Blessed Christmas break is here, and I am so excited about the chance to do nothing. I spent the first few days issuing grades for the course I’m teaching, and we’ve had a few doctors appointments, but I’m trying to spend as much time as possible just reading, walking, and doing spontaneous things that feel fun.

My current read is The Lord of the Rings. It has literally sat on my night table for a full year (with the brief exception of during Harvey when we had to move everything upstairs.). I got 50 pages in last Christmas break and hadn’t gotten back to it, but the moment school was out, it was like I finally felt like I had my full attention to dedicate to it.

It’s interesting reading a book when the movie is already deeply ingrained in your mind’s eye. I keep wondering how I would have perceived the characters if I had not seen them through that lens already, or if that view would fade and a more purely Tolkien one would come into focus, were I to re-read the book once or twice. In any case, I’m enjoying it–and finding plenty of parallels in our time, of course.

When reading about hobbits and all their (many) meals, what one wants is a little comfort food. This recipe that I threw together on the fly last night fits the bill. It’s gluten-free (which we just started back on) and easy to throw together. Serve at first dinner, second dinner, supper, or even elevenses.

We had a yellow squash and a zucchini that needed using. Mustardseed doesn’t care for them–and if I’m honest, plain yellow squash don’t top my list of favorite vegetables either. This is what I came up with to disguise them a bit.

1 diced yellow squash

1 diced zucchini

1 clove of minced garlic

Put these in a casserole dish and mix them. Then sprinkle them with salt, pepper, onion powder, and Italian spice (or oregano).

Grab handfuls of shredded cheddar and mix that in until the mixture looks pretty cheesy. You could also use other cheeses. Some Gruyere would be amazing! I can see this with a nice crust of parmesan over the top, too.

Then sprinkle about 1/3 cup of yellow cornmeal over the top. Toss this so it distributes evenly.

Beat 2 eggs in a separate bowl. Pour them over your veggie-cheese mixture, and stir it all up again.

I didn’t add any other liquid. That may be why it took it longer than I expected to cook and it came out a little on the dry side. You could add maybe 1/4 cup of heavy cream or of beef or chicken broth to make it a bit more moist and perhaps speed cooking time.

Cover it all with foil and cook on 350° F for 20-30 minutes. Mine was more like 30 without the liquid. If you want to do them parmesan crust, sprinkle it on before you slide it in the oven, bit remove the foil for the last 5 minutes.