Spaghetti in cream sauce

You could rightly critique this does not show the elements of a mise en place as well as an overhead look at it would do. I discarded those pictures because I didn't like them. I'm biased. They are not

arts!

The foreshortening doesn't bother me because the elements are actually irrelevant. It could be any *vegetable any *cheese any *herb any *allium any *pasta. An element can be subtracted and still be a decent meal while additions suggest themselves.

But I have to admit that rosemary was nice. I only used it because it was starting to turn black and I didn't want to waste another package. 

The containers are showing the elements for a sauce,  *cream, *mustard and *butter.

The pasta bent like Beckham in another pot, it is al dente inside its skinny insubstantial strands when it is added to the cooked vegetables in another pan. That means the pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it cools, and more so when the cheese is added to finish, a lot of liquid, so there must be extra.

Extra liquid not necessarily extra cream.

If you don't, it will turn into a clump. 

The water that cooked the pasta is still there. The water contains starch that sloughed from the pasta. It is cloudy. Even though the sauce is cream, the pasta water can still be used to thin the sauce as the whole pile of pasta slowly thickens on the plate at the table. This is unorthodox. Pasta water taken to the table as if it were gravy and cream sauce thinned with pasta water, but that's what I did.

You can too. Put it in a gravy boat and tell your guests it's a special magic flavorful thinning sauce that you invented just for this. Then say, please, please, hold the applause, that your demure self finds it intolerably embarrassing. Point to your own cheeks and say, See? Red. Even if they're not red. Distraction is all part of the magic.

If this were a restaurant it would have to be taken to the table as something close to cream soup to compensate for expected continuing absorption.  

Can you believe I fell asleep in the middle of writing this? Like this: zzzzzzzzz

I bore myself. 

Or maybe I was really tired.