Monday was a potluck day. And whenever I can, I try to bring something substantial to potlucks. Because if everyone brings something substantial to potlucks, the worst that happens is everyone brings home 3/4 of the substantial thing they brought. But if nobody brings something substantial, everybody goes hungry (Cue "Rubber Biscuit").

So as I may have mentioned, there were pizza-making plans. The genesis of these pizza-making plans came from a giant lump of dough in the freezer. I do not remember where this dough came from. It might have been pork bun dough from last February.

I know "pizza" is more of a category than a specific dish, and encompasses food as disparate as crappy takeout square-cut crackers with grease on them all the way to Chicago stuffed pies, but to me, if there is a pizza ideal, it must live in Naples, because Punch's version that they claim is pure Neapolitan is, to me, what pizza should be.

I don't even know what week it is at this point. It's all a blur of green and red and occasionally yellow and then more green.

Can't think of any major discards - I didn't keep the third of a head of red leaf lettuce I didn't use, but only because the lettuce was more bitter than I expected. I tossed a couple of cucumbers that went slimy a couple of weeks ago, and may not have mentioned that, but really, that's it. This week!

Yeah, it's been another slow week. I made a nice variant of the asparagus soup with tarragon and garlic, and learned the hard way just how much fucking fun it is when woody asparagus strings wrap themselves tightly around the shaft of an immersion blender, but otherwise, nothing blogworthy.

Luckily, Pepsico's penchant for putting out proper sugar versions of its corn syrup sodas continues unabated, as today's Target run led to the discovery of Sierra Mist Natural, an all-sugar, no-corn-syrup variant of the lemon-lime soda that's not as good as Slice was.

A fairly light weekend of cooking for me, all things considered. I spent my time mainly playing around with CSA produce in odd and less odd ways.

First thing I did was reduce a small watermelon down to two and a half inches of thick liquid in a squeeze bottle. The watermelons from the CSA are really good, but they're seedier than a porn shoot at Mos Eisley. So if you try to eat one plain, you'll be spitting seed more than... well, a porn shoot at Mos Eisley.

It's August, which means it's time for a nice, summery dish. You know, like beef stroganoff.

Yeah, I know. This summer's been way too hot for stroganoff. I myself haven't felt like stroganoff for months. But if you go that long without stroganoff, the thought of just one quick stroganoff builds until you give in.

Normally this would have been up three hours ago, but you all have got to see this. Plus, Ruhlman is soliciting pictures of CSA boxes over at his blog and this was a hell of a box to take a picture of, so what the hell. I'll save the big reveal for the end. First the most ordinary stuff:

In case you were wondering, the light posting this week has been a direct result of my spending the past four days falling back on my repertoire of basic dishes - all of which I've already covered here in one form or another in the past year.

That's the nice thing about building up a nice assortment of standbys. If your pantry is set up and your CSA cooperates, you can spend the better part of a week essentially cooking in your sleep. Which is awesome when you find yourself damn near asleep at dinnertime for most of a week.

Man, I love me some Urbanspoon. Just pick a general direction on the map, start poking at flags, and seeing what works.