Emergency Store-Bought Dinner: Turkey-Chipotle Meatloaf, Twice-Baked Potato, Cucumber Salad, from Central Market, December 2004

Some days menu-planning is just too rigorous contemplate. Sadly, where there is no menu, there can be no dinner. The only option is to forage as best one can at some takeout counter. I never make good decisions at takeout counters. Too much pressure. I always end up with weird combinations of stuff like this.

I really thought it would suck, but the cucumber salad turned out to be the best part.

Chicken Salad with Grapes, Walnuts, and Tarragon, November 2004

It has been raining for weeks. Austin, in fact, has the same annual rainfall as Seattle. You'd think I'd get used to it. But I don't. I gnash the old teeth pretty freely during these interminable deluges. It doesn't stop me from trying to eat, although maybe it should. I was just about to get outside of this bite

When there was this huge thunderclap.

Beef Stew, December 2004

There are few dishes that cannot be improved by the addition of carmelized pearl onions. It is a laborious extra step, but most huge improvements are.

Breakfast Radishes, December 2004

I actually eat them for breakfast, but do not recommend washing them down with chocolate soy milk.

Spinach, Pears, Dried Cherries, Amish Gorgonzola, Red Onion, Toasted Pecans December 2004

This fruit/ nut/ red onion/ blue cheese wheeze is one of the most miraculous discoveries since the first lungfish scampered up on shore and said, "dry at last!" It is a taste that came to me relatively late in life. My earliest recollection of it dates to the mid-nineties and a salad at a St. Louis restaurant called King Louie's, which used to be a bar called Billie Goat Hill, where Hüsker Dü once played. I often dream fondly of this salad, and do not make it as well as King Louie did.