Okay, Yes, Technically it's Fried (under one dollar; about fifteen minutes)

Fried okra.

My first marriage didn't work out. However, I learned some things about cooking in the eight years of that relationship. Banana pudding. Beans and peas. Cornbread.

Fried okra.

Right now it's dark outside, raining in spits and volleys, and about, oh, forty degrees. If that. I'm in flannel and a sweatshirt, shivering uncontrollable, though the furnace is going full blast and I'm indoors. I haven't seen the sun in a couple of days. I feel sort of like either getting in bed and coming out in May, or slitting my wrists and ending it now.

I need summer food. I need bright tastes. I need to be reminded that the earth is now (as it is past the solstice) moving or tipping or whatever it does ever closer to that elusive yellow ball in the sky I've been told is the sun and is up there somewhere, warming something somewhere, where the lucky people are -- where they're probably harvesting the coffee I don't drink or picking the tea leaves (okay, this is just beautiful) I won't use, or chewing the cacao leaves I wouldn't know what do to with while they harvest the chocolate I swore off back when the sun shone in May as solidarity with Chuck's quitting smoking.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. Fried okra. Summer food. Almost as good as a perfect tomato, warm and heavy and just off the vine.

Sigh. Sigh. Can it be May already? Please?

Well, anyway -- the trick with fried okra done the way my mother-in-law taught me is never to stir. NEVER. Always flip. Stir=musciligenous mess. Flip=crisp goodness. Remember these equations. They'll be on the next test.

Here's how you do it.

Get some okra, a small onion, and a potato. You'll also need salt and pepper, oil, corn meal and flour.

In a heavy frying pan, pour about an eighth of an inch of oil. Not too much since, as I was told, you aren't deep-frying the stuff.

Slice the onion, thinly, into a bowl.

Slice the potato, thinly (just shy of chipping it), into the same bowl.

Slice the okra, thinly (say, in quarter inch rounds), into the same bowl.

Throw in a couple of big spoons of corn meal, and a spoon of flour. Add some salt and pepper. You can always add more, so go a little lightly. Stir it up so everything's got a little flour and cornmeal sticking to it.

Heat the oil on medium high. When it shimmers, or when it pops when you drop one drop of water in it, dump the contents of the bowl into the oil.

Shake the pan so that you have one layer. Press down lightly with a spatula.

Let this sit until it starts smelling like popcorn and gets lightly browned on the edges.

Then, with a spatula, flip it in pieces. I do this in thirds: right side flip over, left side flip over, middle flip over. It's okay if you only flip parts or some of it doesn't quite make it all the way over. It'll be fine.

Shake the pan to distribute in a single layer. Wait some more and repeat until the whole mess is golden brown and crispy. The potatoes take the longest to cook, so if a fork goes through one easily and everything looks golden, you're done.

Lift and drain on a plate or in a bowl lined with paper towels.

Eat.

Think of summer. Which I wish it were, right dang now.

There you go.

Jambalaya; Or, The Inauthenticity Continues ($3 or so, when the okra's out of season, cheaper when it's in; about an hour, including the chopping)

It is not okra season. I confess. I bought okra from Honduras. Bad locavore. BAD.

It was just that I had a sort of craving, or maybe it was that someone else had mentioned okra to me, or maybe it was a longing for high, hot summer, the time when okra is in season. I used to grow okra (it was vegetable of the month at the CDC!) when I lived in Athens, more okra than I knew how to eat.

It's not a lovely plant actually, though its flower is really beautiful, a creamy white with a dark burgundy center and bright yellow stamens. And fresh okra, the kind you cut off the plant, carry inside, wash, cut up, sprinkle with corn meal and pan fry -- say twenty minutes max from plant to teeth -- there is nothing like this.

So homesick was I in Wisconsin that I tried to grow okra there, in the richest soil I think any okra plant has ever seen. It never worked. Okra in Georgia gets chest high, neck high -- in Wisconsin it never came to my knees. I had one blossom, and that was frail and short-lived. I missed okra. It was metonymy for the sun, and warmth, and the green, buzzing, bird-filled outdoors that the wasteland of winter in Wisconsin -- all winter, as far as I'm concerned -- denies the world.

So, yesterday, okra. And with okra: vegetarian jambalaya. Sort of. In a way. If this is jambalaya, it's the okra, the roux and the allspice that make it so. And the hot sauce, I suppose.

Here's how to make it. And thanks to Lucy Curzon for the recipe.

What you need:

1/4 cup salad oil

1/3 c white flour

a little olive oil

1 sm onion, chopped small

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 bay leaves

3 med carrots, peeled and chopped

3-5 peppers, all colors, chopped to make about 2-3 cups

2 tsp basil

1/2 tsp thyme

1 can diced tomatoes, undrained

2 c okra (about 1/2 a pound), sliced

3 c vegetable stock

1/4 tsp allspice

hot sauce of your choice

Chop everything up and set aside. This makes up fast, so you want simply to be dumping as you go. Make some rice (go there; do this), since that's what you'll be serving this over.

In a small heavy skillet, mix the flour and salad oil. Put this on medium heat and stir frequently. This is your roux, which will complicate the taste of the jambalaya (Hank. Sigh.) and thickens it, too.

In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium high heat and saute the onions, garlic, bay and up to about a TBSP of either red pepper flakes or jalapeno paste. When the onions have softened and become transparent (this should take a minute or two), add the carrots, peppers, basil, and thyme. Stirring every once and a while so the vegetables don't burn, cook for 5 minutes.

Add tomatoes, okra, stock, and allspice. Stir to combine.

Cover and cook for twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, turn the heat up on the roux and stir constantly. It should begin to turn very dark brown, sort of burned-looking. Keep it moving in the pan. You want it about the color of nicely tanned leather and to smell almost nutty. When you've achieved this, turn the heat off and go do something until the vegetables are cooked.

After twenty minutes, check that the carrots are soft enough (run a fork into the largest piece you can find). If they are, scrape the roux into the vegetables, stirring the vegetables constantly so they don't cook the flour into dumplings. If this happens, it's not a big deal: you just have something less jambalaya than -- I don't know -- quasi-Caribbean vegetable and dumpling stew. Still edible. Still actually pretty tasty (yes, I've done this; that's how I know).

Drape this over some rice, in bowls. Dump on the hot sauce of your choice (classic is Tabasco, but we're real fond of Cholula ourselves). Eat.

There you go.

Soup with Strange Ingredients like Peanut Butter (maybe $3 for a potful; about 45 minutes)

I forgot to ask Santa for an immersion blender (immersion blender discussion, no less). It was an incredible oversight on my part. I have hopes, though, that with my birthday coming up, he'll make a little flight to Georgia next month and correct things.

But seriously folks. Why do any of us have to write letters? Isn't it sort of pathetic, and -- I don't know -- a little condescending? I mean, shouldn't we expect the jolly old ELF (not quite what Santa has in mind), a supernatural being who can fly and deliver presents all over the world in a single freaking night, to be a little, well, psychic?

Why couldn't he have looked into my mind, or more importantly my cupboard, and noted that I didn't have one and might find one useful?

I don't know. Might be I was on his naughty list. It's possible. Actually, it's likely, even.

In the meantime, I'm making do, and though an immersion blender would be handy for this recipe, if you don't have one, a regular blender or a food processor does fine if you're careful with hot soup.

Specifically, hot sweet potato peanut soup, loosely -- okay, INCREDIBLY loosely -- based on some soup I had years ago at a friend's house. His was loosely African, I think. But as he was a Jesuit priest cum English professor from Wisconsin -- well, it's probably mostly Midwestern.

What you'll need:

A stock pot or large sauce pot

a blender or food processor

oil

small onion, diced tiny (grated is better)

garlic

fresh ginger

cayenne

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

1/4 tsp cinnamon

pinch of ground cloves

1/4 c crushed tomatoes

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 lb sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2" pieces (in this version I photographed I baked them first [because I thought I was making something else], but you don't have to)

2 1/2 cup water

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 1/2 TBSP chunky peanut butter (no sugar added is best)

chopped peanuts

cilantro and chopped peanuts for garnish

This is a pretty mild dish. Add more cayenne or chili powder to give it more heat if you like that.

In the stock pot, heat about a TBSP of oil until shimmering. Saute about two cloves of garlic and the onion in this, just for a minute or two.

Add spices and cook one minute longer.

Add tomatoes and sweet potato. Stir and cook for two more minutes.

Add water and turn up heat until liquid simmers. Cook for 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes fall apart when prodded with a fork.

CAREFULLY blend or process smooth. Return to pot if necessary. Stir in cream and peanut butter over low heat. When you serve it, sprinkle on a little cilantro and some chopped peanuts.

There you go.

My Nana Calls This Gravy (about $15 makes two lasagna's worth; about 20 minutes)

My Nana. She's 91. Born in Italy, I think outside Rome. Her father was a scholar, then a coal miner. One of her sisters died in the flu epidemic in 1918; she still has two brothers living, one older, one younger.

My Nana has lived on Long Island (good lord, it has its own website!) for half a century or more, in the same house facing the neighborhood school. She had three children after the war: my aunt Irene, my father, and my uncle Rich. When my father was 17 he and my mother, the 16-year-old daughter of a local Irish family, made me, then relinquished me to my adoptive parents. Two years later, when my bioparents were legal, they married and then had five children: Chris, Missy, Tom, John, and Tracey. We found each other ten years ago. Which is when I met my Nana, who filled her house with her relatives so that I could meet them all.

This is a nice story, and I'm betting you think that what's about to follow is her recipe for red gravy. Actually, it's sort of my sister Missy's recipe, only not quite that either. And maybe she got it from our Nana, I don't know. All I know is that one day I was visiting the coast and Missy said, let's make spaghetti sauce. And I blinked and said, okay, and then we were shopping, and then she was dumping things in a pot, and all of a sudden, blammo. My whole spaghetti sauce nightmare of a childhood ended. Ended, I say. Blammo.

Because as is probably clear to you from my other posts, my mother, bless her heart, was a modern cook. Packages. Pre-made stuff. If it came in a box or a can it was way superior to the raw, naked, whole stuff. I don't blame her. She's a product of her generation, as I am of mine. Thus, on the issue of red sauce she was multiply screwed: she didn't have the ethnic, class, or more generally cultural impetus to make her own. Her idea of getting spaghetti sauce was--go to A&P. Find Ragu. Buy Ragu. Heat Ragu with browned ground beef. Serve over spaghetti noodles. Side salad of iceberg lettuce, pallid tomato, carrot dimes, either Ranch or Good Seasons Italian.

This isn't Ragu. Doesn't have fifty weird ingredients, preservatives, all that sugar. It takes almost no time to fix.

As I've written it, this makes maybe three quarts of sauce, enough for two lasagnas and a little more. Decrease as necessary for your purposes.

Here's what you need:

Stock pot

olive oil

crushed garlic

oregano

basil

red pepper flakes and/or jalapeno mash

vegetables (here, it's onions, green peppers, and broccoli, though just about any sort will do)

Three large (32 oz) cans of crushed tomatoes

one small can of tomato paste

opt. med can of diced tomatoes

a little red wine

possibly a TBSP of sugar

possibly a little salt

Chop all your vegetables up. Set aside onions and peppers, since they'll go in first. But you can glop the rest together.

Open the cans. If you're using diced tomatoes, drain them only. Don't drain the others (you can't actually, but I didn't want you to try).

In the stock pot, heat up enough oil just to cover the bottom. I'd say about 4-5 TBSP max. Use med heat.

When you can smell the oil, or when it starts to shimmer, drop in a heaping spoon of garlic, a handful (maybe 3 TBSP) of oregano, half that of basil (so maybe a TBSP and a half), and some red pepper flakes or jalapeno mash.

Saute these in the oil for just a minute. Don't burn the garlic. This is easy to do, so err on the side of undercooking.

Add onions, peppers, celery, any veg that's there just for flavor. Saute until just limp, stirring pretty constantly.

When the onions are translucent, or the other vegetables are just a little soft, add the tomatoes.

Stir. Turn the heat to low. Cook uncovered for about five minutes, until the tomatoes are simmering. Taste.

It's important to taste at this point because your tomatoes might be very acid. If they taste like can, or sort of bitter, you'll need to add the sugar. This happens unpredictably, so you have to taste. Add salt at this point, too, if you feel you need it. I almost never feel I do.

When the tomatoes taste right to you, add the rest of the veg and about a third cup of wine. I generally just dump, about two glugs.

Bring to a boil over low-med heat (to keep you from having red sauce popping all over your kitchen). Taste, adjust for bitterness -- more sugar -- or for richness -- more wine. Let simmer until the vegetables are just cooked through.

If the sauce looks too thin, add more paste or just let it cook down for a while. This will overcook the vegetables, however, so unless that's okay with you, use the paste to thicken.

[This is a picture of the sauce boiling. I thought it was really neat: a still of motion. Also, the sauce launched a giant blob of red stuff into the atmosphere; it landed on my arm, where I licked it off like Yukon Cornelius licks his pick.]

There you go.

Stone [Soup] Salad (virtually free; less than fifteen minutes)

This is virtually free, since what you're doing is using the odds and ends you have left over in the fridge to make the salad. You may have to buy some lettuce (you know you want the vegetarian starter kit, right?). Or maybe you have some, or some spinach, or something leafy and green? That's where you start.

Chuck can make two meals: this, and a pasta dish he calls carbonara, but it's really just pasta with olives and turkey bacon. It's really good, equally as good as his salad. He tells me that most of his cooking life was spent microwaving fish sticks or eating processed cheese on tortillas (microwaved). There's a good story about a last minute Thanksgiving he and his brother Bob ended up eating at 3am the morning after Thanksgiving. I've seen him make Bisquick pancakes -- and they're also good. But yeah. Now that we live together, mostly I cook.

Here, however, is his "famous" salad. Salad, in this part of the world, is best in fall and spring, when lettuce is fresh and local.

This one he made for dinner, and the way he makes them, they are a dinner.

What you'll need:

Green leafy substance (this is romaine, but any lettuce or non-cooking greens will do)

some fruit (here he's got apples, tangerines, dates, and raisins)

some vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, scallions, green peppers)

some nuts (here, pecans [how to say it like a native] and walnuts)

some salty stuff (like pickles, olives, capers)

some cheese and whatever else you have a spoonful or two of left in the fridge

Some spices (here, dill, cilantro, red pepper and black pepper)

What you do:

Wash what needs washing. Cut up what needs cutting up into bite-sized pieces.

Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces.

Put this in the bottom of a big bowl.

But the other bite-sized stuff on top.

Shake on some Parmesan or other cheese.

Toss and serve.

We eat this without dressing, but for guests we have some bottled stuff, or I drizzle on a little mustard mixed with honey and olive oil, or some Good Seasons Italian.

There you go.