...to Jacques Derrida and Rodney Dangerfield, who passed away this past week.

Co-blogger Waddling Thunder links to a terrible tale of a tormented trifle.

This reminds me, peripherally, of one of my favorite recipes. As we all know, revenge is a dish best served cold. Also, revenge is sweet. Putting these two things together, we realize (of course!) that revenge is actually some kind of chilled dessert.

As it turns out, revenge is really just a trifle.

Revenge

One loaf of persimmon bread. Not too sweet. Slightly dry and stale. Recipes abound elsewhere, so none provided here.
(Why persimmon bread, you ask? That's easy! Because your then-boyfriend's Basque roommate brought home bags of persimmons. You got some, and they had been sitting, dolefully, on your kitchen counter for three weeks. So you made a lot of persimmon bread. Now you have to eat it, right? And the bread was sitting there. Just sitting there.)
Blueberries.
Raspberries.
Lemon juice.
Lime juice.
Sugar.
(Note: you can also skip the juice/sugar above and use a dry package of jello, but I suspect that mentioning this will set off all of Will's ghetto food alerts.)
Whipping cream. The real stuff.
Pudding, of the vanilla kind. And real honest-to-god cooked stuff, not shake-and-serve.

Heat lemon juice, and dissolve sugar into it. Do the same with the lime juice. (But keep them separate!) Add blueberries to the lemon juice, and raspberries to the lime juice. There should be more fruit than juice; you want to do little more than coat the fruit with a citrusy-syrup. If you're using dry jello, you're probably also using frozen blueberries and raspberries. Just add the dry jello to the frozen fruit, and let it thaw.

Cut persimmon bread into finger-sized pieces. Put a layer of bread on the bottom of your trifle bowl. Add a layer of blueberries. Add a layer of pudding. Add another layer of bread. Add a layer of raspberries. Repeat until you run out of ingredients or room in your trifle bowl. Top with whipped cream. Chill for a few hours so that the bread gets nice and soggy and the flavors mix a little.

Serve to friends and enemies alike. Mmm, revenge!

I've got a queue of food articles I'm working on, but I can't seem to concentrate right now. It might be the football on TV. In the meantime, I thought it would be good if I started posting my weekly menu here on the blog. I've had a lot of back and forth with people about cooking while busy, and I notice that I haven't always done a good job explaining exactly how I cook given my relatively limited time. So after I plan my dinner menu for the week on Saturday, I'll try to post it here.

2 nights - Coq au Vin - I got a free bottle of red wine this week (don't ask!), and I like chicken, so I'm going to put together a chicken stew of mushrooms, bony farm raised poultry, wine, and various herbs. It'll serve for two nights of dinner, with rice the first night and buttery hot noodles the second.

1 night - Mushroom risotto - I also got a bottle of white wine this week. It isn't that great to drink (too fruity a chardonnay), but it should soak nicely into arborio rice. So I'm going to roast some mushrooms in oil and thyme, and add them to risotto made with the wine and some of that wonderful organic boxed chicken stock. Of course, it'll be finished off with butter and imported parmesan.

1 night - Risotto fritters - There ought to be some leftover risotto. After a night in the fridge, I'll form it into small patties, dip in egg and some flour or breadcrumbs, and fry in generous amounts of olive oil.

1 night - Braised endive - This is one of those wonderful but simple country meals the French do so well - all you need to do is put some endive in a thick bottomed pan smeared with butter, and then cook it for 40 minutes on low heat. After some cream and lemon to make a light sauce, you're done. Rice or bread to accompany.