We Shop Badly, But Make Some Mean Rapini

In many respects, yesterday was a no good, dirty rotten, very bad day for me and Bean. But mostly for me. There are many dangers specific to college life, but perhaps none so insidious as sleep deprivation. I'm honestly not sure if that is the true root of my series of failures today, but it's my go-to-scapegoat.

Allow me a brief anecdote to illustrate the pervasiveness of today's theme: my shirt was inside out all day and I didn't notice. In this day and age it's hard to tell a seam from a stylish accent, but I've never heard of a stylish accent tag.

But to be honest, today's real villain isn't lack of sleep. It's Price Chopper. Specifically, whoever is in charge of designing their packaging. Here's what I have to say to them:

THE GREAT SAUCE CATASTROPHE:

Feeling exhausted and generally under-motivated, we decided to make some more excellent sauce (as seen in Monday's post), some better pasta, sautee some broccoli rabe, and call it a day. We ran to PChops to buy some more crushed tomatoes and a few other necessities.

Here it is ... looking innocent.

The Price Chopper brand tomatoes were by far the cheapest. Being the responsible and thrifty shoppers that we are, we examined the front of the cans for potential weirdness, and, finding nothing untoward, bought some. 

When we got back to the kitchen and opened the cans, I became suspicious. I tasted, and went into a paroxysm of horror and disgust.

I turned the can around to look at the ingredients and --

Chemistry. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

There was really no salvaging it at that point. Adding sauteed onion and pepper flakes made it better, but the fields had already been sown with salt, so to speak. Except we actually added the salt, because canned sauce (which this basically was) is always so weirdly sweet.

BROCCOLI RABE/RAPINI:

Although thoroughly disheartened, Bean threw herself into preparing our broccoli rabe, which turns out to be a more elaborate process than we initially realized. I decided to get behind the camera this time and document Bean's progress.

Step 1: Trimming the stems. At this point we realized we had an obscene amount of rapini.

Bean in action.

Step 2: Blanching in salty water. This was complicated by our complete lack of ice, so we ended up throwing the bowl into the freezer for a while before filling it with cold water.

We thought it might shrink down a lot like spinach. This didn't really happen.

Step 3: Sauteeing with olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. The wok spits like a llama and tried to burn my face off.

Aw, look at her struggle.

So after about 45 minute's work, we had a mediocre-to-fair rainy day meal. We're not winning any prizes for this one, but it was definitely edible.

Yes, it needed exactly this much parmesan.

CAUTIONARY TALE OF THE DAY:

Honestly, I feel like this entire experience has been a cautionary tale, but here's a bonus pro tip. 

When you are cutting onions, your eyes will sting. You will tear up like a baby, hate life, and run to stick your head under the spigot. Or at least, that's always my experience. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, as long as you're not super attached to your dignity.

What you should never, ever do, is screw your eyes shut, turn your head away, and continue to chop. That will result in your nearly severing your thumb. I think most people would consider that to be a negative. Unless you are Frodo or something, then that could actually work out.