Hiss.
The oven is sending out an SOS. I open the door to see the spaghetti squash, which I bake whole, dripping some liquid from its insides onto the bottom of the oven. This has never happened before. I must have overcooked it. Oh well. Lesson learned for future endeavors: always cook the squash in a pan.
I grab some oven mitts and slide the hot cylindrical mass off the rack and onto a plate. I’m going to have a mess to clean up when this oven cools, I think to myself as I shut the door and turn it off. Oh well. I never used the automatic oven cleaning feature so I guess now is the time to learn about that.
This was a day I was doing a lot of cooking and food prep for the upcoming week so I let the squash cool and put the whole thing in a large covered glass bowl to live in the refrigerator until I was ready to “spaghetti the squash.” I slice it in half the long ways, scoop out the seeds and gooey connective threads which go to the compost, and then I use a fork to scrape away at the insides of the squash and voila, spaghetti squash. It really is a magical culinary experience to get spaghetti from a squash.
At mealtime, I warm it up and add sautéed vegetables as a side or my favorite is to use it in place of pasta with a sauce. If ambitious, I save the seeds instead of composting and roast them with a little salt or seasonings. It takes a bit of patience to extricate them from the sticky connective threads so more often than not they go to the compost. Oh well. One day a seed may take off and a squash plant will emerge.
A few days later after my oven cleaned itself automatically for the first time, I took the chilled squash from the fridge to make the spaghetti. I notice there is a lot of liquid at the bottom of the glass bowl where the squash is sitting. I am thinking: I really overcooked this thing.
I cut it open lengthwise and start scooping out the seeds and gooey-ness in the center. Then I take a fork to the insides and no spaghetti is forming.
Hmm.
I try again. Hmm.
Wait. This is no spaghetti squash. It’s some kind of…melon!
I am staring, a deer-in-headlights kind of moment.
I go back in time to when I bought it in the store, next to the acorn squashes where the spaghetti squashes live; and I remember noticing that the color was not as rich a yellow. But it’s late fall and the weather is getting colder so maybe that accounts for the pale color, I remember thinking. I did a “grab and go” and thought nothing more about it. Until today.
Oh well. Next time when in doubt, ask and find out.
How to live more in the Oh well moments?
Accept the situation, compost what you don’t need, and look for the takeaways or silver linings. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a good laugh, as I did about myself with the melon-squash. Life has its way of directing our paths and instead of looking at what we don’t have or where we can’t go, we can look to what we do have and see any redirection as an opportunity. Either that or walk around pissed off all of the time. It’s up to you. Me? I prefer peace. And I’m sure you do too.
This 2020 year has been full of Oh well’s.
Oh well. We can’t get together with extended family or friends but we can clean out the basement and garage and closets we haven’t had time to tackle. We have discovered Zoom, a platform to stay connected to those at a distance we can take forward into post-Covid days too. We can also have a distance dance party in the driveway! Creativity abounds.
Oh well. We can’t go to the gym but we can explore other at-home options. Walking 10,000 steps a day is do-able. So are online or even Zoom exercise classes.
Oh well. We need to sing “Happy Birthday” twice or count to 20 while we thoroughly wash our hands. I, for one, certainly have never paid attention to the back of my hands or my thumbs like I do now. This bodes well for ingraining basic hygiene habits, especially in our children.
Oh well. We have to wear a mask and socially distance in public, but people have had to endure so much more for war efforts in the past, and dealing with this virus is like a war against an unseen common enemy. Oh well. This world war connects rather than divides us globally and nationally as well.
Oh well. Racial unrest and social injustice are at the forefront so it must be a good time to learn more about its systemic roots in our country. One set of resources is The 1619 Project. It’s free. It’s eye-opening. It’s important. While I’m on this topic, the Netflix documentary 13th which also plays onYouTube is a must-see. And all of this studying explains in part my hiatus from publishing in the writing arena. Until today.
Oh well. I could go on but once more it’s time for Sunday meal prep in the kitchen.
As for the melon-squash? It currently resides on the compost.
Oh well. Maybe a melon plant will emerge from there one day, side-by-side with the squash plant. Or a hybrid will be born. Nature has its ways.
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article photo: Linden72 on Pixabay