Fun with Polenta

Feeling a bit whimsical (I have no idea why this hit--I usually feel more "stoic" or "morose," but whatever, I went with it), I came up with a fun dish that would delight any seven-year old. Since there is only one twenty seven-year old and one twenty eight-year old in this house, we found delight in said dish instead. But I bet my nephews, ages 9 and 11 months, respectively, would've loved it.
I started by preparing the polenta. I'm aware there's another longer, much more complicated method of preparing polenta, which involved lots of babysitting and stirring and infinite amounts of patience. Bah! Bah! I say. My method works just fine, and it comes together in about 3 minutes. I boil two cups of water, then add enough cornmeal until it starts to bubble and thicken. I then dump it into a shaped receptacle, which I have thoroughly grease beforehand, and let it set. After about 2 minutes, it's ready. If your receptacle happens to be a shallow rectangle, your polenta will look like this:

Then came the fun part: the shapes! I found my best "fall-themed" cookie cutters, which were a ghost and a half-moon. Voila! Polenta shapes! See?

I served mine with some zucchini "noodles" I made by simply shaving long strands of zucchini with a vegetable peeler. I put them all in a small saucepan with a bit of water and steamed until all the water evaporated, then sauteed for just a bit.Dressed with S&P and some parmesan cheese, they were really tender and tasty!

I topped the polenta with some marinara sauce and a few cubes of goat cheese.
Here is Cookie Monster's plate: a serving of whimsical polenta befitting for a child alongside extremely phallic-shaped meat. Ah, the inappropriate dichotomy.

And my plate. I also had some leftover roasted eggplant topped with a bit more marinara sauce and a Tofurky. It looks like I have served myself so much more food; really, it's that Cookie Monster doesn't like the vegetables I made.

Oh well! More vegetables for me!