It's lucky I didn't get married when by all rights I should have, during that time known as the Donna Martin decade, aka the 1990s. I might be embarrassed now when I would have looked back at the wedding VHS and realized that "our" song was "Wonderwall" and that all the wedding pictures showcased a drastic blood-red-blunt-bang Vidal Sassoon breakup dye job and cut (it took about three years to grow that mess into that strawberry banana lifesaver stage). Hell, I might even be embarrassed that the reception, most likely thrown at the La Luz de Jesus gallery in Silverlake had offered a backdrop of pin up girls, Weegee photographs and Day of the Dead figurines. And that I listened to Weezer at least 478 times as I hand stamped each invitation ("What's with these homies dissing my girl/ Why do they gotta front?"). I have imagined the scenario probably a hundred or more times over the years, when I was asked to be a bridesmaid or I saw another friend's wedding pictures on Facebook, even when I was six or seven and playing around with my friends. THIS is what my wedding, my big day, is going to look like, and it will be beautiful. Every single detail was imagined and remained as I got older and my tastes changed and the styles of everything around me changed, too, but I was never able to picture one key element:

the groom.

Seriously, even when I was dating someone seriously (and there were quite a few during the 1990s, sorry for partying), I couldn't see the guy, period. Not a body, not a face, not a single distinguishing feature. I'm quite sure that had I been in therapy during any of those imaginative times, the shrink would have had much to say about this.

Maybe most girls are like this, planners and re-planners of this rite of passage, I really don't know, but I think there is something inherently wrong with me. I mean there are many, many things wrong with me, let's not kid ourselves, but maybe if you don't ever see yourself marrying someone when you imagine, oh I don't know, MARRYING someone, you should work on developing other dreams for your life. Like writing a food blog.

This site has been a chronicle of my Amazing Middle Aged Peter Pan Angst(™), and if you've read any of it before today (I know there are at least two of you) you are probably keenly aware that there has been much of it. There has also been silence for more than a year, and I would like to explain, just in case you've felt a gaping hole in your soul.

PostedFebruary 17, 2015

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, soup

Tagssoup, soupapalooza!, split pea, porky pig, not even close to vegetarian, serrano, pancetta, hock this way

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The BLT is one of my favorite comfort foods. In the late summer, when tomatoes are at their ripest, most delicious selves, I almost always come home from the farmer's market with a loaf of french bread, heirloom tomatoes and greens (there is always bacon in my refrigerator, always always always), and they quickly become the almost-instant-gratification expression of delight-- a juicy, delicious and meaty sandwich. And as much as I love tomatoes any way I can get them (minus from other people's refrigerators, naturally, because that makes them all mealy), I have a particular fascination with mayonnaise, too. So between the french stuff, the artisanal hipster stuff from Brooklyn with the chile tinge and the perfect workhorse, Hellman's (or Best Foods if you're west of the Rockies), there are many delicious versions to always keep me interested and to highlight the perfect sandwich.

When I was planning the breakfast-palooza! menu, I had a hard time figuring out how to work in a proper green salad with the circus of carbohydrates I was offering up. It occurred to me that even though it wasn't summer and tomatoes aren't really in season, except, of course, here in Southern California where most produce is pretty much in season all the time, and BLTs aren't really a breakfast food at all, they still pop up on brunch menus sometimes and they would probably taste great next to all the other stuff I was planning to force into the arteries of my guests.

And I was right. This salad is quick, delicious, and Rachel Zoe is somewhere in a corner, furiously shoving it into her mouth whispering, "I die" to anyone within earshot. I would make it as an entire meal for two and eat the whole thing myself.

PostedFebruary 26, 2013

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, salad, breakfast

Tagsbacon is best, piggy piggy piggy, positively piggy, BLT salad, recipe, soupapalooza!, breakfast-palooza!, crouton, mayonnaise malaise, someone get Rachel Zoe a cheeseburger STAT, tomato

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*Blogger’s note: I originally pulled this post down because I thought it a little too raw and personal. And it is. But here’s what I’ve come to believe: it’s just a version of the truth that doesn’t portray my behavior in the best possible light, to be sure, but ultimately is just a part of the whole. And that greater whole is complicated and sometimes loving and fun and sometimes petty and mean just the same, and that’s A-OK with me. This was just how I was dealing, incredibly poorly I might add, with my own expectations of the timeline. I hope you enjoy, even if you think I’m a total ingrate. ---mm

If I thought I tripped into a pothole when I turned 39, then I plummeted full-force into an Everest-style crevasse starting a few short months before I summited to 40. I cannot tell you how crazy I became. Like so crazy that I pitched an absolute hissy fit when I found out my whole family was going to celebrate my niece’s ninth birthday but had no plan to acknowledge mine, this year that I would officially stop being Peter Pan and become Peter Pan-fried. Yes, I was jealous of a nine year old. Trust me, I’m aware (and, sadly, was also even aware at the time) of just how terrible I was behaving, but in the interest of really spilling the pettiest of the petty details, I’d like to set the scene:

PostedFebruary 17, 2012

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, soup

Tagsblue cheese, brattiness, panic button, soupapalooza!, cheesy, main course, 40, piggy piggy piggy, pancetta, pear

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I haven’t forsaken you, Dear Reader, I promise. Not at all. I did, however have quite the soup sabbatical. You see, I had this little “Oh no, I’m turning 40” blip and, in pursuit of personal goals like, say, making a living and dating, I neglected my soup baby. I feel bad. You, maybe not so much. But now that I actually feel the relief of being in my 40s, I think we can pick up where we left off and get back to the eating, entertaining and the spilling of guts.

I’m in the middle of conjuring a post right now-- one with a beautiful soup I picked up from food52 that I made while my mom was here visiting for Thanksgiving that involved pears, blue cheese and friend pancetta. Yes, all that deliciousness in one bite. And there was more, too: homemade white truffle potato chips, mission fig, red onion and ricotta crostini, a salad of winter greens with apple, egg, pecorino with a pomegranate vinaigrette and my mom’s Italian cream cake. Which, by the way, is not Italian at all. So wait for it...it’s coming in a few short hours. Or maybe a day. I never can tell. But here are a few photos just to keep you waiting for my ramblings. And hopefully to whet your appetite for more...

Stay tuned and Soup on!

*please see the following post for the recipe!

PostedFebruary 16, 2012

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, soup

Tagsbrattiness, blue cheese, main course, cheesy, 40, piggy piggy piggy, pancetta, soup, pear

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There was a period of time, oh almost a decade ago, that I completely lost it. I joke that it was my Maria Carey meltdown (you do remember the time in her “Glitter” era when she started speaking gibberish on TRL while pushing an ice cream cart around only to wind up in a “sanatorium”, don’t you?). Well mine was exactly like that minus the fame and the money, the butt shorts and the Carson Daly. I had wound up, after a decade of living on my own in California, back in my hometown working in the mall I used to troll as a preteen. It was so not pretty I can’t even tell you. Every so often I would look up from folding a t-shirt (I spent an inordinate amount of time folding t-shirts) to see the schadenfreudic-full face of some girl I went to high school with strolling with her baby while wearing a two carat VS1 diamond on her finger. I cannot tell you how many uncomfortable and humiliating conversations I had during that period of my life, in between the time I spent traveling from the putty colored walls of my shrink’s office to the hallowed halls of Baybrook Mall’s very own Banana Republic to the zombied-out hours I spent watching “The Bachelor” and “The Swan” on my mom’s couch. It was truly pitiful, not to mention ridiculously expensive due to the megadoses of anti-depressants and sleeping pills I popped every day.

The how I got there part isn’t really all that important, but suffice to say I was in the midst of this full-blown major depressive episode by my own making. I had been on a fast track to a life that I thought I wanted, that I thought I was entitled to, only to have all of it blow up spectacularly in my face; I was suffering wildly at discovering that no one is guaranteed anything in life, certainly not everyone gets a happy ending and what made me so special to think I was so special? I was barely 30 and still young, but I held zero hope for my life ending up as I had plotted, planned and engineered with a Machiavellianish intensity.

PostedApril 14, 2011

Authormelissa mcclure

Categoriespositively piggy, gear and miscellany

TagsMariah Carey Meltdown, book report, The Dirty Life, life lessons, Kristin Kimball, All Things Considered, farming

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serrano split pea with fried pancetta: splitting the difference

BLT salad: presented in all its delicious glory without a side of ennui

pear with blue cheese and fried pancetta: “40” isn’t just a crappy song by U2 anymore

pear with blue cheese and fried pancetta: ballad of a lazy blogger or how I put the lame in lament

soupapalooza! book report: The Dirty Life and making peace with your Maria Carey meltdown

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.