I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

We are well into Summer CSA Season, which means each week we get a selection of vegetables from our upstate farm share. Some people think of this as a time of crisis ("Tatsoi? What the hell do I do with Tatsoi?") but I think of it as a combination of Christmas and Iron Chef ("The secret ingredient is ... Tatsoi!" "Thank you, Santa!"). This week, we got a lot of zucchini and yellow summer squash.

My local dairy pusher at the Ronnybrook Farm stand at the local farmers' market, she who provides me with the raw material for my cheese-making, sometimes has mozzarella available. So I had some of that to hand as well. Inspiration struck and we were off to the rodeo.

Squash Parmesan

• 3 medium-sized squash, zucchini or a mix (and use more if you want)
• oil or grease for frying
• 1 cup corn meal
• 1-2 eggs
• salt to taste, start with maybe a teaspoon
• pepper, if you'd like
• a few slices of mozzarella
• pasta
• red sauce

Heat the grease or oil. I used the last of the fat from the headcheese I made in January, but your favorite frying oil or grease will do fine. You want 1/4" or so in the pan.

Dip the veggies in the beaten egg, then into the cornmeal. Fry in the hot oil for a few minutes each side, until the cornmeal is golden and crispy, but not burnt. Remove to a cookie sheet. Cut the mozzarella into slices or strips and put on the veggies.

Get the pasta going. Use whatever pasta you like and whatever sauce you like. A can of crushed tomatoes simmered with some salt, oregano and crushed red pepper makes a perfectly adequate sauce for this dish, in fact.

When the pasta goes in the water, you should have about ten minutes to go while it cooks. So dump the rest of the cornmeal into the egg and mix it up. Add more cornmeal if you need to in order to make a thick batter. Put that into the hot skillet with the rest of the oil and, once again, cook until golden and crispy, making a sort of polenta-hush-puppy hybrid, and, incidentally, taking care of the leftover breading station materials. Turn on the broiler.

With a couple of minutes left, slide the cookie sheet under the broiler to melt the cheese on the squash. Then, if you've timed it right, everything comes together at once and you just have to assemble it: pasta first, cornmeal cake on one side, squash on the other, sauce over all.

Enjoy!