Chi and Alfredo

So I told you that the husb got me a Chi flat iron for Christmas and that I love it. I didn’t tell you that he got me this with it…

I didn’t tell you because I figured it was one of those things the sales girl recommends because it sounds like something you need and she gets paid on commission and needs to pay her parents back for getting her car fixed after she backed into a light pole in the mall parking lot.

I decided to use it so that I could know for sure that it didn’t work and could throw it out without guilt. Am I a horrible person? Let’s call it ‘skeptical’. Is that still bad?

Anyway, the stuff works really well!…

My mom is going to pee her pants at how dirty that mirror is. Funny thing is, she just arrived for a visit last night and this photo was last week and I still haven’t cleaned it. :P Am I the only bad housewife?

ANYWAY, the Chi worked wonders. The Flat Iron Spray put an extra special twinkle on it. It makes my hair like those girls with the flat hair that have to try to get volume. And the lovely non-frizzy flatness lasts so long – even the next day it is still flat! Love it.

But wait, there’s more!

Haha. I have a recipe to share, too...

Alfredo! If you’ve followed PW for a while, or searched her recipes, you may have seen it – she posted about it in 2009.

The recipe is unlike any other. I have found so many weird alfredo recipes – ones that call for a roux (against my religion; you cannot make alfredo with flour! Um, let’s have flour noodles with some flour sauce on them – no thanky), or weirder ones that call for cream cheese and claim to be the Olive Garden’s Recipe. Whatever.

No, friends, PW’s is the real deal. The only thing I change is her process and not because it doesn’t work – it is because I can never get everything done at the same time and it ends up cold. Oh yeah, and I add garlic powder.

The Parmesan cheese you select is the main flavor in the sauce so get a good one. PW always has fancy blocks of Parm; I am too lazy to figure out where to get them and which one is good, so I have found this widely available one to be delicious…

Her sauce has three ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

1 cup heavy cream

2 cups grated parmesan

And I add:

1/2 to 1 tsp garlic powder

You can read her process in her recipe, but what I do is melt the butter in a saucepan. As soon as it is melted add the cream and the parm and the garlic powder and warm (don’t even simmer it) until all the cheese melts and the sauce is toasty warm and smooth. I like to grind in a little black pepper in mine, too.

If I am going for presentation, of course I use fettuccini noodles and ideally I would have some fresh parsley to adorn it with, but for lunch…

When the kids are fussing and I am having LBSCBD (Low Blood Sugar Cranky Butt Disorder), anything goes! I put it over Penne noodles this time. I like to toss all the noodles in the sauce and then dump a little extra on top and add a bit of shredded parm on top of that when I'm going for presentation points.

In our house we make a double batch of the sauce and make these cheapo breadsticks from Safeway...

When they come out of the oven I brush the tops with butter and sprinkle them with garlic salt. Dip in Alfredo. Same as Olive Garden’s breadsticks, seriously. Try it.

PS- does anyone else have trouble making food look appetizing in photos? I could never be a food blogger.