veggie pie

Whew: that last entry was pretty depressing. Today was a far better day, due in no small part to the fact that baby-j took a 2-hour nap this morning and another 2-hour nap this afternoon. I even had time to make (gasp!) dinner for P and have it waiting when he got home. Such an occurrence is rare, obviously, or I wouldn't be writing about it. I made Savory Potato Pie: I found the recipe a few months ago in my Vegetarian Times Cookbook. I suck at cooking. I'm also only a wanna-be vegetarian. Translated, this means a) that I don't eat red meat and b) I'm too lazy to be a real vegetarian. The only meat I eat on a consistent basis is fish, and I'll occasionally have chicken or turkey, though I'd like to eliminate those altogether. Unfortunately, I've inherited some weird blood sugar issues (ok, my faithful lack of regular exercise has also contributed to these weird blood sugar issues), which means that when I need protein, I need it, and I'm often not prepared or together enough to have vegetarian options at hand. Thus, my laziness = the eating of a turkey or chicken sandwich.

The Savory Potato Pie is pretty good--even P likes it--and it's pretty easy to make. My favorite part about it is the generic reference to something like Boca Crumbles as the ingredient "meat," which is in quotation marks. I was thinking about this usage today as I perused Wikipedia's entry on quotation marks. The entry as of 11pm this evening reads:

One important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotes can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotes are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes.

Certainly, this reference to air quotes is an important part of the Wikipedia entry: the more I think about it, the more I realize that the air quotes are an essential part of the ironic quotation marks. When I read in my vegetarian recipe that I should stir potatoes and peas into the "meat," my impulse is to extend those four fingers and jab them into the air.

Hmm. Why do I keep going on about the "meat"? Perhaps it is because the use of quotation marks there gives that ingredient emphasis, though it is the potato that should be emphasized; I mean, it's given more credit in the recipe title. But then, I guess Savory "Meat" Pie has all sorts of other connotations.