ASNN

disney world

Have you ever been to Disney World in Orlando? I haven't, but we're going there in just over a week... and I'm a little overwhelmed. We have about 3.5 days of park-going goodness available, and (seemingly) a week or more of things to see.

So help me out here: if you've been, what three things should I be sure to hit while we're there?

why are the airlines always on the verge of collapse?

So I have these airplane tickets from Burbank to Orlando, leaving early morning Thursday May 19 and returning Monday May 23. I need one of the tickets to leave after 1PM and to leave from LAX, but keep the return flight to Burbank on the 23rd.

If I change the first leg of the round-trip ticket with Delta, the carrier, it will cost me about $380 (the $50 change penalty and difference between the old fare and the new one). But if I cancel the first leg of the round-trip ticket and convert the return leg into a one-way ticket, it will EARN me $60 (even after the $50 change penalty). Then, a one-way ticket from LAX to Orlando coming after 1PM will cost me $170, for a net cost of $110.

$380 to change the outbound leg versus $110 to convert it into two one-way tickets USING THE SAME EXACT OUTBOUND AND RETURN FLIGHT. And this is the industry the government is called on to bail out every so often?! Needless to say, I did the two one-way tickets.

Nevermind that I was supposed to have moved the tickets not just after 1PM, but to the 20th instead of the 19th. So I guess we can ALL be stupid at times... my point still remains. :-P

angel hair pasta with mushroom cream sauce

I made a simple little sauce for some angel hair pasta tonight, but it turned out REALLY well. So I thought I'd share. :-)

• 1/4 C butter
• 1/2 C chopped shallot
• 8-12oz sliced mushrooms
• Bottle dry white wine (a $3.99 bottle of Berringer Pinot Grigio works great - you need 1/4 C for the sauce, and can easily drink the rest while cooking... ERRRR, that is, with dinner)
• 3/4 C whipping cream
• Handful of chopped fresh sage leaves
• Salt and pepper to taste

Throw the butter in a heavy skillet and melt over medium high heat. Saute the shallots in the butter for just a minute or so. Throw in the mushrooms and saute until browned, about seven minutes. Add the wine and whipping cream (interesting note - if you measure the wine and cream simultaneously in the same measuring cup, the milk will begin to congeal; this doesn't seem to affect anything, but it's kinda fun) along with the chopped sage leaves. Boil and reduce until the sauce coats a spoon. Salt and pepper to taste (though go easy on the pepper).

This sauce matches perfectly with angel hair pasta - boil a pound of it in water as salty as the Mediterranean for 4 minutes, no more. Toss it all together and serve. The angel hair is important as the sauce is likely to be a bit thin, yet it coats the increased surface area of the thin pasta exquisitely. For a little more meat to the dish, brown some flattened chicken breasts about halfway to done, and complete in the sauce while its reducing. Chicken goes atop the pasta, sauce goes atop the chicken.

Incidentally, Andrew (who didn't care for the wild mushrooms, or ANY mushrooms for that matter) had a tremendous idea that I'll be trying. He suggested we put some browned, crumbled spicy sausage in place of the mushrooms. The tang of the wine, the sweetness of the cream, and the spicy (Italian?) sausage... mmmmm...

One final note on the original dish: the inspiration for this was the fact that we had about 6oz of dried wild mushrooms (black, shiitake, porcini, etc.) from a gift basket of some sort. I reconstituted the mushrooms in hot water for about 10 minutes before combining them with 8oz of regular ol' fresh button mushrooms, sliced. The reconstituted wild mushrooms added a tremendous flavor to the sauce, but their consistency was terrible compared to the fresh mushrooms. If you've got the cash, get fresh wild mushrooms for the entire dish. To save a bit of scratch, go half-and-half wild and cultivated mushrooms, or just go all cultivated. (Just be sure to leave the gills - that gives the sauce the maximum mushroom flavor.)

Anyway, that's probably far more than you needed to know, but I was very pleased with this sauce, and will definitely be using it as a base for many simple and quick sauces to come!