September 1 – September 7, 2025

Monday:                             Meatballs in Marinara with Fried Bread

Labor Day                           Cheeseburgers, Turkey Burgers, Cowboy Beans, Slaw                                               Klondikes with Greg and Mike

Tuesday:                              Pork Fried Rice, Iceberg Wedge with Thousand Islands Dressing

Wednesday:                      Summery Stuffed Shells

Thursday:                            PFC Terrace

Friday:                                 Shrimp, Tomato and Feta Bake

Saturday:                            Meatball and Onion Pizza

Sunday:                               Firepit Steak and Potatoes

Home Cooking

Dining out for dinner is one of the great pleasures of life.  An entire room of room of people are devoted to making your evening pleasant, and behind the scenes, chefs, sous-chefs and dishwashers are all pulling in the same direction.  And you can do no wrong – if you drop your napkin or utensils or spill the water or the wine or, more likely, the martini, sloshing as it is in that most fascinating and impractical piece of stemware – the martini glass, the staff will pick up, replace or wipe up and sweep up your mistake, even as your stony-faced spouse is staring daggers at you.  (Marriage, let’s face it, is not for the faint of heart.)

And while the staff at the restaurant have no high expectations of you (which is why they are prepared to pick up, replace, wipe up, etc.), you have high expectations of the restaurant.  You want your food made from scratch – no canned spaghetti sauces, no frozen entrées reheated to order, no bottled salad dressings.

And, of course, you can speak freely when commenting on the food or drink that is being served – no pulling punches to avoid offending Aunt Mary or your spouse or your daughter-in-law.

But I am blathering which is how I begin many of these posts, just to get the juices flowing.  And now we’ve come to the point of all this blathering, a cri de coeur from a home cook to remind those I cook for that they are not in a restaurant.

One of the most annoying questions I get, on a regular basis, from someone I dearly love is, “What’s our e.t.e.?”  This is Beez’s clever way of asking, when will dinner be ready? Now, our evening schedule is variable: occasionally Billy drops by after the gym, we are sometimes busy with Zoom calls or other obligations, and I am often grilling or cooking meat which is, to put it bluntly, done when it’s done and not before.  And I’m usually cooking with a martini in hand as insurance against the kind of cooking angst that earned me the sobriquet ‘psycho chef,’ and I’m often popping into the family room to answer a question or two from ‘Jeopardy.’  The point being that I often don’t know our e.t.e.  And where, I feel like asking, have you got to get to this evening young lady? and if you’re really impatient, just go ahead and bang your utensils on the table. 

But, of course, I don’t say any of those things, because I am no longer ‘psycho chef,’ and I am a mature adult who cooks.  And I am also practical and sometimes tired and circumstances occasionally call for a last minute trip to a local restaurant and more often call for what I can only call home cook hacks.

Which is to say that because I am not cooking in a restaurant, everything does not need to be from scratch and I can, indeed should, for the sake of a reasonable e.t.e., from time to time use bottled or prepared ingredients.

And that’s exactly what I did last Wednesday in cooking a recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli which had caught Beez’s eye: ‘Summery Stuffed Shells.’ 

Guarnaschelli is a very great cook and Beez is a very great spotter of delectable recipes and last Wednesday these two truisms combined with my lack of energy to produce one of the fine meals of the summer.

Here’s what happened: The recipe Barbara suggested looked good.  But that recipe involved cooking my own marinara sauce from scratch and letting it cool and then boiling large pasta shells, and letting them cool, and then making a parmesan bechamel sauce and letting it cool, and them combining ricotta and zucchini and summer squash and herbs to create a filling for those shells and then filling those shells (after they had cooled) and then, finally baking the whole shooting match.  Not as hard as running a marathon, or getting a reservation at the newly re-opened Poulet Bleu, or translating Latin poetry – but still, after a long day of reading and study and the gym, a very heavy lift.

And those damn shells are always falling apart or tearing as you spoon the filling into them and . . .

Well, you see my point, I hope.  And our friend, Leonard Labriola, has a crew at one of his markets, that makes superb pre-cooked and frozen pasta of all sorts, including stuffed shells.  And, since I couldn’t put the zucchini into the stuffing, I shingled them over the shells, along with some corn I cut of 2 cobs.  Then I showered the whole thing with parmesan giving the finished dish a nice savory crust.

So please don’t criticize me for not cooking everything from scratch and please understand that if you eat at my house, you had better be prepared to pick up your own damn utensils or napkin if you drop them and do not think about criticizing the food until you get in your car to drive away and, if you do spill your wine, be prepared for some ungracious looks and a certain coldness on our part.

SUMMERY STUFFED SHELLS

Heavily modified recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli)

About the modifications – I used a very nice bottled marinara (Labriola’s – if you don’t live in Pittsburgh, try Rao’s) instead of making my own, I used Labriola’s frozen, stuffed shells and there was no zucchini or summer squash or cherry tomatoes in the stuffing.  If you want to cook the dish from scratch, you can find the recipe online at The Food Network website.

Timing:                                 90 minutes to thaw the shells

                                    About 40 minutes to assemble and cook

Ingredients:

  I package frozen, stuffed shells (I’m guessing this weighed about 2 lbs.)

  Large Jar of Marinara Sauce

  1 zucchini, sliced into ¼-inch rounds

  1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved

  (Optional)  Kernels from 2 corn cobs

  2 tablespoons sliced basil

  2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar or glaze

  ¼ cup pecorino or parmesan

Prep:

  Thaw the shells – you want them totally thawed.  I’m guessing this will take

  About 90 minutes.  Or just put them in the refrigerator overnight.

  Preheat oven to 375 F.

  Use a casserole or gratin dish that will hold the shells in a single layer.

  Slice the zucchini, halve the tomatoes – don’t slice the basil until serving.

  Toss the tomatoes and basil with a pinch of salt and the balsamic.

  Cut the corn from the cobs, if using.

Assemble and Cook:

Brown the zucchini:  Heat a large sauté pan over medium high, then add the  olive oil and, just as it is beginning to smoke remove the pan from the burner and add the zucchini is a single layer.  Return the pan to the burner and cook over high heat for about 4 minutes.  Transfer to a plate.

  Spoon a layer of Marinara sauce in the bottom of the casserole or gratin dish.

  Place the shells in a single layer in the dish.  Spoon the marinara sauce over

  them.  Sprinkle the corn over the dish, then shingle the zucchini over the  

  shells and bake until browned and crisped – 15-18 minutes. 

  Now top the dish with ¼ cup or so of grated parmesan or pecorino and put

  under the broiler for 2 or 3 minutes.  

  Spoon the tomatoes over the top and serve.