No license needed to captain this vessel.

They don't. In fact, even "zucchini raft" is really quite overoptimistic.

Speaking of overoptimistic, you should try some of these boats. "Mmm" is for "mmmediocre."

Anyway, it's been a good long while since I plunked down here and went about attempting to distract people with words and pictures; four months nearly to the day since I've made something worth mentioning. Well, that's not entirely true, really, but it has been quite some time. What got me back to pushing down buttons again? Other cooking, obviously.

I had a buddy over the other night, and we decided we'd try our collective hands at "Enchilada Lasagna," which was a recipe we'd come across on an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats. It was indeed good eats. So good were the eats that my heart ached to again spend more than I should on supplies, to again waste away a weekend evening spinning around in the kitchen, and to again eat enough for three people. So what did I do?

Ruined my streak of never buying mushrooms.

I remembered something. Ho-ly shit.

Backstory: A few (six) weeks ago, I took a trip with some friends to see some friends in Colorado. (This has no relevance whatsoever to the outcome of the story, but now you know where I was.) Now, since we were there for quite a while, and it was really just being in a house where other people lived (while said other people went about their daily routines until the evening when we all came to life), there was a decent lot of television-watching. This was a pleasant surprise for me, because I haven't watched copious amounts of television in a very long while, and, frankly, I miss doing so. Some of it was crappy music-channel disposable programming about nobody-cares-what, some of it was of the soap variety, and some was cooking. It was in this last portion that I saw a lady cook some things that made me take note.

Zucchinis' back-sides.

Her name was Rachael Ray, and she made some vegetarian zucchini boats. There were bits of mint, mushrooms, herbs -- exactly the same sort of stuff that small- to medium-sized ground animals subsist on. And you know what? It looked good. I sort of hate mushrooms, and there is no such thing as a vegetable which can raise my pulse, and yet this culinary witchdoctor had voodoo'd me into a stupor with her mint and her mushrooms and her herbs. And so I took some very shoddy notes, which also included a bit about "adding sassage" in order to make it into an actual meal.

FAST-FORWARD TO THE PRESENT DAY. It's Friday, there are no plans, and I'm feeling like it's an appropriate time to postpone going to the gym. "You haven't cooked anything in a while, you lazy ass," I say to myself. And so, after a moment of rather dull recollection, I decided I'd make some stuffed zucchini boats. I left work, I bought things, I returned home.

Oh my God, I just remembered I also bought delicious lemon squares. I am going to eat those so hard.

This is what cooked food looks like.

Anyway, yes. I returned home and I got to the cookin'.

Now, I looked for the same recipe I saw on the television, but I couldn't find it. I referred to the aforementioned notes, but all they said were:

Zucchini boats! Mushrooms? Add sassage. Mint.

My note was of no use to me. So I went off of this one instead, and by "went off" I mean "looked at, largely disregarded, and improvised based in theory upon." I used "some" tomatoes and "less" onion, two links of spicy Italian sausage (which was not called for), half a portabella mushroom (also not called for), and pecorino romano in place of parmesan and mozzarella. Actually, that's pretty close to the original, just heartier.

I would like to point out that this recipe says simply to scrape out the zucchini guts and then bake the zucchini for a little bit to soften it up some. Another recipe I dug up (which I think was in fact one of Ray's) mentioned boiling the zucchinis (whole, guts in tact) for a few minutes before gutting, and made no mention of pre-baking whatsoever. Having found the zucchini to be a bit tough in mine (which were not boiled, but rather pre-baked) I would have to recommend this. The instructions were to boil until "tender," but not "soft." I'd imagine a good run under cold water afterward would be wise.

But, honestly, like I've said a couple times, they didn't turn out so hot, which I attribute to me disregarding the instructions. I mean, they weren't bad -- if I ordered a couple in a restaurant, I wouldn't be sending them back, but I also probably wouldn't be ordering them again in the future.

The friendly fungus.

The real point is this: I willingly ate a rather large quantity of mushrooms. Also I ate a few slivers fried and lightly salted but otherwise plain. That's crazy talk to me, because I think eating mushrooms is crazy talk. They're weird, man. Like, okay, I read that I had to be careful when cleaning or sautéing them because they "might absorb some liquid." Holy understatement, Batman. These things are like cloth. For example: I had some oil coming up to heat in a small pan and dropped in a few slivers to fry up so I could say I ate mushrooms plain. This is all well and good, until the oil around the mushrooms actually disappears and the slivers are several shades darker around the edges like a wet cloth.

Fine, maybe "something being absorbent" is not the wildest thing you've ever heard, but I thought it was something.

And why are they so soft? They are gross food. Cutting them sounds like cutting styrofoam. Gross.

But, honestly, they weren't bad. Their flavor did not overpower the rest (the sausage took care of that), but did come through with a good bit of definition. Interesting new flavor, but it definitely will not be showing up on my pizza any time soon.

So, in closing, what did I learn today? That I prefer romano to parmesan, and that mushrooms are precisely as off-putting as I had previously suspected them to be. (Also that URLLoaders don't fire init events.)