"Did you just put cream cheese in the salad dressing?"
Or, how to make do when the Airbnb is out of oil
First, HELLO to all 2,162 of my closest friends! That’s right—in the five days since I launched Gentle Foods, more than two thousand of you have signed up to read. I can’t express how meaningful it is to me that you’ve chosen to be here, and I am so excited to bring more essays and recipes your way. I’ve been in a state of creative burnout for many months now, and this is the first time in awhile that I feel truly invigorated and joyful in my work. And that’s thanks to all of you.
I’m fresh off a weekend spent high in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Asheville, NC, for my sister’s bachelorette party. (I’m also recovering from food poisoning that I acquired sometime during said bachelorette, though I’ll spare you all the details here.) I love the Asheville mountains so much. In between trips to town for delicious food and drink and some exploring, we had plenty of down time in the mountains, where we spotted bears, huge wild turkeys, and groundhogs.
On our last night, a friend and I were tasked with cooking dinner for the house of 12. We were all stuffed and sleepy from a day of eating (at Cúrate) and drinking (at Wicked Weed Funkatorium) so we kept it simple with a veg pasta, a meat sauce pasta, and a big salad.
I diligently plugged away on salad duty, layering baby arugula, sliced strawberries and cucumbers, corn, avocado, halved cherry tomatoes, and basil into a slow cooker insert (the only vessel in the house large enough to hold a salad for 12 and a genius move on my part, if I might say). Over it all went a whole 8-oz. block of feta. I was just about to start gathering ingredients for a sharp-and-lightly-sweet vinaigrette when my co-cook informed me we were “running low on oil” and handed me a bottle that held about a teaspoon of it, lol.