King Henry, Laundry, and Eyebrows

I sat my butt down to write a post but instead I did the following…

• Scrolled through Insta and FB repeatedly as if something so new and earth shattering would happen since the last time I checked my phone 2 seconds ago
• Googled “Why was King Henry the VIII an ass”
• Wondered why my feet were cold 
• Stared at this pile of laundry 
• Listened to the bugs singing in the trees 
• Wondered why bugs sing in trees
• Thought about waxing my eyebrows 
• Cursed my Italian heritage for giving me eyebrows that would rather be called eyebrow
• Wondered why it’s called an eyebrow and not a foreheadbrow 
• Googled brow and Wikipedia claims it is also an “entryway for boarding a ship” Who the hell knew that?!
• Is now envisioning a rather large eyebrow for people to walk on to board a ship
• Thinks I need to stop typing because I am getting carried  away

Ooohhh look! A post! 

You Know You Missed Me!

It’s been 2 years. It’s been 2 years since I posted on Mama Spaghetti. It’s been 2 years since I posted on Mama Spaghetti because…I forgot my password. 

I mean let’s face it…everyone, including the ice cream man, tells you that passwords need to be different for each account. They also must contain an uppercase letter, special character, Morse code, and your 1st born child. I am just incapable of remembering such things.

Why not reset it you ask? Because apparently I also couldn’t remember which email address I used. Because we’re supposed to have 71 different email addresses too, right?!

Have no fear! I have figured it all out! (Obviously since I am ACTUALLY POSTING SOMETHING!) And…guess what??! I downloaded the glorious app! Which means that I can just spout off about whatever I want whenever I want. 

This could be dangerous. 

A picture of Little Miss Gigli’s spaghetti plate because…why not?!

It’s a bit messy…so what?!

Little Miss Gigli is napping. There is SO much to do around the house. Laundry is overflowing. Bathrooms need cleaned. The lawn needs mowed. The list goes on and on. I look around and feel completely overwhelmed by the fact that there just isn’t enough time to get it all done.

Then I look at Little Miss Gigli’s messy playroom…

…and the shoes by the front door.

And instead of seeing a mess, I see beauty.

I see Little Miss Gigli’s imagination at work in her playroom. I see both of my girls going out for adventures in those shoes. I see their childhood.

It’s moments like these that things start to shift into perspective for me. One day, Ziti and I will have a disgustingly clean, immaculate house because the girls will be out with their friends. Going off to college. Starting families of their own.

One day, I will not be tripping over Dusty the Airplane in the middle of the floor. One day, I will miss it.

Note: Dusty is also a Lego. Super painful.

Happy Spaghetti Year!

I’ve never been one for New Years Resolutions. I don’t take them seriously. My past resolutions are proof.

2009 – Use a spork more often while eating spaghetti.

2010 – Finally become a proud owner of a penguin.

2011- I didn’t make a resolution this year because I failed terribly in 2010.

2012 – Have a baby (Note: I was already pregnant).

2013 – Eat more pasta.

2014 – Establish a National Glitter Day.

Resolution for 2015? Have the cast of Downton Abbey over to drink the 125 bags of tea sitting in my pantry.

What’s your resolution?

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #18 – South Korea

Another “rule” we have for our Winter Olympics Cooking is that on Closing Ceremony night we eat a meal from the country that will be hosting the next Winter Olympics. Therefore, last nights meal was from South Korea.

Ziti cooked dinner last night and it was Korean Stir Fry. He did not use a recipe. He cooked some delicious steak with Korean Stir Fry Sauce that was then placed on white rice. There was also a heaping amount of vegetables such as bok choy, daikon, mushrooms, carrots, and bean sprouts.

Our 2014 Winter Olympics cooking has come to an end. It was a lot of fun but also a ton of work! It required researching countries to find out what they eat there. Then researching recipes and then some of those recipes were quite involved.

Whenever we tell people that we do this for the Olympics they are always really impressed and curious as to what we cook. That was the main reason for me posting these past 18 days. Which by the way…I can’t believe I followed through on! I hope everyone enjoyed seeing our crazy tradition! Perhaps some of you will give this a try for the 2016 Summer Olympics. I know we will! 🙂

Now I’M curious…what was your favorite dish to read about?

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #17 – Brazil

The Winter Olympics are starting to draw to a close. We decided to have a meal from the host country of the 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil.

Instead of going to a fancy Brazilian Steakhouse, we brought the steakhouse to us. Ziti cooked up steak, pork, chicken, and two different kinds of sausage. Have no fear, Ziti’s mom and brother ate dinner at our house. There is no way Ziti, Stelline, Little Miss Gigli and I could have consumed all of this on our own! Little Miss Gigli did have two heaping helpings of meat so it is possible that she could have eaten all of this on her own.

The massive amounts of meat being cut up for dinner.

Our side dishes were white rice and Pico de Gallo. The Pico was just simply tomatoes, green pepper, onion, cilantro, lime and salt.

Yummy Pico!

The finished product

We have one more meal left! What country do you think we’ll choose??

 

 

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #16 – United States of America

I’ll bet you didn’t think we’d choose our home country as one of our Olympic meals! Why not? It gives us a chance to try some of the weird stuff this country has come up with.

Canada likes weird stuff on their fries. We like weird stuff on our SPAGHETTI!!!!

Cincinnati Chili Five-Way is what we inhaled last night! Well in reality everyone else ate it like a normal human being. I inhaled it because I was excited to have spaghetti twice in one week!

Cincinnati Chili is a plate of spaghetti with chili poured over it. The chili consist of your normal chili ingredients with some interesting things added to it, such as chocolate and Worcestershire sauce. The spaghetti and chili are topped off with beans, onions, and cheddar cheese. It is so bizarre and so delicious!

Would you like to try this weird yummy dish? Just follow the link below! 

Cincinnati Chili – http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/cincinnati-chili-recipe2.html

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #15 – Germany

Since I did so well eating the Norway meal I disliked in the past, I figured why not do another meal that doesn’t sound too appetizing to me?! Enter Germany. I don’t dislike German food. I just dislike sauerkraut. Which is pretty amazing considering the fact that I could have eaten a whole bag of that stuff when I was a kid!

For our German meal we ate Bratwurst Stewed with Sauerkraut, German-Style Creamed Spinach, and Soft Pretzels.

The Bratwurst was cooked in onions, garlic, sauerkraut, paprika, and chicken stock. The paprika definitely helped give the sauerkraut a different flavor. Fresh dill was supposed to be added when the meal was done cooking, but I forgot. Oops! Which actually bummed me out because I think that would have tasted delicious.

The Creamed Spinach was AMAZING! It consisted of onions, heavy cream, gouda cheese, and nutmeg. I don’t have nutmeg in my spice collection. I think nutmeg taste a bit like pine-sol so I stray a way from it. However, I did have Pumpkin Pie Spice which has nutmeg in it. I threw that in the spinach instead and it tasted pretty fantastic!

The Soft Pretzels were the frozen pretzels that you can buy at the grocery store. The ones that I craved like crazy when I was pregnant with Little Miss Gigli! I just wasn’t up for the task of making soft pretzels from scratch.

We have three more meals to go! What will they be??

Would you like to try one of these recipes? Just follow the links below!

Bratwurst Stewed with Sauerkraut – http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/michael-symon/bratwurst-stewed-with-sauerkraut.html

German-Style Creamed Spinach – http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/german-style-creamed-spinach.html

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #14 – Norway

Ziti made the Norwegian dish Fiskesuppe (Fish Soup) back in 2010. It was made with egg and there were big chunks of fish floating around in my bowl. I thought it was disgusting and it was never made again. For some strange reason Ziti and Stelline loved it.

When we were discussing which dishes to bring back this year Fiskesuppe came up. Actually Stelline brought it up several times. Which meant that we had to give this dish another try. Just because I wasn’t a huge fan of it doesn’t mean that it should never be made in this house again.

The recipe for Fiskesuppe that I found is drastically different then what Ziti made. There is no egg in this recipe but instead milk and heavy cream. This recipe is also LOADED with vegetables such as carrots, celery, parsnip, turnip root, potatoes, and onion. The recipe also has you add fresh dill and lemon at the very end. This helped to cut back on the overwhelming fish taste.

I know there doesn’t appear to be much in that bowl, but there is! I enjoyed the Fiskesuppe this time around much better! Yes, you can taste fish. However, the fact that there were veggies and lemon made the fish taste yummy. We served the soup with Dark Onion Rye bread which was a good choice.

I guess I’m not so scared of this dish anymore. Will it be made again in the future? We’ll see!

Do you want to try Fiskesuppe? Just follow the link below!

Fiskesuppe – http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Norwegian-Cod-Vegetable-Chowder

Winter Olympics Cooking ~ Day #13 – ITALY!

I’m Italian. Oh my goodness…are you shocked!? Which means that our country last night was Italy!

A part of me wanted to try a brand spanking new Italian recipe, but an even bigger part of me just wanted some good old fashioned spaghetti and meatballs. Spaghetti always wins!

Dinner consisted of spaghetti, meatballs, salad, and mascapone brownies.

Confession time: I’m typically a jar sauce kinda girl. It’s just so much easier than waiting an hour or whatever to simmer some tomatoes. However, for the Olympics I made my own sauce. I just had to. For this I turned to Jamie Oliver’s Basic Tomato Sauce recipe.

Plum tomatoes getting ready to simmer

Meatballs are honestly pretty straight forward. I really only glance into my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook to refresh my memory on the temperature and cook time. You can really add whatever you want to your meatballs. I’m a green pepper and onion person. My mom loves garlic in her meatballs. And guess what? I still think she makes the BEST meatballs! I don’t even try to attempt making her meatball recipe because I would just do it all wrong.

The beaten up falling apart cookbook

Now I know everyone was expecting some fresh pasta from me. Yeah…that’s not happening. We do own a pasta maker but man! It’s just too much work! It’s a 5 person job! So the boxed stuff it was!

Dessert was supposed to be tiramisu but I could not find lady fingers anywhere! So instead I made Mascapone Brownies. They were amazing!

So what will our next meal be? Something I’m kinda scared of!

Do you want to try some of these yummy recipes?? Just follow the links below! 

Sauce – http://recipecircus.com/recipes/carolyn/PASTA/Jamie_Oliver39s_Basic_Tomato_Sauce.html

Meatballs – http://www.bhg.com/recipes/how-to/cooking-basics/how-to-make-Italian-meatballs/

Mascapone Brownies – http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-one-bowl-mascarpone-bro-84470