Cooking dinner all day long

 

It didn’t really take all day, but cooking Eggplant Parmesan took up much of my day. I had invited Teddy and Sue for dinner and promised to cook it because Teddy’s favorite food is apparently eggplant. So this morning, knowing I was between projects, I planned to spend the morning cooking. I read my emails, took a quick look at comments on Facebook, and was ready to roll.

When I cook what Jordan calls casserole dishes, the worst part to me is the chopping. So I did it in order of hardest to easiest—chopped and sauteed the onion. The recipe said for each thing, “In another skillet ….” How many skillets do they think I have? I cooked one thing, dumped it into a bowl, cooked the next, dumped it into the same bowl, and moved on. So I got to a point where I had onion and ground beef cooked and in the bowl. I added breadcrumbs, pecorino cheese, tomato sauce, egg—and then tackled the eggplant. Halved the two eggplants Sue had brought me and found, to my dismay, that both were—I don’t know—not right. Eggplant discolors quickly when cut, but these were discolored form the getgo. Teddy brought me two new ones.

It’s not easy to scoop the insides out of an eggplant half, but I did it, using the cross hatch method my girls have taught me for scooping out avocados. The recipe said to boil the diced eggplant, but my note on it said sauté, so I did. By early afternoon, I finally had four stuffed eggplant halves. I took a nap. One thing about this dish is the lovely presentation—so of course I forgot to take a picture.

We had a fine dinner, and they seemed to like the eggplant. And we had long discussions, ranging from relatives and friends to politics. Sue insists trump will be president in 2024 because Republicans will vote their pocketbooks. I insist that he may be indicted by then, and whether he is or not, enough Americans, even Republicans, have the good sense not to vote for him. His presidency was a disaster for everyone but the one percent—and those who are brainwashed by disinformation.

Those are the folks that worry me—the ones who believe every conspiracy theory that comes down the road. They still think Hilary Clinton was operating a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor, Joe Biden is responsible for everything from supply chain problems to the shortage of baby formula, Democrats are replacing whites with people of color as a path to power (can you believe anyone believes that?). I am particularly angry with those who claim that Biden is senile—everything he has done and accomplished, from stopping the pandemic deaths to orchestrating international support for Ukraine, argues that he is a man in full command of an incredible mind. His style is certainly different from trump—he goes quietly along, often with his head slightly down, doing what he thinks is right and not bothering about ratings and the like. I have felt the sincerity of his words several times, most recently at the memorial to the victims of the Buffalo shooting.

I just don’t believe that Americans will vote again for the man who unleashed that much hate on America, a man who is now supporting Putin and criticizing US support for Ukraine—he never was able to think beyond the immediate moment to the consequences, in this case of Russia rolling over all of Europe. Yes, he has followers, but their numbers are not overwhelming when compared to the citizens of this country. And those Republican pocketbooks—really, how many will vote that way?

I didn’t start out to proselytize, but now I find I have backed myself into a corner, but it’s a corner I’m comfortable in: Vote blue at all levels. The future of this country, the future of women depends on it.

Sorry. I didn’t mean to rant. But politics engages so much of my mind these days. It’s either politics or cooking with me, unless you want to hear more about the writing process, which also fills my days.