sat Tuesday

I spent the morning at the café, uploading photos and journal entries and downloading the first two episodes of Lost season four. Liz stopped by to hang out a little on her way to class. For lunch, I found a Japanese restaurant a stone’s throw from my apartment. They have an offer for unlimited sushi for 10 Euro. Let’s see how many visits it takes before they ban me. Then I spent a few hours catching up with Lost.

Henk came home in the afternoon with market bags and announced he had invited the girls to dinner. His plan: Pasta and osso bucco. He graciously let me take over the osso bucco half of dinner, so I scoured our pantry for ingredients and did my first spontaneous cooking in a long time. It came with black pepper, fresh rosemary and fresh thyme. So all I had to do was salt it and dredge it with flour. Into the pot to brown. Then garlic, onions, and eventually mushrooms. Red wine to deglaze since our household doesn’t really stock white. Then just some water because we didn’t have broth. Osso bucco back in and simmer for a few hours. When the girls got here – some missing for late classes and a community service meeting – it was just a matter of plating and topping with chopped parsley, green cipollini, and lemon zest.

It turned out better than my expectations, which honestly were pretty low. Henk’s pasta was a slight variation on the one he made the other night, which translates into it being fantastic. Everyone seemed to enjoy both. Some of us hung out for a while, and when everyone else went to some bar to see a Beatles cover band (sounds awesome, but not walk-able), I went downstairs and just hung out with Liz for a while.