longest week ever

I know I say this every Friday, but I am SO glad it's Friday and I'm home from work for two days.  Have you ever had one of those weeks that just never seemed to end?  It never happens when you have a ton to do and need more time, right?  Nooo... you only manage to squeeze that 25th hour in when all you want is for the day/week to be over.

I'm excited to be going to a cousin's wedding on Sunday - let's hope it doesn't rain!  I can't wait to see what a lovely bride she'll be and I'm thrilled with this completion of her family.  Her husband-to-be is a great guy - a true gentleman and a good father/provider.  They are such a great couple and I am delighted to be a part of the day they officially commit their lives to one another.

I wish I could say that was the only reason I wanted the week to pass quickly, but as you may have picked up from recent posts, things aren't going so well at work.  An image comes to mind...

Anyway, I really hit a wall last night.  Well, maybe yesterday in general.  Usually, I just have to give my brain/soul a little pep talk on the way to work, but my body cooperates with my efforts to force myself out of my home, onto the train, up the stairs, and into the cube farm.  Yesterday, even my body rebelled and I literally had to use my arms to force my legs to carry me into the office.  Yes, I do know what the word "literally" means and I do mean to use that word.

I narrowly avoided being whipped up into the Dark Clouds of the Apocalypse that chased me to the train on my way home, only to observe the hail hitting the windows once I was safely on board.  I didn't think it was supposed to rain until today, so I had no umbrella.  Fortunately, I found a very kind and amusingly chatty cab driver to take me home from the train station.  Obviously, my plans to coerce Mister into a dinner outside at Horizons (or even just Stella) were rained out, but I had absolutely no desire to cook.  At all.  Possibly for the rest of my life.

In case you were wondering, this is what dinner looks like on those nights.  It kind of looks like a jello mold, but with farfalle and purple cabbage, wouldn't you say?  It looks about that appetizing, too.  Fortunately, after a brief braise with about 1/2 cup of vegetable broth and a generous sprinkling of the Mediterranean Sea Salt, it tasted just fine.

I'll admit, though, it was kind of fun watching the perfectly molded leftovers escape the container in which they'd spent the last few days.

Tonight, though, I was perfectly and happily aware that it is Friday.  I made a little deal with God toward the later part of the afternoon.  It went something like this: "please don't let it rain until I have made it to the wine store and home safely."  There really wasn't any "and then I'll do this for you," part, unless you want to count my silent agreement to not throw a temper tantrum on 5th Street.  Fortunately, God loves me anyway; in fact, God loves me so much that it's still not raining.  Maybe we can make a deal for Cousin's outdoor wedding on Sunday?

With some help from an almost-missed treasure on the bottom-most shelf of one of the foreign wine sections, I gathered the ingredients for a hearty, flavorful, and elbow-grease-intensive Pasta Puttanesca with Artichokes, from The Complete Vegan Cookbook.  In addition to enlisting the assistance of my newly acquired bottle of Nederburg Pinotage (which I haven't had in about 10 years!), I got to snip some leaves off of my pretty, aromatic, kitty-seducing basil plant (which I have craftily hidden in the one windowsill he hasn't discovered yet).

I was a little worried about the contribution the artichokes would make, since I was supposed to get frozen, rather than canned (but did not).  Fortunately, since the artichoke hearts were simply soaking in salt water, rather than brine or marinade, they were actually somewhat overpowered by the pungent sauce.  I also used more red pepper flakes than I'm usually comfortable adding, which added a fun little kick in the throat.  This was good and I can certainly see myself making this again, but at this particular moment in time, I can't think of anything that makes this sauce outstanding against many other puttanesca recipes I have.

streetwalkers and subtle hints

By the way, those two things don't really go together in real life.

For the moment, trusting that most of my readers are female, I'm going to go out on a limb and work under the assumption that I'm not the only one who's seen (loves, and owns) Pretty Woman.  I mean, if you're anywhere near my age, it was kind of a rite of passage, right?

So, follow me just a moment - I swear it will all connect.  A couple of nights ago we had Pasta Puttanesca from One-Dish Vegetarian Meals for the first time in a long time.  I always get a kick out of the legend behind this piquant sauce - there are two rumors I favor:

1. The sauce is so good, you just can't resist... (kinda stupid)
2. The sauce, being made up pretty much completely from pantry staples, was easy to put together after a long night of work, when the "ladies of the night" were hungry and a bit...ahem...worn out.

I definitely prefer the second legend - despite the vulgar nature of the legend, it also seems a little more romantic in its dark realism.  I mean, the sauce is good, but it's not irresistible.  Unlike Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

How's that for a segue?

Anyway, in one of the opening scenes, you see Julia's character, Vivian - a hooker - using the fire escape from her apartment to sneak past her landlord, since the money box she and her roommate (also a hooker) keep in the toilet tank is empty.  Classy.  Anyway, she heads over to a bar where she expects to find her friend, and she does, and right before the two of them "head to work," her friend (Kit) puts a bunch of cocktail garnishes - cherries, orange segments, olives - in a napkin to have a snack.

My thought is that that is probably more representative of the way hookers dine.

Maybe Italian streetwalkers are different.  I mean, if I had the choice of eating a paper napkin full of formaldehyde-soaked cherries, drying out orange segments, and dollar store olives, or throwing a can of tomatoes on a skillet with some olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, and high-quality black olives and tossing the resulting sauce with hearty and stomach-sating spaghetti....

...I'd rather be an Italian hooker.

So on that tactful and international note, why don't we head north a bit and grab a little influence on our way to the Red Light District of New Orleans?

Through the only moderately subtle influence of PIFA, I've become a little francophilic these past couple of weeks.  The theme for PIFA, in case the huge Eiffel Tower in the middle of the Kimmel Center's plaza didn't give it away, is France (Paris) in the first few decades of the last century.  I'm not normally a big fan of France, but there is something undeniably romantic about Paris, enough that even my anti-France husband thinks I should go to Paris because it's enchanting.

Obviously, with its French Quarter, NOLA owes quite a bit of its cultural, linguistic, and culinary history to France and continues to capitalize on the vague resemblance.  The Poor-Man's Paris?  Anyway, with the near-constant reminder of all things French due to my mild obsession with PIFA, I thought it would be fun to revive a dish I haven't made in a while: Vegetable Etouffee, also from One-Dish Vegetarian Meals.

Someday, I'm going to have to find/order some authentic Louisiana Pecan rice to serve with this.  The brown rice was fine, but probably not as uniquely flavored as my brain lets me believe the recommended rice is.  This is the first time that I made this without toasting the flour first and honestly, I can't say it suffered much.  The whole thing probably could have simmered about 5 minutes more, but as long as its actual flavor is cloaked, the soft, subtle crunch of the zucchini was kind of fun and stands out against the creaminess of the kidney beans.

The sauce could be a little more flavorful.  The rebel in me wants to mix in some bourbon next time to see what happens.  The Yankee in me is poking me in the brain right now to remind me that I don't like bourbon.