Two.

Instead of eating leftovers last night, I played a Whiny Card and demanded pizza. All I could think about was pizza. Specifically ground Italian sausage on a pizza. Austin finally gave in, asking if it could please be hot Italian sausage, and onions on half. I graciously conceded, I know when to settle my bets. We picked it up from Nashville's Most Wanted, which is definitely our favorite pizza joint. And it turns out their hot Italian sausage is sliced, not ground. And the mushrooms seemed sort of wet, and all in all it was a rather meh experience.

Then at approximately 6:15 this morning, I opened my eyes and remembered it was Pizza Wednesday at work, and I'm a moron. Why would I throw away a Whiny Card that could have been used for a Guaranteed Delicious meal like Gold Rush or Samurai? Dumb. And of course I wasn't even in the MOOD for Pizza Wednesday by the time it rolled around. What a waste of two perfectly good meal opportunities.

Happily, today was also CSA day in addition to Pizza Wednesday. I was inspired by a beautiful box of goodies. The contents of today's box of 1/4 bushel of veggies plus 4 servings of meat:

6 ears of corn
2 green bell peppers
2 good-sized yellow squash (one is yellow on one end and pale green on the other)
3 baby beets
1 hot pepper (resembles banana pepper, have been warned it's hot. That's all I know)
1 white onion
5 small young Yukon gold-type potatoes
2 small, simply gorgeous, heirloom tomatoes
2 lemon cucumbers
1 patty pan squash
6 eggs
1 2 lb. beef roast
1 2 lb. jar of popcorn (special order)

All this for a grand total of $33.50 (the popcorn was an extra $3.50).

When I planned this week's menu, I took CSA day into account and didn't buy a side dish for tonight's planned dinner, chicken Parmesan (with noodles). So when I got home I scrubbed and cut up the yellow squash, pattypan squash and those darling baby beets, plus a yellow onion. Olive oil, salt and pepper, tossed on a cookie sheet, roasted at 400 while I worked on the sauce for the chicken. It's a pretty simple puttanesca type, sweat garlic and onion and bay leaf in olive oil, stir in chopped Kalamata olives and some torn basil, then two big cans of crushed tomatoes.

Then things went awry. I had three chicken breasts from a recent CSA delivery, so I started to unpack them while I had Austin breaking some eggs into a pan for coating the chicken, eventually with breadcrumbs. He said, "These eggs are kind of stinky," right as I was cutting open the chicken package. I replied, "I don't think it's the eggs." The chicken was most. definitely. bad. Pretty much worst nightmare kind of circumstances. Double bag it and take it straight out to the trash. Ga-ross.
Luckily I hadn't messed with much more of the prep on the chicken, so I didn't waste any more ingredients. Austin the Logical pointed out that we could just eat the sauce on the noodles, which would never have occurred to me (I was winding up to send him the store). This is how we ended up with Off the Cuff Pasta Puttanesca with Mixed Vegetables.