It’s storming. The OKC TAF doesn’t look good for the morning–600ft ceiling at 4am, and only 1200ft at 10am… overcast, mist, etc. Right now there temperature’s 10 degrees with a dewpoint of 8 degrees, which means low ceilings all morning. I talked to D., and we went ahead and decided to aim for tomorrow afternoon. There’s that possibility of a window of higher ceilings before the wind picks up after it gets a little warmer. We’ll see. I’m not going to get too excited.

I’ve been experimenting with classic Italian cooking the past couple of days, serving Joanna multi-course meals. She seems to like them. Yesterday we had Tagliatelli with Bolognese sauce (the dish which after many perversions became American spaghetti, but doesn’t taste anything like it) and pan roasted rosemary chicken. A REAL bolognese sauce is milk/wine based and the only herb in it is nutmeg. Yes, that’s nutmeg. I expected it to be, boring at best and possibly interesting though unappealing. Considering it has to be cooked for a minimum of 4 hours in various stages, it’s odd that I embarked upon it at all. I diligently followed the recipe as best as I could (like I have things like an earthenware pot) and the end result was quite shocking. It tasted completely unlike what I expected. I also handmade the tagliatelli with nothing more than a rolling pin and knife…. This was something of an adventure, but it’s not as bad as you might think. Fresh, handmade pasta puts even homemade pasta machine pasta to shame. And that was just the pasta dish.

Tonight we had potato and onion soup followed by sirloin steak cooked in a tomato-onion-olive sauce. Joanna even liked the olives. I’ve been trying to find a source for real, canned, Italian tomatoes, but it looks like I have to order a whole pallet. I’ve also been searching for the sort of olive oil that I grew to love while I was in Italy– it’s got a darkish greenish hue, is unfiltered, actually taste like olives… Most olive oil here is so filtered and processed and light that it doesn’t taste like olive oil. I found some at Sam’s which is more full-bodied than most, but it’s not great. Good olive oil even online looks to be very expensive. So my brief foray into gorumet cooking looks like it’s going to be hampered by lack of availability of high quality ingredients. Like Parmesan cheese. I have no idea where to find good cheese. The only non-grated stuff in the grocery store is all dried out and missing the crust. But then, it’s fairly cheap and good Parmesian-Reggiano when I’ve found it is REALLY expensive.

Joanna did bring me some Vidalia onions from Mobile which has been nice, even though they’re rather scrawny and some are a little wilted. I can’t even get the Texas Sweet onions here I used to find in Dallas… though I did find some Chilean onions that were okay.

Joanna’s making brownies for some sort of work-luncheon tomorrow. (The recipe on the back of the Hershey’s coco tin is pretty good…)