't help that it was more than an hour's drive away. And that tomorrow is Fathers Day and Ritesh still wanted to get a gift...

So Ritesh went out gift shopping, and I stayed home to try my new mozzarella-making kit, which works like magic! I did mess up a couple of things but somehow my mistakes seemed to cancel each other out and I was left with this lovely, fresh mozzarella:

21.20h - baked pasta w/ home made mozarella. This is such a simple dish, but that home-made tomato sauce had to boil and simmer for almost 2 hours before it even went into the baking dish ... worth it, though. Loved it. I don't often feel I'm actually eating Italian food when I eat pasta - it's become such a universal convenience food. But tonight I do. At home, with Ritesh.

21.27h - the pasta, lovely orecchiette baresi, is not home-made, mind you, but at least was personally escorted over here by yours truly from Rome last year. That's got to count for something.