Summer dinner recipe:

1. Slice tomatoes.
2. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and snipped basil.
3. Drizzle with olive oil.
4. Eat on back patio while reading good book.
5. Rip open Fudgesicle.
6. Eat in three bites standing next to fridge.

Fall dinner recipe:

1. Dice pound of potatoes and place in plastic Ziplock bag.
2. Sprinkle with ketchup, cumin, red pepper, and freshly ground sea salt (NOT that already ground iodine-infused stuff  — EVERYONE will taste the difference).
3. Ziplock the bag. Have fun shaking it for a while.
4. Pour bag’s contents into greased pan.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour or until toasty enough to eat half the contents of pan before must add to recipe.
6. Husk one pound fresh tomatillos and chop a bit.
7. Dice onion.  Cry.  Pretend it’s from the onion.
8. Boil tomatillos and onion for 10 minutes, drain, wait for mixture to cool.
9. Puree tomatillo/onion mixture while still steaming because I’m starving and can’t wait for it to cool; burn face from steam; don’t add cilantro even though recipe calls for it because cilantro makes me gag. But you might want to.
10. MEANWHILE, brown chorizo sausage. Wash hands a billion times because dealing with raw pork. Sample bit before fully cooked. Realize mistake. Panic. Wash hands again.
11. Try to find a place somewhere in crowded kitchen to set the tortillas, perhaps on this surface with the red warning light. Burn hand on hot stove surface.
12. Fry tortillas in chorizo grease, commend self for using already dirtied pan and helping environment. Every little bit helps.
13. Grease yet another baking dish.
14. Spread layer of tomatillo sauce on bottom and sides of it.
15. Dirty yet another dish with rest of tomatillo sauce.  Moisten fried tortillas in sauce.
16. Layer bottom of greased dish with moistened fried tortillas. Lick fingers. Mmmm. Commend self for being accomplished cook.
17. Layer potatoes (sample a couple to make sure they taste okay), chorizo (not a chance), cheese, sour cream (light for diet purposes), and more chef-quality tomatillo sauce, then blanket the whole thing with another layer of moistened fried tortillas. Spread with remaining award-winning tomatillo sauce, smother it all with more cheese so won’t taste anything but.
18. Place the whole shebang in the oven at 400 degrees.
19. MEANWHILE, peel and dice apples.
20. Mix apples with a little sugar, cinnamon and flour, spread mixture in yet another greased dish.
21. Mix oats, butter, white whole-wheat flour (for health purposes), cinnamon, white sugar, and brown sugar in separate bowl. Eat half of batter. Sprinkle remains over apples.
22. Dot with more butter.
23. Pull main course from oven.
24. Place apple crisp in oven.
25. Eat main course with dollop of sour cream while watching DVRed shows from last week.
26. Pause DVR.  Pull apple crisp from oven. Squirt with whipped cream (light for diet purposes).
27. Resume DVR.  Eat dessert.

The Aftermath