Lessons Learned: A Bunch of Repeats With Changes Applied

So I haven't gotten to write a whole lot on here, since I'm busy with classes, but I've done a lot of recipes that are on here, and I figured that because I learned a number of lessons, I'd share them with anyone who's following my posts.
First, I made penne with Rosa sauce. Normally I put dry white wine in it, but because I didn't have any that I wasn't aging, I decided to instead add a little red wine. It worked well, but it's still missing something. At least I have one piece of the puzzle figured out, right?
The next night, I made risotto Milanese. As I stated before, I didn't have dry white wine, but I did have some Chianti, so I used that instead. It was good, but would have been way better if I had some sauteed mushrooms to go with it.
Finally, I made corned beef and cabbage. Because I was gone all day, I put the corned beef in my slow cooker before going to class. Twelve hours later, I'm wondering why I didn't decide to do this sooner. The corned beef was super tender and Will, who hates fat on his meat, was able to scrape the fat off without any issues. Regardless of whether I'm busy or not, I will make corned beef this way again.
I hope these pointers help you. As always, the recipes are on other parts of the blog; the penne with Rosa is under "Blushing Penne" and the risotto and corned beef are under the same names throughout the blog.