Poker, Pasta and a Graduation

After work Thursday, I drove to Reno for a Friday morning project meeting. I only make this trip once a month and the meetings are generally short, lasting not much longer than an hour. Even though I enjoy travelling and Reno is not the worst place in the world to spend a night, these trips tend to be my least favorite part of my job. This, mainly because I hate leaving Kaelyn even for just one night.


To make up for this, Roger tends to make a big deal of my return, getting exciting and saying how much they missed me. He does this mostly to get Kaelyn excited, which makes me feel so much better. The first five minutes after my return is my favorite part of the trip. This Friday, I got back much sooner than I had anticipated, and Roger and Kaelyn were able to pick me up around lunch time for an impromptu shopping trip. Of course, when I asked to go shopping it was with an agenda. I’ve been wanting a new toy…the pasta attachment to the Kitchen Aid mixer. I’ve been eyeing this attachment for a long time. I love to cook and I especially love to cook pasta. I’ve always thought that with the right tools (the attachment), making the pasta from scratch would be breeze. I pitched this idea to Roger a while ago, who thought that me making him fresh pasta was an awesome idea and readily agreed to the purchase.

We have been checking these out at a few stores and discovered that pricing was pretty consistent, so on Friday, we chose a store that was located close to my work place and set off. When we got there, we discovered that Kitchen Aid also makes a ravioli attachment. Roger had been asking if we could try to make handmade raviolis and I admit the thought of that was daunting. Seeing a tool to aid me made it seem so much easier, but because it wasn’t part of our plan, I didn’t want to get it. After some talking, justifying, and dreaming if delicious raviolis, we finally decided to get that as well.

Of course, like any child who has just gotten a new toy, I wanted to immediately check out our purchase and start making pasta the second we got home. But…we had a busy weekend ahead of us and that wasn’t possible. Roger was hosting a bbq and poker tournament at our house on Saturday. Getting things ready for that party took priority. To make it more hectic, our good friend Klara was graduating from college the same day. I’ve known since she started school that I would not miss celebrating her graduation for the world. This was both helpful and not to Roger. On one hand, he would be on his own for all food prep the day of the party, but at the same time, I was taking Kae with me to the graduation, so at least she wasn’t going to be a distraction.

Saturday morning was just downright crazy for us. We tried to relax together a little bit before we started getting ready, but with the party starting at 4 and the graduation at 1, there just wasn’t the time. Roger still hadn’t purchased all the meat for the bbq and I needed to do some last minute cleaning. Also, I left most of the menu planning to Roger…this was his event after all. But that proved to be a mistake. Roger likes meat and when planning a bbq, his main focus is on what types of meat to get and how much. At 11am I realized that he had not considered what side dishes or snacks to serve. I ended up running to the store quickly to get vegetables and fruits for snack trays, chips, and some other appetizers we could make quickly. Our friend, Vickie was coming to our house so we could go to the graduation together and when she showed up, I still didn’t have Kae ready to go. We were a little late, but luckily only missed the mingling before the presentations and were able to be seated well before the program actually started.

The graduation was great and I’m happy to say that Kaelyn was well behaved the entire time. We even had a chance to briefly discuss our upcoming trip to Vegas (our graduation gift to Klara). The graduation made us late to the party and by the time I got home, our guests had already started to arrive. Luckily, another friend was able to show up early to help Roger put out the food and he and I are both extremely thankful for her help.

The party went off without a hitch. Roger is a master griller and the food was delicious. The poker tournament was also fun (Roger won…but it was nail biting in the end). We had a great time. The excitement was a lot for Kae, though. She already had a big day and was tired earlier than usual, but refused to go to bed. She’s not the kind of baby that is willing to miss anything! Basically, I had to trick her into going to sleep by laying her on the floor of her room and surround her by toys. I stayed and played with her a little bit, then left her alone leaving the door open so she could still hear the party and see people walk by. I normally hate doing this and am pretty strict about bedtime, but I made an exception. It took her 20 minutes to fall asleep and I was able to get her into bed after that without too much fuss.

Our last guest left around 2am. I was able to get things cleaned up well before then, so there wasn’t really anything to do when he left. Roger and I were both exhausted. We passed out immediately and really wanted to sleep in…unfortunately, Kaelyn still woke up at her usual time.

The good thing about Sunday, though, was that it was pasta day! I was so excited and started planning out what kind of raviolis to make and what sauces to make with them. It took us a while to get started because we were just so drained from the day before. Playing with Kaelyn just seemed so much more fun than making pasta from scratch. But, as we got hungrier and talked about our meal, our motivation quickly returned.

Let me just say that cooking together is a real test and testament of our marriage. Of all the things we do well together, I admit that cooking is not one of them. It’s hard for either of us to take a back seat when we’re in the kitchen. We’ve been able to work things out by working in separate spaces and clearly delineating our responsibilities. Normally, Roger cooks the meat in our outdoor kitchen and I make all the side dishes and sauces inside. We wanted to make the pasta together and somehow convinced ourselves that this would be fun…but, with both of us trying to figure out what to do and having different ideas of how to do it, it turned out to be a disaster. Fortunately, after a small argument and a lot of frustration, we worked out a system and were able to work together to make our raviolis. The end result was delicious, although our technique needs a lot of work. The raviolis didn’t all turn out pretty and it took us much too long to process the dough. Next time, if we work faster and apply our lessons learned, we should do much better. I think tonight, I’ll try to make some fettuccine, which should be much easier.

So, another busy, fun, crazy and exhausting weekend has passed and we’re both ready for another busy, fun, crazy and exhausting work week.



‘Til next time…