Rain, rain, go away?

Oh, this blasted rain. It's been coming down for two days now, in fits and starts, dustings and drenchings. Everything is gray, wet and sloshy. People scurry with covered heads and umbrellas; you can see February fatigue in their hunched shoulders and set brow. I found tonight's lightning an infinitely welcome event because its searing light beat a path across the grim, monotonous skyscape. Finally; something to illumine that dense shroud.

I do not yet know this house in rain. It's funny really, how I still feel somewhat like a visitor. I forgot about that element of moving: the lack of familiarity one has in a new place. As if you've gone on vacation but with everything you own.

Since Friday, I've spent a great deal of time cleaning. In the scrubbing and polishing of space inhabited just two weeks ago by strangers, I've gleaned some sense of how they might have lived here. These cabinet fronts are the most worn; surely they were those used most frequently. This drawer still has the maker's stamp clearly etched inside; was it ever even used? Where is the dust most concentrated? Where has it started to adhere? What areas appear to have been most treasured?

These little clues of others' lives are inconsequential really, but as I work to make this house ours, I notice and find them interesting. 

In a way it makes me sad that we're covering our tracks, so to speak, at our old house right now. The kids and I went by on Tuesday to check the samples of floor stain options the refinishing crew had left for us. Already, the home looked less like ours than it had just six days prior. No more worn carpet leading upstairs to our cozy rooms, no more uneven hue showing where we walked and played and ran most often.

Next week the painters will head in, to spackle away the holes and dings we left behind, evidence of the countless pictures hung via tape and nail, of the wear and tear rambunctious little boys leave in their wake, of who knows what that would give others small hints at how we might have lived.

Nine years sanded and stained and painted over. How dearly and tightly we hold on to things, until one day, we don't, and the debris of lives lived ends up on greasy paper towels and bundles of ripped out old shoe molding waiting for the garbagemen to carry it all away.

I was so snappy tonight. Tired and peevish and achy and short. I didn't like my attitude, but the traffic and errands and boxes and questions, homework and whining and why the hell won't the water just boil already?! I cursed the rain as I listened to the unfamiliar song it played on our house, and just when I thought I'd burst, Tom got home and finished bedtime (kind of), and I cooked the clams and made a salad.

The rain slowed and sated from a good meal, I considered that even though I tire of mud and slosh, browngrayugliness and February, rain is cleansing and perhaps this storm is the final bit of our goodbye and hello limbo week.

Perhaps instead of erasing our happy years in our old home, we're wiping its slate clean for the family who lives there next, offering them a blank canvas on which to paint their own experience. I think that's what I'm doing here, too.

Pasta galore

As you might imagine, I came home from Italy feeling as if I'd been marinated in enthusiasm for pasta, both the making and enjoying of. My class with Maria Novella (and Elia and Leone) was such fun. It was in her kitchen, a generous space with pots lining one wall, a great view through the windows of another and a charmingly ancient oven and hearth anchoring a third. Maria Novella, henceforth known as MN, was such a warm, down to earth woman; the sort you like and feel comfortable with immediately. She spoke almost no English, and while we could have soldiered through four hours with my Italian, it was such a treat -and an infinitely more accurate learning experience- to have Elia there translating.

I told MN that while I was decently adept at making egg pasta, I felt completely fearful and inept in the face of the basic flour-and-water version. She said that under no circumstance should I be worried, that it was simple, simple and let's get to it. As hand-rolled trofie flew from between my palms (the first off the counter and onto the floor where the dog sniffed it suspiciously and all adult humans roared with laughter), my confidence grew. It was such fun, such a fine feeling of accomplishment to create from elemental ingredients a platter of beautiful food which would sate us just hours later.

The same was true as MN guided me through my first few orecchiette: cut a small knob of dough from a snake you've assuredly rolled (wet palms help); roll into a ball; using a rounded knife blade, pull one side of the ball outwards, and then shape into an "ear."

You use the same recipe for both shapes, and it's nothing but semola di grano duro (a double-milled semolina flour), a pinch of salt, a tablespoon of olive oil and some water.

For the ravioli, MN taught me to use farino tipo "00", a flour you might have seen used in pizza dough recipes. Mound it on the counter or a board, preferably wooden, dig a small well in the center, incorporate one egg at a time ("One egg per person," MN told me) and three pinches of salt, and knead like it's your job. Then roll through the pasta machine, zero through four, lay, fill, cut and scene.

Please note: MN does not recommend cooking with latex gloves. She had burned a finger and did not want to expose that to our food.

After four hours, MN and I had made quite a lot of food. A stunning amount, really.

We toasted, and then she packaged everything up for us, helped us load it onto and in Leone's stroller, and El and I headed home.

The next day, I had to find one of the butter prickers MN used on our mille foglie leaves, and I did. Perhaps you can spy it in the midst of the many bags of pasta, farro, beans and flour I schlepped home. Heh.

And last night, I tried my hand at homemade spaghetti alle vongole. I made the dough, kneaded and wrapped it, let it sit, waited until Tom got home so he could help me roll it out and, voila!

People, that is not spaghetti and I did not make it. It is Severino mafaldine, a lovely local brand that I keep in my pantry. My pasta dough would NOT roll. It was not marvelously pliable yet strong as was Maria Novella's. And I admit that after a long, first day back, I got frustrated, rewrapped my beautiful orb of dough and went for the stuff in the bag. You win some, you lose some.

I'll jump back into the eggless pasta ring soon, some of my fear having returned, but my memories of class con Maria Novella surely enough to ultimately show that dough just who the boss is!

Spaghetti with (local) clams

With the bag o' clams we bought this morning at the farmers market -thank you Rappahannock Oyster Co!- and the homemade pasta T whipped up while I was in my writing class this afternoon, I made a vat of spaghetti alle vongole (it was more like fettuccine as T rolled it thick) for dinner tonight. As always, it hit the spot. Seriously, this dish is one of my all-time favorites, and it is so unbelievably easy to pull together: olive oil, garlic, clams, peperoncino, parsley, salt and pepper. It just wreaks and rolls and ensorcells you with flavor. I always overeat -as I did tonight- because although my stomach is beseeching me to put the darn fork down, my taste buds are pleading for one more bite of pasta slicked with clam jus and garlicky parsley oil. Remarkable use and confluence of the simplest flavors!