Enter Sandman

Pantry Tuna Cauliflower Casserole

I married a pantry tuna noodle with a cauliflower mac and cheese idea to form this super easy Dump Casserole for Two.

The zombie apocalypse came to my apartment this night.  After a troubled morning, P went straight back to bed feeling fatigued with a big headache.  I waited all day for him to rise back up but it didn't happen. I thought the smell of something in the oven might coax him out.  I tiptoed in a few times to check and the bedroom was pitch black and cold as ice.  I got a little spooked because we had moved into the 'getting better' phase and this was a step backwards.  He went to the bathroom a few times so I knew he was alive but moved real slow and deliberate, like you do when you're injured.  Declined invitations to come out came in barely audible mumbles. Late night arrived and I set up a bed in the living room.  Around 2:30 I hear someone breathing through my earbuds.  Are you up Patrick?, I yell out in the dark.  Like something out of my nightmares, I turn my computer screen to see P sitting in a chair in the dark kind of hunched over.  I believe he was sleep walking but it's unclear really what happened.  His head was down and his eyes closed as he spoke whispery like the last time but after some effort I got him back in bed and he was able to eat and then eventually speak normally.  I still don't know if he was awake through any of it.  We may never know.  He awoke the next day refreshed and twice as better so we decided to ignore it for now, chalk it up to yet another COVID layer.

• 1/4 cup shredded carrots and onions 
• can of Cream of Mushroom soup 
• 1/2 cup of yogurt 
• 1 can of tuna 
• 1/2 cup of shredded cheese 
• 1 cup of cooked pasta 
• 2 cup of Cauliflower Chopped into bite sized chunks (cooked last 5 minutes with pasta)

Stir everything together in a buttered casserole dish and top with bread crumbs.  Don't forget to add cracked black pepper and salt.

Coming through the COVID cloud, I find myself fuzzy and unable to process all that I've set aside for when I felt better.  Many tasks on my lists tend to become unnecessary with time.   I sort of remember questions that were important right before this shutdown hit.  I got the news I was furloughed somewhere in the middle of this virus and definitely put that down on the we'll get back to that shelf.  I still can't wrap my head around the vastness of this impact but that may be a crucial protective coating, so I'm not going to try until we're both much healthier.

Take My Hand, We're Off to Never Neverland

Stuffed Japanese Yams

Fall is as pretty as spring and just as fleeting.  I thought it was starting very late but it turns out the first week of November is right on time for this area.  After all the leaves fall off the trees in the coming months, this colorful time feels like a dream.  Not my dreams mind you.  My dreams are creepy and dark.  I have many a recurring and some are for the books.  I have a house that lives somewhere in my slumbered mind complete with back rooms that keep going for blocks in every direction.  There is a blocked off entrance to separate this desolate area of the never ending building complete with furnished bedrooms, kitchens, offices, hallways, windows that look out onto empty space all interconnecting and endless in every direction.  After some wandering, there is often evidence of someone lurking there suddenly and then it becomes a rush to find my way back through the maze, running frantically back to the safety of the living room of my first apartment in my mom and dad's house.  I might stop in a bedroom with the feeling of someone living there that is loving and I'll feel momentarily protected. Doilies on the nightstand, a cigarette burning in the ashtray.  Signs that person was just there but we never pass.  Sometimes I see a barely visible shadow just out of the corner of my eye.  Last night, I never made it out of that living room or through the boarded up entrance.  Instead the normally still space itself turned into a wet carpeted, feces filled disgusting room that I had to maneuver through. There were mic stands and lots of coiled wires.  How did it get this way?  I remember thinking I knew it was getting bad but didn't realize how much.  But apparently this was not the plot.  The dream was centered around the fact that the neighbors who are my real neighbors here in Brooklyn, rented the downstairs of my family's second home on Webster Street, the one with the bizarre portal entrance.  They came home and found me asleep on the floor in one of their rooms, which was actually my mom and dad's bedroom at one point in real life.  When I awoke still in the dream, I was also very surprised to be downstairs and not in my own flat upstairs.  I was on the floor between the dresser and the bed.  That back room had it's own entrance and was often very cold as it was right then laying on the floor.  Cold like winter.  I heard them talking about me in the other room and the wife asking if this has ever happened before to her husband.  All the while I pretended to stay asleep because I was embarrassed to be there.  Then when no one was looking, I crept up the back stairwell to my own bed where P was awake and I had to tell him the story that I didn't even understand myself.  But not before walking through that horrible, revolting, stinky living room again. 

For breakfast we went to eat at Black Forest Brooklyn, hoping to have bit of a celebration seeing as P got a new job.  We had fun but were starving and my plate came about 10 minutes after P's and not before we had to beg the inexperienced but friendly waiter for it.  In the end, it was mediocre and we know better than to keep expecting excellence from this place but it's a few doors down and we like close.  They have great coffee.

But for dinner I matched the Fall colors with these stuffed Japanese yams and sweet potatoes.