That Goose is Cooked

In an amazingly domestic attempt to bulk up our (my) recipe repertoire, I've been spending hours each week digging through cookbooks, magazines, and online catalogues trying to find new dinners - preferably fast ones. Easy as it sounds, recipe bowling has become kind of an extreme sport in our house. No gluten, no mammals (he's trying to change that), no peanuts, no eggs, no cannellini or lima beans, no adventurous seafood (I'm trying to change that), getting tired of chicken and turkey, under an hour...it's paragliding, with measuring cups.

As a result, I've tried some strange things in attempting to get us out of our spaghetti-caldo-Tejas salad rut, notably a Norwegian fish stew that was the cuisine equivalent of swimming with sharks, but last night I may have hit a new level of weird. I don't know what I was thinking with a recipe composed mostly of broccoli rabe, chickpeas, and ricotta, but hey, it was sauteed, it was fast, and it didn't have one of our official No foods.

"This is tasteless," I said, about three bites in. "More red pepper? Lemon? Salt? No. It's just...this doesn't...work."

"So I can not like it?" my husband said, hopefully. Poor guy. He looked like he was being tortured. We both tried a few more half-hearted bites, but finally I removed the crime and made a steak for him in restitution.

On the upside, he's decided to cook tonight. And I do love spaghetti.