Those are John’s hands on the mandoline in the picture above with the rainbow radishes. John is 15. John has floppy, curly dark hair and a warm smile. John is 15. John has done four (I think it’s four, though it may be more... I had a few glasses of rosé) different stages at amazing restaurants in both New York and Los Angeles. Did I mention that John is 15? John was a volunteer helper on Sunday for “L.A. Loves Alex’s Lemonade Stand”, a beautifully done food event benefiting childhood cancer. John is 15 and he is going to be a great chef. Hell, he’s already a whole hell of a lot more effective passing out food stuffs and assembling a salad plate at an event than I am. But whatever. John is 15.

John was in charge of slicing the radishes because Chef Kenobi thought a 15 year old could and would do a better job of keeping their digits in tact than I would, which is, actually, all too true. I would like to see my hands continue to be full of fingers, tips and all. But just a shout out to John, my new favorite up and coming chef, I loved working next to you on Sunday and I cannot wait to eat in your restaurant in a few years.

Before I had the pleasure of meeting John, Sunday started like any other Sunday for me as I picked up Chef Kenobi and his adorbs sous chef, I’ll call him Bar-Bearded, and we headed off to Culver Studios. OK, It wasn’t like any other Sunday at all except that there was food. And people. And booze... all to benefit a cure for childhood cancer, which is something I think we can all get behind. Before I forget, please go to Alex’s Lemonade Stand and donate your time, your money or get your kids’ schools involved, please do something. This organization is AMAZING. And Alex’s story is heartbreaking and inspiring.

On Saturday Chef Kenobi, Bar-Bearded and I had hit the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market and loaded up on gorgeous Japanese eggplant, herbs, heirloom peppers and micro greens (actually, I just acted as a curious sherpa, asking all sorts of inane questions while lugging economy portions or marjoram from tent to tent). The menu for Sunday: grand aioli, beautiful fresh, local produce, herbed micro green salad seasoned with olive oil, lemon and salt and lightly fried eggplant and baby potatoes.

PostedNovember 8, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriessalad, gear and miscellany, vegetarian

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Halloween came a week early this year when I came perilously close to chopping the tip of my left thumb off. It’s been months since my last knife wound thanks in part to knife skills lessons from various and sundry professionals (thank you, Obi Wan) and from a year’s worth of diligent practice; but it was like Dan Akroyd’s Julia Child from the late 1970’s SNL skit where blood just shoots out all over the place in a fountain of red corn syrup. Hilarious. Only mine was plasma and platelets which are apparently necessary to sustain human life. Anyway, I spent a large part of the afternoon with my left hand propped over my head wrapped in a roll of paper towels trying to avoid a trip to the emergency room for stitches since I let my health insurance lapse a few weeks ago. Eventually the bleeding slowed enough for me coat the digit with enough neosporin to support two girls in a mud wrestling vat and to dress it with a sterile bandage and cover it with a rubber glove so I could continue cooking.

And that wasn’t the only creepy occurrence.

There was this little thing a while back where my subconscious rendered an ex boyfriend dead. As in totally kaput. Morto.

Yes, I had a dream, but not a dream in a MLK or a copper pot kind of way, oh no. It was like when Jimmy Smitts was written out of NYPD Blue: there were tears and there was pleading and then the dude died. As in dead. As disco. And I woke up sweaty and full of guilt and shame (guilt because I realized the One Night Stand-Up was sleeping next to me, and shame because technically I should now refer to him as the “Two Night Stand-Up”, which isn’t nearly as funny).

PostedOctober 28, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriesvegetarian, soup

TagsGorgeous G, apple pie ice cream, goat cheese w/ pistachio, cranberry & toasts, spinach and gruyere stuffed mushrooms, sunday bloody sunday, soup, butternut squash, blue cheese, killing off ex boyfriends, Chef Kenobi, soupapalooza!, cheesy, apple, romaine and flash pickled fig salad, thumbs up, One Night Stand Up

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One year. Twelve months, Fifty-two weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, give or take the few that need to be classified as “lost”...

It feels like I just started this little adventure and it’s been a thousand years all at the same time.

This Sunday, soupapolooza! is one. And like any proud mother whose offspring is reaching a milestone, I can’t help but think about how this thing I imagined is nothing like I imagined; that it has its own ideas independent of my expectations and I am powerless to do anything about it. That everything and nothing have happened all at the same time-- and that I’ve been living my life in the moments in between.

I didn’t know what would happen when I started cooking. I hoped I would learn how to dice and that I would understand a little more about what makes good, healthy food (I have). I hoped that other people might the enjoy stuff I created and join me for a few hours a week (they did). And I hoped I wouldn’t poison them (I haven’t).

Here’s what I didn’t plan for in this year since I started making soup:

PostedOctober 20, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriesgear and miscellany

Tagslessons learned, soupapalooza!, thanks for souping, soupaversary, one isn't the loneliest number

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I’ve almost never fully understood what my currency has been at any point in my life. What a waste my twenties were in this regard and what a crappy thing to have silly things like ideals. I remember giving up an invitation by a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to attend the Oscars with him because I thought he was a little suspect and aged (I think I’m older now than he was then, by the way) and I didn’t like his hair much, because I was that nit-picky. I also thought that surely if an opportunity to go to the Oscars was being presented to me at 22, I would certainly have others-- I didn’t realize that it was youth and naivety that were my sources of power at the time (I thought it was just my plain ol’ ”badassness”). What giant lady balls I had! I would stomp on kittens to have any number of those lost opportunities now. Yes, I said stomp on KITTENS. Or even BUNNIES, though at this stage of the game I would try and use my feminine wiles to get the dude to cut his hair, which I am quite sure at this point he already has, or at the very least make sure he didn’t take Corey Feldman as his backup date, which he actually did, much to both my disgust and to my delight.

The only time that I can think of in my past when I did know what it was that was my source of advantage was my senior year in college. I was one of the few people (I think there were fifty of us total) that petitioned to live in off-campus housing and had a non Middlebury sponsored residence, which meant I had a nice kitchen and a wood burning stove, which was cozy, if not completely necessary, since this was Vermont and we were all semi-lame pseudo-hippies that smelled good. Anyway, because I wasn’t on the meal plan in the dorm and because there was a food co-op right down the street and because that co-op sold ramen noodles and Annie’s mac and cheese and because I washed down every meal with at least three cans of Milwaukee’s Beast (that’s not a typo), I had acquired quite the culo. My solution? Use whatever means at my disposal to lose the fat ass. And what was at my disposal, you might ask: why, my kitchen and my (sort of) ability to follow directions.

PostedOctober 12, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, soup

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There was a tragic turn of events last week. My beloved two dollar “hand-crafted-by-foreign-children-so-as-to-be-available-to-hoarding-americans-who-don’t-need-more-of-anything-for-two-dollars” coffee mug from Target was forever lost to this world because of soapy dish hands and an industrial sink. It was quite sad when it shattered, and I feared that my mornings were to be forever a little less happy. Not that I’m really ever all that happy before 8am.

You see, I judge the quality of my day based on how much I enjoy my morning coffee, and that stupid mug made countless mornings just a tad brighter, mostly because it didn’t hold heat very well and I like my morning soup luke warm. I’m a weirdo, what can I say. Thank goodness for those tiny, inexpensive and uneducated factory hands and Lord Jesus bless that mug.

R.I.P Cheap Ceramic Cup, provenance: Target on La Brea (2004-2010).

I thought my morning happiness was lost forever, or at the very least I might have to suck it up and drive the seven minutes it takes to get to Peet’s on Larchmont for the foreseeable future. But something happened to change the game completely. Something happened that would make all my mornings a little bit sunnier.

PostedOctober 11, 2010

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriesgear and miscellany

Tagsservewear, sausalito, Heath ceramics, coffee cups, child labor laws, dinnerwear, coffee is morning soup, vessels

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herbed salad of local greens with aioli and fried eggplant and fingerling potatoes: LA Loves Alex's Lemonade Stand and I do, too

butternut squash and apple with blue cheese: Halloween came a little early this year

so far so good: a year in the life of a soup blog

sweet potato with pancetta rosemary croutons AND roasted yellow pepper/ roasted heirloom tomato with serrano cream: soup(s)apolooza!

my cup runneth over: not to be all off-topic, but what is coffee if not your morning soup?

Why? Because soup is cheap, delicious and easy. Kind of like me.

a weekly attempt to eat well and to savor life. or to see how much food I can get on my clothes.