My baby girl was born at 5:02 am, and by 8 pm that evening, I was enjoying my first meal of sushi after a nine month hiatus. It was spectacular. The evening we came home from the hospital I had my first glass of wine. When she was less than two weeks old, I made this pasta alla vodka. Even though it is not fun to give up things like sushi, wine and vodka for nine months, I think it goes without saying that the outcome of a healthy baby is so completely worth any sacrifice on my part. Not only that but when the ban is lifted, it’s pretty wonderful to experience all those favorites again. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder…
Now, a lot of people feel perfectly fine eating pasta with vodka sauce during pregnancy and I have nothing against them. I am just not one of those people. The concept that all the alcohol added to a dish cooks or bakes off entirely is quite simply wrong. A quick internet search on the subject will reveal various charts that show how long something must be cooked and at what temperature for a certain percentage of the alcohol to be eliminated. You might be surprised at what you find – I was. Ultimately it is up to each person’s individual comfort level with ingesting any amount of alcohol, but for my own purposes I generally avoid using more than a splash of wine in a dish during pregnancy. I saw this pasta alla vodka pop up on Shanon’s blog, and then Tara’s, and I filed it away under “to make very soon after giving birth”. The night I made this we had originally planned to grill but the weather decided otherwise. Afterward, we were all glad for the dark and stormy evening. There isn’t much to convince you of here – I mean, it’s pasta with a tomato cream sauce, kicked up with a bit of vodka. The flavors are simple and subtle, and blend together to make an indulgent and comforting meal. If it were up to Ben, this is the sauce we would make every time we make pasta. And you know, I think he might be on to something.
Oh, and to since I’ve posted a few pictures of Andrew lately, here’s one of my sweet girl. She is growing so fast!