If I were Ogden Nash, I would have something very clever to say today. I’m sure of it. Maybe something like, candy is dandy, but this biscotti is not(-y). Yes?

Or candy is dandy, but I’m going to flush this biscotti down the potty? I think that might be it.

Or, ooh ooh, I’ve got one: Molly isn’t jolly, because this salad was pallid. ZING!

What a week it was. After the quiet glory of cabbage with hot sauce, it all went downhill.

I can’t remember what we ate on Monday night, which is not a good sign. And then on Wednesday, I made the most spectacularly tasteless soup to ever sit atop my stove. It was so bad that we wound up going out for pho instead, leaving the soup to sit in its pot and reflect on its wrongdoings until we threw it away the next morning. On Saturday, we ate the leftovers of the pho we bought on Wednesday and then tried to go buy cupcakes for dessert, only to find that Cupcake Royale was completely sold out. And yesterday, I spent the afternoon happily padding around the kitchen, making granola, trying a new biscotti recipe, and washing gai lan to sauté in olive oil and garlic and serve with sausage and polenta, only to find that the biscotti was bland, the gai lan was even more bland, and I was tempted to burst into tears in the middle of dinner, except that our friend Ben was with us. I’ve been trying to limit my crying fits to audiences of family, and sometimes strangers on the bus.

And then, this morning, I tried to make oat cakes from Home Baking. Judging by the photograph in the book, these oat cakes were supposed to resemble digestive biscuits, or something akin to Carr’s Wheatolos. (Does anyone else remember those?) I will never know for sure, however. The recipe said that the dough would come together to form a mass in the food processor, but instead, mine turned into oat-and-brown-sugar hummus. Pita chip, anyone?

I think this would be the part when I say, candy is dandy, but hummus is among us. (Sorry?)

Even the bag of recycling that sits in the corner wanted to scream.

All of which is to say that I have nothing for you today. I know, I know, and I’m sorry. But I can offer you a suggestion, and it is this: that you make this dish as soon as you possibly can. We made it for dinner the week before last, and it was so perfect that I’m still thinking about it. It was so perfect, in fact, that I won’t even try to make up a rhyme about it, and today, that is the highest praise I can give.