Spring (Fall) cleaning

I love being able to "redecorate" my living space, even if it's just moving a piece of furniture to face a different way. You give the living area new energy, new focus, and (sometimes) a new purpose. Cleaning out the old and bringing in the new is invigorating, and shouldn't necessarily take place only in the spring, as the well-known phrase implies. It can be done year-round with just as much of a positive impact. Such was my holiday weekend.

I had been looking at my couch these past few months and wanted to move it out of the apartment. It's a bulky piece of furniture that's too big for my small place, and we (Scooter and I) never used it. The cats got 100 times more use out of it than we did, and even they were not on it often. It needed to go. So Saturday, we borrowed my parents' car, loaded up the couch and took it down to storage. When we came back to the apartment, I was amazed; there was so much more space with it gone. The room had the potential to be a room that I liked and wanted to use regularly. And so, when Scooter was napping in the next room, I decided to start moving the other furniture around.

It wasn't easy. There are a lot of electronics in the front room that need to stay there (TV, cable, Internet modem, router, printer, DVD player, etc., etc.). That meant a lot of wires to untangle before things could even be moved. Then, bit by bit, I worked my way around the room, moving furniture a piece at a time to see how it would look. Finally I had things the way I would like, and stepped back to take it all in. What a difference! The room looks larger, and there's more room to walk around. It looks, dare I say, inviting. It even seems like it's brighter, as if the clutter were sucking the very light away. Between that and my dining table that's become my de facto office, the apartment looks...perfect. Well, perfect for me anyway. Even Scooter was amazed by the change. He loves the front room now and hasn't complained about having to watch TV out there (before he didn't want to go out there much at all).

And so, to celebrate a job well done, I once again experimented for dinner. I made something that my mom calls porpetta (Mom, if you're reading this, you'll have to let me know if the spelling is off). It's another Italian food, one that my mom would make using left over ravioli filling. It's basically a fried meat patty, but it has Italian herbs in it that make it taste oh so good. Since I didn't have everything that went into ravioli filling, I experimented a bit with what I did have, and came up with this recipe.

What you'll need:
1 lb. ground meat
1/2 c. bread crumbs
1 egg
1 small onion
5 cloves garlic
3 4-6 inch springs of rosemary
3 sprigs of oregano
2 sprigs of thyme
3 sage leaves
salt and pepper to taste

What you'll need to do:
1. In a food processor, chop the onion and garlic until the pieces are very fine. Remove them from the food processor and set aside. Remove herb leaves from the stems and place the leaves in a wooden chopping bowl (or in a food processor if you don't have one). Chop the herbs until you get very fine pieces.
2. In a large mixing bowl, put in the ground meat, bread crumbs, egg, onion and garlic pieces, and the herbs. Using your hands, mix the contents together. Add salt and pepper (if desired) and continue mixing until all ingredients are fully assimilated.
3. Use your hands to shape the meat mixture into 6-7 palm-sized patties.
4. In a large frying pan, fry the patties over medium heat until well browned on both sides and fully cooked in the middle (12-15 minutes). Don't use oil in the frying pan, as the patties will come out too greasy. Also, don't cook more than 4 patties at a time in the pan.

Again, this recipe isn't too hard. You can cut back a little on the onion, but I would keep everything else just because the flavor is so good. Serve this with zucchini or your favorite vegetable on the side. I had porpetta and zucchini with peach crisp for dessert. Enjoy!