Sunday was a good day. No. A really good day. Not sure why it wasn't "great" day, but we like to leave room for potential improvement.

Got up pretty early but fairly lazy. Ate some delicious chocolate cupcakes (courtesy of Bakery de Jocelyn) with our coffee, then got surprisingly little done on a variety of projects around the house. We'll spare you photos of the shelving, it isn't much to look at.

Steve reveled in the fact that our local hardware store is now sort of open on Sundays. The whole store isn't really open, and you've gotta ask staff to let you in to the limited areas that are "open", but this is still a monumental achievement for the DIY on the weekend crowd as now one can forget a part on Saturday and still have a chance of finishing the project on Sunday. Good stuff.

Caly spent the afternoon snoozing in the sunlight. It's good to be the dog.


Anyway, and on to good parts, Steve stopped off at the grocery where he was inspired to make a delicious clam and bacon pasta dish (*recipe below). His enthusiasm inspired Jocelyn to set a lovely late-afternoon ocean/sunset view table, where we savored our food and wine with a nearly-perfect gentle afternoon breeze and temps in the low 80s. Pretty darn nice!

Looking to share the pleasure, we invited some friends over and the six of us had some more wine and chatted until it became dinner time. Since one of the guests came with some bbq ingredients, we fired up the grill and made a gourmet meal with grilled chicken, a grilled veggie medley including green beans, squash, eggplant, onions, and chayote (a local veggie that's tasty on the bbq), and a russsian potato and beet salad.

We stayed up a little late, perhaps, and drank maybe a smidgeon too much, but everyone had a great time and, in the end, it was a good Sunday.

*Clam and Bacon Pasta for Two*
(sorry the measurements are vague, you'll have to experiment)

• about 100grams of bacon (maybe 5 slices?)
• 1 can chopped clams in natural juice (the little can, 6 oz?)
• spaghetti noodles
• 1 organic green/red bell pepper (mine was half & half, which was perfect) diced to about pea size.
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed and diced
• 2oz olive oil
• 1 pat of butter
• 1 dried red peppers (the little crinkly ones w/ seeds)
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 large sprig fresh parsley, minced

1. Cook the bacon until crispy but NOT too hard. Remove and reserve.
2. Drain clams, reserve juice.
3. Start cooking your noodles.
4. In medium cast iron pan, sautee clams and crushed/diced garlic w/ dried peppers in olive oil
5. as garlic starts to brown, add diced peppers, dried parsley, and dried basil. I probably used more like 1.5 tsp of basil.
6. add butter
7. saute roughly 2 minutes, then add enough clam juice to barely cover the other ingredients (about 2 oz).
8. lower heat, simmer, don't let the peppers get mushy.
9. Your noodles are probably done by now. I like 'em al dente.

Pile the noodles on each plate, then put the clam mixture in the center of the noodles. Sprinkle the bacon and fresh parsley over the top of everything.

Serve with warm baguette or ciabatta, fresh parmesan and cracked pepper on the side.

We also did a simple little salad of fresh tomatoes (diced) with capers and sliced green olives that we marinated in balsamic vinegar for about half an hour and drizzled with virgin olive oil. Yummy.

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