Does anyone have suggestions for cooking summer squash, please? My usual thing is to lightly steam or bake a vegetable, then hit it with butter and/or vinegar. But steaming and baking leave summer squash slimey. Likewise putting them in casseroles. My usual solution is to just not buy summer squash, but they're coming in with the CSA now so I'm stuck with them. Can I use them in bread like zucchini?

I saute squash/zucchini with onion in olive oil. With herbs if I have them or just S & P. No sliminess happens.

Or skewer and grill.

Squash is delicious sliced, tossed lightly with olive oil, garlic and pepper, and grilled.

I put it in spaghetti sauce. Or grate it and put it in ground hamburger or turkey and grill.

The mother's stealth vegetable technique?

Sadly, I don't have a grill. But I'll give the sauteeing a shot. Thanks!

The mother's stealth vegetable technique?

Partly.

Mostly.

Look, Vortex, if you wear this diamond cross, you will find a husband in no time. If you don't want to wear it, just keep it in your purse. Please? Do it for her.

That made me laugh so loud I startled the cats.

Next time you see your Mother, Vortex, wear the two diamond crosses as ear rings. This way, she won't go and get you a third one.

Brilliant.

Beverly, I've taken notes on your jewelry-storing technique, and plan to implement it. Organization-porn!

I have 1st edition Thousand and One Nights, vols 1-10.

Something to add to the rudeness discussion:

Um. *ahem* Pardon my rant.

The fuckers who drive down this little neighborhood street with their music turned up so loud, and their bass turned up so much, that I can hear their "tunes" IN MY FUCKING HOUSE with the windows closed. Sometimes my windows rattle. Sometimes I feel the bass rumbling in my chest. All day long, at all hours of the night, all seasons. The folks across the way have a bunch of friends who park all their cars in the road (it's a 30-foot-long dead-end road beside my house, because the property it was meant to connect to was never developed, so these rude fucktards use it as their personal parking lot), with the windows of a car rolled down and its stereo on as loud as they can turn it, so they can par-tay. Last night, they did this from 10pm to midnight. These people, I want to kill. My only solace is dreams of homicide and auto-cide and the knowledge that someday they will be deaf.

I have called the police three times. (I NEVER call the police on people unless there's an actual crime in progress. That's how pissed off I am.) I've asked them to enforce the noise ordinance. Nothing happens. Once I saw a cop car cruise past, turn around, and cruise on out of the neighborhood - the noise had already stopped by the time he got there, but he could have knocked on the door - I know I'm not the only one who's called; one dispatcher I talked to assured me they'd gotten lots of noise complaints from this area.

One of my out-of-town friends was visiting a couple weeks ago, and one of the music-lovers drove past, and we stopped talking until he was gone, and she said, "Okay, NOW I understand when you complain on Twitter about this!"

I guess there's nothing to be done, if the cops don't give a shit, and I can't build a motion-activated directional electromagnetic pulse generator.

Rant over. Carry on.

(I'm just finished with a nearly-3-hour conference call, during which we (the employees) earnestly talked about how we (the company) could improve morale. No one believes that anything we talked about will be implemented. Our bosses' stated policy on morale is "If you don't like it, find another job." I'm suffering from low morale RIGHT NOW, AIFG.)

OMG, you guys! So, y'all made me want to look up CSAs in Dallas, and we have like, 4 but only one with pick up in Dallas proper (meaning not Arlington or a suburb), and that one is full for 2010. But! Through a link on their page I found out that there is totally an all local/eat green market at my freaking train stop every Thursday! That is also Jon's day off! And they have a blog! [link] So we'll know what's there and we can get whatever extras we need for meals and whatnot!

We're going greener and it's not even hard!