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.

Oat MEAL.

Way back in the bad old graduate school days, my neighbor was a psych grad student and I was dirt poor, I mean poorer than I've been since I was babysitting for a living. I'd lost a job, my boyfriend at the time lived a bazillion miles away, my dissertation director was abusive, I was in the midst of both a divorce and a nasty sexual harassment debacle, and maybe not coincidentally, I wasn't writing. Which meant I wasn't finishing my dissertation, and that was bad, bad, bad. I cried. A lot.

I needed work, I thought. If I could do something, I would be okay. My neighbor, probably a do-gooder who pitied me, but at that point I didn't care, told me she needed someone to read her psych texts into a tape recorder so that she could listen to them as she drove, and she would pay me $10 or something a tape. They were the most boring books I ever read. At one point, she told me to stop yawning since it was dangerous: when I yawned, she did, and that made her sleepy, and after all -- she was driving, so could I PLEASE stop yawning. Yeah, I didn't.

[Right now I'm yawning. Typing the word makes me yawn. Saying it makes me yawn. What IS that?] [Holy crap. Watch the chimps yawn. Mirror neurons? Wow.]

But this was several weeks after she found me crying in the back yard of the trashy little house I rented (and loved) [search Woodrow St, Athens, GA at this site]. She told me I was depressed, and asked why I didn't come over and have some oatmeal and we could talk.

Her name was Amy, she was very concerned in a nice maternal way, and I hated oatmeal. I said, yes, (snork, sniffle), expecting at least to find comfort, if not good food.

This is Amy's oatmeal, minus the mashed banana, only because my bananas weren't ripe. And I ate probably three bowls of it that morning. Afterwards, I went home and threw away my instant oatmeal packets -- never even thought twice again about buying those shitty little envelopes of pre-made oat-refuse my mother'd pawned off as oatmeal. What Amy made, and that crap, are not even kin. I'm telling you what.

What you'll need:

Oatmeal -- I've gotten snobby and buy steel-cut oats (they have their own website!), but plain Quaker regular-cook oats will do

water

dried fruit (here, raisins and dates)

nuts

applesauce or finely diced apples

a little butter and sugar (maple syrup is also good)

Milk or cream if you like to eat your oatmeal that way, though I don't.

Oats cook at a 3:1 ratio: three parts water to one part oats. For three people, if you're having toast, 3 c water, 1 c oats. If you're feeding Chuck (search Bowie on this website), this feeds two people, with toast. One if he's really hungry.

If you're doing just these servings, you'll need about a 1/3 c nuts, 1/2 c dried fruit, 1/4 c applesauce or one small apple, about a TBSP butter and a tsp of sugar.

Boil the water with a little salt, maybe a tsp or so. Add oats (and if you are using diced apple, the apple), stir once, return to boil, turn heat to low, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the water is absorbed.

Meantime, break up the pieces of nut into bite-sized bits with your hands. In a small frying pan, melt a little butter and toast the nuts over medium heat. When they smell like toasted nuts (intensely nut-smelling) and start to turn deeper brown, sprinkle with about a tsp of brown or white sugar and take off the heat.

When the oats have absorbed all the water, add the nuts, dried fruit, and applesauce. If you're using just diced apple, you may want to add about 1/2 tsp cinnamon and a little sugar. Stir. Taste. Adjust salt (for more intense taste); sugar (for more sweetness); or butter (for more richness).

Eat. Think of Amy who was kind to me when I needed it. Thank you, Amy.

There you go.