Internet, if you thought my baking week couldn’t get any weirder than the catfish cake, you would have been right. Until yesterday. That’s when I spent the day on a cake designed to look like a 2 1/2-foot male member as the final project for my Wilton Fondant and Gumpaste class.

Kidding! Or am I?

No, the cake was a special order for a client’s birthday.

So, I’m finishing this cake when I remember the deadline for the Barefoot Bloggers‘ first official assignment: Pasta, Pesto, and Peas.

I was in luck, because most of the ingredients are house staples: pasta, olive oil, mayo, garlic, spinach, peas. I picked what basil I could from the plants in the backyard (grow, babies, grow!) and made due with the pasta we had–a mixed bag of interesting shapes and unfortunate colors.

While the pasta boiled, I made the pesto (the smell!) and started prepping the other ingredients. I didn’t bother measuring the mayo–just used what was left in the jar. Ina’s recipe calls for defrosted spinach, but we had just the right amount of fresh, so I used it instead.

Even with the recipe cut in half, there was enough pasta salad to feed Lower Guam.

The entire recipe takes about 20 minutes. Plenty of time to grill some chicken, get the drinks on the table, and take a call from your grandmother asking if your cake is circumcised.

Bon appetit!

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My sister’s birthday is this week. She’s threatening to stay in bed.

Oh, don’t feel sorry for her. She’s got looks, she’s got brains, she’s got talent. She’s hilarious. She has a big heart, a way with people, and very well-behaved hair. Woe is her.

What she lacks is perspective.

I mean, what are you before 30? A fetus with a driver’s license.

So, in preparation for my sister’s Triple X, here’s a bold, spicy, delightfully inappropriate recipe: Spaghetti alla Puttanesca (”pasta in the way a prostitute would make it”). No one really knows from whence this classic Italian dish got its name. I’ve read that maybe it’s because a.) the dish is spicy, b.) it was sold cheap to lure hungry men into brothels, or c.) it’s a quick-prep meal that the ladies could cook and eat between appointments.

Recipes, like people, are more interesting with a little history.

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