ahream

Recipe for spaghetti squash: Step One – Cut the squash in half length-wise.

Right. No problem. I sat the nice and wobbly vegetable about the size of a football onto the cutting board and got out my biggest, horror movie-sized knife. “Now, I just slice down the middle.” I put the blade against the skin and tried to saw. Uh huh. “Okay, I just slice down the middle.” I moved the knife vigorously back and forth. Nothing. Okay. Perhaps some gentle pressure. I pushed down hard on the back of the knife. “Going...to...just...slice...down...the...middle.” I stepped back, sweat dripping from my face and only a slight indentation on the skin of the rock the grocer had helpfully labeled “good source of fiber.”

“Okay, clearly, I need a serrated knife. Right. That’ll fix it.” I pulled out the turkey-carving, burglar-stabbing, when-you-absolutely-positively-have-to-cut-up-a-body knife. “Here we go. Just going to slice down the middle.” I went after that vegetable like a lumber jack in a log-sawing contest. Bits of squash dust began to accumulate around the knife cut. After five minutes, I had managed to perforate the skin to a depth of approximately 1/16 of an inch.

I was starting to regret not allowing my husband to buy that hatchet he wanted for our camping trip. And in fact, found myself completely devoid of any hacking tools whatever. Screwdriver? Check. Hammer? Check. Wrench? Check. Bandsaw? Sadly, no.

Maybe if I throw it on the ground, I thought, remembering that comedian with the watermelons, it’ll bust open... I looked down at my recently mopped floor. “Then again, maybe not.”

“Oh, well, f*%@ it!” I opened the oven door and pitched the whole bloody thing inside. “Take that, you little b^$%&*d.”

After a while, I reasoned, it’ll soften up and then I can cut it. Right?

Problem. Squash still round and wobbly. Squash still fairly hard. Squash now molten hot.

Me now sticking to zucchini.

ahream Dispatches from the City of Angels I'm a mystery writer living in and writing about Los Angeles. You can catch my short story, "Running Venice," in the new anthology LAndmarked for Murder. Look for it in bookstores and on Amazon.com now. In the meantime, feel free to poke around. Over at my website you can find even more blog entries than I could fit here, as well as a few other ramblings. Enjoy and come back often.
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