Sunday was cold and blustery. In the early afternoon I put on a split-pea soup to cook, knowing my husband prefers whole green peas but chose the split peas since I wouldn't have to soak them overnight. I added celery, onion, garlic and chopped carrots along with a chicken cube and a small amount of salt, larger amount of pepper, and we had a good hot soup for dinner. But of course we also needed a main dish and I thought what I might do with a spaghetti squash.

I cooked three slices of bacon until they were crisp, crumbled them, then added to a small amount of the bacon fat sliced bell pepper and small pieces of asparagus, briefly stirring them, then adding to them several chopped green onions, and grinding pepper over them. I had earlier baked the spaghetti squash, removed the seeds and pulled the strands, and to the pile of squash strands I added a cup of shredded old cheddar, the crumbled bacon, and the vegetables. And then the resulting mass was placed in a casserole and baked briefly until the cheese had melted.

I liked the result quite a lot, but it's questionable whether I'll repeat it. My husband is fussy about spaghetti squash; he likes it only done one way. When it has been baked and the seeds scooped out he puts brown sugar, butter and cinnamon on his hot squash and eats it with relish; that is with the kind of enjoyment that 'relish' is meant to describe. Go figure.

Today I wanted to do something different with ricotta cheese, rather than prepare cheese-filled blintzes as I often do. So I thought I'd do a gnocchi dish with tomato sauce. The tomato sauce is a breeze; I sweat an onion and chopped garlic in extra virgin olive oil, add chopped yellow bell pepper, a tad of hot pepper flakes, chopped carrot, and finely sliced tomatoes - and the water I'd cooked a medium-sized Yukon gold potato in.

I mashed the potato, added a cup of ricotta, a third-cup of grated Parmesan cheese, an egg, sea salt and dehydrated onion, and finally 3/4 of a cup of unbleached flour, and made the gnocchi by rolling out portions of the resulting dough into elongated rolls, then snipping them into inch-size pieces, to be cooked briefly in boiling, salted water.

The finished tomato sauce will be served over the gnocchi and I have high hopes that my husband will enjoy this different way to serve ricotta.