Ravings of a Textual Deviant

I had an eggplant and some spinach already in the fridge that I needed to use, and pile of zucchini. I wanted something with a lot of vegetables in it, but didn’t feel like fussing around with a ratatouille or lasgana noodles.

So I skipped the noodles. I sprayed down my usual lasagna pan with olive oil, and got to work.

I sliced the eggplant and zucchini into planks, sliced up an onion and some mushrooms, and pulled a bag of baby spinach out of the fridge. Using the veggie planks in place of noodles, I layered everything with tomato sauce from a jar (told you I was feeling lazy) and some various odds and ends of cheese; fresh mozzarella, shredded parmesan, and an Italian four-cheese blend. (I seem to end up with a lot of odds and ends of cheese, but never enough of any one kind to use up on its own.) I covered the pan with foil to keep the cheese and onion on top from burning.

It went into the oven at 375 degrees (Farenheit; I’m an American, after all, and we can’t be bothered with that metric nonsense) and it’s there even as I type. After 40 minutes of baking time, I’ll take the foil off and let the top get brown and bubbly. Maybe by then, I’ll have gotten of my lazy behind and cooked up some gnocchi or whatever to go under it.

And I still need to figure out what to do with a rather substantial amount of cabbage.

ETA: Shouldn’t have skipped the noodles. This tasted pretty good, but was very watery.

ETA: I ended up putting the lot of it in a blender with some tomato paste and canned, diced tomates. After several hours on low heat and the addition of some Italian sausage meatballs, it turned out very well indeed…sort of, but not quite, a Bolognese.

I had three yellow summer squashes of various configurations, and no idea what to do with them. After thirty minutes of looking through cookbooks ranging from Janet Kessel Fletcher’s Fresh from the Farmer’s Market to Dale Carson’s New Native American Cooking, I still didn’t have a recipe that struck my fancy.

I decided to wing it. I started off my sauteeing chopped onions in olive oil, for the sake of making a decision that left me a lot of options. As soon as the onions started to turn translucent, I added some cubed pancetta. I cut the squashes into something approximating bite-sized cubes, and added them to the pan after the onions started to turn golden-brown. The squash took a while to cook down and soften up, but when it did, I added some dried basil and oregano, then deglazed the pan with a splash of white wine.

To go with it, Spouse roasted a chicken on top of some potatoes, onions and carrots, so we ended up with lots of veggies, and I suspect I am going to be making chicken soup in the not-too-distant future.

Last night’s dinner was sauteed mixed greens from the CSA box, with duck, water chestnuts, and mushrooms.

The beet greens from the box were not in great shape (it’s been a very buggy season so far here, what with all the rain), but there was plenty of cabbage to fill out. I cut the greens into fairly large shreds, as they shrink down a lot when you cook them. The pickup point for the CSA produce is a lovely little neighborhood market that had some duck breast, which I always have a hard time turning down. Half a pound was fine for two servings, with a little bit left over. I also had some shiitake mushrooms that predated the CSA muchrooms, so I sliced them up.

I started the mushrooms in the pan first with a little bit of olive oil, then added the duck, cut into bite-size chunks. I probably should have added the greens earlier than I did, as the cabbage was fairly robust stuff, but it came out quite edible despite that. The diced water chestnuts went in next, and as soon as they were warm, I poured some of Trader Joe’s Five-Spice sauce over the lot. The saute went over plain rice, and was absolutely delicious.

Before I knew I could get the duck, I was planning to do this as a vegetarian dish with tofu. Next time, perhaps. I still have a lot of cabbage left over.

Another thing I wish I had written—I quote Ilana entirely without her knowledge or permission.

So the other day while Dan and I were touring Philly - the town that is, in fact, all about the Benjamins - we decided that Benjamin Franklin was clearly the Chuck Norris of the 1700s. Thus, I present to you some facts about Benjamin Franklin:

1. Ben Franklin invented EVERYTHING. Even your mom. Especially your mom.

2. Ben Franklin does not sleep. He is already so healthy, wealthy and wise that it would kill a weaker man.

3. Poor Richard is the guy who talked smack about Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin killed him and wrote an almanac based on reading his entrails.

4. When recreating the portrait of the signing of the Constitution, the artist could find portraits of all the signers to work from, save Jacob Broom. This is because Mr. Broom tried to butt in line to sign the Constitution in front of Ben Franklin, and Ben Franklin promptly ripped his face off.

5. The Franklin stove is not really something Franklin invented; it’s one of his nicknames, as his sheer, unparalleled hotness could in fact heat an entire house if properly harnessed.

6. Ben Franklin is actually what BF stands for. He is the original BF, and everyone’s BFF. Unless you cross him. The term “best friends” originated to pay homage to his initials.

7. Ben Franklin is so sexy even his focals turned bi.

8. Ben Franklin’s pseudonym, Mrs Silence Dogood, can be anagrammed to spell Decode Girls’ Moons. Also Genocide Lord Moss. The only thing saving us from this destruction is that it can also be anagrammed to spell: Declines God’s Room.

9. Ben Franklin has a bucket…of LIGHTNING.

10. Ben Franklin considers six letters to be redundant: c, j, q, w, x and y. If your name begins with any of these letters, watch out.

11. When Ben Franklin was Grand Master of the Freemason Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs in France, his number was 24. This means he may also secretly be Jack Bauer.

Yesterday, Spouse picked up our first CSA distribution. We have one head each of two different kinds of lettuce, the most beautiful head of cabbage I have ever seen, a small bunch of beets with the greens still on them, two small cucumbers, an assortment of five small summer squashes, and about half a pound of mushrooms. I was hoping for tomatoes, too, but it was not to be.

I see salad (lots of salad) in our future, probably some Asian-style sauteed cabbage and beet greens, and maybe mixed squash gratin if I can find or invent a recipe.

I’m in a mood to do some cooking and baking this weekend…anything could happen!

A: Everyone was trying to figure out who should do it, and everyone kept pointing at everyone else. And then [everyone else] left.

B: I was the only one here, so I volunteered because I didn’t actually have to do anything.

C: Let me get this straight…you volunteered to do no work.

D: What’s really funny is that nobody else was willing to volunteer to do no work.

“I’d like to keep this civil, but…damn, b1tch!!!”

“I don’t know what’s going on here, but it’s like taking a sleeping pill and a laxative at the same time.”

This was a big hit at the impromptu 4th of July party we were invited to. It’s a variation on the very similar recipe in the Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s cookbook I picked up last month.

• 1 single-shell pie crust (make your own or buy)
• 1/2 C heavy cream
• 1/4 C sugar
• 8 oz mascarpone cheese (let it come to room temp)
• 1/2 t vanilla powder or 1 t vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt
• 1 T finely grated lemon zest
• 3 pints berries (or other fruit in equivalent amounts; I used a mix of blueberries and raspberries)

Heat the oven to 450 degrees F. Gently press the pie crust into a 10″ tart pan, or a pie pan. (Personally, I have better luck in this situation when I line the bottom of the pan with baking parchment.) Resist the temptation to cram the crust into every last corner of the pan; it’ll expand when it bakes. Also, the original instructions state that one should trim the excess crust from the outside of the pan. if you choose to do so, be conservative. Prick the crust several times with a fork in order to let steam escape. Bake the crust according to your recipe or manufacturer’s instructions. Let it cool completely before filling.

Combine the heavy cream, vanilla, and sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form. I recommend using an elextric mixer for this. Fold in the salt, lemon zest, and softened mascarpone cheese. Spread the dairy mixture evenly (more or less; it doesn’t need to be perfect) into the crust. Arrange the fruit on top of the filled tart.

I see a lot of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in my job. Every once in a while, I see something really good, like the second “l” left out of “general public,” or substituting “nuisances” for “nuances” (use the spell checker, but don’t rely on it, kids).

Usually, though, it isn’t anything worth giggling about. For example, misuse of ”it’s” has spawned at least one book, and more debates than anyone probably wants to know about.  The most common misuse that most of us see is using it in place of “its”. “Its” is a possessive singular pronoun, despite the lack of apostrophe. “It’s” is a contraction of “it is” and has nothing to do with the possessive form.

Today, an unnamed individual (not one of my writers), declared that there ought to be an apostrophe at the end—its’—because the “it” was plural and possessive. It’s not often that I get to see the birth of a new way to abuse punctuation, and this one gave me the same combination of amazement and dismay that I get when I find something that has been in the back of the fridge for way too long.

So, naturally, I had to share.