I had the skillet lasagna/pasta for breakfast today :P

I had bones for supper last nite

The aftermath
I tried to upload the aftermath, and after re sizing the pic three times it still would not load. FUCKING COMPUTERS!!!

Lasagna noodles?

fargon - those look gorgeous. I have never been able to successfully make bones of any time

Dana - like these pictured. Do you have a different name for them?

Yeah - pasta sheets.

'noodle' is only ever used to refer to long thin strips/strands. Like the stuff you get in noodle soup, or chow mein. It isn't used as a wider word for pasta, as (I now realise) it is used in the US.

fargon, those look delicious. damn.

It's funny, I call them Lasagna noodles, and spaghetti, capellini, fettucini, ramen, soba, are also noodles, but any other pasta shape is either pasta or whatever its Italian name is. Farfalle, Ditalini, gemelli and so on.

Addie fixed latkes with onion and garnished with a dollop of sour cream. Quite proud of my 7 year old. Of course, Elizabeth hovered over her. They just got through playing dreidel. They used pralines for coins.

Ahh now - spaghetti is never called noodles here - that's spaghetti. Or pasta.

Hi guys. Those ribs look pretty excellent, and latkes, my god I'd shank someone kosher-style for a pile of good latkes about now. A smooth, clean draw across a major artery with a blade so fresh and sharp that god could shave with it and not realise for a week that it's taken an eyebrow and half an ear along with it. In exchange for potato things. Fair trade.

I just wanted to tell you guys I tried, and fucked up horribly, making african food tonight: a Tanzanian-style rice pilao with peanut sauce. I forgot to get normal, natural peanut butter from the store for the sauce, and it turns out that choosy africans don't actually choose Jif. Who knew? The end result isn't terrible, as such, but it's a lot like I'm eating some interesting and exotically seasoned food between bites of a peanut butter sandwich. Luckily, I did not actually add the sauce directly to the rice, so in the end what I've got left is a pot of wild rice with carrots, onions, and a few dabs of mushroom and potato, and some spicy peanut goober with mushrooms and onions. Lesson learned. I think I'll try just putting peanuts in the rice next time.

Other than that, I wanted to ask readers here: thoughts on "kombucha" tea? Anyone tried it, liked it, disliked it? I think I like it, but it's a very odd thing to me.

Does that mean you've had a proper "Tanzanian-style rice pilao with peanut sauce" to compare?

Kombucha is fermented, and tastes like it. If you enjoy things like kimchi, real sauerkraut, etc., then you will probably also enjoy the tang of kombucha. Most people I know drink it because it's good for them, not because they genuinely like the flavor.

Well, I think I had something closely approximating it, anyways. My boss is a wildlife ecologist specializing in large mammals of africa; he lives in africa quite a large portion of the year and has done so for ages, he and his wife both. They invited me to a christmas dinner party a couple weeks ago and what they served as the main course was an african rice pilao with mushrooms and onions and a spicy peanut sauce. A Tanzanian student was also in attendance and it seemed to meet with his approval, and I loved it to pieces, myself. Relatively simple in nature, but surprisingly complex in flavor thanks to the addition of a spice blend that's a combination of cumin, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, and cinnamon. Also some things like ginger, garlic, cayenne, and green chiles, and a little coconut milk. It's quite a lovely taste, a lovely sort of subdued, earthy spice going on. I had to blend the spice mix by hand, though, and one thing I probably need to do is let them all integrate together a bit longer before I use them again. I can say that today, after it's been in the fridge overnight, the cooked dish actually smells and tastes even better than it did last night, in part because the flavors were able to meld together a bit better.