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" This morning I woke to a gray day. Ugh. It seemed that all I had ahead of me were small battles, to get someone dressed and into the car, to persuade him (ahem) to eat, to watch him misbehave in karate class, to wrestle with a squirmy baby, to prepare meals. That stopped me. I realized that in my fridge at that very moment I had something very delicious to warm up for our lunch. It was this spinach and rice torta, topped with Parmesan gratings and the crunchy, golden bread crumbs I had made from my very own bread. And that made me smile. It carried me, smiling, through breakfast, and then through getting a pretty cooperative boy dressed and into the car for a not-to-bad karate session which the baby nearly slept through.  The torta recipe is adapted from Marcella&amp;#039;s Italian Kitchen, an old cookbook that I found for $2 at the library book sale. I was so excited about this find because I had read that Marcella Hazan is like the Julia Child of Italian food, bringing it into our kitchens with a degree of authenticity that had been missing in America.  The torta involved a lot of steps, but you could plan ahead, making extra rice to use here. I didn&amp;#039;t, so I started by cooking 1 cup rice in 1\u00BD cups chicken stock (that was the ratio of rice to water recommended on the package). While that was cooking, I cooked an onion in oil, then added half a big bag of chopped frozen spinach (Hazan uses fresh and would probably not like the substitution, but it is easier). While that thawed and cooked, I mixed \u00BC cup grated Parmesan with 4 eggs, salt and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. I pulsed cubed bread in my mini processor to make 1 cup crumbs, then buttered a 9-in. round baking pan. I poured in the crumbs and sifted them around to coat the inside of the pan, then poured the remainder out into a bowl and mixed them with another \u00BC cup grated Parmesan. Mixed the cooked rice into the skillet, then let the mixture cool. When it was cool enough, I mixed that into the egg mixture and spread it in the prepared pan. Topped with the Parmesan-crumb mixture, then dotted with butter.  I was thinking this might be a good side, too, for some kind of protein, like this chicken Milanese, although we ate it as our evening meal.  What food-related thing can lift your mood? \u2014 Kim Walker "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/food-recipes/a43781/happiness-is-leftovers-in-the-fridge-5293/>