Pasta!

I love me some pasta, but Scordo's challenge project to eat every known type of pasta (within a year and a half) is a little bit crazy... albeit in a wonderful way. It's got me thinking about similar, delightful food challenges. Wouldn't it be fun to try, say, 52 soups in a year? Or 52 baked good recipes? (Or hell, lots of pasta, why not?) What can one do to broaden one's culinary horizons in a year or so, if one is really trying?

So I am going to push back against the sameness that creeps up on the omnivorous American quotidian diet. (When we were vegetarian, our cuisine tended to be far more experimental... and I know we can do it again!) I just don't know the dimensions of the project, yet. Any thoughts?

For the moment, it might have to be a brussels sprouts or cottage cheese challenge, since I have a vigorously developing passenger that seems to be a nutrition freak. I am fortunate that all of my cravings (except the odd pickle, olive, or lemon wedge -- I am into the sour/salty things! -- and one stray, mad passion for waffles) are for healthy foods: rye bread, spinach stems, carrots, red bell peppers.

Here's the critter:

(Yesterday the critter measured 7 weeks 1 day.)

We got to watch the heartbeat fluttering on the ultrasound monitor, and Pat got to watch me submit to medical indignities extensive enough to embarrass him. I will remember the joy we felt at seeing that heartbeat, and our tight hug afterward, me still hospital-gowned and ooky from the sensor goo, for the rest of my life.