These are the things that collin has made... Last night.

Penne Alfredo w/ Whatever the Hell Vegetables I had

First dish. I'd not eating a whole hell of a lot this week (portion size restriction, you understand) so this meal was going to be filling and fucking rich. I settled on a pasta dish, a creamy alfredo-y pasta dish, with enough vegetables thrown in to make it seemingly "light and summery" (it was not).

Sauce: Alfredo sauce is incredibly simple to make. So long as you don't try to pair back the extravagance that is necessary for its success. Simply combine heavy cream, butter, garlic and a crap load of Parmesan and you've got dairy heaven going on. I've read that folks dislike using parmesan because it doesn't fully melt into the sauce sometimes, but that's fine, I liked it. Having more dense, nearly stringy sauce seems to me just a reminder of the fact that so much wonderful cheese is in there.

The Rest: I sliced up some zucchini, red bell peppers, shallots (yeah you heard me right mother-fucker!), garlic and some fresh tomatoes. Threw them all in a pan with some olive oil and let them go till I felt good about it. I wished I'd had some swiss chard, but I didn't. So I sliced up some leafy green lettuce and chucked it in there late in the game until it wilted. This was really more for the aesthetic, not much flavor was derived from it.

Things Learned: If you make a sauce that is loaded with cheese butter and cream, the rest can really figure itself out.

The red peppers didn't work. Something just wasn't jiving. The taste didn't match the creamy sauce and I realize this now. No more, instead I should have gone with Asparagus. Quite the difference I know, but think it really would have worked, chopped into 1" lengths.... It would have worked... Damn it..

The wine:

Don't ask your sweet, but uninformed mother to pick up a bottle of "decent zinfandel" and expect to get what you had in mind...

Tasting notes: Like a sweet, white wine vinegar, with a capri-sun squeezed into it...