xxxmas.

I took a picture of this spider web at the tram stop. Later in the day I showed it to Mara and she said "was that at the tram stop?" She'd wanted to take a picture of the same spiderweb...

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We're entering the final countdown phase for Xmas dinner. Vital stats: 25 guests, 2 soups, 2 pastas, and we don't really know what else. The Tomanek/Morse crew is handling one soup and one pasta, Andy is doing one soup and one pasta, and everyone else is bringing antipasti and dolci. And we're doing a salad, which I think everyone has forgotten about, including me until just now.

Though the theme is Italian, our team's offerings are distinctly Italian-American. Minestra maritata is much better known in America as Italian Wedding Soup, and apparently it's a regional specialty of Ohio, where Mara's family is from.

We've been calling our pasta a "walnut and pecorino tortelloni in a very garlicky Alfredo sauce." But we actually need to do a little more research to determine if this is really an Alfredo sauce...I don't think that it is. The thing is, it's got lots of garlic and crème fraîche in it, catapulting it kilomteres away from the boring heaviness of most American alfredo sauces.

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