olive oil and something resembling cheese

Because my friend asked me to, today I learned that O Organics olive oil congeals if you put it in the fridge overnight. Why is this information interesting? It turns out that according to various newsish sources (Fox's Carol Alt and Dr. Oz), olive oil should solidify in the fridge, and if it doesn't, it'll kill you because there are additives in it that increase shelf life and wreck antioxidants or something.

One thing that happens when this information airs is that UC Davis' Olive Center gets a  lot of phone calls, and they, academically and fairly diplomatically (or potentially funded-by-olive-oil-companies-ly), think that congealing depends on the concentration of waxes and long-chain fatty acids, and they are not going to weigh in on any additives or whatnot.

In other food-related news, I made a ricotta-style cheese-ish thing, and it tastes pretty good, but since I haven't ever actually had anything with ricotta cheese in it, I haven't the faintest idea of what to use it for. If search engines didn't exist, I'd be in trouble, but I wouldn't have come across the recipe, either.

cooking tomatoes is overrated (at my house, anyway)

Today I learned how to make spaghetti sauce from scratch (and I mean no cans scratch).

What you do is have some cooked butternut squash lying around in the freezer waiting to be made into pumpkin pie. Thaw it, blend it until smooth, add spaghetti seasonings (onion powder, garlic powder, "Italian herbs," salt, pepper, olive oil), and then add vinegar and lime juice until it tastes right. It took me 15 minutes. If I'd started with a whole butternut squash, it would have taken an hour, but I'd have been sitting on the couch while chunks of it boiled on the stove for half an hour. Your sauce ends up orange instead of red, but if you can't find a tolerable jarred spaghetti sauce and have no interest in scalding tomatoes, you're all set.

I was using butternut squash because I had some from when they were really cheap in the fall, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't do the very same thing with summer squash. It'd just be kind of greenish, I guess. (So no one else on the planet will eat it -- more for the rest of us.)