Friends, I cooked the loveliest dinner: olive oil poached cod; smoked asparagus; multigrain bread; a glass of Chablis. Everything smelled beautifully and looked as nice; our anticipation was swell.
And then I gently put my fork into my perfectly flaking fish, applied just a bit of pressure and as the fish broke SAW A CURLY, PINK, NOT-A-VEIN BIT OF NASTY. I will eat pretty much any food that drops onto the ground, whether my kitchen floor or the sidewalk. I'm not great at washing my hands fastidiously all the time. I'm definitely not a germ alarmist. But I will tell you that my stomach turned so precipitously that I surely would have yakked up a lung if I'd not pushed my plate away as lightspeed-quickly as I did. I was literally green at the gills, nauseous as a 1st trimester gal with child. Also I was repulsed, and I fully intend to bring both fish and finding back to the market tomorrow.
Uuuuuugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Fortunately, I had one bowl of turkey chili left from last night and a few biscuits too. Plan B was terrific. I'd made some cinnamon-honey rice pudding earlier with the whey from the ricotta so treated myself to a small bit of that as well.
I really was a cooking machine today: the ricotta; rice pudding; candied kumquats; the failed dinner; something else too, though now it escapes me. Aren't these kumquats pretty? I saved a few seeds to plant tomorrow, just in case I'm struck with a green thumb.
