Mary Bilyeu: Meme menu madness
Aug. 8—There's a meme for every day of the week, isn't there?
Meatless Monday. Taco Tuesday. Wine Wednesday. (While those of us old enough to remember the famous ad campaign know that Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day, that pasta dinner can certainly be paired with a good Italian red, perhaps, to accommodate both.)
Throwback Thursday, Fish Fry-day, Caturday, and Sunday Funday round out the list.
While not all of these are food-related on first glance, I think we can make them all fit the theme of this page.
Meatless Monday, of course, is an easy one. Any vegetarian or vegan dish will satisfy the requirement, from grilled cheese sandwiches to pita chips and vegetables with hummus, saag paneer to ratatouille, and rajas con crema (strips of roasted poblano peppers in cream) to groundnut/peanut stew. For dessert, avoid lard in a pie crust.
Taco Tuesday is also ready-made. Pick flour or corn tortillas and fillings that are traditional (al pastor, carnitas) or modern/fusion (thinking outside the box or, more correctly, the taco shell), then run wild with the chicken or beef or pork or seafood or vegetables to create your meme-themed masterpieces. Of course, you have to follow this with Choco Taco ice cream treats.
On Wine Wednesdays, you can drink wine with your dinner. You can cook with wine, too: Add a splash to your spaghetti sauce, steam clams in white wine, make coq au vin, etc. And remember that you can also be an overachiever, like me, by doing both. Just be sure you cook with a wine that's worthy of being sipped. If it's not good enough to drink, it's not good enough to eat.
Throwback Thursday strikes me as a day for serving old school food: Grandma recipes that you remember fondly from childhood, casseroles from 1960s cookbooks (complete with the requisite can of cream-of-something soup), or even just a dish you love but haven't made for awhile. You don't have to necessarily throw back across the decades or centuries; a few years would undoubtedly suffice.
Fry-day is obvious: This is the day to gleefully celebrate onion rings, churros, and funnel cakes. Falafel is another delicious option, as are empanadas and fish 'n' chips. Your frying doesn't necessarily have to be deep-frying, though we all know that's more fun (to eat, at least, if not to clean up after). Fried eggs would also meet the brief. And, of course, anything cooked in an air fryer is obviously also a fried food.
Caturday ... well, this becomes food-related not by devising recipes for the undoubtedly tender meat of the average lazy, spoiled housecat. This is a day for catfish, I think. And for dessert, enjoy the famous French treats Langues de Chats: Cat Tongues, which you may recognize more readily as Pepperidge Farm's Milanos. A buttery cookie by any other name, to paraphrase Shakespeare ....
And finally, Sunday Funday is the day to play with your food. Breakfast for dinner, and maybe stirring some colorful sprinkles into your pancake batter. Or how 'bout brunch? Is there anything more fun than mimosas in the middle of the day or over-the-top Bloody Marys laden with any- and everything: mini cheeseburgers, candied bacon, crab legs, jalapeño poppers, doughnuts, and other outrageousness?
There you have it: A meme and a menu for every day of the week.
