LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF SALAD

         My ducks are in order. Today is the day to cook. For two weeks now I have been planning on making a great batch of Mostaccioli Salad. The pasta itself has been sitting in the cupboard for a month. It was on sale, four boxes for two dollars, one week in late July. I bought boxes of penne rigati, farfalle, fusilli and mostaccioli. The other three are gone. Now for my culinary masterpiece!

         It requires carrots, an onion, a green pepper, bacon and a creamy salad dressing. Carrots are never a problem around here. I buy them but rarely eat them, but in this area every house should keep some on hand in case the neighbors come visiting on horseback. Carrots do not grow moldy, they simply shrivel with age. The batch today had been bought in mid-June, but there was still life in it.

         As for the rest of the non-bottled ingredients, the farm stand is less than a half mile away in case I need fresh. I was going to make it back in early August, but found the bacon had overstayed its welcome that day. This package was bought last week. It is not lower in sodium, which I prefer, not for health reasons but because it shrinks less. Had I cooked this much longer today we would have had bacon bits.

         You want salad dressing? This is the place to come. There are seven varieties in the fridge, but strangely none added up to the 1.25 cups required. A normal sized bottle is approximately one cup of dressing, so I made the choice to add a second bottle of parmesan peppercorn to the remainder of the first and rid the house of the stuff. Miraculously on Sunday while at the store, I remembered to buy it.

         I hear you asking, "Isn't that an awful lot of salad for one? Does the dog like pasta salad?" The answers are 'yes' and 'no'. Tomorrow is the graveside service. Naturally I must invite the guests to stop here afterward. After driving 180 miles they ought to be hungry. Of course, no one is coming, but I shall be hungry when I arrive home after my physical labor.

         I spent the morning working on that which brings in the money to buy the pasta, and then began to make my lunch, leftover tuna salad from dinner last night combined with sliced tomatoes. Before I sliced the tomato, I put the water on to boil and began to cook the bacon. This time I remembered to spray the pan with PAM, not Lysol spray, which I used last time. I did not have the guts that time to cook with it to see if it killed salmonella.

         None of this kitchen work was done easily. A little over an hour before lunch, the sky clouded over and shortly after, a rumble of distant thunder was heard. Within fifteen minutes it was raining hard. I was in the cellar office when the dog alerted me to the change of weather, and alerted me, and alerted me, and alerted me. For the next two hours she followed me everywhere. She must think I have a charm that wards off angry gods.

         At least she was not hyperventilating, but as I grated my carrots and turned about to attend to the stove, I had to remember that someone was standing or lying directly behind me. Transferring six quarts of boiling water from the burner to the colander in the sink while nudging a 95 pound dog out of the way is not how Emeril is used to working. I did keep the water from splashing the dog or me.

         I got out the largest bowl I have and dumped the salad dressing into it, along with two tablespoons of sugar. It was at this time that I realized I should not have drained the bacon grease and put it in the freezer. I needed two tablespoons. It had only been a few minutes but by the time I took it out, the grease was solid. I doubt that anyone will notice its absence, especially when all guests will be coming disguised as empty chairs.

         The bacon is supposed to be crumbled and added just before serving, but I decided the way to give it the taste of bacon grease would be to put the bacon in now. This would also prevent me from forgetting the bacon in the first place. As the good book says, David tossed it all together, stirred it a bit, and 'saw that it was good'. Into the fridge it went, covered with aluminum foil.

         Looking at the destruction I had visited upon the kitchen, I realized that what I needed was not a dog but a side sink man to clean up the mess. No one in the audience volunteered, so I filled the slowest draining sink in the west myself and began the clean up process. By the time I had finished the sun was shining again and the cooler weather promised for tomorrow had begun to rush in.

         I should be feeling proud of my accomplishment. I have now accounted for dinner for the next five or six days. I won't have to eat it every day. I have a pound plus of chopped steak to share with the dog for one night, and there is good old pesto for another. Yet, I must admit there is a letdown, and I know that by Friday I will be trying to interest the cat in pasta salad.

         I know what I will do. Tomorrow we depart about nine, the dog in the back seat, me driving. I will put the glass bowl in the back. The dog will be singing her head off,

'It's got a back seat, you can't lose it,
any ole time you use it,
gotta be bark 'n woof music,
if you wanna dance with me."

After 180 miles of that, I will take the bowl and put it in the refrigerator at the cabin. Surely a hungry hunter will stop later this fall.

Valatie September 4, 2001