the best evening of summer so far

A closeup of the pork belly tacos seems in order. So you can see the pool of fat.

The night also involved being serenaded by a dishwasher playing a pink banjo and singing a little tune he wrote called "Angry White Woman" while I drank beer and ate chocolate and wasn't angry at all.

boom

click here

I wish I could tell you that I haven't posted in weeks because I've been too busy with tango lessons and late-night dinners and warm summer air, but such is not the case. Vacation is over, and Gruel for Dinner will now return to its regular schedule of infrequent posts featuring complaints about the weather and recipes for soup.

Complaints about the weather

It's cold, it's gray and gloomy, we're supposed to get a foot of snow tomorrow. I'm so tired of winter, I can't even find the energy or humor to make a joke: This weather just sucks it. Sucks what? You know what.

Recipes for soup

Do you really think that if I can't even manage a crack about the weather that I can pull together a soup recipe? Bitches, please. I'm living off the frozen portions of lentil stew clogging my freezer. Since we returned from Argentina I've been working, looking at our vacation photos when I should be working, and wishing I lived in Buenos Aires. Not a morsel of food has been cooked in my kitchen.

I may not have a lot to offer you in the way of laughs or nourishment, but if you came to this website to kill some time on the internet, maybe this or this or this will keep you occupied.

If you really want a recipe for soup, this and this and this are among my GFD favorites.

And I'm hoping to one day soon make this and this and this (if you get to them before I do, which at the rate I'm moving seems quite likely, let me know how they turn out).

I may not have missed winter or working or waking up early, but I've sure missed you.

Hi there.

rude awakening

We went to the Adirondacks last weekend.


Or was that a dream? Hours spent reading by the fire, snowy walks on the lake, long baths in a cast iron tub.


No internet, no cell service, no phone.

The yachtsman made his famous seitan vindaloo, his famous biscuits. He, famously, took naps on the couch with the dog curled up in the crook of his bent legs. In my dream it was so beautiful I vowed never again to complain about winter.


And then we drove home and I stepped out of the car into a puddle of icy slush and the wind slapped me across the face like I was its bitch and I was all like, "Fuck this." I was like, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." I was like, "Two roads diverged in the woods and I— I— what the hell am I doing living in Vermont?"

a few of my favorite (& least favorite) things

I haven't cooked anything new or bl*g-worthy lately (e.g., tonight's dinner was marinated, baked tofu and brown rice—jealous?), so I thought I'd share with you ten of my favorite GFD recipes from 2010. These aren't necessarily the most epicurean or elaborate items from the archive, but they're the foods (and a drink) I find myself returning to again and again—some because of demand (the chocolate-chip cookies may be the primary reason I'm ever invited anywhere for dinner), others for ease (avocado toast, anyone?), and all because they're delicious.

That's correct, I find raw kale delicious. Not just nourishing and healthful, but also comforting and scrumptious. Raw Tuscan Kale Salad was my refuge from the fat-fueled, boozy sugar high that is the last couple weeks of December. When running from event to event shoving white food in my face finally overwhelmed me, I donned my fleece and retired to the couch, where I caught up on Gossip Girl (why can't Blair and Chuck just be together?) and ate this salad. The holidays are over (praise Jah), so you can skip the office parties and family gatherings, the chips and dips and roasts and cookies and punch, and move straight to the trashy TV and garlicky, peppery salad.


Other foods that I like to eat on the couch in front of the television include...well, all foods, actually. But especially soups. There's nothing like a warm bowl of soup and the blue glow of the television to help a girl forget that it gets dark at 4 p.m. Bright, lemony Red Lentil Soup With Lemon was featured on this bl*g in 2010, but I've been cooking it for years and never tire of it. Unlike winter, which I'm already so sick of I could (and do) cry.

Asparagus, Rice, and Pancetta Soup, on the other hand, I made for the first time in 2010, and then went on to make it a second, third, fourth, and fifth. Right now it has me pining for spring, when the asparagus tips will begin peeking through the soil. Because that's pretty much the only springlike event in Vermont, unless you count mud, barren trees, gray skies, and daffodils dusted with snow. But once that asparagus shoots up, I'll combine it with salty pancetta, loads of Parmesan cheese, fresh thyme, and white rice, and eat a warm bowlful while I watch the m*therf%ck!n' snow continue to fall.


If and when summer finally arrives, I'll make Chilled Thai Squash Soup, a cold, spicy slurp of a soup that's perfect for cooling off on a hot day (something I cannot even imagine right now as I sit at my computer wearing long underwear, fleece pants, a long-sleeved shirt, wool sweater dress, sweater, and scarf, an outfit that in some states is grounds for divorce). Also perfect for cooling off on a hot day are Creamy Raspberry Popsicles. I didn't discover these until late last summer, at which point I made a batch every week until raspberries went out of season. Some days I ate a popsicle for breakfast, another for elevenses, one for dessert after lunch, one for mid-afternoon snack, and one after dinner but before walking to the lake to buy a creemee and watch the sun set (at 9 p.m.). My god, I love summer.


I'm not sure when avocados are in season, but I eat No-You-Don't-Need-a-Recipe Avocado Toast year round. Before you judge remember that I live in Vermont, where being a localvore would require surviving on beets and turnips from October through April and forgoing most fruit save berries and apples. So I supplement my diet with avocados that are flown in from some tropical location I'm thinking I should move to. Mashed with the juice from a lime that I hope for the sake of my carbon footprint arrived on the same plane as the avocado and sprinkled with salt from France, this snack is about as unlocal as I can get without trotting over to McDonald's, and far more delicious than a Chicken McNugget.

While I haven't actually stepped foot in a McDonald's for years, I have been known to walk catatonically around Costco, which is where I buy one of the ingredients for Sun-Dried Tomato and Pistachio Pesto. Not the pistachios


the sun-dried tomatoes. Although I usually come home with, in addition to the tomatoes, a migraine and a mega-supply of something I don't need, the trip is totally worth it. Even if you don't like sun-dried tomatoes. Or pistachios. Or Costco. Make a double batch of pesto and freeze portions to eat on those winter nights when you can't bring yourself to do much more than boil a pot of water for pasta but need to eat something delicious to remind yourself that life is worth living.

If that doesn't work, drown your sorrows in a few It Was a Dark and Stormy Nights.

For the drowning of the sorrows I also recommend Possibly the Best Chocolate-Chip Cookies Ever. Unfortunately, they require 36 hours of lead time, and I don't know about you, but when I'm ready to drown my sorrows, I need to drown them RIGHT NOW, not in a day in a half. Fortunately, Possibly the Best Chocolate-Chip Cookies Ever freeze well, so you can make the batter when you're not in the throes of depression and bake a cookie whenever you need a little pick-me-up. They're also good for winning friends and influencing people.


I should probably end this post here, with dessert, but instead I'm going to close out this look back at 2010 GFD recipes/diatribe against winter with salad dressing. I'm generally a fan of shortcuts in the kitchen, but I just can't abide store-bought dressing—olive oil and a little lemon juice or good balsamic vinegar are preferable to anything sold in a bottle. Sometimes I'll get fancy and add fresh herbs or make dressings that require a blender, a recipe, or more than four ingredients, but since I had it for the first time last spring, this simple Red-Wine Vinaigrette has been the most common accompaniment to my greens. The ingredients are few and all staples, the effort required just barely more than unscrewing the greasy cap to that bottle of Wish-Bone that's been sitting in your fridge door for god know's how long. And when viewed from above in the right light, a jar of this dressing resembles the sun, something I haven't seen in so long I can't remember what it looks like.

highs & lows

When I woke up this morning it was 2 degrees. For lunch I ate mac 'n' cheese and a pancake. I've been trudging around the house all day in a head-to-toe fleece ensemble, with a down blanket wrapped around my torso like a towel. This afternoon I boiled a pot of water to alleviate the crucifying dryness in our apartment. On our walk tonight I had to carry the dog the last half mile home because his booties fell off and the salt on the sidewalk hobbles him.

Winter in Vermont really, really sucks. And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) makes me really, really proud to live here.

pardon my french

It's officially fall, a time of year most Vermonters seem to love. I'd decided that I, too, was going to enjoy the season this year, but now that it has arrived, I ask you: What is there to enjoy about this oppressively low, colorless sky and high-of-50-degrees weather?

Fuck fall. Fuck foliage, fuck crisp, sunny days and cold nights, fuck pumpkins (not literally, please), fuck harvest festivals, fuck the smell of woodsmoke in the air, fuck hot, mulled cider, fuck wool sweaters and leather boots, fuck bike rides, fuck apple picking, fuck swishing through piles of fallen leaves.

Enjoying fall is like enjoying the view out the window of a crashing airplane. "Look, I think I can see the..." BAM! We're going down, bitches, and while the scenery might be pretty, this flight is going to end in a ball of flames in some farmer's field. And when I say "ball of flames in some farmer's field," I mean "dark, subarctic igloo of depression on my couch." So stop fooling yourselves: Winter's coming.

Summer Chickpea Salad With Local Tomatoes and Herbs

Adapted from JamieOliver.com

[This recipe is not as much a recipe as it is an idea for a simple, delicious salad. A salad that will not work come winter, as the tomatoes are a central component. So eat up.]

1 small red onion, peeled and finely diced
1–2 fresh chiles, seeded and minced [the kind of chile you use will depend on how spicy you'd like your salad—I used a serrano one time and a jalapeno another, neither of which made the dish particularly hot in the end]
2–3 handfuls of ripe cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered depending on the size


2 lemons
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1–2 cans chickeas, drained and rinsed
a handful of fresh mint, chopped
a handful of fresh green or purple basil, coarsely chopped

1. Add the onion, chile, and tomatoes to a bowl, and dress with the juice from 1½ lemons and a couple of glugs of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Heat the chickpeas in a pan over medium heat, then add 80% of them to the bowl. Mush up the remaining chickpeas and add these, as well. Allow to marinate for a little while and just as you're ready to serve, give the salad a final dress with the fresh mint and basil. Taste one last time for seasoning—you may want to add the juice from your remaining lemon half at this point or more salt and pepper. Top with crumbled feta cheese.

conquering the csa, biblical stylee

Like it says in the bible, when life hands you raspberries, make popsicles. Never mind that it's 57 degrees and rainy; who are you to question the word of God? Throw two cups of raspberries into the blender, heretic,


along with two cups of whole-milk yogurt, one-third cup of sugar, and one teaspoon of lemon juice. Thou shalt blend until smooth, and then press the mixture through a strainer into a bowl with a spout.


From the bowl with a spout pour the now-seedless liquid into popsicle molds, or, if you don't own popsicle molds (and who does?), into whatever small containers you can scrounge up, including the pretty Moroccan-mint-tea glasses your husband gave you, and the tall, skinny shot glasses a Mexican guy you barely know sent to you from his homeland after coming to a party at your house and being served a, god forbid, margarita (apparently tequila is meant for sipping out of tall, skinny shot glasses, not mixing with lime juice and orange liqueur). Freeze until the raspberry mixture begins to set, around half an hour, then plunge a popsicle stick into each one.


Don't have popsicle sticks? WWJD? Pray on it.

That's right, he would break in half the disposable chopsticks that accompanied takeout Vietnamese and are now clogging the silverware drawer and use those.

Maybe don't put the splintery end into the popsicle, my child.

And it was so.


Freeze the popsicles until very hard. To eat, run the mold (or shot glass, as the case may be) under hot water and wiggle the stick around to remove the pop, and rejoice unto the popsicle.

Supermodel P.Loz

Next week I'll tell you about how the Lord summoned me to the mount and told me to roast tomatoes, and how I did not forsake him.

[Popsicle recipe adapted from Orangette.]

there is no gruel here

There are, however, pork boners. You heard me: pork boners.

Among other delicacies of the fair.


Including "the big pig"—an obscenely massive corn dog.


After all that food I had to force my delicate bitches on a ride, but ride we did.

Never winter.