Columbus Foodie

It’s been a while since I’ve made a new pasta dish. This week for Presto Pasta Night, I decided to try to wing it and make a dish that I had in New Jersey, but that I have never made at home before - crab linguine.

Even after making it, I still don’t have a recipe for it. It was an exercise in improvisation. I had made garlic bread to go with it, and had made a compound butter (made with spreadable butter, garlic paste, minced parsley, and garlic salt) that I used as the base of the crab dish. To a pound of canned lump crab I added a bit more parsley, some olive oil, a splash of clam juice, a couple squirts of lemon juice, and a little more garlic. I tossed the crab mixture with a pound of fresh egg linguine from Carfagna’s. It came out very much like the dish I had in New Jersey, except not as fresh (you can’t beat fresh seafood in a dish like this). All in all, and excellent dish, and one I wouldn’t hesitate to make again.

I’ve been tagged by both Dhana and Christa to do the “seven random facts about me” meme that’s been going around. OK, I’m game - why the hell not? Here goes.

1. I am a high school drop out. Because I was a ward of the state from ages 15-18, I moved around a lot from youth shelters to foster homes to group homes and back again. I started out my senior year taking honors classes, and within one school year had moved so many times (3 times in the first marking period alone) that I just couldn’t keep up anymore. So I dropped out. I got my GED much later in life, and then went on to get both an associate’s degree (in 2003) and a bachelor’s degree (in 2006).

2. I married my husband after only knowing him for 5 weeks. We met online, then met in person, and were inseparable after that. Even though everyone thought it would never last, our 11 year anniversary is coming up in November.

3. My mother is such a hardcore geneaologist that she’s managed to trace back our family tree to like 100 AD. We’re related to the Fairbanks guy who built the oldest house in Massachusetts or something like that. My husband wants to research his family, but I think it’s a moot point because we’re all related in one way or another, right? That, and I have the patience of a gnat.

4. I have a sister that I’ve never met. I know she exists, and I think she knows I exist, but our paths haven’t crossed in this lifetime and probably never will. It kind of makes me sad.

5. I’ve got freakishly small ears. Easily the least serious of my physical imperfections, but one that people (read: my husband) comment on all the time. They are so small that I can’t even use the ear buds that come with my iPod.

6. I’m going to be 35 this month, and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t know if this means I haven’t grown up yet, or that I just don’t have confidence enough in my abilities to stick with something. I’ve had a lot of false starts.

7. I love to enter sweepstakes, and have been very successful at it. So successful, in fact, that it’s lost it’s novelty. Even though I was entering hundreds of sweepstakes every day for about 10 years, I haven’t entered one in months.

If you’re reading this and haven’t done this meme yet, consider yourself tagged.