Comfort food

This past week has been quite a busy one. I had events at church on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, yoga on Thursday, dinner with friends at their home on Friday, and a trip out of town on Saturday. Therefore there hasn't been much time for homecooked meals lately, hence the lack of posts (although I did find some time to bake for a few special occasions... posts to come on those... hopefully soon!).

The out-of-town day trip was to my grandparents' house in Bluffton. My sisters and I all rode together. The purpose of this trip was to look at some keepsake items from generations past and decide what we might be interested in someday owning. These items included books and clothing that were over 100 years old and had been handed down to my dad's mother, as well as photos and memorabilia of my dad's father, who died when my dad was a boy. I'm sure it will be a relief to my grandparents to be able to clear some of these things out of their house and to know they are going to someone who understands their value and will cherish them. It was a really great afternoon, and we got to enjoy the company of all but one cousin on my dad's side, and hear some interesting stories!

We had left my house around 9 this morning to head there, and got back home around 5:30. Jason had been golfing at an MS fundraiser today, so we were both rather wiped out after our long days. We went out and grabbed some sandwiches and watched the last quarter of the Buckeyes game at a nearby sports bar, and then headed home to relax. Jason lay down on the couch to watch the Columbus Crew game, but promptly fell asleep.

I walked the dogs, did some laundry, watched some Food Network, and meanwhile thought a lot about all the tidbits of personal history I learned today. I had a strange sensation of missing people I had never even met.

With the trifecta of my nostalgia, the slight loneliness I had because Jason was napping, and the fact that I was watching the Parmigiano-Reggiano battle on Iron Chef America, one thing became perfectly clear: I had to make Cheesy Noodles.

Cheesy Noodles is one of the few dishes I ever remember my dad cooking. I don't know if my sisters ever cook this but it is definitely a go-to comfort-food snack for me. It's easy to make and I usually have all the ingredients on hand. It only requires three: pasta, butter, and parmesan cheese.

Basically you cook the pasta, drain it, return it to the hot pan with about a tablespoon of butter, stir until the butter melts and coats the pasta, and then stir in as much parmesan cheese as you like. Tonight I used ziti because that's what we had but my favorite pasta to use is spirals because then the cheese gets stuck into all the crevices of the spiral.

Cheesy Noodles is a weird dish. It's not really even a dish, in that I would never consider serving it as part of a meal, but it makes a great snack. It's the kind of thing that tastes even better when you stand in the kichen and eat it directly out of the pan it was prepared in. I only needed a few bites tonight.