MN Little Italy 16

[TheMysticMasseuse]

I HAVE STARTED A LITTLE ITALY THREAD!!!!

hooray for me!!!

Hi, yes I second what Camo says. It seems pretty common here to invite the whole class in the first yr of school.
And last year the first party the children were invited to was a good "bonding" experience for them and a nice way for the parents to get to know each other.

But I feel your pain Bucharest... parties are stressful... do what you feel like!

off to make ragu now...

just had to go and pick up ds from school early. He woke up with a bit of a cold this morn and apparently started crying half an hour after I left him and they couldn't stop him. His maestra (who he loves) is off sick today so he was in another class so don't know if it was that. Bless him when I got that his eyes were nearly swollen shut from crying . Thought it had all gone too smoothly to date.

Ah poor thing, hope he has recovered.
Franca you are one of those people who makes their sugo at 10 in the morning, you are more italian than I thought!

Gio- Hope ds recovers soon....and it is a bit of lurgy and not the start of school blues...a fair few in dd's class were in tears this morning.....ach, this too shall pass....
I've boiled my lentils already for lunch....does that count in domestic goddessery?

Actually I made mine and DS's lunch yesterday! Only because we are having leftovers.

oh, poor ds, hope he gets better soon!

DD and I are having leftovers too - penne al ragu'! (DP's having his 2 day training at ikea... can't believe he'll take him at least 6 months now to get to the level he was when he left)

Oh Gio poor ds . Perhaps it is a combination of feeling under the weather and the absence of his favourite teacher. But good on the school to ring you. I'm impressed!

Sputnik . I usually start to cook in the late afternoon to have our dinner ready by 19/19.30... but I take the dc to swimming lessons on tuesday and we won't be home before 19.30. So I decided to make pasta al forno, dh will only have to put it in the oven ...

Do I sound please with myself? gah, I'm usually a last minute kind of person!

Camo, is your dh going to work at IKEA!?! How will he resist the constant temptation?
I worked part time for 6 months when I was at Uni and had such a great time there!!! (luckily I still lived at my parents... as we do here ) so I didn't splash my wages on Billys or Umpellala or whaever...

I'm not virtuous, I remember I spent my last ikea stipendio on a new pair of ski . Good old days!

I am insisting on more Billies before the end of the month...either that or I need to have a book burning session.

We currently have 8 big (the biggest) Billys at the mo (plus other various means of book holding...)

(It's Billies, isn't it... though Billys sounds more ahem Swedish

We need more Billies too but not sure where to put them... so maybe I need to dump some books.
DS seems full of cold but happy now is at home with his trains! Making him minestra for his cold. On that note I am SO bored of my minestra recipe-what do you guys do? Need variation. Am trying to make myself try a few new recipes a week cos am bored of my cooking punta basta at the moment.

We were having a joint clutter clear yesterday and dp is just like, "chuck these books away, I've read all of them". Heathen.

he's already worked there for 2 years (so we would have had the option to move close to my parents with him being transferred to the new one they've just opened near trieste). unfortunately we'd already furnished the house (from Ikea ) before he'd started then, as he got/gets 15% off - and staff get great xmas presents too!

oooh Christmas presents from Ikea how lovely, what kind of things do you get??

Ah Camo, I didn't know that!

How do you make your minestra gio?

When I cook for the whole family I make passato as the dc will it just like that, with some pasta and parmesan.

A few months ago I bought one of those vellutate Findus I think, the one carrot and pumpkin. I added some chilli, ginger and coconut milk and it was delicious!

A year's supply of meatballs?

that would be my dh's perfect present Sput !

I love their gerkins (already sliced sweet/sour)

sput, on Wed they do 10 meatballs and cheaps for £1.50

the first year he started just too late to be in for th present, but that was a sat nav, then they got a great foldable bike (blue with yellow "IKEA" ), then a digital camcorder.

Don't make minestra here, sorry. I do big thick veg soups though, usually add some red lentils.
Have you tried onion soup? Dead easy, you fry up a load of onions, add a few potatoes, water and, secret ingredient: parmesan crusts. Cooks for 1/2 an hour then take half and blend it (remove parmesan). Really delicious and creamy and frugal, yet impressive.

Oh I like the sound of the foldable ikea bike

Onion soup is delicious. I always forget to make it though. I also buy those packets of mixed pulses etc and add onion, carrot, potatoes etc (and bacon... ). But as I said dc only eat passato di verdure, I just put inside whatever veg lurks from the fridge.

celery, courgettes, potato, carrots, onion and parsley plus pasta and loads of parmesan. nice but need a change
I like that carrot and pumpkin vellutate as well, may try your recipe idea there Franca. Their mixed veg one is nice as well

Sorry, I am a veggie , Ikea meatballs are a running joke in our family, whenever we eat there that's all everyone else seems to take.
Apparently Ikea's biggest selling product.

I feel inadequate now with my 2 Billys. We do have some other bookcases though. I try and get rid of books I'm not going to re read.