Home on the Range

Word of the day

Calamari is the polite form of squid

Calamari, the polite form of squid, combined with artichoke is crisped into a delicious fritter, the refined form of fried. (Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune)

Leah Eskin Home on the Range

September 18, 2011

Words come in handy so often, we've decided to stock up. At breakfast, we click the vocabulary app. At dinner, we hand out points for usage. It's the sort of project that can fritter away the whole week.

It started mildly, with soporific. Everyone rubbed bleary eyes, thinking about the sleep-inducing charms of rainy Monday, good book and warm bed. Hastily, we poured mugs of hot anti-soporific, with cream. By Tuesday, we'd moved on to profuse, and its plentiful, abundant, copious alternatives.

Everyone quickly grasped deracinate. It worked neatly into the Wednesday schedule, right along with profuse, weeds and despair.

On any given Thursday, our household census counts one teenager and one preteen. Surly needed no explanation.

But tarradiddle? It sounds like pretentious nonsense. And means pretentious nonsense. That, or fib. We cast suspicious glares at the word app — was it entirely trustworthy?

Saturday we came across callipygous, apparently an actual word that actually celebrates the shapely rear. Splicing that one into the dinner hour, with teen and preteen, yielded profuse tarradiddle.

Which we enjoyed with calamari, the polite form of squid. And artichoke, the edible form of thistle. Crisped into the fritter, the refined form of fried. Followed by ice cream, known to ease surly and enhance callipygous appeal.

Calamari fritter

Prep: 30 minutes
Marinate: 1 hour
Cook: 10 minutes
Serves: 4 as a first course

Ingredients:
1/2 pound fresh artichoke bottoms, see note below
1/2 pound calamari, cleaned
Lemon vinaigrette, see recipe
3 tablespoons flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
Butter lettuce