Easy!

Tonight, after a packed day, I’m heading to our monthly girls’ potluck, still known as Mag Club in spite of not having adhered to the original meaning (we’ll all present an article from a magazine! and a dish the article inspired! yeah, right!) for years. These days, instead of dating and parties, we talk of engagements, weddings, and apartment decoration. In spite of these topics, we manage to have fun getting together.

Back to that packed day. One of the challenges of living and working in New York City is the extended time we spend away from our apartments. To leave at 7am and return when the clock strikes 10pm, after work, dinner, and the gym is exhausting in its own right, never mind the work and plans that take a toll on people like me who enjoy fresh air, homemade lunches, and 8 hours of sleep. Being out all day often means carrying a lot of bags, too, wedging ourselves plus our gym clothes, lunch bags, and scarves into an already slim column of air on the 4 train.

Even when it means an extra bag, I like to bring a homemade dish to Mag Club. (We don’t dock membership if you buy sushi, sesame noodles, or pizza, but have you met me? I’m the queen of homemade.) Since everyone has become pretty health-conscious, my last few carb-y contributions (Swiss Chard Lasagna, and a huge container of fried rice) weren’t ideal for the occasion. I decided to eliminate the carbs and load up on vegetables in tonight’s roasted vegetable salad with chickpeas and goat cheese inspired by the sweet-and-tangy flavor combination of eggplant caponata. I hope you – and the girls tonight – like it!

And here’s how to be a potluck party all-star.

There are weeks when I think I could subsist entirely on oatmeal, grilled cheese, pizza, and pasta. Despite nightmares of leafy greens coming to attack me just so I’ll take a bite of something with nutrients, I’m not unhappy with this diet. Until I remember: this is no way for a grown-up to live.

Grown-ups eat vegetables. Especially grown-ups like me who actually like vegetables.

Usually, when I’ve had one of those bread-and-cheesy weeks, it’s out of laziness. Vegetables can take a little longer to prepare: washing, drying, cutting. What a slog, I think from my pizza haze. The real nightmare in that case is the head of washed Swiss chard splashing around my kitchen, leaving puddles on my countertop as it begs me to eat it.

And so this–an amazing, healthful, fresh, tasty, unusual chopped salad–is a salad for lazy people. It’s good for you, and yet almost all of its vegetables come from cans or the freezer. Which is amazing if you ever need a healthful meal when you’ve gotten back from vacation or haven’t shopped in a while. Grab some avocado, bake (or buy) some roasted chicken, and go. 

Habaneros are hot yellow peppers whose capsaicin content can make your mouth sting, your hands turn into poisonous spice conveyers, and your eyes buzz with pain and tears.

So, I added it to my soup.

At a recent project kickoff, which I’ll tell you about soon, a brave chef added a timid portion of minced habanero to a creamy, smoky tomato sauce that coated some Mexican meatballs. In spite of its not inconsequential heat, I wanted to drink this sauce. And so, I decided to make such a creamy, smoky, spicy tomato concoction drinkable–that is, make it into soup.

In the past, I’ve minced poblanos, jaleñpeos, and serranos. No big deal. But over the weekend, for the sake of this dream, I took on the habanero.

For a while, I’ve been into the idea of eating meat-lite, but the trip to Thailand really reinforced the beauty of appreciating a dish’s noodles, sauces, and vegetables–and few bites of meat. Not that I had any trouble with that before. In fact, when I began eating meat again after my vegetarian days, I swore to practice meat lite-ness, and I’ve mostly stayed true to that ideal. Except when Shake Shack cravings hit.

Growing up, my mom usually made vegetarian chili. For a long time, I didn’t associate chili with meat, lite or not. The closest we have to mom’s chili recipe on the site is this black bean and sweet potato chili.

Of course then I got proposed to over a classic chili con carne. That introduced meaty chili into my life with a bang.

Whatever flavors and components go into chili, I still think the best part is on top: the condiments. Cheese, sour cream or yogurt, cubed avocado, broken-up tortilla chips.

So while we’re concentrating on the topping, I decided to slip into the recipe and make it really nourishing and healthful. This one’s got shredded chicken, but not that much (meat-lite, remember?), a handful of barley, tons of green vegetables, and white beans. The barley thickens the stew, making warm, spicy bowls of it feel more indulgent than they are.

I’ve started keeping a pound of frozen ground meat in my freezer at all times. Sometimes, it’s beef. Sometimes, it’s pork. Right now, it’s “bork,” what Fleisher’s, my Park Slope butcher, calls its mix of ground beef and pork.

This feels like an apocalyptic urge for someone whose stance towards both the freezer and the apocalypse is pretty blasé. While the freezer’s cookie dough and its ice cubes go unused, I find that the beef, pork, or bork becomes a meal at least once every couple of weeks. Which is about the interval at which I return to Fleisher’s to buy some more fresh brisket, chicken thighs, or lamb shanks, and to replenish our freezer’s meat stash.

The habit began late last year, a month or two before 12/21/12, which might have been the apocalypse. It started on a whim. And then, one wintry night when we needed a food pick-me-up, I made mini meatball subs, a recipe from the last chapter of the BGSK book. A few weeks later, there was freezer bolognese.

And then, these.

This filling bowl bears a resemblance to spaghetti and meatballs, only with all the Italian flavors replaced by Mexican ones, cojita cheese subbed for Parm, chipotles added to the tomato sauce, and rice replacing pasta. This is the kind of tidy little meal I love to eat on weeknights, not exactly healthful, but not fried or rich really either, and completely satisfying. And also: cheap. That pound of awesome, free-range, pretty local meat costs about $6.

More meatballs:

Mexican Chicken Meatballs (the prequel), from Big Girls, Small Kitchen

Mini Ginger Chicken Meatball Subs with Masala Sauce, a BGSK recipe on Design*Sponge

Lamb Meatball Banh Mi Sandwiches from Big Girls, Small Kitchen

Chicken Parm Meatballs from Dinner, a Love Story

Teriyaki Meatball Bowls from Budget Bytes

Meatball Subs with Caramelized Onions from Smitten Kitchen

I looked at the calendar early this week and the December days that would have blog posts crawled into view in the few open spots left in the year. Three more in 2012, if I keep to my pace. Though the last few months have sped by, with their big stresses and their triumphs, and their too rare moments of utter calm, those last few posts stuck out to me as opportunities to cap off the year with champion recipes, recipes I love and that’ll be really useful to you, whether you’re celebrating or feasting or recovering.

Better make them good, in other words.

For much of high school and college, I dreamed of living in the country. A little house, a big piece of land, a farm even, maybe some chickens. The summer after I graduated from college, I researched for the Let’s Go: USA travel guide in the Great Plains region. My editor thought I was nuts for being excited to drive the flat roads of Nebraska and the Dakotas, up to Minnesota and east to Iowa, but I loved the epic farmland, the forests, and the small towns.

So I find it strange that of my three sisters, I’m the only city dweller. Kate lives in rural Arkansas. Jill moved to central Pennsylvania.

But country mice can’t resist the city, and a few weekends ago, Jill paid a visit to Brooklyn for some sidewalk grit, subway screeching, and hip shopping for clothes to fill her huge country closets. On Sunday, I made brunch for her and some friends. I wanted a feast that was hearty but not unhealthful, and for which I could do most of the work in advance, since I really hate being relegated to the kitchen when friends are hanging out in my living room.

I’m sharing the recipe for this easy, prep-ahead sweet potato and caramelized onion frittata today, and I figured I’d share the menu while I’m at it, since menu planning is always more of a puzzle than cooking any one particular dish. With holiday parties and Christmas breakfasts approaching, you might want to steal this easy brunch completely – it’s a winner.