daydreams

So sometimes I have really bright ideas and then sometimes, I just don't. I'm a weather stalker, it's true, always have been, always will be. One of my less bright ideas (<-- is that even a proper phrase - probably not but I'm going to use it) is that in addition to stalking my own weather, I stalk the weather for places I wish I lived. Currently the weather locations set on my iphone include Alexandria (where I actually reside), Paris, France (where I would visit every weekend), Barcelona, Spain (where I'll run in March) and then Rome & Messina Italy. The last two are there because in my daydreams I live there. I pick fresh tomatoes and drink full bodied red wines. I smell fresh baked bread and live off of homemade pasta. I walk through acres and acres of olive trees and have fresh cheese with each meal. The reality is I don't live in Italy but in my daydreams and hopefully someday I do.

I love to cook, as mentioned earlier, I'm Italian and I read once that the best food you can make is the food you grew up on. It's what you know. I know Italian food. As a bit of a self proclaimed food snob I know good food vs. bad food and I really know bad Italian food. Is there anything worse than biting into a soggy bowl of pasta noodles? The problem is to have good food you must have fresh ingredients and here in Alexandria our farmers market is drying up and fresh ingredients are not easy to come by. The other week Doug & I bought some tomatoes that had been grown under a tarp. Thankful for something still fresh from the ground we looked forward to making some BLT's for lunch that day. Well as is usual this time of year the tomatoes while fresh were not flavorful and we were reminded that it's time to settle in for our winter food. That or move to Italy where they are still growing tomatoes plentifully... oh daydreams.

So you ask, for those of us not fortunate enough to live in Italy, what do we do? Well, I do spend a lot of the summer freezing various pasta dishes full of fresh spring/summer vegetables to keep safe until some cold dreary winter day but that's a post for another time. My go to for this time of year is homemade marinara sauce. Doug loves my marinara sauce as do many other people in my life. It's light and tastes fresh and is full of flavor. I use good canned tomatoes which means I can make this year round. At some point soon I'm hoping to actually begin selling my marinara sauce but for now I just make it by the batch full, give some away, freeze some and eat some. We are fortunate enough to have a vendor at our farmers market who makes fresh homemade tortellini and ravioli each week and sells it at the market. His pastas can be frozen and pulled out all winter long. My fresh sauce over his awesome pasta makes a fresh flavorful meal fit to cheer you up even when it's 32 degrees in Alexandria and 75 in Messina. Now if only I could get my hands on some fresh ciabatta bread... daydreams.