No More Chewing

After a grueling day of numbers today, I went for a walk. At the liquor store I bought 2 bottles of cheap whiskey and 1 bottle of cheap Scotch. At C-town I got a half gallon of milk, 2 liters of root beer, 2 liters of ginger ale, and 2 cans of chick peas. Lest you think I might chew them, I am turning them into hummus.

Fish and Bean Pasta. Pungent Pasta 2.

I have eaten a variation of this every week since I made it up. I usually make it with sardines, but I made it with tuna today. That's what you see in the picture. It turns out that everything you put in a sauce to make noodles taste good also makes beans taste good. And beans have protein and fiber. I rarely have whole wheat pasta around, but I think it would go well in this.

Here's how to make it.

Nouns:
2 tins of sardines or 2 cans of tuna, drained
1 can cannelini beans
1 lb/1 box pasta. every shape has been good so far
pecorino romano
olive oil
dried parsley

Optional nouns:
diced onion, a little crushed red pepper, a lot of black pepper, anchovies or fish sauce, fresh parsley

Verbs:
Boil some water with a lot of salt in it. Put in some garlic powder if you want.
Drain the pasta. Save a coffee mug of the flavorful water if you think of it. It can help thin/make your sauce.
Add olive oil to the pan and heat it and add the onions and anchovies if you're using them. Then add the sardines/tuna and beans and let it cook a bit. Stir it to break up the sardines and anchovies. Add the red and black pepper now.
Add about half the pasta to the pan and stir it. Add dried parsley and fresh parsley if you're using that. Add the rest of the pasta and grate a lot of cheese into it. Stir it. Serve with more grated cheese.

Note about the parsleys: As famous cookbook authors accurately point out, dried parsley is no substitute for fresh. However, dried has its uses. Namely, it's very small and coats the pasta in a way that makes it greener and nicer looking. Without the green flecks, you're looking at a food made of up of shakes of white and ecru. I used fresh parsley once in this when I had it, and it tasted good, but I didn't cut it small enough so I didn't like how it looked and added dried parsley too.

The cheapest cabbage I've ever seen.

Must be on sale for St. Patrick's Day. Apparently the Irish have a cuisine. The lowest price I had ever seen before this was $0.49/lb.

Tuna Microeconomics

My price of tuna went up, so now I eat more of it. How does that work?

I used to pay $0.75/can for tuna at Western Beef. That was the chunk light variety in water, though I'm not very particular. Then Western Beef raised the price of its store brand to $1. At first, I cut back on my tuna consumption, but now I see tuna on sale at every grocery store for $1. It's frequently higher, but with all my grocery stores and all the brands of tuna, I can always find it somewhere for $1. Now I don't have to make a special trip to Western Beef, so I tend to buy tuna frequently and I'm spending 33% more per tuna-unit.