And this weekend our fridge died.

We are having the best possible holiday season around here, let me tell you.

The repair guy is coming this afternoon. We'll see if we need a new fridge. In the meantime, our landlord brought us a couple of tiny dorm fridges.

Remember our freezer full of stuff? Yeah. Me too. It's not full of stuff anymore. At least we tend to keep a lot of nonperishables in there along with the serious frozen food. It means we didn't actually lose the entire contents, and we have plenty of rice and lentils and flour and yeast and what have you.

The other high point is that in a largely vegetarian household, the refrigerator isn't ever stuffed with a $400 standing rib roast or anything like that. Instead, we have lots of vegetables, tortillas, butter, cheese, and eggs, most of which are just fine in an ice-filled cooler overnight.

We'll also get to start over and build a new freezer & fridge in a more organized and less completely bonkers fashion. But that's about it for the good there.

So this weekend was just exhausting. Then we had to cook.

If you've ever thought you can't make dinner with a single pot of boiling water, think again, because we just did.

Emergency pasta with broccoli

1/2 lb chunky pasta
1 small or 1/2 large head broccoli
salt, pepper, red pepper flake
olive oil
fresh parsley
parmesan or another hard grating cheese

Salt a pot of water and put it on to boil. When your water boils, drop in your pasta.

While you're waiting, chop your broccoli into medium florets. Peel the stem and cut that up too.

When your pasta is about 2/3 of the way done, add your broccoli to the pot. Stir to mix and continue to cook for the remaining 1/3 time. Taste a piece of pasta and one of broccoli for doneness. Drain well.

In a mixing bowl, combine your drained pasta and broccoli with salt, pepper, red pepper flake, olive oil, chopped fresh parsley, and grated parmesan to taste. Toss well.

Serve immediately. If you have some extra parmesan or parsley, throw that on top. We had a few chopped almonds lying around, so I added those too.

Don't take any pictures because you are too tired. Go to bed and sleep the sleep of the person who still needs to work tomorrow even though it is officially holiday week.