20 pounds of pasta

In five plastic bags, uncooked, it doesn't really look like all that much. But those 20 pounds of multi-colored twirly pasta will be the basis of a side dish for a dinner three of us are cooking in a couple of weekends. My husband, Jerry, my friend, Carey, and I are cooking dinner and breakfast for the Jonathan Pon Memorial ride-- a two day ride in Marin and Sonoma counties.

We will be feeding 150 very hungry cyclists, so we are planning to cook a lot of food. Dear, wonderful, Leslie, the owner of Johnny and Theresa's Comfort Food Cafe in downtown San Rafael, is letting us use the restaurant's kitchen the evening before to do most of the prep. Without her, the task would have been hellish, but now I think it will actually be fun.

Carey and I met the other day downtown, his most adorable dog, Julio, in tow. Julio looks like a puppy, but he's actually a full-grown min-pin/beagle mix. And he's a charmer. Everyone wanted to stop and pet him, and he ate up every minute of it.

Carey has lots of culinary experience, so he disabused me of some of the cooking notions I had, and together we hammered out a couple of really great menus.

This week there has been little cooking at Chez Carol. I've had a cold or the flu or some such nonsense, and eating has been less than pleasurable. But I'm on the mend so in the next day or two, I'll hit the kitchen with gusto.