Justin and I make a tasty and simple pasta dish every now and then. It calls for one onion, a jar of vodka cream sauce (or homemade for those ambitious enough), two sliced and cooked sausages, and penne. Whip up the sauce with the sausage and onion, slap it all together and MM-mm, fast and easy dinner! We call it Trader Joe's Pasta since I learned the recipe from the Trader Joe's sample girl when my old work used to have their offices right above the store.
Anyhow, we were at Whole Foods looking for a quick dinner fix the other day when we came across Silver Platter pasta sauce on sale. You know, it was stacked at one of the aisle-ends like they do when they want to get your attention. I didn't even know that Silver Platter made pasta sauce, but it turns out they do... and vodka cream sauce nonetheless. I do wonder, however, if there was a reason that the sauce was on sale. It seems that, well, something was missing...
Need a closer look?
Yep, that's some calorie-free pasta sauce there, folks. And lemme tell you, it was taaaasteee. :D
In other news, I had my first guitar lesson last Thursday and it was fabulously fun. The only nerve wracking part about it was being late-- it took me half an hour to go about 11 miles from my house in Wallingford to my instructor's home in Ballard. The Fremont bridge being under construction has terminally f*cked things up. Next Thursday, if the weather is at all decent, I'm biking with my guitar bag on my back. Guh.
My instructor, John, is very patient and very experienced-- two good things he has going for him as a teacher. He's so calm it's almost creepy, but I suppose I'll get used to that as I've gotten used to Justin's dad being eerily calm.
During the first lesson, I played a short piece for John to show him my technique. Because I knew absolutely nothing about how to properly hold and strum a guitar, I was prepared to completely dismantle the way I'd been practicing. It turns out, of course, that I was doing it completely wrong-- but now I feel so much better. Today I took my guitar in to the shop to have the strings adjusted (the grooves in the nut needed to be deepened) and pick up a music stand (it pretty much sucks craning your neck to see a book on the coffee table).
I learned to read music many years ago, after playing Suzuki method piano in elementary school, clarinet in middle school band, and singing in high school concert choir. I gather that a lot of people go into playing guitar not knowing how to read sheet music and I'm almost jealous of them. Guitar annotations are so different than "normal" annotation that I'm much more comfortable playing things written out in clefs than I am on frets. This isn't a huge problem, since I've been playing things from a book that uses the former, but I'd like not to have to re-learn everything! I'm having a great time practicing, though, so it's not a huge complaint. :)
Tomorrow we run 6 miles for marathon training (Justin got new shoes!) and will be joining Tom & Amy (whom we met in Glacier '06) for a Super Bowl party.
Posted on February 03, 2007 @ 7:01 PM | 0 comments
Anyhow, we were at Whole Foods looking for a quick dinner fix the other day when we came across Silver Platter pasta sauce on sale. You know, it was stacked at one of the aisle-ends like they do when they want to get your attention. I didn't even know that Silver Platter made pasta sauce, but it turns out they do... and vodka cream sauce nonetheless. I do wonder, however, if there was a reason that the sauce was on sale. It seems that, well, something was missing...
Need a closer look?
Yep, that's some calorie-free pasta sauce there, folks. And lemme tell you, it was taaaasteee. :D
In other news, I had my first guitar lesson last Thursday and it was fabulously fun. The only nerve wracking part about it was being late-- it took me half an hour to go about 11 miles from my house in Wallingford to my instructor's home in Ballard. The Fremont bridge being under construction has terminally f*cked things up. Next Thursday, if the weather is at all decent, I'm biking with my guitar bag on my back. Guh.
My instructor, John, is very patient and very experienced-- two good things he has going for him as a teacher. He's so calm it's almost creepy, but I suppose I'll get used to that as I've gotten used to Justin's dad being eerily calm.
During the first lesson, I played a short piece for John to show him my technique. Because I knew absolutely nothing about how to properly hold and strum a guitar, I was prepared to completely dismantle the way I'd been practicing. It turns out, of course, that I was doing it completely wrong-- but now I feel so much better. Today I took my guitar in to the shop to have the strings adjusted (the grooves in the nut needed to be deepened) and pick up a music stand (it pretty much sucks craning your neck to see a book on the coffee table).
I learned to read music many years ago, after playing Suzuki method piano in elementary school, clarinet in middle school band, and singing in high school concert choir. I gather that a lot of people go into playing guitar not knowing how to read sheet music and I'm almost jealous of them. Guitar annotations are so different than "normal" annotation that I'm much more comfortable playing things written out in clefs than I am on frets. This isn't a huge problem, since I've been playing things from a book that uses the former, but I'd like not to have to re-learn everything! I'm having a great time practicing, though, so it's not a huge complaint. :)
Tomorrow we run 6 miles for marathon training (Justin got new shoes!) and will be joining Tom & Amy (whom we met in Glacier '06) for a Super Bowl party.
Posted on February 03, 2007 @ 7:01 PM | 0 comments
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