MENU

Sections

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy

More

  • Support the Spy
  • About Spy Community Media
  • Advertising with the Spy
  • Subscribe
October 2, 2023

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy
Local Life Food Friday Spy Top Story

Food Friday: Weekly Challenges

September 8, 2023 by Jean Sanders Leave a Comment

Share

Oh, I am going to miss those slow, lazy days of summer. When there was some time to think; I miss the time we had for making choices. School has started and we are back in our familiar, though swift-moving, routines. We leap out of bed to shower, Hoover up breakfast, gather lunch, dash out the door, work, learn, play, volunteer, weed, grocery shop, home to chop, slice, dice, cook and scrub. Whew. Not to mention getting ready to do it all again tomorrow. And laundry.

This is when we have to get strategic, and plan ahead, just a bit – even if the future only means saving enough time and energy to read a chapter of Lessons in Chemistry before bed. And maybe we’ll talk to our family while doing all the food prep. How else are we to experience teen angst all over again, if not through our children? (I’ve noticed it is hard to be glued to an iPhone when you are chopping onions, too.) We can conduct our own Cordon Bleu school of cooking – where else will you be able to experiment with different methods for peeling garlic? They certainly will never acknowledge us in the moment, but the children will learn more through osmosis and experience in your kitchen than from YouTube. As Julia says: “…no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.”

We like having a couple of recipes on our steady weekly meal rotation: Monday is pasta, Friday is pizza. I’m usually happy and ambitious on Mondays, and by Friday I can barely drag the stand mixer out of the pantry to make the pizza dough. If Monday is frantic we will have a simple, no extra-shopping-required pasta, like spaghetti with butter and garlic, or Cacio e Pepe. Recently the New York Times published a Baked Spaghetti lasagna-type casserole which is one of its most popular recipes. It is insanely easy, and has the added benefit of being perfect for left-overs: for dinner or lunch. Baked Spaghetti.

Baked spaghetti is as satisfying as lasagne, without the terrifying process of layering slippery, boiling hot, ribbons of lasagne in a pan, or remembering the proper order of sauce, mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese, hot pasta, sauce, which cheese? And with baked spaghetti you don’t have to make enormous commercial-kitchen-size pans of baked spaghetti. You can adapt it to the moment and the number of folks home for dinner tonight. This Sunday I am going to assemble a pan of spaghetti to bake on Monday night, to have again for lunch on Tuesday, and for dinner (again) on Thursday. I’ve never been able to re-heat Cacio e Pepe satisfactorily, so once we get this dish into the meal rotation it will simplify life. Which will save time and aggravation and will give us a brief moment of breathing space.

I can’t begin to contemplate dense and complicated fall and winter casseroles, and while this is warm meal, this pasta dish isn’t just for winter weather. It bakes for 40 minutes, so we won’t be heating up the kitchen too long. And it doesn’t require much in the way of fancy techniques or ingredients: it’s not Boeuf Bourguignon or Baba Ghanouj. It is warm, satisfying, and it re-heats well, making leftovers an added treat in our busy week.

If you have time on your hands on a Sunday afternoon, as I did last week, go ahead and bake this chocolate cake. We have been doling out pieces for lunch every day, and the cake just gets better as the week goes on: Ruth Reichl’s Giant Chocolate Cake https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017692-ruth-reichls-giant-chocolate-cake?unlocked_article_code=TkDK1ae-xVzuIIpW28vv9oEDVKoUiJaoio5wmt3_MpWXHF4UTRDT8sxmjrvUxmSrstkKld723jhGp65Gy0zI_v1REzz8m_JJjn3-IODZo-YEnjC-cyOnrhtRyQ__WDOSydOPSOgaocLjMbnCJMzZS0XwRFCf1l64lt4fe6fNOax8l_oudo9aLlXNamlwkNrAoL8zH4t5_pBhyY1OYqrJ682VVZFxQoUIc3UeuLKyyZ2jT9H3XCiEk2YvO5_SQjG3bPQlRChjooMrDaX8d64zvgPHEYE-PHVB2JAcrYa3sHMYj-v4L_sOjdYvgZu4pQBpBmN0EvzEBukqQ0EZrGmOjywk06fzYQ&smid=share-url I made it as a sheet cake, not a layer cake, and I halved the recipe, because we didn’t need that much cake tempting us every day. Deelish.

It helps to read the email notes from NYT readers who have already cooked the recipes. They tend to be amusing, acerbic, and insightful. One reader suggested substituting ziti for the spaghetti noodles – they thought the spaghetti dried out too much during the baking process and ziti stays moist and hefty. One other of the notes: “Classic! Whenever I use marinara from a jar, I rinse the jar out with 1/2 cup of red wine, which I add to the sauce. It transforms any off-the-shelf marinara.” That is pure inspiration. I love it when folks openly admit to buying jarred sauce. We are not alone.

“‘If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.’”

― John Irving

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Food Friday, Spy Top Story

About Jean Sanders

Preparing for 16th Chesapeake Film Festival with Sandy Cannon-Brown Insight Meditation Community Offers Introductory Class

Write a Letter to the Editor on this Article

We encourage readers to offer their point of view on this article by submitting the following form. Editing is sometimes necessary and is done at the discretion of the editorial staff.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2023

Affiliated News

  • The Cambridge Spy
  • The Talbot Spy

Sections

  • Arts
  • Culture
  • Ecosystem
  • Education
  • Health
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Spy Senior Nation

Spy Community Media

  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us
  • Advertising & Underwriting

Copyright © 2023 · Spy Community Media Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in