Pasta al Forno

My lovely wife Sheryl made this very scrumptious dish today. The recipe is largely based on Rachael Ray’s recipe with the same name. Very highly recommended!

Pasta al Forno

1 pound rigatoni
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 stalk celery, diced
1 (15-ounce) can, crushed or pureed tomatoes
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 pinches ground cinnamon
Salt and pepper
1/2 tsp each of dried thyme, oregano and marjoram
3 ounces prosciutto, 1 thick slice from deli, chopped
1/4 to 1/3 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Softened butter to coat a medium casserole or baking dish

Bring large pot of water to boil, then salt and cook pasta to al dente. Once your pasta water comes to a boil to cook rigatoni, preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

In a medium skillet over medium heat add extra-virgin olive oil. Cook onions, celery and garlic in oil 5 to 8 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and herbs and bring to a bubble. Add cream and season sauce with cinnamon, salt and pepper. Add chopped prosciutto to sauce and stir with cooked pasta to combine. Coat a medium casserole with the butter. Adjust seasonings and transfer pasta to casserole. Cover pasta with Parmigiano-Reggiano and place in the oven for 10 minutes. Serve hot from oven.

Thanks to a recent posting by Accordion Guy, I had the great fortune to read what has quickly become one of my favorite short stories.

The Door in the Wall is a very engaging read. Written in 1911 by H.G. Wells, the style reflects and is evocative of a more genteel time, though it is in no way stuffy. The story provides ample opportunity for self reflection; many of the excuses made by the protagonist will resonate with those of us living modern, busy lives. Take the first step towards the door, and read this story!

Power lunching in Japan:

The one shown above is for Moneka, who loves PPG!

There are another 1/2 dozen or so of these imaginative creations available for your viewing pleasure.

Thanks to memepool for the link.

Wyrex, a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, is being excavated in an undisclosed location in Montana. Unique to this dig is the fact that the entire process is being documented via the web.

The dig’s web site, known as Unearthing T. rex, provides a rich experience, with lots of photos and a variety of educational pages. There is also a daily journal, where one can track the dig’s progress.

photos by Peter L. Larson - Copyright © 2003 BHIGR

Just a quick note to mention that mike-sheryl.com is back on the air after a brief outage.

Unfortunately, dotster never replied to any of my customer support queries so I don’t know if things naturally cleared up, or if they took explicit action to fix things. Plus, this doesn’t give me confidence that any future problems will be resolved quickly. On the other hand, this is probably the first problem I’ve had in 5 years, and it’s not their fault I let the domain expire. Still, 2 wrongs and all that. Contrast that to pair.com, where an urgent support request (doublechecking their DNS config), was answered, not just acknowledged, within 1/2 hour.

Oh, I also let riverside-cafe.com expire. It has since been renewed, but due to its odd DNS setup (it’s hosted on my home linux box) it’s not yet visible on the network. Riverside Cafe (named after a cafe owned by both my folks and my grandmother at different times) provides the random picture at the top of this site. I worked around it being down by referencing the images using the IP address of the server instead of the domain name. I hope to have the site back on the air soon.

If you sent me any emails from between 4pm (pdt) yesterday and noon today, please resend.