You’re masked and fogged, walking a tiny cart around the gourmet grocery store. You’re looking for delicious vegetables you haven’t tried yet and Loblaws, because of the pandemic, is fresh out of jicama and just about everything. But here . . . $5 baby Chinese eggplants! Pico broccolinitinietti! $7 for a bunch the size of a sprig of dill! You bought some of these things last week. You roasted them in the oven. You forgot about them and now they droop over the edges of the shelves in your refrigerator like the clocks in a Salvador Dali painting.
Pasta for the passing punster.
There is a Great Wall of pasta beyond the vegetable section. Different shapes of pasta you haven’t tried yet! Made from durum wheat which is . . . google . . . a tetraploid species of wheat . . . whatever. You spot one that looks like the tubey pasta you once ate with bolognese sauce at a lovely restaurant which has closed because of the pandemic, but it gives you a few happy memories, so you bring it home.
The label says it is ‘ziti.’ To the right is a picture of what it looks like bubbling away in the pot. The one you love comes by and calls it pea-shooteretti. It takes a full 12 minutes for the pasta become even slightly al dented and, drained and resting in the colander, it resembles the inner tubes from a tiny bicycle.
Here’s where things get worse. You have crafted a sauce of sauteed, chopped eggplant mixed with black diced olives cooked in a chunky tomato base. You pour it generously over the pasta. The two of you decide to eat dinner while watching an old episode of The Wire and settle into your matching La-Z-Boys, steaming bowls in hand. A few minutes go by. Perhaps inspired by the carnage in front of him, your loved one looks down at his dinner and declares ‘it looks like a bowl of guts.’ He finds this amusing. You try to finish your meal. The next day, increasingly pleased with himself, he says the remains you heaved last night in a fit into the compost as, ‘wow, now it looks like someone was disembowelled.’ You write a blog that will, you hope, embarrass him. No chance. He has forgotten all about it and is happily wondering what’s on the menu for dinner tonight. You think you’ll surprise him.