for lunch i had a leftover italian sausage and a few buffalo wings. i made a matcha latte as well. the trick for making a proper matcha latte in my own personal experience is to mix the matcha powder (a teaspoon worth) in a bit of hot water with an electric milk frother. i heat a glass of milk in the microwave for 2 minutes, then i combine the matcha mix with the hot milk. i also add a teaspoon of honey, but the honey i have has turned to crystal from lack of use, so today i just used some granulated sugar. when i first started drinking matcha lattes i thought they were magical, like i felt i had more energy afterwards. nowadays, they're pretty ordinary, and i don't feel anything special.
in the afternoon i packaged up my mother's kipling bags that she wanted to return. she bought 3 directly from the company but didn't like any of them. little did she know, they don't offer free returns, and not only do you have to pay to send it back, but they deduct the cost of the free shipping they used to send the package originally from the refund. it gave me a chance to use the tape gun my father gave me after finding it. it definitely made repackaging the box a bit quicker.
there was a line at the post office with just a single clerk working behind the counter today. i ended up waiting 15 minutes before it was my turn. it ended up costing $12 to ship the package, and another $10 when kipling deduct the original free shipping.
afterwards i rode down somerville avenue and went to market basket to get some groceries. i decided to make assassin's spaghetti for dinner tonight, and the only thing i needed was some pasta sauce. i actually went with the cheapest i could find, since the sauce would be reduced anyway, and no point in getting anything good. i almost settled on getting some canned tomato puree, but end the end went with tomato sauce from a jar.
rest of the day was spent doing some retroactive blog updating. i also backed up a bunch of photos. that combination of those two actions freed up 80GB worth of space on my computer. if i ever manage to fully update all the backlogs, i'll free up an additional 25GB worth of photos off of my macbook.
evening came and it was time to make assassin's spaghetti. i actually had some second thoughts, i've sort of been avoiding pastas as a weight saving measure, and didn't know if i should be eating it again. but i have a bunch of pasta in the house that i wanted to use it, so that was my justification. the recipe is basically like making a risotto, except instead of arborio rice and chicken stock, it's dried spaghetti noodles and watered down pasta sauce. i warmed up the sauce first, cooked up some minced garlic in olive oil before pouring the whole jar of sauce along with another jar of hot water. once the sauce came to a simmer, i set it aside and cooked the noodles. i used my largest pan so i can fit the spaghetti without breaking. i poured a good amount of olive oil then added about 3 tablespoons of red chili flakes, before adding the dried noodles and coating them in the pepper-infused oil. i then began scooping in the sauce 4 ladle-worth at a time, and cooking the pasta until the sauce was reduced. the idea is to caramelized the tomato sauce, and to add some charring to the noodles, flipping the noodles with tongs to make sure both sides get cooked. once all the liquids have dried up, i ladled some more sauce into the pan and continued again. i did this until i used up all the sauce, by which point the spaghetti was fully cooked.
i also had a mixed greens salad with some kewpie-brand roasted sesame dressing, to maybe make dinner a little healthier than just pasta. assassin's pasta was interesting, but i don't know if i cooked it well enough. in my mind i was thinking something akin to cantonese pan-fried noodles. there were bits of caramelized tomato sauce (the charred bits), but i didn't think they were anything special, and there wasn't enough to make the spaghetti feel crunchy. i did like the pepper-infused oil adding a significant amount of spiciness to the noodles, something i don't equate with italian food. i think it's a recipe that's worth trying at least once, but it takes twice as long to cook, and it's easier just to make pasta the normal way, by boiling in water. i made 2 servings of pasta, saving the rest for tomorrow or later in the week.
trash day isn't until tomorrow night, due to president's day on monday. later in the evening i finished the rest of the leftover chicken feet, as i was afraid they might spoil, being more than a week old. i also wanted to finish them so i can toss out the bones with the compost tomorrow.