more on cooking..

I thought I'd expand on the night we made dinner. Cooking was a lot of fun. My normal pot of sauce is usually big enough to make 12 servings for Hilary and I (we freeze it in batches of 2) so I just had to round up a bit. That part was easy. We had to run around a bit to find the right ingredients. The romano cheese I found at the "Cava de Queso" or Cheese Cave, a nice cheese shop we just happened upon while out one day. It cost 23,000 pesos or about $10 for a small piece. It was key though so I had to buy it. The rest was paid for by the hotel. I think the manager really likes Italian food so she was very encouraging. The canned tomatoes were from Carrefour, the only tomatoes I've seen here that are imported from Itly. Hilary's Mom sent us her mother's meatball recipe so we had to buy garlic powder. The rest - breadcrumbs, eggs, etc they keep in stock here at the Halifax and they said we were welcome to use whatever we needed. They have nice olive oil down here but its all from Spain. I suffered through it. There is actually a place 2 blocks away that makes fresh pasta. It's dried but they make it right there. We bought 4lbs. The arugola was from the local grocery believe it or not. I can't even find arugola in Bed Stuy for petes sake. Blanca helped me clean everything and Hilary came in and out with Mariana. She mixed up all the meatball ingredients and I did the frying. Then into the sauce. The actual serving was a bit of a rush job. I've never cooked that much pasta before and trying to dole it into two big platters was challenging. I then took some of the whole garlic cloves that roasted in the sauce, mashed them, smeared it on the baguettes and sprinkled with salt, pepper and a little romano for some nice garlic bread. Hilary dressed the salad and the staff helped us put everything into the approprite platters. They don't usually put all the tables together like in that photo but it was a special occasion. There was lots of toasting and bonding. One of the Swedish couples has a son that didn't want to eat anything while they'd been in Colombia. He had been losing weight. His Mother had told me that his favorite meal was spaghetti and meatballs. Part of the reason we did it that day was because I knew they were leaving the next day. He was well pleased with meal but even more so with the cookies. We packed up a few care packages and gave some to the staff as well.