Posted on August 28, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Tell me, O Octopus…

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs

Is those things arms, or is they legs?

I marvel at thee, Octopus;

If I were thou, I’d call me Us.

–Ogden Nash

Well, I managed to get to work by 6:15AM today, so of course I forgot my camera. So imagine the delicious cranberry-orangeness of the muffin I had this morning for breakfast, taken from my freezer and heated back into deliciousness by the microwave….

Naturally, the day I forgot my camera was the day I decided to break from my walking habit and head over to the farmer’s market during my lunch break. I spent a whopping $17 on the items pictured below–though there was another tomato and the end of that loaf of bread as well…

If you’ve never been to a farmer’s market, let me give you a better idea of the cost: that loaf of bread was $5.60 (a price the lady who sold it to me called “ridiculous”–okay, next time I’ll get another vendor’s bread) and the bag of pecans was $3.75. So the veggies shown here cost about $7.65. I got some great deals–the peppers were 2/$1 and the tomatoes were $1/lb.

In the spirit of the day, I hauled this all up to my office so it didn’t get all gross in my car and ended up leaving my phone on the seat. So my beautiful lunch, which I’ve named “Tomato Sandwich, Desconstructed,” is forever lost from view. I broke off the end of the loaf of bread, quartered and salted the tomato missing from the photo above, and had a piece of light Babybel cheese. I wasn’t expected great things out of the tomatoes since they were so cheap, but the one I had was delicious. And that bread–oh my. $5.60 a loaf is not ridiculous for bread with the texture of cotton candy. I don’t even like bread that much, especially white bread, and even I had to grab another piece after I’d finished the first one. Soooo good…

I had to stop at Harris Teeter on the way home to pick up the ingredients for the Seven Layer Salad I’m taking to my brother’s place tomorrow. So I picked up a several other things that looked tasty while I was at it. In fact, I had trouble deciding what to make for dinner. Eventually, I decided to make a stir-fry using the “Seafood Medley” I’d picked up, with blue cheese coleslaw on the side.

Oh yes. The connection to the octopus poem at the beginning of this post is coming soon.

I glanced at the contents of the Seafood Medley before I bought it, but it didn’t register until I opened the bag that we weren’t just talking shrimp here. I mean, yeah, there were shrimp. There was also clam meat, and mussel meat, and that’s not so bad.

But there were baby octopus. And squid.

I’ve had squid before, at the urging of friends who’d cooked for my college’s International Dinner. You know what? Those squid parts weren’t identifable.

These were.

I seriously hesitated at this point. There were tentacles in my colander. Worse, there was what appeared to be a mostly whole baby octopus.

I left the colander in the sink with the cold water running so the “medley” could thaw and turned toward making my blue cheese coleslaw. Cabbage, carrots, blue cheese, some really good “lemonaise” by The Ojai Chef that I just discovered this afternoon, and some seasoning. I bought an apple to put into the coleslaw, but the Pink Lady, she would not shred, so instead I sliced it and served it alongside my meal.

While I was making the coleslaw and my ocean friends were thawing, I had green bell peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli, and snow peas cooking in a little olive oil and Penzey’s Ozark seasoning. Normally when I make stir-fry it’s one whole onion, one whole pepper, and some beef, but today I decided to go with more of a variety so that I could use less of each item. It worked out very well.

When it was nearly done, I dumped in the seafood and cooked it for three minutes.

Eventually, I couldn’t take looking at the baby octopus in my pan anymore, so I scooped it out. No way I was eating that.

When my meal was finished cooking, it was very pretty. For the first few minutes, I used my chopsticks to pick out the shrimp and the veggies. And then I decided to man up and eat a chunk of squid.

And you know what? This was one of the best meals I’ve had in a while. I really liked the different textures of the seafood, and that coleslaw was stellar. I ate it while watching NCIS and looking out my balcony door while it thunderstormed outside.

Unfortunately, it’s still raining, and my dog is being bad. He did his duty when I took him out after I got back around 5PM, but I’ve taken him out twice in the rain since then and he is more interested in chasing bugs and lunging at the neighbor’s yappy ratdog than getting in another bathroom break before bedtime. Meanwhile, I’m being eaten by mosquitos. So he’s locked in his crate in my bedroom for the first time in a good long time, and I’m getting ready to head out to the living room to watch the hilariously bad Wing Commander and possibly fall asleep on the couch.

I hope I don’t dream of tentacles.