My surprise guest for the weekend was my friend Kathy from Georgia. Larry and several friends were in cahoots to bring her into town to celebrate my dreaded 40th birthday (June 13). We had a great weekend, and I decided we needed to make dinner together but I wanted it to be something easy. This pasta is easy to make, but I wasn’t overly thrilled with it. Not sure why.

• Smoked Trout Rillettes (Fine Cooking #42, January 2001, p. 44)
• Spaghetti Alla Carbonara (Fine Cooking #92, May 2008, p. 57)
• Butter Lettuce and Radiccio & Lemon Poppyseed Dressing (Fine Cooking #51, July 2002, p. 48)
• Oven-Roasted Beets

Wine:
– Fontodi 2005 Chianti Classico (Chianti, Italy). We thought this was one of the bottles we brought back from Italy last year. It was good, but my notes say we bought it at K&L Wine Merchants.
– Ridge 2002 Buchignani Ranch Carignane (Sonoma County, California). Really good, especially after it opened up a bit.