Chile Crisp Fettucine Alfredo, Books and Movies

January is coming to an end, but the winter weather chaos continues. We are looking at our second consecutive weekend of icy weather, which in the South usually means a total shut-down, with impassable roads and power failures. Last weekend's storm Fern was milder than expected. We did not lost power; however, we were iced in on the weekend, and schools only reopened on Wednesday. 

On these unexpected school days off, the main challenge is keeping our 9 year old entertained, and we are always grateful when we can pool childcare with his best friend's parents, with the two boys playing together at one or the other house. They have grown to be great friends of ours, and we especially love going to the occasional trivia night together, leaving the kids at home to entertain each other. 

On the long MLK day weekend, we let the boys play video games together and snuck out for a game of bar trivia, only to find the place packed with no tables available. So we walked down the street to our local board game cafe and had ourselves a couple of happy hours playing Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. (We were determined to get our trivia fix one way or another.) 

The food, though. We were hungry, the place was understaffed, the orders were mixed up, the sandwiches were overpriced and dismal. Ours just isn't a town with great restaurant options, especially if you happen to be vegetarian. Other than going out for casual enchiladas or a Thai curry, if I want something good, I have to put in some effort and make it myself. The day after our outing, I pulled up my folder of saved recipes and decided to try a new recipe, to treat us to something different. 

I found the Fettuccine Alfredo with Chili Crisp & Spinach recipe from NYT Cooking, which was perfect as I had some fettucine in the pantry. While I don't have an NYT Cooking subscription, they occasionally unlock recipes, and I had saved the recipe when it was available. You can find the recipe reprinted on this blog. It is a simple recipe that almost makes itself, but unusual in the way it combines Italian elements (pasta in a cream sauce) with a Chinese condiment, one that happens to be beloved in my household (chili crisp). 

There's nothing difficult about this recipe, but it is a special occasion recipe for us, because it is very rich! Fettucine is boiled until tender. The sauce is just butter and cream and chili crisp. Baby spinach is tossed in to wilt in the heat, then the sauce is finished with the cooked pasta and a shower of parmesan cheese. For once in my life, I followed the recipe very closely, only bumping up the quantity of spinach. (You know how quantities of spinach wilt down to nothingness.)

This pasta dish was great in a special, restaurant-quality way. It is one that I know I will make again. Chili crisp is one of those condiments that brings (which is to say, BRINGS) the flavor, and the contrast with the soft pasta and cream sauce is unexpected and delightful. Oh, and leftovers reheat well. Our kids did not like this dish so V and I ate it happily all by ourselves. 

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Here are some recent tidbits from the world of books and entertainment:

On a snow-day movie night, we watched the 1992 classic sports-comedy movie, A League of Their Own on Netflix. It focuses on a time in American history when professional baseball players were away at war, and the very first women's professional baseball league was formed to keep the game going and the money flowing in. This movie has an all-star cast, including Madonna, and Tom Hanks as the reluctant coach, with his famous line, "There's no crying in baseball"!

Funny enough, this very same women's baseball league was mentioned in the book I read next, The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, published in 2024. It is a work of historical fiction (and a murder mystery), set in the 1950s in a women's boardinghouse in DC. Each chapter focuses on the backstory and life of one of the residents, and the book as a whole covers female friendships and an unlikely community formed via a weekly dinner club against the backdrop of national events and the culture at the time. I highly recommend this book- it was an easy and fun read while still covering some deep themes. There is history and there is mystery and there are recipes. The storylines all comes to a satisfying conclusion. 

Also, this month, I read the classic 1915 novella, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The original is written in German and the version I read is translated expertly by Susan Bernofsky. V asked me if the book is Kafkaesque, and yes, yes, it is LOL. A traveling salesman named Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a giant insect. The text is very easy to read, but what's interesting about this book is the meaning behind the text and the surreal quality of it all. It is one of those classics where you read the book which has a simple enough (albeit bizarre) story, and then you read interpretations of the book by people who are literature experts and then you think about the book for days.

My son loves reading comics (in fact, to my chagrin, all he reads is comics and graphic novels) and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comics are a particular favorite. My husband has a whole collection of these and our son is devouring them. Which is why I was pleased to come across this comic and accompanying text about Bill Watterson. It is truly worth reading! Watterson gives some wonderful advice about making one's own path in life, and reminds us that a job title and salary are not the sole measure of a human's worth. I think of this kind of philosophy often, as I work a humble job that I love but which impresses no one, but leaves me with plenty of time and bandwidth to read, blog, volunteer, and indulge my many hobbies. 

I only recently learned about something called "blackout poetry" - how interesting! I'd like to find some text and try my hand at this. It sounds like something a non-poet could do as a creative exercise.

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The sewing continues. I decided that instead of chasing after new fabric, I should make more of an effort to use up my fabric stash in the first half of this year. I own a few pieces of block-printed Indian cotton, and one piece had enough yardage to make my first collared shirt. 

The pattern is the Donny Shirt by the Friday Pattern Company. It is well-known in the sewing world as a great first-shirt pattern, with a few lovely features like a fully enclosed yoke (where I got to try the "burrito method" for the first time) and a lightly gathered back. 

The pattern had very good instructions, but I also relied on their video sew-along, and also generous bloggers like this one for their additional advice. Making this shirt was a rollercoaster of emotions, from the excitement of seeing the enclosed yoke emerge to the panic of seeing, at one point, that while the front of my shirt looked correct, the back had the wrong side of the fabric facing out. Then came the job of figuring out what I had done wrong, and unpicking and redoing it. Finally, the relief at getting it right, and the simple child-like joy of trying on a shirt that I made ALL BY MYSELF. If you want to inject some low-stakes drama in your life, I highly recommend taking up sewing! 

We tend to think of coding and engineering as hi-tech and activities like sewing as simple and not particularly impressive, but the truth is that assembling pieces of flat fabric into a 3-D structure takes some solid intelligence and skill. This simple shirt pattern was breaking my feeble brain at times as I struggled to visualize how the steps went together. I have a new appreciation for how technical sewing is and how clever tailors and seamstresses and designers are. 

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If anyone has tips on must-do things in Chennai (culture, restaurants, stores, fabric shopping), please share them with me. I might be spending a few weeks in that part of Southern India later this year, and I'm excited at the prospect! 

What were your highlights from January?