Pinterest fail? I spotted this Loaded Cauliflower “Mash” Bake on Pinterest, and it looked so yummy! It’s kind of a “skinny” version of loaded mashed potatoes. Not necessarily “great” for bikini season but better than potatoes would be! As a vegetarian, I had to swap out a few ingredients. Instead of bacon, I used some sort of green pepper type thing that my mind is currently blanking on the name of. It tasted okay but wasn’t quite as photogenic. Oh well, a starving artist has to eat!
Easter was a special time in my family when I was growing up. And by Easter, I of course mean Greek Orthodox Easter. Every year, we’d pile into the station wagon and drive down to Baltimore to spend the most important religious holiday for Greek Americans with my father’s side of the family. There would be a whole lamb out on the spit, a symbol of Jesus Christ as the sacrificial lamb, and we’d crack red Easter eggs, a symbol of the crucified Jesus breaking out of the tomb and overcoming death.
I’m all grown up now, and my family is spread out between three different countries. Holidays can be a tough time for singles — especially those in the city, who don’t have family in the area and can’t get to their family. Protestants and Greek Orthodox believers follow different liturgical calendars, and since this year our Easter celebrations didn’t align, I decided to reach out to my American friends in the city who might not have family in the area.
After inviting friends from all walks of life, none of whom were native to New York (two of whom are not even native to this country!), I started to plan the menu only to begin panicking about what to serve for an American Easter. I certainly wasn’t going to roast a lamb out on a souvla on the city sidewalk! In the end, I made egg salad, which one friend said was the best she’d ever had! Secret ingredient: LOTS of mayonnaise! I also made cold carrot ginger soup with goat cheese and carrot curls. My friends said I saved the best for last: cheesy hash browns!
Starving artists know that birthdays mean free drinks at the bar. Today we toast to Ernest Hemingway, who would’ve turned 115 years old yesterday.
Hemingway had a bit of a reputation as a drinker. “I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure,” he wrote to the Russian translator and critic Ivan Kashkin. He and James Joyce used to toss back drink after drink together, though in that same 1935 letter to Kashkin he said alcohol wasn’t beneficial to writing. He was always a drinker, but after getting injured in a plane crash he drank even more heavily.
More than a few articles have been written about Hemingway’s drinking:
Being an alcoholic is probably not the reputation anyone wants. No one wants to be dependent on alcohol. It can destroy your life and the lives around you. If you drink, drink responsibility. But there’s no shame in not drinking either!
Hemingway’s favorite drink was a martini, but he was also closely associated with mojitos and daiquiris. I thought a daiquiri would make a great summertime drink, so here’s the Starving Artist Hemingway Daiquiri recipe:
2 ounces white rum
¾ ounces lime juice
½ ounce grapefruit juice
¼ ounce maraschino liqueur
Blend these altogether with a cup of ice. Who has time and money for fancy garnishes like maraschino cherries and lime wedges? Drink this sucker from whatever glass you have clean as you sit on your stoop, defining your own generation.
You might also like these other posts from my blog:
Yesterday I shared that summer was all about karpouzi at my house.
The other Sunday, after church, I had my friend Sandra over for brunch and wanted to make something special. I decided to try my hand at a watermelon-feta salad. This isn’t something I ever grew up eating, but when I attended the GABBY Awards a few years ago, one of the passed meze they served at Ellis Island before the ceremony was cubed watermelon with feta speared with a toothpick. Since then I’ve seen delicious recipes for it watermelon and feta salads. I decided to make my own version, topped with an exquisite dark chocolate vinaigrette my friend Rori gave me as a housewarming gift.
Here’s my super-easy, super-quick recipe:
See how easy that is?! You can prep ahead by cutting the watermelon and the feta into chunks the night before, but I recommend waiting until you’re about to serve guests to mix the ingredients together so that they retain their individual flavors and so the nuts don’t get soggy.
The ingredients are, admittedly, a bit on the pricier side, but when you make it yourself you save a lot of money. This is part of a new series I’m doing called “The Starving Artist.” I used to do posts called “Tasty Tuesday,” but I’m switching it up a little now to focus on budget-friendly recipes for writers. You might also like these feta-inspired appetizers:
I’m looking to get more fruit in my diet this summer. If you have any unique watermelon recipes, please share them in the comments below!
Summertime was all about BBQing when I was a kid growing up in New Jersey. (So much so that it even found its way into my memoir!) We spent many humid nights outside under a canopy of green leaves and stars, swatting away mosquitoes, as we ate food from the BBQ. Most of the year, my family didn’t eat dinner altogether too often because my father worked long hours and got home late—and because he didn’t eat the same “American” foods that the rest of us ate. In the summer, when it was too hot to turn on the oven, he’d fire up the grill.
Now maybe it’s a regionalism, but I recently BBQed with someone not from the TriState area and discovered that “BBQ” to them meant something entirely different. BBQ to them is its own separate category of food. It’s a big deal. An art. What I call “BBQ,” they think is just basic “grilling.” To my ears, grilled anything sounds like something off a health-food menu. As in, you order grilled chicken when you’re on a diet, even though what you really want to eat is fried chicken.
But grilling doesn’t have to be equated with flavorless meat topped with zero-calorie iceberg lettuce. Nope, we made stuffed burgers. We stuffed it with Fontina cheese and mushrooms and onions and peppers and so much deliciousness. Or at least it looked delicious to me. As a vegetarian, I made due with veggie burgers luxuriously slathered in Stubbs BBQ sauce. My skinny little soy burgers weren’t nearly as exciting as the juicy stuffed burger. Sigh.
I just came across a recipe for a Feta-Stuffed BLT Burger, and my Greek American heart skipped a beat. I may not be able to eat it as a vegetarian, but for all you Greek cheese-loving carnivores out there I thought I’d pass it along: Feta-Stuffed BLT Burger recipe. And for those of us who abstain from meat, I’ll offer this alternative Greek vegetarian burger recipe:
Eat and enjoy!
This is part of a new series I’m doing called “The Starving Artist.” I used to do posts called “Tasty Tuesday,” but I’m switching it up a little now to focus on budget-friendly recipes for writers.
I’m always on the hunt for vegetarian-friendly Greek foods for the BBQ, so if you have any suggestions please post them in the comments section.
Also, did you know Greeks have a whole holiday devoted to BBQed meat?
If you’re not a meat-eater, you might also like this Greek vegetarian BBQ idea.
Jack Kerouac’s parents were French Canadian, and he described some fantastic meals in The Town and the City. While he was on road trips though, he barely had enough money to buy food sometimes.
Saveur magazine created a springtime menu for if you happen to find yourself roadtripping through France … or just dreaming of being there!
The menu includes:
Get the dinner party recipe here.
What’s your dream menu for a road trip along France’s famous Route 7?
Big Sur tells the story of Jack Kerouac’s alter ego escaping the pressures of fame brought on after the publishing success of On the Road by hiding out at the desolate cabin owned by his friend, City Lights Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti (called Lorenzo Monsanto in the novel). Kerouac had a notorious sweet tooth, perhaps most noticeably evident by all that delicious apple pie a la mode he writes of eating in On the Road. In Big Sur, his friends point out his taste for a sweet of a different sort—sweet drinks!
Kerouac’s drink of choice in Big Sur is the classic cocktail the Manhattan, which gets its sweetness from vermouth, orange bitters, and a maraschino cherry. The Manhattan has been called “the drinking man’s drink,” though, probably because of all the whiskey in it.
Here’s the history of the Manhattan, as told by That’s the Spirit!:
Samuel J. Tilden was elected Governor of New York in 1874, and to celebrate, socialite Jenny Jerome threw a party at the Manhattan Club in New York City. Jerome asked the bartender to create a drink for the occasion. The bartender mixed 1 1/2 ounces bourbon, 1 1/4 ounces each of sweet and dry vermouth, and a dash of bitters. It met with Jerome’s approval and she named the drink the “Manhattan,” after the club. Jenny Jerome later earned her place in history as she later became Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Sir Winston Churchill, one of England’s most famous Prime Ministers. The Manhattan became a classic cocktail that has survived a number of changes over the years and is presently enjoying a comeback alongside its cousin, the Martini.
That’s the most popular version of the story, but of course, like most cocktail history, there are other versions of the story as well.
That said, there are also variations of Manhattans. It can be made with rye whiskey or bourbon. Although Big Sur doesn’t specify, Kerouac would probably have preferred the bourbon variety, since rye whiskey is more on the bitter side. Likewise, there are different types of vermouth: sweet and dry. The bitters can either be traditional Angostura bitters or Angostura Orange. Some people add a lemon peel for garnish.
On almost any given page of Big Sur there is a reference to alcohol, as the book documents Kerouac gripped by the disease of alcoholism. While many culture critics have accused Kerouac of promoting a nefarious lifestyle, Kerouac makes the dangers of alcohol quite plain in Big Sur as he portrays himself in deplorable states of breakdown. In addition to the maraschino cherry, some bartenders will even add a bit of the cherry juice to the drink. Yum!
Big Sur also describes Kerouac drinking a lot of port wine. A Manhattan made with port instead of vermouth is called a Ruby Manhattan. Since he frequented the famous Nepenthe in Big Sur, though, I’m going to go with their recipe. It’s quite possible the restaurant has changed its cocktail recipe since Kerouac’s autobiographical novel was published in 1962, but their current Manhattan ingredients includes Makers Mark, sweet vermouth, and blood orange bitters.
Nepenthe doesn’t include the ingredient breakout, but based on other general Manhattan recipes, this is my take on Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur Manhattan:
Stir the ingredients over ice, then strain into a cocktail glass (the Martini glass) to serve straight up. Garnish with the cherry.
Nothing says summer like fresh watermelon! I found these at a market in the Hamptons.
How about cutting up a few slices and serving it up with ouzo?
I didn’t feel like cooking so I decided to check out mamagyro. Isn’t that such a cute name?! It’s fast-food Greek food on the Upper East Side.
mamagyro is at 1113 Lexington Avenue, New York City.
I went to brunch at Ovelia in Astoria with my sister and cousins when they visited. Ovelia is one of my favorite Greek restaurants in New York. I love their modern take on traditional Greek foods! And it’s got a great funky vibe going on with the decor.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and speaker based in New York City.
She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of "Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"
You can email her at stephanie_701 {@} yahoo.com
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 