Pumpkin and Spice

 I wanna come clean about something- I don't like eggplants. When I say I don't like them, I mean I really hate them. I don't even like eggplant parmesan, and it's breaded, deep fried and covered in cheese and tomato sauce! I'd probably eat a sneaker if you fried it and covered it in sauce and cheese- but not an eggplant. I don't like the little seeds, I don't like the wet, spongy texture, I don't like the bitter flavor. Bleh.

I feel a little bad about my distaste for eggplants- I really hate to be a picky eater, and I'll taste dishes with eggplants in them, but I just have a hard time getting over my hang-up. One eggplant-centric dish I like (minus the eggplant, of course) is ratatouille. Ratatouille is a thick, hearty, French stew, made with lots and lots of veggies, most notably, eggplant. It's also fantastically inexpensive to make, as it tended to be, as the characters in the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille point out, "peasant food". (And, as Linguine points out, it also sounds a lot like "Rat-patootie".) There's no meat, no cream, no butter, no exotic ingredients- just simple veggies, stewed and savory.

I don't often order it at restaurants, but I've made it at home before, with a little tweak- I substitute meaty portabella mushrooms for the eggplant. I know this makes it a less-than traditional version, but if I'm making it for myself, I see no reason to use an ingredient I don't care for.

One year in my Christmas stocking I got a small, paperback cookbook (2000, according to the publishing info inside). It's one of those "brand name food item" cookbooks that you find at the grocery store checkout with the National Enquirer and People magazine. It's called "Velveeta: Recipes for People Who Eat Food."

I think Santa gave it as a joke, because while everyone needs more Velveeta recipes, this is one strange little cookbook. The recipes are exactly what you'd expect, but the actual copy in the book is a little... quirky. I don't know who wrote it (no author is credited), but the chapter intros are so weird that I have to assume they locked the guy in a windowless room and told him he couldn't see his wife or kids until he wrote about "Quick Fixin' Dinners". I'll provide an example in a moment.