vapours
leftovers pizza, lazy caesar, and other meals for the struggle
Hi everyone. This week’s newsletter feels a bit half-assed compared to usual due to *gestures at everything*. Who else is tired of living in interesting times? Every day kind of feels like that ‘don’t let the existential dread sink in’ comic. Staying informed can easily turn into doomscrolling, but then it’s time to shift focus to what you can reasonably do that’s helpful. It sounds so corny to say that when you give in to despair, you’re letting them win, but it is something worth remembering: it’s their goal to make you feel helpless, hopeless, and joyless. You are are not. Caring for yourself and others is the first thing.
The last week of January, my mom had a few precious days off call and got a hotel in Vancouver instead of wasting half her short vacation time travelling somewhere. Dine Out Vancouver is on, and she and Jimm had made a reservation at Social Corner. Alice works at their partner restaurant, acquafarina, so she and Shawn were going to join them, but they got the flu and couldn’t, so Jeff and I met up with them instead.
I have to say it’s excellent to eat in a restaurant that thinks about things like keeping the music at a volume that allows you to hear the people you’re talking to, but not the table beside you. Jeff was the only one who ordered off the Dine Out menu; Jimm got a pizza and my mom and I decided to share a few tapas. The kitchen somehow reversed the bills with our starters and mains, so all the mains showed up first, which they were incredibly apologetic about (several of the starters got comped). But I was actually fine eating the salads and bread at the end— it only proved that we, as usual, ordered too much food. And yet no one was too full for a couple of bites of Jeff’s panettone tiramisu.
My favourites were the spicy vodka alla pizzaiola— vodka sauce with bocconcini and basil with perfectly baked pizza dough to dip into it— and the beets & burrata, although everything we ordered was very good, and the service was lovely. Well worth having to wait for the seabus home after 11pm.
Jeff and I got to bring home the leftovers from Social Corner, because my mom and Jimm were in the kind of hotel where if you even look at the mini-fridge they charge you for it. The next morning we made a hash out of the patatas bravas, and in the evening we made pizza with the others. The vodka sauce made an amazing base, and when we took it out of the oven we added some leftover burrata and a few leaves of arugula from our abandoned salad. Also in pizza news: the next week we bought more of the seafood mushrooms and made the same mushroom and green onion pizza bianca we’d made a few weeks ago, because we liked it so much.
Days when I have to leave the house for work are always a challenge. Sometimes we eat leftovers or takeout, but some days I have to attempt to cobble something together when it’s late and I’m already very hungry, while grumbling aloud in disbelief about the prison of capitalism that demands some people do this every day. But it can at least be a good excuse for a grilled cheese sandwich. I made a slightly fancy one by dry-frying some brown mushrooms in the cast iron, then putting them into the sandwiches, cooked in the same pan. We also had salad, because even taking soup out of the freezer and heating it up would have taken too long.
I’ve made a good number of the dishes in Isa Does It, having owned the book since it came out, and over the years I started making notes in the recipes I make a lot if I found myself making changes often, or if I thought the ratio of something wasn’t quite right, and a few times, if I made a recipe and didn’t much care for it I wrote down why. So it’s been something of a surprise that twice so far this winter I have revisited a recipe for miso-vegetable soup where I’d initially pencilled ‘boring but fine’ at the corner of the page. I stand by my original assessment made as is— maybe I just don’t care for kidney beans, cauliflower florets, and green beans in soup together— but it’s proven to be a decent base for a ‘use up those random vegetables’ dish with a few alterations. This week I used green beans, leeks, carrots, green onion, and chickpeas, with capellini spezzati added. The base is much better with something spicy added to it, sriracha or sambal or another paste or oil. I used a spoonful of guilin chili sauce. This made a lot, and it’s so satisfying and spicy I’m not even mad about it.
A soup from the same book that needs no alterations, however, is the classic potato leek. As she says in the book, you don’t need to mess with this one to make it more delicious— it’s already great as is. The only change I make is blending lightly with a hand blender for a uniform texture, and sometimes I use yukon gold potatoes without peeling them. If you want a smooth velvety soup, use peeled russets; if you want it more rustic, go for the unpeeled golds. Add some herbs and a little drizzle of olive oil to finish it off.
It felt weird to make salad for dinner when it was literally snowing outside, but sometimes one is powerless to resist the caesar craving, and I had a bunch of greens to use up (I used kale and romaine here). I made the dressing using the end of a jar of store-bought mayo, and I know I’ve become insufferable because my first thought was that it would’ve tasted better if I’d bothered to make the mayo myself. These days I usually just wing it when I make caesar dressing, but if you don’t have a recipe you love, Samin Nosrat’s is a great place to start. (Here’s my favourite vegan one— but only make this if you are prepared to taste garlic for the next 2 days.) I also dropped the ball on making croutons, so I just made garlic toast in the frying pan, and fried a few slices of salami to crumble over the top of the salad afterward. This was the laziest possible way I could have made it, I think, but it definitely satisfied the craving. And eating it in front of the fireplace with a dark beer made it feel a bit less out of place on a snow day.
I went to visit Liang after work on Tuesday, and we had a cup of tea while Tim, who is the cook in their house, made a nice artichoke pasta for dinner (thanks Tim)! After a couple of bites I told him that it was making me nostalgic for Lipton Sidekicks. He had no idea what I was talking about, so clearly this is a Canadian ephemera moment, but I assured him it was a compliment. Some of you reading this, if you grew up in the Canadian suburbs of the nineties and aughts, or were a broke university student here during that time, may share my memories—specifically the parmesan one is what was brought to mind here, but I remember the butter & herb one was also a fave. Anyway, obviously what Tim made for us was better than packaged noodles with powdered sauce: crispy fried artichoke hearts and sliced garlic, with a creamy parmesan sauce that’s not too heavy. I didn’t ask him for the recipe, because I was pretty sure I’d know where to find it, and I’ll definitely make this myself soon. I think it could handle a bit more veg, too, if you wanted— green peas or some arugula stirred in to wilt at the end both sound good.
Thanks for reading— if you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with someone new! I like providing this to you for free, but it does still involve time and effort, so any donations are greatly appreciated. And finally, a little something for my fellow queers to be reminded of: queer joy and queer rage are inseparable.
Lipton Sidekicks just knocked loose a memory of my own: I used to eat what I think was the Kraft version of that. I think it was Kraft, cuz it was somehow connected to KD in my mind. Creamy garlic, alfredo, maybe something with sun-dried tomato? Everything had sun-dried tomato in the late 90s.
They were a staple in my university pantry. What easier way to make a tasty creamy pasta dish! Whip up one of those bad bois, and add that university staple green: blanched broccoli. Feeling lush? Sauté up some chicken while the pasta cooks.
That was when the only chain grocery I shopped at was Dominion. I’d walk up to Bloor every couple weeks to buy toilet paper and shelf stable items to go with all the fresh stuff I bought in Kensington.
In later years, my then boyfriend and I would sometimes drive to a Loblaws, and then I could get the President’s Choice Mac & White Cheddar. That stuff was student food GOLD.