the stories
the kitchen
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the food porn
the recipes
the about
the drop me a line part
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the full list
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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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BLT salad: presented in all its delicious glory without a side of ennui

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.

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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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Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday: road trips and alcohol are awesome diversionary tactics

Just in case you're wondering where I've been, which of course I know you breathlessly have been, I've been pinned under a pile of Get Your Shit Together, Girl. Reentry is such a tremendously whiny  little bitch. 

My little August adventure proved to be a fantastic distraction from my real life here in LA, but as I learned when I was taking Physics in college, if you ignore a problem (or 10 problems) long enough, they most certainly do not go away by themselves unless you bribe the TA. I was so hopeful then, as I am now, that the opposite is true because I never learn. Also because I seem to love the sound of my head hitting the wall or the palm of my hand, depending on the severity of my denial.

It's still hotter than hell here in LA. Not a turning leaf or a cashmere sweater in sight, in fact. But technically it is fall in this fair land of ours, and it is a very fair land, indeed, as I discovered on a little road trip this last week, a journey that I accepted in an effort to delay the getting out from under the Get Your Shit Together, Girl pile even further.

I was invited to tag along with a friend who was driving a car and her dog, a black lab appropriately named Demon, from Chicago to Los Angeles along with another mutual friend (we will heretofore be known as Thelma, Thelma and Louise)... 

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PostedSeptember 28, 2012
Authormelissa mcclure
Categorieslibations
Tagsthelma thelma and louise, fish sauce, cajun, recipe, tomato, cornichon, libations, bloody mary, bacon is best, demon dog, sunday bloody mary sunday, grand canyon, roadtrip, LA, soupapalooza!, my brother's prom date, piggy piggy piggy, Get Your Shit Together, chicago, facedown in a tray of fried, random hausfrau, horseradish
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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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heirloom tomato and lemongrass with pea shoots & crab: If only my McDonald’s habit was as cool as my Member’s Only jacket

I am unashamed that I like really bad television-- über mind-numbingly soul-sucking sideshow TV, to be specific. I think this must be the same impulse that hipster dudes have to sport facial hair and roll up the sleeves of their vintage Members Only jackets in an ironic way. I like high culture also, but isn’t it a mark of my good taste to admit that I like something that is just plain bad (as long as I know that you know that I know that it is, indeed, low brow and tasteless), just like those smelly, hirsute boys in Williamsburg do? 

Seriously “on-the-side” side note: I’m still not completely sure just how wearing iconic and tacky clothes from an era before you were born is ironic, exactly, though I did try and wear a poodle skirt once in fourth or fifth grade after seeing Grease for the 12,000th time. I wouldn’t even have been able to pronounce the word irony, much less understand its meaning back then, had I ever heard it, which I hadn’t. It took a little elevator scene in the movie Reality Bites my senior year of college to really drive that one home for me. Thank you Ethan Hawke. Thank you for more than just your OG greasy hipsterness, thank you for your contribution to my education. And PS, Ethan: I still think Winona Ryder should’ve chosen that douchebag Ben Stiller over you even though his weasely re-editing of her reality show was kind of pathetic, if not simply self-serving. She’d have a viable career now, that little wisp-of-a-waif Winona, and possibly be living somewhere other than in a cloud of shoplifting shame and Xanax residue and that wouldn’t be such horrible thing now would it? 

But I digress.

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PostedAugust 18, 2011
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriessoup
Tagshipster, recipe, icebox pie, gingersnap pie crust, tomato, rhubarb, crabby, lemongrass, cat on a leash, grilled avocado and peach salad, vaguely asian, roasted cucumber sandwiches, soupapalooza!, Bad McDonald's Habit, my gay boyfriend, peashoots, Ethan Hawke is greasy, now with fish sauce!
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sweet potato with pancetta rosemary croutons AND roasted yellow pepper/ roasted heirloom tomato with serrano cream: soup(s)apolooza!

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.

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PostedOctober 12, 2010
Authormelissa mcclure
Categoriespositively piggy, soup
Tagspistachio ice cream, rosemary crouton, roasted tomato, serrano, CPK no!, tomato, chopped herbs, serrano cream, 80s throwback, Bait and Switch, pancetta, soup, Legal Eagle, sweet potato, roasted yellow pepper, duo, stomp on bunnies, soupapalooza!, piggy piggy piggy, Oscar FAIL, the two Coreys
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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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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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