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

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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Hugh Acheson's spinach salad with spiced pecans, sliced pear and blue cheese with a shallot-thyme vinaigrette: zen and the art of herb chopping

I feel alive in New York. More alive than when I'm anywhere else, actually, even though statistically speaking I'm much less significant. There are 12 million people hanging around these here parts, and I am a cog in a big machine, not anything large in and of myself. There's some kind of harmony in the dirtiness, in the smells and in the little inconveniences of being surrounded by so many people and so many agendas and a rhythm in being in it. And as I was walking to dinner last night I was struck by exactly how much I felt like an ant. Like one of those "scout" ants that releases a smell trail so that other ants know where to follow to find food (I was somewhat smelly from a very hot day in the prep kitchen). And yes, that could seem dehumanizing and sad to think that people are like ants, but it somehow made me feel comforted, like it's amazing to think that being so infinitesimally small is actually powerful. That yes, we may have the illusion of freewill (or maybe it's not an illusion, I don't know) and we also have consciousness, but there's gotta be something bigger, too. And I'm really happy to give the idea of my big ego and my big life a much needed vacation; they've worked some long, miserable overtime hours and I'm hopping they'll be more fun when they return with some good drinking stories and a tan.

Making jewelry and cooking both put me in the same headspace that New York does. It's my meditation. It's having a plan, and in putting that plan into motion, making hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny little movements to complete the plan. It's more rote than conscious and it's incredibly mentally quiet, though it's certainly not physically quiet-- the prep kitchen was insane with playlists of both Tool and Tejana music last week. I had to completely block that shiz out the same way I did when we had the same 45 minute music loop (including Coldplay tracks, oh joy) for six months when I was folding t-shirts at Banana Republic. 

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PostedAugust 14, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessalad, vegetarian
Tagshumble-pie-a-palooza!, shallot, spinach salad, thyme, herbs, chopped herbs, chopping to the oldies, new chefs knife kind of sucks, it's OK to be a scout ant, august adventure, blue cheese, Chef Kenobi, Englebert Humperdinck, spiced pecan, callouses, herbalicious, Tom Jones, vinaigrette
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spring pea and poblano with cumin and mint crème fraîche and fried serrano ham: there’s a whole lot of cumin goin’ on

If anyone out there in Cyberville has a clue as to how to get the smell of toasted cumin out of a plastic mini-prep, I’m all ears. It’s true that I’m the jerk who probably melted the plastic of said mini-prep by adding toasted cumin seed to it straight from the stove without cooling it first, but someone somewhere must know how to rectify this sorry state of affairs. I tried scrubbing, I tried soaking in soap and then in white vinegar. I even tried steel wool both to the chagrin of the skin on the knuckles of my right hand and also to no avail, and I’m ready to say Uncle. 

I’ve been a little overly, well, scrubby about things lately. I mean the cumin smell in the plastic isn’t exaggerated at all, but it is sort of indicative of a kind of OCD-like desire I’ve been having to scour things clean and to contain stuff. The result of cleaning and organizing is great; certainly it makes life a lot easier, but building what is essentially a bomb shelter in your chemical room (yes, I did this a couple of weeks ago) may not signal the height of rational behavior. 

In the Clark Kent portion of my life I’m a goldsmith. And being a goldsmith that actually forges and welds gold myself, I’m required to have a space with a hood to contain the fumes from various chemicals I use that either remove or add oxidation to metal. When I moved into the studio space that I live and work in (if you’re curious, you can see pictures of the space here), there was a back office area that conveniently already had a hood built in, which was great, but it also had a pile of crap in it (panes of glass, 15-20 carousels of slides, a slide projector, apple boxes, a slab of iron that weighed at least 500 pounds, a ladder, sand bags and rusting C- stands). Which would be fine if I hadn’t already spent the first several weeks of my occupancy ripping down walls, painting and cleaning up the previous tenant’s meshugas. So I “organized” these things into a few corners, brought in the bedraggled fridge from the kitchen (it makes a great beer locker) and added my chemical tables to the mix. And then there were the extra boxes that soon piled up (what if I need to move my Le Creuset 15.5 qt french oven someday?) , the odd items that I was holding in storage for my gay boyfriend (whose computer and SCALE--why I don’t know-- I am babysitting while he is teaching in China) and a panoply of shit that almost reached the ceiling. Looking through the glass windows into the room was giving me heartburn. 

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PostedApril 12, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriespositively piggy, soup
Tagsspinach salad, recipe, mint, OCD, soup, Legal Eagle, cumin, Hoarders, creme fraiche, serrano ham, spring pea, bee cake pan, soupapalooza!, piggy piggy piggy, blood orange vinaigrette, lemon lavender ice cream, poblano, Semi-sweet Bitters, green peas
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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)
  • party planning (1)
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  • stocks and broths (2)
  • vegan (5)
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  • quick pics! (9)
  • appetizers and snacks (10)
  • salad (10)
  • positively piggy (11)
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  • vegetarian (33)
  • soup (36)

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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