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soupapalooza!

the stories
the kitchen
the market
the proof (party pics!)
the food porn
the recipes
the about
the drop me a line part
the resources
the full list
jewelry alchemy
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curried lentil soup: if I were a landmark I might be called Mt. Dumpatoa

Four New Year’s Eves ago I got dumped. Three birthdays ago I also got dumped, exactly one year and four days later, by a different guy for the first of what would later be two separate dumpings. I know, it’s a lot of math for an opening paragraph, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

Actually it was four New Year’s Eve eves ago, but for dramatic purposes I prefer to tell the story with the dumping on the holiday as opposed to about the holiday. It’s neater, more horrifying and narratively tidier.

I had just returned from Texas and even though he had taken me to the airport on my way out of town, he had not called in several days, most notably not even on Christmas itself, and had not offered to pick me up outside of baggage claim or anywhere else for that matter. Expecting very little of both myself and of my paramours, I hadn’t bothered to call him, either, to get a real read on the situation, but had instead been “sitting on my hands” at the advice of a quack therapist that a close friend at the time based most of her life decisions on. A quack who, by the way, has since been on Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, famously telling some poor girl, “men fall in love with virtues, not vaginas!” I totally beg to differ. Bitch may be Patti Stanger’s version of Mr. Miyagi, but I’m still giving her and her advanced old-age quackery my most fervent side-eye.

It was afternoon and I was looking forward to making plans for New Years Eve, even though if you (and by you I mean me) are still planning on making plans with a guy less than 24 hours before New Year’s Eve and he hasn’t brought it up, he’s probably not taking you to the Rainbow Room for dinner. In fact, you may not actually be dating him at all, even if you’re, like, totally sure you are.

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PostedJanuary 25, 2013
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriesvegan, vegetarian, soup
Tagsscrew your pumpkin pasta, Freud Freud Freud!, recipe, carrot, It's not me? Oh yes it is., mt. dumpatoa, can be tailored vegan, let it go already, Raoul's, New Year's Eve eve blows, soup, Soho is now ruined forever for me, curry, lentils, soup with a side of ennui, soupapalooza!, vegetarian
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quick and delicious gazpacho: stop thinking and start jumping

I have to remind myself that when I start to feel tinges of sadness it's most likely because I'm in the process of letting something go, and, almost always, there is greater happiness on the other side. I have to say this to myself over and over. This standing on the precipice part is a real bitch. Every cell in my body is at attention, ready to respond to some kind of directive and yet I have a hard time pin-pointing exactly what it is that's bothering me because, quite frankly, I don't really want to identify it. Because then I have to address it, jump off the cliff and then realize it's over. And yes, there is relief after the dive, but holding onto crap is what I know; it's my human condition. My name is Melissa and I'm an emotional hoarder. I need a producer from A&E to hire a junk crew to remove all the shit from my brain and haul it away while I try and hold on to the useless bits like bottle caps and love letters in a shoebox.

Since I arrived in New York I've worked most days. Because obviously I'm here to work and to learn. And I'm having a great time doing it, as I've made mention a few times in these recent posts. In fact, I feel the same sense of hope that I did when I lived here when I was studying at FIT almost 10 years ago. I'm trying to figure out if that's because I have a pathological need to jump from one creative discipline to another (costume design to goldsmithing to recreational cooking) and it's some kind of well-established pattern of folly, or if it's just a little internal compass reminder that I'm on the right path for right now. It scares me to think that I'm constantly reinventing myself, my life and my surroundings, but I just deeply hope that I don't have ADD or that I am a dilettante of the highest order (though I don't think I'm wealthy enough to be considered a dilettante, anyway).  

Even though I've worked most days I've managed to visit with old friends, one of which drove down several hours from another city. It was an uncharacteristically spontaneous thing for him to do, which is a weird thing for me to even know about him, because I don't actually really know him at all...

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PostedAugust 23, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriesvegan, vegetarian, soup
Tagshumble-pie-a-palooza!, so square you have corners, dilettante, recipe, whiskey, tomato, chorizo, soup, jalapeño, august adventure, cucumber, AWOL, soupapalooza!, shishito peppers, gazpacho, lost weekend, little do I know, jumping off a cliff
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grilled avocado and peach arugula salad in a red wine & vanilla vinaigrette: killing you softly with this blog

Reformatting this blog has proven to be a bit more tedious than I had first imagined. Imagine that! I could go on and on about iWeb and MobileMe and tags and categories and robots and stats, but then that would just be me being super cranky and boring you to no end. And I hope that even if you may disagree with my cantankerous  and narcissistic point of view sometimes (and the overwhelming number of times I mention my cat) , and even if you may not like the food I'm writing about, I hope I'm not completely boring you. I try to mention things like almost cutting my finger off and my narrow escapes from internet dating predators just to make sure you're awake. Hell, I'll even further lower my standards and throw out something like a cat on a leash if it makes you think I'm some kind of blog surrealist or if it means you'll read a post about tomato and crab soup.

So, anyway, as I'm reformatting each individual entry from the last almost-three-years (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz), I'm being reminded of many embarrassing rants and some pretty crappy photography (this blog did pre-date Instagram--you can see a few pics of my live feed at the bottom of this post-- and Hipstamatic, after all). But there has also been a silver lining: there are many appetizer, salad and dessert recipes that I failed to document along the way that now can be posted. I'm also formatting a page with full menu suggestions that may prove helpful for you, and it should be up in the next week or so. If, of course, I don't have an aneurism while I continue to re-visit these old, obnoxious posts.

So the first old recipe that will be new to you is an arugula salad with grilled avocado and peaches, topped with a red pepper, red wine and vanilla vinaigrette.

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PostedJuly 19, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessalad, vegan, vegetarian
Tagsrecipe, soupapalooza!, stone fruit, peach, summer salad, avaocado, Instagram, arugula, grilled, vinaigrette
2 CommentsPost a comment

vegetable broth: you’ve gotta start somewhere

So basically I’m like the worst blogger ever. Or maybe just the laziest, take your pick. And I mean that’s saying a lot. Sloths have more frequently updated blogs than I do, and they take a week to cross the street to get to a tree.

I just checked this here little soup site for the first time since mid-May. It’s late July. There are already stacks of Halloween candy and Thanksgiving crap going up at my local CVS, so I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.  I won’t bore you with the details of this, my lost summer, but let’s just say I’m going to play the sympathy card and let you know that there has been a big, bad sickness in my immediate family that kind of knocked me out like that dude on the Bachelorette during that insane trip to Thailand this season. I didn’t wind up on a Thai stretcher or get sent home after my “hometown visit” (poor dude), but I did do quite a bit of wallowing and moaning and I kind of let myself watch a lot of bad TV. So I’m sorry. I’m back.

Because I lost so much time and I am no longer able to battle my ADD (forget about any salient stories people), here are some pictures of deliciousness from this summer so far...

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PostedJuly 20, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriesvegan, stocks and broths, vegetarian, soup
Tagsquick pics!, recipe, Cook's Illustrated, bad blogger, soupapalooza!, broths and/or stocks, summer!, soup, America's Test Kitchen
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curried cauliflower with lime yogurt and sautéed vegetables: the accidental vegan (sort of)

Things at March’s soupapolooza! started off with a bang. Literally. And while I get super irritated with people who misuse and/ or overuse the term “literally” (I’m looking at you with my side-eye, Rachel Zoe), it is both appropriate and correct in this instance. It was buh-nan-ahs.

Semi-sweet Bitters showed up early on Sunday, as he always does, prepared to cut lemons, fill water bottles, light candles or whatever else I’d managed to forget or ignore. I love this. Even when entertaining close friends who are by nature pretty forgiving, I still stress about having things ready to go before the first arrivals (and by the way, I’m never on time). So the fact that Semi-sweet is almost always the premier guest and he’s game for completing the incomplete, I’m spared a great deal of hair pulling and some serious bouts of Procrastinator’s Agita. 

It is also not uncommon for Semi-sweet Bitters to bring his sabre, for sabrage naturally, which is a crowd pleaser to be sure: who doesn’t love watching someone decapitate the top of a champagne bottle with a sword? I have amassed quite a collection of trophies of this handy work on top of my sink, beautiful champagne corks with their glass necks still wrapped around the collar. I love them. They’re kind of like my version of taxidermy animal heads on a study wall, except I don’t have a study and the only things that got killed and stuffed are my sobriety and my good judgement. 

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PostedMarch 17, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriesvegan, vegetarian, soup
Tagspear cardamom chutney, spinach salad, lime yogurt, recipe, triple vanilla cupcake, can be tailored vegan, poor kitty, soup, fried pappadam, curry, Coulter = Secretariat, persian cucumber, soupapalooza!, samosas, cauliflower, bang!, you gotta have a gimmck, stunt baking, tamarind vinaigrette, bacon cupcakes, alcohol induced accidents, Semi-sweet Bitters
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goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

goldsmith, sometime costume designer and badass cat owner. 

  • dessert (1)
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  • vegan (5)
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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.

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