*oh, balls.

The word for today is: frustrated. Say it with me, children! No, not fustrated. Or, God forbid, flustrated.

Yes, I live in the South.

I'm frustrated by a lot of things today, the laundry list of which would likely send you fleeing to positive corners, where there is less complaining and more cocktails. But the problem with frustration is that once it seeps in around the corners, through the overtime and the deadline panic and the inexplicable doctor's office invoice, it starts to infiltrate everything else, like the impenetrable hand dryness and the worthless pencil lead (what is the point if it breaks every time I try something crazy like using it?) and the fact that I might soon be suffocated by my own hair.

It's long and thick and blonde and possibly my best feature, but it will be my demise.

I've also been frustrated by my inability to find the time to preserve some of my recent cooking exercises for posterity. I had untold amounts of fun cooking for LSis and the BiL during her maternity leave, feeling all warm and schmoopy and useful and appreciated. (BiL dubbed me the "kitchen MacGyver," a moniker I earned mostly from their epically empty cupboards and my attempt to create something out of them on the fly—it's how cheesy mustardy broccoli pasta was born.) BiL, it should be noted, is my absolute favorite eater, in part because he proclaims everything I make "the BEST thing you've EVER made."

Flattery. My drug of choice.

But I haven't had the best of luck getting great shots of the food, LSis' kitchen and the Woodside kitchen being what they are. (And what they are is eerily yellow, like making dinner inside a UFO.)

But I messed around with my boyfriend (the D90) the other night and managed to get a couple of mediocre images of the really very good, and very easy, and very cutesily named Lady and the Tramp Spaghetti and Meatballs I made Monday evening.



The Le Creuset was a score from a giveaway, and I cherish it all the more for its freeness. It's also a reminder that complaining about my workload might be a smidge shy of gracious.



I highly recommend this recipe, if you're the kind of person who needs recipes for a thing like this (and I am). The meatballs come out a little soft, which makes them break apart a bit if you're too rough with them, but then you get spaghetti bolognese—not altogether a bad thing. I'm sure their fragility had nothing to do with the fact that I plopped the egg white into the mixture without it having been "lightly beaten," as a casualty of my inability to read all the way to the end of any given sentence.



I also ended up with 24 meatballs instead of 25. I wasn't about to go take 1/25th of every ball and try to rectify the situation. It so happens I cannot apportion correctly. It's a chronic illness.

The reason one is supposed to wind up with 25 meatballs is that the recipe makes five servings. That way one consumes just five small meatballs at a time, savoring the meal slowly and appropriately and moderately.

One has to watch one's girlish figure.