Tickets and Spaghetti Sauce

Fact: My wonderful and fabulous fiance is a computer uber-geek and can make them do anything he wants.
Fact: I'm a reasonably competent computer geek-in-training with programs like Excel and Publisher.

Fact: Today, I spent 4 hours designing, printing, cutting, and then hand-numbering and perforating 600 tickets for an event at Ickworth this weekend.

It was my lucky day, I guess.

I could figure out how to make consecutive numbered things...in excel. I could figure out how to design the kind of ticket I wanted...in publisher. But could I figure out how to make a ticket thingy and have them auto-number? HECK NO! So I wrote out the numbers 1-599, twice, today. Awesome.

I really like my job, but sometimes I have to do the randomest tasks.

In other news, I have perfected my 'spaghetti sauce from scratch' recipe. Way better than the stuff in a jar and not that hard to make. It's a mishmash of my French host mother's tomato soup, Mom's spaghetti sauce (minus the fennel, ugh), and Andrew's grandma's gravy. Dry roast some herbes de provence, add olive oil, onions and garlic, then add crushed canned tomatoes, sugar, salt, tomato paste, and a bay leaf. Simmer for half an hour and you have spaghetti goodness that is a direct line to John's heart. I think my next experiment is going to involve some grated nutmeg in the spaghetti sauce. My other new favorite thing to cook is lentil soup...yum! I made leek and potato soup a la Alton Brown yesterday. Episode title? "Sprung A Leek." Teehee. It improved on the other recipe I had by using veggie stock instead of water and was v. yummy and reviving as leftovers at work today. I hate cleaning leeks, though...they have too many layers with little teeny pieces of dirt in each layer. And then they get all squeaky when you try to chop them. It's a conspiracy.

I need to figure out how to make a curry...John loves them and the last time I tried to do it, it was more of a bastard spaghetti sauce. Not exactly what I was aiming for. He's v. good at making them (although sometimes overdoes it on the spice front), but it's nice for me to have dinner ready when I'm home all day and he's at work.

One other food-ish related thing: NEVER buy "Lite" Ribena, no matter how many ads you read telling you it's as good as the real stuff. It's not. It's all nutrasweety and it's gross. For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about, Ribena is a concentrated blackcurrant juice that all Brits drink. It's, as they would say, lovely. I'm addicted to the full-sugar stuff but it's got more sugar in it than Coke. Zing!!