Magpie collection

‘The Wolf of the West, he would come from the Mountains to save all’

If I’m being honest, I’ve never been a big fan of zucchini. So when I saw this dish on Stanley Tucci‘s special, Searching for Italy, I wasn’t initially that interested.

But when he said, it was his favorite pasta of all time and that he made it at least once a week, I thought to myself I have to give this a try.

And frankly it blew my mind. It was a totally different flavor than any zucchini I had ever had before, and mixing it with pasta, and the fresh basil was a revelation.

What is the number one tip to make this zucchini dish incredible?

The number one thing you can do to make this dish sing is to let the fried zucchini rest in the fridge overnight. Trust me.

Ingredients

2 cups Sunflower Oil, infused with one lightly crushed clove of garlic. Removed before frying.

6- 8 medium Zucchini 

Extra-virgin Olive Oil

1 pound Spaghetti

Large bunch of fresh Basil, torn. Avoid the stems. 

3 cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and aged Provolone mixed or pure Provolone del Monaco if you can find it.

Sea Salt to taste

2-3 Tbsp Butter

Preparation:

Put the sunflower oil in a large pot and bring to 375F over medium-high heat. Infuse the oil with the lightly crushed clove of garlic, but remove before frying.

Slice the zucchini into thin rounds and fry in batches until golden brown.

Remove and set aside on paper towels to drain. 

Add the basil, olive oil and put in the fridge overnight. Get it back to room temperature before using. You can skip the overnight rest if you’re in a hurry, but the overnight rest is a big improvement. 

Boil the pasta until al dente and drain, reserving about 1 cup of the pasta water.

Place the cooked pasta back into the pot over low/medium heat along with the zucchini mixture and combine gently. 

Add the pasta water, a little at a time, to create a creamy texture. You may not use all of the pasta water. 

Add some of the Parmigiano a bit at a time to the mixture and continue to combine by stirring gently and tossing. Finish with the butter, if using. Serve immediately.

Stanley Tucci’s Favorite Zucchini Pasta If I’m being honest, I’ve never been a big fan of zucchini. So when I saw this dish on Stanley Tucci‘s special Searching for Italy, I wasn’t initially that interested. But when he said, it was his favorite pasta of all time and that he made it at least once a week, I thought to myself I have to get this a try.And, it blew my mind. It was a totally different flavor than any zucchini I had ever had before, and mixing it with pasta, and the fresh basil was a revelation. Heavy PanStainless Pot 2 cups Sunflower Oil6- 8 medium ZucchiniExtra-virgin olive oil1 pound SpaghettiLarge bunch of fresh Basil (torn. Avoid the stems.)3 cups grated Parmigiano-ReggianoSea salt to taste2-3 Tbsp Butter (Optional)1 clove Garlic (lightly crushed. Optional) Put the sunflower oil in a large pot and bring to 375F over medium-high heat.Slice the zucchini into thin rounds and fry in batches until golden brown. Remove and set aside on paper towels to drain.Add the basil, olive oil and put in the fridge overnight. Get it back to room temperature before using. You can skip the overnight rest if you’re in a hurry, but the overnight rest is a big improvement. Boil the pasta until al dente and drain, reserving about 1 cup of the pasta water.Place the cooked pasta back into the pot over low/medium heat along with the zucchini mixture and combine gently. Add the pasta water, a little at a time, to create a creamy texture. You may not use all of the pasta water. Add some of the Parmigiano a bit at a time to the mixture and continue to combine by stirring gently and tossing. Finish with the butter, if using. Serve immediately. Main CourseItalianzucchini

Full Transcript at the link; 3-minute listen.

Quote:

By taking biopsies from long COVID patients before and after exercising, scientists in the Netherlands constructed a startling picture of widespread abnormalities in muscle tissue that may explain this severe reaction to physical activity.

Among the most striking findings were clear signs that the cellular power plants, the mitochondria, are compromised and the tissue starved for energy.

"We saw this immediately and it's very profound," says Braeden Charlton, one of the study's authors at Vrije University in Amsterdam.

The tissue samples from long COVID patients also revealed severe muscle damage, a disturbed immune response, and a buildup of microclots.

This article mentions that ME/CFS is a "similar complex condition" but that's DEEPLY underreporting the similarities. The phrase "post exertional malaise" (now researchers are trying to replace it but this article uses that phrase) was INVENTED for ME/CFS. It's the only known condition, before "long covid", that causes these kinds of symptoms after exertion!

It's good to know for sure that it's the same mechanisms at play when the inciting viral infection is Covid and not, for instance, Epstein-Barr or RSV, but half the time it doesn't seem like researchers are making comparisons at all, just reinventing the wheel and acting like "long covid" is a totally new phenomenon with no previous point of comparison. There are literally drugs in human trials to try to treat the mitochondrial dysfunction in ME, this dysfunction is well-established and fairly well understood and I feel insane when ppl report on long covid without mentioning that there is already a named and studied condition that accounts for this subset of symptoms!!

SOME researchers are drawing comparisons but they're largely ME researchers who everyone else is largely cignoring because of the widespread perception that ME is a fake disease for lazy women.

That same perception btw is why "graded exercise therapy" (GET), or exercise gradually increasing in intensity, cwas for years the go-to treatment despite MOUNTAINS of evidence that it makes ME patients sicker. Some end up permanently bedbound and unable to even eat or drink without a feeding tube/IV because the damage is so bad! The GET recommendation was finally changed only in the past few years in the US and the UK, and many doctors hate that they're not allowed to recommend it anymore, because they insist despite the evidence that ME/CFS is psychological and ME patients are just "deconditioned" and too lazy to do anything about it.

Now the same kind of "treatment" is being recommended for long covid patients despite evidence showing exercise is having the same kinds of cellular effects as it does in ME patients. "Taking PEM into account" sounds gentler but I'm deeply concerned about the reinvention of GET for patients who meet all the criteria for an illness that's been shown definitively to become permanently worse with GET. This mitochondrial damage is progressive in ME, and there's no reason to believe patients who meet all the criteria of ME after Covid won't experience the same progression if they force themselves past their energy envelope in such a systematic way.

The additional finding that T cells — part of the immune system's arsenal — had infiltrated the muscles of long COVID patients also caught Iwasaki's attention, possibly indicating "an autoimmune response within the muscle cells."

Say no more, here they all are! (I post about them more on my sewing & art blog @vincentbriggs, though I'm afraid I haven't got proper tags for each individual machine.)

c. 1885 White VS2, made in the U.S. Basic straight stitch treadle in good working order. It came to me very dirty and needed a lot of cleaning and a new drive belt & bobbin winder tire.

Singer 15-91, made in Canada sometime between 1936-48. This was my first one, which I bought refurbished when I moved out of my parents house, since it's pretty similar to the one I grew up using. It came with a knee lever but after a few years the speed control box failed and I replaced it with a foot pedal.

1945 Bernina KL 105, made in Switzerland. This is my most recent acquisition and I haven't started on the cleaning & refurbishing yet, but I'm excited to use it! It's a treadle that has backstitch and drop feed.

Gimbels department store branded Singer 15 clone, made in Japan. No idea what the date is, but the style of the logo makes me think maybe 50's? All cleaned and stitching again, though I still need to put the motor back on. The case was too rotten to save, so I've got to learn how to make a new one. Being a 15 clone, it's extremely similar to my Singer 15, but there are quite a lot of differences in the smaller external parts and it has a much better drop feed system.

1958 Singer 99k, made in Scotland. All cleaned and adjusted, and my father helped rewire it, but I still need to finish fixing up the wooden case. It wasn't so bad as the previous one, but it's in no condition to stain so I'm going to paint it. This one's something of a foster kitten, as I've promised it to a friend.

1964 Singer 185J, made in Canada. I've cleaned it up and replaced the missing bobbin plate, but I need to make a new wooden case for this one too because the plastic case it came in was all cracked and warped. It's the same basic machine as the 99k, just in a more space age style shape. The bobbin winder is more stripped down, but other than that the workings are identical.

1970 Pfaff 360, made in Germany. This was the second machine I got, and it was meant to be a backup because this was when my 15-91 speed control was acting up. The pebbled greige paint job is horrendously fugly, but it's a splendid piece of engineering. I still need to get around to taking apart and unsticking one particular area, but if I'm successful in that it'll be able to do zig zag, plus a variety of other fancy stitches controlled by that nice stack of cams on the left.

The 2 treadles were given to me, the 15-91 was bought refurbished as mentioned, and the other 4 electric machines were thrifted.

"How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it" GREAT question.

To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear's Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that's about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.

And it's only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits...

(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)

...that they decided to drown it. Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be "driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out. You will concede that's rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world...

...and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck...

...only for the ropes to snap...

...and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.

(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)

Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.

Or at least the wrecking ball.

But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.

Still, I feel it's criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)

Wait NO-

Well, that was uncalled for. Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.

Or at least, given that buried it wasn't...

...to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat...

...and be fueled up.

"be fueled up", pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.

Look at that thing, you say.

Let's be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that's not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.

And again, you are right.

The battery was disconnected.

Sorted that, tho

"You can't be serious." Oh darling I sure can! "Well the presenters can't then" no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It's at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!

Legend (1985) dir. Ridley Scott

And if you have a minute, why don't we go Talk about it somewhere only we know?

TIFFANY STUDIOS 'Nautilus' Desk Lamp

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.