What does one eat before jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge?

Got my cook on this morning, since my only obligation was attending a staff meeting at the restaurant at 3pm. My goal was to do a batch of mushroom tomato sauce, and make hummus and pumpkin ravioli. First two got completed, but I didn't have enough time to cook the pumpkin filling and make the spinach pasta dough.

The tomato sauce was a bit experimental, aided by a food processor for the first time. Previously, I was sticking close to the Batali recipe, but now, well, why not just go do what feels good? I remembered what my dad would throw into his sauce, and worked from there. A diced onion softened in olive oil, with the addition of diced Italian cooking peppers. A pinch of salt, then a mess of finely minced shitake and portobello mushrooms, cooked down. One can of whole tomatoes mushed by hand, then another can of whole tomatoes blended to smooth. One bunch of oregano, minced. Two heads of mashed roasted garlic, right out of the oven. Simmered on low for an hour, threw in a cup of minced parsley. Salted to taste. Cooled, put into containers, then into the ice box.

While simmering the sauce, I split a pumpkin, cleaned it, smeared it with maple syrup, and cut side-down into the oven for an hour (along with the foil-wrapped garlic). Took a half container of spinach, threw it in boiling water for 60 seconds, then into an ice bath. Puréed the shocked spinach in a blender with a little water to smooth, then took 3.5 cups of flour and made a well, into which 4 eggs and the spinach liquid went into the middle. After about 15 minutes of hand mixing and kneading, the dough was ready to rest in plastic. Using my new pizza dough balling skills, I rounded it nicely, like a nice lil' green sphere.

Simmering, resting, roasting. Threw all the hummus ingredients in the food processor -- 2 cans of drained chickpeas, half a container of tahini, juice of 1.5 lemons, one head of roasted garlic, olive oil, a bit of salt. Let it go for a while, tasted it, added pinch of salt and a little chickpea liquid, then finished it. Packaged into the fridge, then on I went.

Scooped the pumpkin out of the skins after cooling, and into the food processor unil liquid. Spread out on a baking sheet then put back in the oven for 10 minutes to dry. Once out, into a mixing bowl with a bit of marscapone, Parmesan, cinnamon, nutmug, and melted butter that I hit with balsamic and maple syrup as it was browning. Mixed, tasted, salted, refrigerator.

Once again, a mountain of dishes faced me. My wife, after working in an office all day, probably wouldn't want to come home to that. So, despite not having an industrial dishwashing machine on hand (or any dishwasher at all), I got it all done and out of the house on time.

After the meeting, I was at K's house way uptown, and we were just loungin' n' talkin', comfortable and neither of us especially wanted to leave the apartment. So I made refrigerator soup -- soup with whatever was in the fridge. Into boiling water went a few rough chopped peeled carrots and a single white potato. Two yellow peppers I roasted on the burner. Once the carrots were soft, into the blender with some of it's water, milk, olive oil, butter, diced garlic and ginger, salt, pepper, a dash of nutmeg and cinnamon, a blurb of molasses. Sliced a bagel thinly, some olive oil and salt and onto a baking sheet to crisp and brown. Soup well blended and seasoned, garnished with the smokey diced yellow roasted peppers. Bagel chips came out surprisingly good, the soup was pretty nice.

When I got home around 9:45, banged out the spinach pumpkin ravioli (6 portions of 8 raviolios, 2 portions of spinach linguine, a large portion of scraps which will make a good meal -- why did I throw out these pasta scraps till now?!)


ADDENDA:
On the way to the restaurant, as I was riding my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge, I came upon a scene of a man teetering on the edge of the bridge, with the intention of flinging himself off. A helicopter hovered on the opposite side of the bridge, cops blocked off traffic in both directions, and police boats stood by in the harbor. I number of cops, with ropes clipped to the handrails, slowly approached and spoke to the man.

My first reaction was sympathy for this poor fellow -- what dire straights he must be in to get to this point, or perhaps he's mentally unbalanced, or both. Does he have parents, children, loved ones who will be harmed by his actions? My second reaction was curiosity -- did he eat lunch today? And if so, what? What does one eat before jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge?

And thirdly was guilt -- here I was, gawking at this stranger's awful ordeal, rubber-necking and being idly distracted along with all the tourists and ne'er-do-wells.

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, organic chex with good milk, .75 bowl, hunger 4/5
In the midst of cooking, was going to finish the salad for breakfast, but it went all stinky.

AM TASTINGS: 9am-1pm, a few spoonfuls of hummus, a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce, a spoonful of pumpkin ravioli-filling, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 3pm, cup of good hot chocolate, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Chef R made it for everyone at the meeting.

DINNER pt 1: 5:30pm, slice of streetza, chocolate pound cake, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
From a crap joint called "Cheesy Pizza", believe it or not. Not very good.

DINNER pt 2: 7:45pm, carrot soup with bagel chips, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5

EVENING WATERING: 9:30pm, quart