use real butter

Recipe: darling pasta

I’ve been busy this weekend with visitors. My aunt (one of my dearest friends) and her family are staying with us. They’re in the Denver area for some business and I am delighted to have our first guests in many many months. It is the first time I have seen her since my diagnosis and we had a tearful, heartfelt reunion on the sidewalk outside of Sushi Tora in Boulder. Yes, we had sushi. She is as much a sushi whore as I am (we are related, mind you).

So I wasn’t able to get online until late last night when to my delight, I learned that beloved Chuck of Sunday Nite Dinner has revved up Food Gawker, a budding replacement for Tastespotting. Good on ya, Chuck, and thank you thank you thank you for stepping up to the plate. A lesser cook could not have done this so quickly, so elegantly. You are superfly, babe.

Now, I have to be quick with this recipe because I need to make brekkie shortly and I am still managing random and annoying side effects (yes, they linger long after chemo – stupid chemo…).

I chose my partner well, this is obvious. Jeremy is never a cause for strife or stress in my life – he always makes everything better. But you can’t be guaranteed the same for your partner’s family. Luckily, my in-laws are incredibly sweet and loving people who treat me as if I were their own daughter. And they love to cook! Every time I see them, MIL and I always wind up exchanging recipes and sharing new dishes. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years and some of my favorite recipes come from the early days.

pasta, chicken, sun-dried toms, pesto, parm, roasted peppers, garlic, pine nuts

**Jump for more butter**

I was concerned yesterday when Tastespotting appeared to have hit a speed bump and didn’t update all day. When I saw that the site was no longer being run by NOTCOT, I was surprised and saddened. It was a terrific forum for sharing food links as well as an awesome catalog and archive of recipes and ideas. I am hoping that perhaps it just means someone else will be taking over and the site will return, but I don’t know the details.

That said, I’ve received some misguided comments this morning on one of my old posts (where I rant about the posting and misrepresentation of one of my photos by a certain freakishly enthusiastic tastespotting poster). Those commenters somehow feel my blog is a public forum for their misconceptions about copyright, intellectual property, the web, and religion (of all things).

It is not.

So my ground rule is, if you can’t behave yourself in the comments, your comments will be deleted and if you piss me off enough, I’ll just ban your ass. I realize I am preaching to the choir because people with no sense of propriety don’t know that they’re nutcases to begin with…

This is my first week of my radiation treatment. Unlike chemo, radiation is daily instead of once every three weeks. Unlike chemo, radiation lasts all of a few minutes instead of 3 hours. Unlike chemo, radiation doesn’t suck shit nearly as much! There are still going to be side effects, but they will appear later and won’t bring my life to a screeching halt quite like chemo did. At least, I hope they won’t.

in the stairwell of the cancer center

The cancer center is a lovely building and the people are so incredibly friendly and kind. I am in a good mood when I go in, and it’s not forced like it is when I have to deal with a department like General Surgery at the medical center. The other day when I went for my treatment, I wooshed into the dressing room and emerged in less than a minute with a gown on and dumped my stuff in a locker. One of my radiation techs said I was like a superhero, dashing into the changing room and emerging with a gown on faster than anyone. Ha ha! My dreams of superhero status will be realized yet :)

**Jump for more butter**