Ho, hum. Another Super Bowl.

 

Pasta with anchovies, garlic, panko and pecorinoi

What do you do when it’s Super Bowl Sunday night and you’re home alone? Why you fix yourself anchovy/garlic pasta with a Caesar salad. At least that’s what I did. I’ve been curious about what I call offbeat pasta sauces—with sardines or anchovies as the focal flavor. This was good—a bit of parsley, plenty of olive oil, a bit of garlic, grated Pecorino cheese all softened the anchovy taste so that it was what it can be at its best—earthy and flavorful but not so salty or fishy that you wonder why you’re eating it. The best thing about the dish, though was the panko that I sauteed in a bit of olive oil—stirred in, it added a wonderful crunch to each bite of pasta. So glad I tried this. The recipe was for six, which meant I had to pare it down for one, so I obviously may have made a wrong quantity judgment somewhere along the way. I paired my pasta with a butter lettuce salad (no, I didn’t deliberately splurge—it was all Central Market had when I ordered) dressed with Paul Newman’s Caesar which I have recently decided is as good as the classic oil and vinegar. And I put lots of pecorino on the salad too.

Christian came in a few minutes ago to give Sophie her shot, and when I commented that Facebook posts generally indicate that the halftime show was awful, he said that people say that every year. But then he allowed he didn’t much like this one, which was mild compared to some online comments. I turned it on briefly, just in time for halftime, but what I saw was a bunch of men (I guess there could have been women) dressed in what looked like hazmat suits parading around the field in a gait that looked like imitation Neanderthal. I quickly turned it off.

I did another good thing tonight: I made from scratch chocolate chip cookie dough. Haven’t baked cookies, but when we (note the collective pronoun) do bake them we will sprinkle sea salt on the top. I have recently discovered the wonder of sea salt on sweets. That’s because when Megan was here, she bought salted caramels from Central Market—so good. They have become my new obsession. I figure we should have the cookies as an alternative to my expensive salted caramels. Jordan went to Albertson’s for groceries today, and I am still in shock over the tab.

My work-related accomplishment for the day is that I reviewed my web page and realized it hasn’t been updated since June—way too long. So I made notes for my web guru on updating and that’s my next email for the evening. But then I’ll settle down with a new book: probably Deborah Crombie’s new Scotland Yard mystery, A Killing of Innocents. It’s a busy week ahead. Hope for each of you, the week holds good promise.