In her cartoons, Roz Chast captures the unreasonable paranoias, internal monologues, and existential-petty angst of uber-regular people, especially New Yorkers. I love her examination of normality, and all its defying quirks. I see myself in her characters, which brings both light embarrassment and a shrugging giddiness. Daydreams and neuroses are a part of all of us, and I don’t really mind being proto-typical or self-analyzing. We’re all types. I listen to NPR podcasts while I walk my dog, possibly like a million others; I move the car, in PJs, according to my very particular alternate-side-street-parking strategy, like a weirdo. We are all strange. I love Roz Chast for both gently ridiculing and wholly celebrating us.
I feel like our society’s fixation with food could be her next topic. You can imagine her frazzled characters in shlumpy outfits carrying New Yorker tote bags exclaiming over the dearth of certified organic options or the careless extinction of heirloom tomato varieties. She could play up the complicit silence/internal rage surrounding the casually brazen rounding-up of sum totals at a favored farmstand (injustice at every turn!). She could depict the turn when pride in a groaning cornucopia in the kitchen-counter produce bowl slowly becomes (after a week of *mostly* take out) a source of nail-biting guilt when fruit flies descend. She could find hilarity in the seriousness of seasonal cooks like myself, who mark time with the beauty and fleetingness of summer peaches, the abundance of fall gourds, the forthcoming total grimness of winter turnips and rutabagas.
And that food calendar of mine is feeling out of whack, I admit. Though it’s late October, there are still tables full of bona fide summer produce on display at the farmer’s market. Eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, CORN. It’s weird. And somewhat of a conflict when you’re psyched to start cooking squash, and stews, and stuffed cabbage. I mean, do you cook solely according to your cravings, or do you cook with what’s fleeting?? It’s a conundrum I feel like only Roz would understand. I fall squarely in the camp of shunning personal desire for taking advantage of short-lived availability. (A friend once ordered lasagna in a Dominican restaurant in Washington Heights, because that’s what he felt like eating. Lasagna. In a Dominican restaurant. Whaaaat??) Yet how silly to cook something only because you are seasonally able to and won’t be able to do soon. That said, this is still entirely how I live my life.
So if your local market is still flush, and you are FOMO-oriented like me when it comes to produce, here are some last-minute ideas to take advantage while you still can (italics to indicate Chast’s eyes-bugged-out emphasis). These ideas also consider the fact that it is fall, and that a cranked oven, steamy pot of pasta water, or a warming soup is entirely appropriate.
FOMO Ideas for Lingering Summer Produce:
Pizza, pasta alla Norma, tortilla soup.
- Corn fritters: plain with maple syrup and/or bacon and/or hot sauce, or with basil and tiny cubes of mystery cheese from the fridge drawer (like cheddar, gruyere, gouda) cooked inside. (Quick recipe: 2 ears corn, 1 egg, splash of milk, enough flour to make thick batter (~1/2 cup); don't overmix; cook in butter)
- Pizza: roast all the veggies you couldn’t resist buying (zucchini, eggplant, peppers, etc, plus an onion and some chopped garlic), place on pizza dough with homemade or storebought pesto, and top with ricotta or mozzarella. When out of the oven, drizzle with more pesto.
- Healthy-striving version of Pasta alla Norma: roasted eggplant, fresh tomato sauce, basil, pasta.
- Roasted tomatoes: for salads, for sauces, for eating out of hand in a feeding frenzy. (These can also be frozen for a winter day—so resourceful!)
- Tortilla soup: chicken broth, corn, tomatoes, peppers, cilantro.
- Corn chowder: I talk in detail about it here.
- Fresh tomato sauce with sausage and tons of basil, served with spaghetti squash: summer on top, fall below.
What do you cook when global warming is messing with your available ingredients? And would you order lasagna in a place specializing in rice and beans and the world’s most delicious baked chicken?
