Once More Around the Block

Today’s adventure in getting lost in a small town I have lived in for four years took me (eventually) to my chum Andrew’s house. We went to the printer and looked at proofs for his new chapbook, which will be lovely. Then over a delicious lunch he gave me the following recipe:

Dice beets. Sauté in olive oil for a while. Add dry spaghetti and sauté it for a while too. (Sauté dry spaghetti, he says. He says this like it’s something everyone does all the time, as if you call up your pals and they say, “Oh, yeah, just watching the ball game and sautéing dry spaghetti.”) Then add boiling water and some other things and cook it for a while. Then you have pink pasta.

I am clearly out of my league, here. I have done the following things with spaghetti: boil it, pour jar of sauce on it. Andrew is from England. He has notions of yogurt beyond my wildest dreams.

I have accomplished nothing remotely housefrauey today. But I am in awe of the fact that this nice lady made a sweater for a tree. Now I must learn to knit and make sweaters for something. I don’t have any trees. Maybe I can make a sweater for my neighbor’s dumpster.