TIPsgiving!

every year my TIP friends (we met working at a summer program run by Duke TIP) get together for a weekend of telling stories, cooking, eating, playing board games, and acting silly.  it's wonderful.  we used to do it around the thanksgiving holidays, hence the name TIPsgiving, but the busy fall led to the reunion weekend happening in january this year.

i'm making stuffed shells for our dinner tonight, with this recipe that is DIVINE.  (and it's a great blog if you like this recipe and want to see more.)  i'll make it at home and transport it across town to bake at abby and aaron's house where we'll be holing up for the weekend.  the reason for stuffed shells: i made fresh ricotta again this week, after standing in front of the prepackaged ricotta at the grocery store and realizing i could not bring myself to buy it.  mine is so. much. better.  this is kind of a problem, since grocery store ricotta takes 1 second to open and my ricotta takes 1 hour to make.  whatever.  quality > convenience (most of the time), and the cost is about the same.

i also made pumpkin-walnut-date cookies, an applesauce cake with cream cheese frosting, and i've got a couple of bottles of wine.  my food contribution to the weekend: done!