Pasta with Chard, Peas and Mushrooms in Cream Sauce

I know it doesn't look like much, but I don't intend it to. After the debauched past few days, tonight's meal seemed rather uninspired. What I love about this, is this: that with a few things pulled from the fridge (chard, peas, mushrooms, cream, cheese) there can be such a quick, healthy (mmm, maybe not the cream and cheese part) satisfying meal. Do you ever wonder how specials come to be? Um, we have a lot of chard left over, what should I do with it? So, I give you the next day's meal with not a lick of turkey in sight. What's great about this meal is that I will probably never cook this again. Not exactly. Or, until I have all these ingredients in the fridge again in the same way. The probability is close to nil.

In olive oil, I sauteed garlic, then onion, then mushrooms, then chard. When I added the chard I also added two or three ladlefuls of the water that the pasta was cooking in. Let it all simmer. Added the peas. Then lowered the flame and added some cream. Drained the pasta and put it in a bowl. Added the creamy veggies. Lots of grated cheese and fresh parsley. Tossed it all. And you know, then it was time to eat. I like that.

Asiago Polenta with Swiss Chard

Yesterday was the first day of hunting season. We could tell by the gunshots reverberating off the ridge. It's surprising to hear the first booming sounds. It's much louder than you would think and vaguely unsettling. I'm a gatherer, not a hunter. I remember first being aware of hunting driving home from college and seeing all the deer carcasses strapped to car fenders, slack jawed and bloody. Or even closer to the bone, coming home to my apartment in High Falls to see a split open deer hanging from the tree in the parking lot, while a fire burned in an oil drum to warm the neighbors huddled from the cold. That lurid spectacle didn't stop me from asking for some meat, but I don't remember if it was ever given. A few years ago a friend gave me an tenderloin and it was so incredibly good. Even still, that and the game cooking book I've had hanging around my bedside table, I'm not going hunting anytime soon.

Fittingly, we had a vegetarian meal last night that took all of ten minutes to make. The chard, purchased at the market from a witty young man, was just sauteed in olive oil with garlic and finished with a generous squirt of lemon juice. The polenta was instant organic and I now know what I'll be eating all winter. It really took just a minute to make, and I added some cream and two handfuls of some nice asiago chunked in cubes and let it sit for a few so the cheese got soft. There was tang and bite from the cheese and the chard, that little bit of oxalic acid drying your tongue, while the pillowy polenta softened it all a bit.

You have respite for now, my deer.