Cicada Romesco

Flurry of brown eyed cuteness below, as promised. Not all my promises are empty.

I just made a scrumptious Romesco sauce to accompany the surfeit of of ramps I bought for tomorrow. (Love them wild and crazy leeks.) Now, there are as many recipes for Romesco as there are Catalan grannies, but I seem to have struck a happy medium in preparation time. Of course, I roasted the peppers, but I didn't bother roasting the garlic or tomatoes, just skinned and half-assedly seeded the latter. I did fry the bread in olive oil which was, oh my God, an insanely delicious thing to do with bread. In fact, when the sauce was complete, I fried up another piece of bread in the remaining oil to sop up the sauce clinging to the blade of the food processor. Eli was mercifully asleep and didn't witness this act of sheer gluttony.

Speaking of cooking seasonal delicacies, I keep coming across recipes for cooking the 17 year cicadas that are about to rise like winged zombies and take over Chicago at the end of the month. Apparently, the boy cicadas don't have enough fat to be worth eating, and one should remove the wings and legs -- not inedible, just not tasty -- from the girls for a crunchy treat. Man, this is one time I'm glad I keep a kosher home. When we were digging up along the deck to plant some clematis, I came across what I swear were some cicada nymphs, although Eli disagreed. I know they're allegedly not harmful, but I smashed those little buggers into a pulp with my shovel. I'm not a squemish girlie girl -- I even talk to my happy earth worms while gardening -- but cicadas really creep me out.

This post is pretty much procrastination, as I've a looming deadline.