Depression

I admit it: I am depressed. This is a fact. I am ready for f___ing christmas to be over. I want this gig over with, I want this holiday over with, I want to get back to my kitchen and back to my friends. I belong to a neat little community in Long Beach, and I miss them; and they miss me, or so they tell me when they call. And I went on a date with this guy, and I want to take him out again. I feel like a 16 year old girl, a little bit, just slightly, since, well… he’s kind of dreamy.

It doesn’t help that I had to do all my christmas prep in 2 days, running around an unfamiliar landscape in a rented car, much of which used to be farm and forest land that has been strip-mined into homes and strip malls as far as the eye can see. I’m broke (a relative term), which is a major cramp in my style, and since I waited til the last minute to shop in a basically ordinary place, my usual toy-shopping bacchanalia was pinched into the stressful last-minute nightmare that it is for most people throughout their lives.

The funny thing is I am in the midst of one of the happier periods of my life, I just want to get back to it. I had a lot going on when I left… and I feel interrupted. Oh well. Gotta head out for the 47 fish dinner. Why don’t we do an imaginary menu? Wait, I’ll do the real menu first:

Shrimp cocktail
Mussels in tomato sauce
Squid stuffed with breadcrumbs
Fried smelts
Lasagne with seafood
Spaghetti with clams
and we were supposed to have sweet and sour salt cod, but I forgot to buy the cod before it was too late to soak… so I blew it.

And let’s imagine what we might have:
Although I love salt cod, I would save the *agrodolce* (sweet-sour) treatment for octopus (see below), so I might make:

*baccala* (salt cod) in a salad with potatoes and fennel
*baccalaccio*

sweet-sour octopus cooked in red wine. This gets cooked for a long time with a fragment of cinnamon stick in it. Don’t laugh.
*polpo agrodolce*

roasted eel with cipolline onions
*anguidda ai cipuddini*

shrimp scampi- the real deal with sesame oil, not what they have at Red Lobster
*ammari liguriani*

clams in white sauce
*vongole in bianco*

pasta with whole crabs in marinara sauce
*pasta ai granchi*

panfried smelts with parsely
*cicireddi al pitrusinu*

Whatever you’re eating, have a good holiday.