big hass avocados

i finally got around to trying my hand at making a home cooked italian meal. the menu consisted of a not-so-italian salad, home made 3-cheese ravioli, bolognese sauce and tiramisu for dessert.

making your own pasta sounds scary, but it isn’t. 2 cups of flour in the food processor for 15 or so seconds to aerate it, add 3 whisked eggs. process until it forms a dough (adding water 1/2 teaspoon if necessary, or flour 1 tbsp at a time if necessary). knead the dough for 1-2 minutes, let it rest 15 mins-2 hours, then run it through a pasta machine. i got the cheap one, and it worked great:

the filling is equally as simple: 1 cup ricotta, 2 oz parmesean, 4 oz mozarella, one egg yolk, and 2 tbsp basil. mix it up.

we got one of these to help with assembly and it worked great. i was horrified at the thought of going to all this trouble only to end up with a boiling pot of empty raviolis in cheese water. no ravioli explosions, we had pasta success!

as for the sauce, it was an all-day affair, but well worth it.

classic bolognese sauce (from cooks illustrated)

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 c minced onion
1/4 c minced carrot
1/4 c minced celery
1 pound meatloaf mix or 1/3 pound each ground beef chuck, ground veal, and ground pork
Table salt
1.5 cup whole milk
1.5 cup dry white wine
3 - 14.5 oz cans diced tomatoes , packed in juice, chopped fine, with juice reserved

1. Heat butter in large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over medium heat; add onion, carrot, and celery and sautè until softened but not browned, about 6 minutes. Add ground meat and 1/2 teaspoon salt; crumble meat with edge of wooden spoon to break apart into tiny pieces. Cook, continuing to crumble meat, just until it loses its raw color but has not yet browned, about 3 minutes.

2. Add milk and bring to simmer; continue to simmer until milk evaporates and only clear fat remains, 25 minutes. Add wine and bring to simmer; continue to simmer until wine evaporates, 25 minutes longer. Add tomatoes and their juice and bring to simmer; reduce heat to low so that sauce continues to simmer just barely, with an occasional bubble or two at the surface, until liquid has evaporated, about 3 - 3.5 hours. Adjust seasonings with extra salt to taste and serve. (Can be refrigerated in an airtight container for several days or frozen for several months. Warm over low heat before serving.)

and the tiramisu, which i can’t find the recipe for online right now and am entirely too lazy to type out tonight.

overall, it was very tasty. the bolognese sauce would be better suited for plain pasta, and i’d try a marinara sauce with the ravioli next time. tiramisu had a great flavor, but the ladyfingers were definitely over soaked and i’m not sure how to soak them any less than we did.

oh, and i realized i forgot to post recipe links to last month’s hungarian adventure. find them here.

in queue: irish, belgian, spanish and thai food. in no particular order…

reading:
almost 600 pages of deliciousness that are going to make me fat add so many items to my to-cook list that i’ll never finish:

started this in 02 when i nannied for one baby. turns out, you have a lot less time to read on the job when the second baby comes along. anyway, i finally got around to picking it back up last week, just in time to be invited back to my old nanny job for new baby #3 and an “1100 square foot guest house with my name on it”. it really is tempting. but i need to finish the book this time guys:

sniffing:
wait til they go on clearance, you get them for like $5

seriously, if you have allergies, get some of this stuff and try it for 2 weeks. since i started working from home, my dog allergy has gotten worse from being exposed to it more. from about october-january i couldn’t sleep through the night without waking up to sneeze and blow my nose. i tried air purifiers, antihistamines, sudafed - nothing worked. couple days of this stuff, and i don’t sneeze at all and only take my antihistamine every now and then. brian’s dad, who is allergic to everything and has had years of allergy shots also tried it and is having great results:

drinking:
sorry, fido, you got one-upped. not only is the coffee at crema delicious, i bet their internet connection is better, and i don’t have to look at everyone i went to college with doing things like networking or talking about synergy among team players who think outside the box. i went to college with some oh-so-important people, none of whom have been spotted at crema. plus, mon-fri happy hour 3-5pm $2.50 for a cookie and coffee! YAY!

admiring:
speaking of crema, friend ours has some art opening there this weekend. free coffee, wine and cheese from 7-10pm friday night. i heart this picture:

attempting:
homemade ravioli. i’ve got the ravioli stamper, and the pasta machine is on the way. wish me luck…

getting sucked into:
goodreads.com - keep track of what you’re reading and see what your friends are reading…this is the only form of social networking i can condone

tastyplanner.com - haven’t used it yet, but i’m sure it’ll suck up a few hours this weekend.

i don’t blog much about work-related stuff for a couple of reasons. few people really know or care to know about the intricacies of what i do. its a niche. i like it. that’s all that really matters. sometimes i do blog about work topics because its hard to find up-to-date info on some of the stuff i do. other times, i write about goofy stuff because i’m a dork and i like to see if i can make things i blog about show up in search engines. (*cough*best running playlist ever*cough*)

however, today you will not be spared, i’m sorry. i have a few tips for those placing ads using any online keyword-based advertising platforms that may stumble upon this blog:

dynamic keyword insertion:
so, when you write ads, you can set the ad to automatically insert the term you are targeting. for example, all those ads you see when you google something that have a headline that reads exactly the same as what you just typed in - no, target.com doesn’t read your mind. they use this feature.

exhibit a:

note: no, i didn’t do a search for this particular term. its a contextual ad, so if a certain keyword appears in an article, you can hover over it and an ad shows up. just so happened this article mentioned it. ew.

wow, bizrate.com, i bet you do have the best deal on menstrual cycles.

anyway, this is a typical example of a horribly managed campaign. i guarantee what happened here was that someone set up a gigantic campaign, with hundreds and thousands of keywords that they used a keyword research tool to generate. then they created ad groups for every keyword generated and used the same format for every single ad group. unfortunately, the ad format for something like “cookware” which would have worked in this case, doesn’t work so well for “menstrual cycle”.

so, the point is, automating and working fast are good. but maybe double check on what you’re actually doing?

typos/consistency
seriously, read your ads before you make your campaign live

exhibit b (click to make it bigger):

here’s a secret: why are you tring to sell me adwords tips if you can’t proofread your ads? why..?

here’s a tip: buy www.27adwordssecrets.com and put a bunch of adsense ads on it - guarantee some people see this ad, try to remember it later, and end up at www.27adwordssecrets.com

that is all, enough work talk.

complain about mexican food in nashville if you must, but you truly have no idea how good we have it here until you’ve had a burrito in a bowl from the detroit airport.

airports all look the same on the inside, so when i was hungry and saw a burrito place, i got in line. as i got back to my seat, and opened my dinner, i thought to myself “this looks different than in nashville…where am i again?”

detroit. not exactly known for their fine cuisine, or fine burritos for that matter.

what on earth was i thinking?? a burrito in detroit??

after i ate about half of it (trying to pick around the white lettuce and crunchy rice) i thought to myself, “i have to get something familiar and yummy to eat before i get on this flight to erase the memory of this burrito from my palate”

unfortunately there were no more food kiosks between the burrito place and my gate. just a solitary vending machine. i looked through the selection, trying to find my comfort food of choice. beef jerky? lemon wafers? hot fries? ew…

yes, i washed down my detroit burrito with an oreo cakester. i am truly the most disgusting person ever.

i ran 72.1 miles this month. this is the same distance as from my parents’ house to ralph wilson stadium. who knew?