Butternut, chard and caramelized onion lasagna

I haven’t posted any recipes or cooking-y things in a while. It’s not that I haven’t been making food for myself, it’s just that the food I’ve been making has been utilitarian, the sort of thing you assemble and eat quickly or use for leftovers (noodles with kimchi and poached eggs, curried rice and beans). Also, I can’t lie, there have been several Cereal for Supper nights lately. 

However, it is allegedly spring but still chilly in New York, and tomorrow is Sunday, so perhaps you are thinking of making a nice supper that will allow you to spend several hours in the kitchen and leave you with enough food for a few days’ lunches. If that is the case, read on, and do not be daunted by the number of ingredients or the length of the directions. Also, I suppose you could skip the cashew ricotta steps if your stomach/respiratory system can handle dairy ricotta (mine can’t!), but both my dairy-eating companion and I agreed that the cashew ricotta has a particular charm all its own.

You will need:

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Pickled apples

Is that a thing?

eta: YES IT IS.

Internet mood ring

Sometimes I regret not taking computer coding classes in college. If I had, I would start fewer sentences with “Someone should invent a thing that…” and more sentences with “I’m in the new issue of Wired (again).” I still think it would be great if someone invented a FarmBill app that let you throw corn subsidies at your friends, or if someone invented a website that tracked internet agita over time (like a running line graph, with spikes when everybody just seems super upset about everything). I think it would be fantastic if someone invented a spellcheck that read for context, so people wouldn’t send documents referencing “my dead friend Jane’s party” when dear Jane is very much alive. But I never took computer coding classes in college, so instead of turning my ideas into filthy lucre I turn them into blog posts, for a profit of ~$0.

The latest thing I wish someone would invent is a mood-specific filter for web browsers. You’d have to fill in some information so it could figure out what you personally consider depressing or infuriating or hilarious, and you could teach it about your preferences during the course of normal internetting by clicking examples of things you find depressing or infuriating or hilarious.

Then, see, if you happened to be in a vulnerable state but needed/wanted to read things on the internet anyway you could set your filter to block things like the lead NYT article about the old lady who has no family and no friends and no money and a cat that’s taken to eating bedbugs for sustenance (“In these difficult economic times…”). Or the three-graf blog post about the family whose house was foreclosed and now the kids are being taken away from their parents. Or the think piece about how whatever industry you’re in is doomed, or a study proving that people who live where you live are less likely to find fulfilling long-term relationships than any other people in the country. With the filter activated you’d just see a blank space where those things are, or a picture of kittens, and everything else—the useful, neutral or hilarious parts of the internet—would remain intact.

Later, when you were feeling more coolly detached or maybe even optimistic about the world, you could turn off the filter and deal with all that other stuff. Because it’ll still be there. I’m pretty sure it’ll still be there.