Sick-Boy Casserole.
I had a lively discussion with my co-worker V yesterday about the inherent lameness of casseroles after he got offended when I dismissed his lunch as “disgusting.” The brownish-yellow pasta-chicken-Velveeta confection (seemingly proliferating in culture in its Gladware container) looked like a strange combination of a forgotten freshmen biology experiment and the undersea palace in The Little Mermaid.
“I don’t mean ‘disgusting’- disgusting,” I went on. “Just disgusting in that it’s such a lame middle-American concept that tossing some protein into cheese-smothered carbs and shoving it into an oven on 350 equals a meal.”
“It’s so filling, though! And yum!!!” was his argument, as he Hoovered another forkful.
Conversation of food that looks like vomit notwithstanding, I was feeling shitty yesterday. The bipolar weather, wearing sweaters instead of jackets, and mingling with a cadre of new bacteria during Toledo’s feeble attempt at a gallery hop probably all contributed to my cold; as, I’m sure, did the fact that I’d been eating restaurant food (only some of it good) almost exclusively for the last six days; and also, my mind was still reeling from the odd, junior high coldstare I received at a party on Saturday, from one of the most vacuous people I’ve ever known.
And I was hungry.
Long story short: I was ready to end my day-long fast of kombucha and zinc, and make something on my own, in my own kitchen for a change. Something warm and familiar and mushy. Something not necessarily “healthy,” but maybe just healthy for my weird mood. But most importantly!: something that would not require me to change out of my drawstring pants or leave the house. Something like a casserole!
After turning my Snob Dial down to level 2 and braving chaos that is our pantry, I emerged with a box of penne, a jar of organic roasted garlic tomato sauce, and a bag of plastic shredded mozzarella I filched from my parents house a few weeks ago, when I was exceptionally poor and grocery shopping out of their fridge (mind you, I am still exceptionally poor and continue to grocery shop out of their fridge).
As I put the penne on the stove, I remembered the huge, unopened, 10lb bag of cruciferae languishing the freezer, purchased during a trip to Costco in which I was feeling especially virtuous. I cut it open, weeded out some broccoli and a handful of julienned yellow carrots, tossing them into the boiling pasta when it was about a minute away from being done. A minute later, I strained it all, tossed it into a bowl with the tomato sauce and mozzarella, and thought to myself, “Man, some ricotta would really come in handy right now!” There was no ricotta to be found. However, there was a packet of cream cheese I made the horrible mistake of freezing and thawing, only to discover that thawed cream cheese turns into this crumbly, liquid mass that kind of resembles — hey!!!! I tossed in half a packet of bad cream cheese, stirred everything around, decanted it into oven safe Pyrex, and chucked the whole thing into the oven.
I lingered in the kitchen while the casserole baked, as my oven is absolutely not to be trusted when left to its own devices. I took a handful of stray penne from the colander, and one by one, sopped up the remaining tomato sauce in its pan; the whole while thinking about how disgusting the monstrosity in the oven was going to taste. “Still,” I thought, “it does feel nice to be cooking for myself.”
The moment of truth came, and I was astonished to find that the casserole was actually kind of delicious in the trashiest, most anti-epicurean way possible. The culinary equivalent of watching a Bad Girls Club marathon in your parents’ basement on Thanksgiving Day, really. I anointed my casserole with parmesan and red pepper flakes and ate it straight out of the pan while watching an HBO show on DVD that I’d rather not discuss here, congratulating myself with every bite, and feeling better than anyone in my delicate condition has any right to feel.
