A Series of Unfortunate Events-Puttanesca Sauce

Recently, in our Red Snail Classroom, we finished reading the first book in the series by Lemony Snicket; "A Series of Unfortunate Events."  In the book the Baudelaire children are asked demanded to make dinner for Count Olaf's theater troupe.  The children had been raised in privilege and had no idea what to make, but after hunting through several cookbooks they stopped on Puttanesca Sauce.  The sauce is a tasty version of spaghetti sauce and is served the same way as spaghetti.  So with the finishing of the book, we decided to celebrate by recreating the scene of the children making the sauce and serving it to the theater troupe. 

 Although we didn't have a theater troupe, we did have the three of us to serve it to instead.  Here is how we made our version of the Baudelaire children's Puttanesca Sauce.

What you'll need:

• A sauce pan

• Dutch oven

1.  Linguine or angel hair pasta.

2.  Kalamata Olives 

3.  Capers 

4.  Whole tomatoes (Smashed by hand)

5.  Olive oil

6.  Garlic (Chopped)  I used garlic in a jar, but fresh is always best.

7.  Parsley (Chopped)

8.  10-12 cherry tomatoes (Halved)

9.  Small white onion (Chopped)

10.  Garlic French Bread (Optional)

You can also have the book!  You can buy your own copy here, and start reading this wonderful series too!

1.  Cook the Linguine according to the package directions.  Drain and place in a glass bowl.  Top the Linguine with a tablespoon of butter.

2.  Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the sauce pan and heat over medium high heat.  Add two cloves of chopped garlic, and chopped onion to the sauce pan and sauté until golden brown. 

3.  Add the smashed whole, canned tomatoes with their juices, and the cherry tomato halves to the sauce pan.  Skylar loves this step because I let him smash the canned tomatoes with his hands.  Be sure and cut the tomatoes in half first before smashing.

4.  Increase the heat, and add in the capers, Kalamata olives, and 10 springs of chopped parsley, with the stems.

5.  Stir the ingredients together and allow to boil slightly for about eight minutes.  Reduce the heat to low.

6.  Dish up your pasta into individual serving dishes and add the Puttanesca sauce on top of the pasta.

7.  Finish the dish off with a few sprigs of chopped parsley, and a little drizzling of olive oil.

This is such a great way to incorporate reading with cooking.  It teaches two things at once.

We have started reading "Book the Second":  The Reptile Room.  We are so excited to see if the Baudelaire children will finally find their good luck in this book.  

Our Garden Currently: Getting garlic in the ground before the freeze

This past weekend we gave planting garlic a shot.  We haven't really grown any type of garlic yet, but we are dipping our hands into the herb to see how well it does were we live.  We hope to have a good crop when it comes time to harvest, and use most of them for cooking and canning, so we shall see if we are garlic farmers when summer rolls around.

We started by clearing out a patch of area close to the house.  The area under our garden hose was begging to be turned into some sort of flowerbed, or planting bed.  My mother-in-law, Cheryl, actually grew up in the house that we are living in currently and said the area that we cleared out was once a flowerbed when she was a little girl.  With just river rocks and bark mulch in our way, we raked and hoed on the area until it was pretty clear of debris.  I loved how it turned out once we cleared the area completely.

Skylar is always such a big helper!

We used three eight-pound bags of organic potting mix from the local farm supply store, Wilco.  

We planted three different varieties just to see which one does the best.  We expect to lose a few of them to animals, or rot, but overall we should have plenty survive.  With any luck, all three will be great harvests next year.

We decided to plan the entire bulbs from the garlic cloves we bought, since the roots on them were very thin and small.  We may be swimming in garlic come harvest time, but we plan on canning a lot, cooking with it, and pickling it with cucumbers and by itself.  I've also been learning how to braid garlic, so we are looking for a large harvest next summer for sure!

With all of the rain lately, we haven't had a chance to manually water our plants or trees.  Sometimes the Oregon rain is helpful.  

Unfortunately, the rain also doesn't work well with untreated Adirondack chairs though.  We ended up saying goodbye to the 13-year-old Adirondack chairs Jeff and I got when we moved in together in 2000.  We were able to salvage some pieces to use in other ways, but its chair days are over.  We are on the hunt for some new ones as we speak though, and there are so many styles to choose from.  Here's one we've had our eye on lately.  

We love this look with the natural hardwoods.  This one comes from World Market and is on sale right now for only $99!

We have seen a few more that we like too.

1.  Adirondack Chairs Only.

2.  Amazon.

3.  Manta in Covallis, Oregon with their cedar chairs.

4.  Cabela's Adirondacks.

5.  ACE Hardware's folding Adirondacks.

Our options are very much open.  Next spring we will finally make the decision.  In the meantime, I will find use of the parts from the old chairs and wait out the Oregon rain.