Pastafarian

Well, the weekend was varied. It didn't start well, but it ended superbly <3

It actually started with a total balls-up. Absolute ages ago, when we went to the March Market on Main Night Market, we first heard about the JHB Culinary & Pasty School's (still a dreadful website imo) Pasta & Wine Friday nights and decided that'd be a great way to spend a Friday evening.

And when I got around to actually investigating it further, fate stepped in and provided us with a City Slicker deal on the class. Yes, please!

So we found some friends who wanted to go as well. And in typical style, everyone was super keen when we were mentioning it initially, but when it came down to actually booking, we ended up with only 1 couple keen to join us. Which actually suited us just fine since they were people we'd met once before, but spent a whole night chatting to who we really liked and had decided to make an effort to make some new couple-friends.

Anyhoo, I bought us the 4-person class on City Slicker and booked for Friday night ... and thought very little more of it. Till Tuesday when I called to confirm with the School. Now let's keep in mind when I was originally trying to get some more information about the class, I'd emailed them. Twice. Because on their website the text says one email address but the mailto is spelt differently.

They never responded. Eventually, I called when we were making the booking after having bought the voucher. When I called again on Tuesday, they'd lost our booking. Apparently ours wasn't the first they'd lost either, they were having issues with their computer. No worries, there was still space in Friday's class and we were booked in as planned.

Till I replied to the confirmation mail that said "You are booked for Friday" but had a subject line of "Friday 20th booking". If you check out your calendar, you'll see Friday was the 19th. I replied to confirm it again. Uh-oh. On Friday morning we found out they'd actually booked us for Saturday evening. Eep.

Mad scramble across email to see if we could all reschedule. Luckily we could. So suddenly we had no plans for Friday night.

Since things had been so weird this week between The Trucker & I, I decided to cook us a nice dinner, complete with candles and even a home made dessert. We didn't get to dessert. We had a fight and I went to bed early and he stayed up watching TV.



In the morning, I was up early again for another trip to Milpark. Due to the fighting, he didn't even budge and I went alone. Anyhoo, the good news is I'm healing just fine and I only have to go back again in 6 months. Which is just as well because even with a 7:15 appointment, I only saw the doc just over an hour later! Sheesh. The only sort-of bad news is that apparently there will still be sensitivity for up to 2 months as it heals internally. I'm hoping to make it a whole day today wearing a normal bra ... I had to whip it off by the afternoon on Saturday & Sunday. Very uncomfortable. Haha.

I got home and eventually The Trucker returned from some errands and we sorted everything out. Thank goodness. I hate when we're not good.

We went and ran some errands and then relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. And then we headed off to make some pasta!

Okay, I will say this, after all the hassle of getting a booking, I didn't really have very high hopes but the evening was fantastic and I'd recommend it to anyone. It was definitely more fun going as a group of 4 (because that's how the tables are structured). And the pasta we made was simple and absolutely delish! Seriously. They made some amazing sauces to go with it while we were focusing on our pasta-making and the meal at the end was superb. Although it's a good thing we took our own wine because their wine only came out after most people had finished eating.

And did I mention what a great venue it actually is (apparently they moved about 2 months ago). It's all glass and lit up wonderfully :) I didn't see their old spot, but the new one looks fabulous.

Seriously we had such a great evening. And we were still sitting and chatting after just about everyone else had left. But we were having such a good time we headed to Chalkboard Cafe for a last drink before heading home. Which turned out to be far later than I expected! A fabulous Saturday evening :)

On Sunday we had a bit of a lazy morning then headed to Doppio for some breakfast, and then to get our grocery shopping out the way. I'd decided that since The Trucker has one of those pasta machines, we should put our left over pasta dough to some good use and try our hand at Ravioli for dinner. Seriously, the pasta on Saturday night was so light I didn't even feel like I'd had pasta, usually I would never have pasta 2 nights in a row!

I made the filling while he napped before cricket. I used a little block of feta, finely cut baby spinach, chorizo cut into quarters and then some of the Woolies tomato and onion mix in a box (it is delish). Popped that in the fridge and when he went to cricket, I headed off to visit @clairam and @samanthaperry for the afternoon. Can you tell I'm feeling more sociable again?

When we were both home, he rolled out the dough and we had a few failed attempts at ravioli making. You really do need a rather large circle to start with (okay, so I suppose we were actually making Agnolotti, since it was half-moon shaped). And the amount of filling you can get in there is far less than you imagine!

But we did it. I think we made about 22 pieces. And then we cooked them. It all went rather quickly which surprised me. The real down-side was that at home there is no one cleaning up after you. Our kitchen still looks like a bag of flour blew up in it - haha, but that is a problem for this afternoon.

We added Woolies Red Pepper pesto as the sauce (I spooned some into the bowl in layers as we served the pasta because I figured it'd be too hard to stir without breaking them open ... they get a lot bigger than you realise). It was absolutely yummy! OMG so so good. And I still don't feel like I've eaten pasta this weekend. I can't believe how much lighter it is when homemade!

Unfortunately The Trucker was still hungry after this (we could've made more, we had more filling and more pasta, I think he was just getting impatient - haha). But it was still such a delish meal, I can definitely see us making pasta at home again! Which comes as a little bit of a surprise to me, I must say.

Oh yes, and I'm sure you can see, this whole fascination Gypsy has with the bunny hutch is pretty much and almost-daily occurrence now. The bunnies are generally less than impressed with it. Mostly she doesn't bother them. Except in the big photo (I know the hutch is very dirty, it needs a clean, but when you've had an operation less than 2 weeks ago, it is not what you feel like doing), she started to swat Rex thru the gap at the top of the box he was in. I removed her. I used to try keeping her out of there altogether, keeping it as "their" space ... but that hasn't really worked out very well :P