Cooktress, meet Technology

I've had nothing but free time this past week, since the job I secured on Monday doesn't start until tomorrow. I've spent nearly all of that time cooking, cleaning/laundering, reading about Sylvia Plath or watching episodes of AMC's Mad Men . In other words, I am learning to become a housewife straight out of the early 1960s-- albeit under the tutelage of Ms. Plath, one with rather consuming emotional problems.

I mean, after doing laundry I ROYGBIV'd the boyfriend's tshirts, for god's sake.

In an effort to get back to the culinary ascendancy I achieved in college, I've been busting out all the old standbys: orzo with roasted vegetables, curried chicken salad, zesty tomato soup and black bean soup. I've been getting creative with leftovers, too, taking the ingredients Ma bought for a salade nicoise when she was here and turning them into mashed potatoes with a mushroom-shallot sauce and avocado-feta paninis.

Creating a dish last night, however, threw this cooktress for a loop. We were invited to a vegan potluck. I can do meatless dishes no sweat, but no butter? no eggs? no milk? That eliminates nearly everything from my canon of cookery. I finally settled upon a dish of yams and broccoli and nearly sliced my phillanges off trying to cut through those blasted roots. I wasn't confident in the vittles' quality, and made sure to tell my host.

My related my tale of the futile search to a fellow guest.

"I near tore apart my cookbooks looking for something to bring!" I said.
"Do you have the Internet?" she asked.

Oh, snap.