Weekly Menu June 28

(For past entries in my Weekly Menu series go over to my place and look for the Weekly Menu tag.)

So earlier this week a coworker had baked some zucchini in butter and parmesan and brought in some of the leftovers for lunch. That got me thinking. And when Danny thinks about food the results are (usually) on point.

Zucchini Alfredo over Linguine

1 whole zucchini (washed, peeled, and sliced)

One serving of linguine noodles (that's just what I had on had at the time but I bet you could do with just about any noodle)

About a handful of shredded Monzarella cheese

About 1/2 cup of Alfredo sauce (I really need to learn how to home make that stuff)

Salt

Pepper

Sesame Seeds

About 4 tblsp of butter (cut into pat sized pieces)

Preheat your oven to about 350. While that is heating spread your sliced zucchini across a lightly greased baking pan (I'm almost willing to bet you don't need any grease since zucchini give off a lot of water but I didn't want to chance it), try to make it one layer if possible and remember that the thinner you slice it the faster it cooks. I topped mine with salt, pepper, sesame seeds, and butter. Cover the pan and put it in the oven and then start preparing your noodles by the directions on the box. Truthfully I don't know how long that zucchini baked but the goal is to bake it until you can easily cut it with a fork. Drain the noodles once they are done and put on the plate. Place the zucchini on top of the noodles. Drizzle the alfredo sauce over that and top with the shredded cheese.

That was some good shit. I'll have to remember this one and make it again.

How close are you to your food?

Yesterday, I was feeling creative and decided to vegetize homemade macaroni. I bought pasta shells, 2 different varieties of "Italian blend" shredded cheese, a bag of shredded parmesan cheese, red and yellow peppers, fresh zucchini, and soy milk.

I went home, sauteed the vegetables in olive oil and ground pepper, boiled the noodles, added the milk and the cheese (and a little butter) to the noodles, and found that the cheese was clumpy and sticking to the spoon, and just not mixing well at all. I was used to the powdered kind, or the creamy "sauce packet" kind that came in the box.

Then is hit me: I had never, before only embarrassingly recently, considered cheese as a possibility for a pasta topping. Tomato sauce, alfredo sauce, beef sauce, sure. Cheese? Huh? That didn't even occur to me.

Even though I've been eating macaroni and cheese for my entire life.

My mom even made homemade macaroni and cheese. She used Velveeta, though, because it melted easily. It wasn't real cheese, and the easy meltability wasn't indicative of a "cheesiness," but rather a feature of the food product.

It only just now occurred to me that I can put cheese on pasta and that cheesy pasta isn't just some weird invention. And I've been eating macaroni and cheese my entire life. What does that say about our relationship with food today? (All right, I'm only talking about my relationship with food today, but I hardly think my experience is unique.) Macaroni and cheese didn't come from a blue and yellow box. It came from PASTA AND CHEESE. Kraft simply made a product out of the combination, and we allowed Kraft to redefine macaroni and cheese for us, to the point that cheese and pasta without the blue and yellow box stopped making sense.

Oh, if you're curious, the macaroni that I made was amazing: