When I went to the list to try and find something, I realized that I’ve been fretting about graduate school too much to even update the list properly. It was mostly full of desserts. But near the bottom, I found a recipe I dug up online ages ago that I’d felt too intimidated to make. . . UNTIL NOW. It was a recipe from Post Punk Kitchen that modified a recipe in Clean Eating for Red Lentil Thai Chili. I’d avoided it for so long because of the Thai red curry paste and the coconut milk — both things I’m not used to and thus terrifying. BUT NO LONGER.

The chili sounded like a tasty, spicy alternative to mix up your usual chili, and included some of my favorite things, like sweet potatoes, cilantro, and chili powder. The recipe also used a lot of canned things, which appeals to my lazy side. By the time I actually gotten round to making this recipe, I’d learned from my travels that Thai red curry paste is nothing to be afraid of — it’s super common and easy to find. Low-fat coconut milk, not so much. Apparently the makers of coconut milk want to keep that shit as high in fat as possible. I avoided a near disaster in Whole Foods where I almost bought the kind of coconut milk you put in your cereal, rather than the kind used in Thai food, just to find something low-fat.

At the suggestion of one of the commenters, I decided to cook the chili in my crock pot, rather than over the stove. I peeled and diced the potatoes, cut up garlic, and sliced the red pepper (leaving out the onion, of course). I sautéed the garlic and the pepper, then threw them and the sweet potatoes into the crock pot with the vegetable broth, lentils (I didn’t actually have red lentils, so I used green instead), and all the spices. It felt strange to be sautéing things at noon.

According to the mystery commenter, I was supposed to cook everything on low for about six hours, then add the cilantro and coconut milk and cook for another half-hour-ish. The problem was:

Whoops.

My crock pot was completely full. It hadn’t even occurred to me to measure this out and make sure it would actually fit. The actual, non-crock-pot recipe called for cooking the ingredients in a very specific order. I’d already poured them all in together, so there was no going back. I turned the crock pot on low, and hoped the stuff would maybe cook down a little bit, enough to add almost two cups of coconut milk.

It didn’t. Six hours later, the crock pot was, if anything, even more full than it had been when I started. I decided I’d ladle it out into my biggest pot. I had no idea how many cups my biggest pot could actually hold, so I just went for it.

Success!

To my amazement, it actually fucking worked, coconut milk and all. I let the soup simmer for another half an hour, until the coconut milk was heated all the way through.

I added a squeeze of lime, some salt and pepper, and a little extra cilantro on top. Mine doesn’t look as chili-like as the soup in the photo — the coconut milk thinned the broth out quite a bit. I was worried it would taste watery, but hot damn it was flavorful. I thought all the different spices and the coconut milk might make this a sort of flavor clusterfuck, but it was delicious. The lentils didn’t seem to be quite fully cooked — they hadn’t gotten as soft as I wanted. Next time, I’d cook this on high for an hour and then cook it on low for a few more hours. And cut it by a third. In order to get the more chili-like texture, I could always make it like the recipe actually suggests. But in the end, the reheated leftovers thickened up well. Following recipes is for squares.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

“I shouldn’t have these cookies. But fuck it, I’m on vacation!”

“I don’t even want these chips. But I’m eating them anyway.”

“I should go running after this. But instead I’ll just be fat!”

We were transgressors. Inwardly I patted myself on the back like some kind of smug asshole for having the light beer or for drinking water instead of pop. You don’t want to get fat, I tell myself. As if getting fat is a disease you can catch; as if it’s the worst thing that could happen. I don’t own a scale and never really set much store by the numbers anyway — I’m a tallish and a little muscular, so striving for any number is never something I cared about.

Instead, I found other ways to care. I measure with my fingers how much fat does or does not spill over the front of my pants or how much my jeans fold around my thighs. I pinch the undersides of my arms to see how soft they are. I feel for my collarbone. I didn’t even realize I was doing it or that it’s a problem behavior until I heard it named online: “body-checking.” I was physically measuring my imperfections, checking to see if the disease had spread.

What was I afraid of? Why was I so afraid? I was a twiggy little kid. I grew up with a mother who ate healthily and exercised, but who was always loving and never shaming, never said anything negative about my body or appearance. I was occasionally teased for my crooked teeth or ridiculous hair, but only in the way that kids are sometimes mean, never to the extent of cruelty or bullying.

I watched and learned from the way other girls were treated that fat was bad. Fat was ugly. Fat was something I never wanted to be. With my frizzy hair and braces, I already had two things that the pretty girls did not have.  I was average-looking. If I got fat, I knew I’d be officially ugly. (I know this sort of thing inspires a chorus of people saying nice and reassuring things, which is so kind, but I am really not fishing for compliments. That was how I saw the world. I observed and paid attention and learned who was considered pretty and who wasn’t, and knew I was somewhere muddled in between.)

I figured that, if I could only stay thin, I could have a chance at being pretty. I’m grateful I have never crossed into eating disorder or excessive exercise territory. I never needed to be stick thin and I wanted to be strong. But I still spent plenty of time hating myself for the paunch on my stomach or the way my inner thighs always touched no matter how many squats I did. When I said, “I’m fat” or “I feel fat,” what I really meant was that I felt ugly. Fat was a bad word. (AN F-WORD IF YOU WILL.)

And then one of my friends said the following: “PSA: Using the word ‘fat’ to describe yourself when you are not actually fat (a yardstick is being able to shop in non-specialty mall stores) is kind of rude. As someone who has actually faced real, tangible, public discrimination for being fat, I would really appreciate it if we could put a hold on that word.” And then I started doing some thinking and doing some research. I watched this video. (HI IF YOU DON’T READ ANY OF THIS, YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY JUST WATCH THIS VIDEO.) And I realized I was being a huge asshole (if unintentionally) to others and to myself. It never occurred to me that when I’m lost in my own neuroses, I could be hurting other people. All my fat-hate had been focused on myself and never on others, but it didn’t matter. I’d been using the word fat as a scapegoat, which is really just as awful and discriminatory as using the word gay to mean that something is bad or stupid.

So I’m trying to retrain myself. I’m trying to teach myself that fat is not a bad word. Fat is not an insult and shouldn’t be used as one, whether toward myself or toward others. Fat does not mean ugly or lazy or stupid or mean. Fat is fat. Some people are fat. I have some fat on my body. You can be fat and be still healthy. Being fat does not mean you’re ugly — my lovely friend who helped me to start thinking about these things is gorgeous as hell.

It’s difficult. It’s really difficult. But especially as a writer, I want to be conscious of what words mean and how I use them and try to not use them to harm myself or others. And fuck apologizing for that extra slice of pizza.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

A few months ago, after six months of rock climbing and a long walk in bad shoes, I sprained my big toe. Despite being one of the lamest possible injuries, it meant that even walking was a challenge. I normally work out five or six days a week, but I really didn’t want to injure myself any worse.  I switched to a stationary bike, did push-ups as if I enjoyed doing push-ups, and tried to stop myself from complaining. I was not very successful. I thought if I just took it a little easy, my toe would go ahead and heal itself. But after three weeks, I was sort of able to walk but hadn’t gotten much better. So I went to the doctor.

The doctor told me I needed to quit doing everything for two weeks. Apparently my toe was too weak for even the friggin’ stationary bike. I realize it’s irritating for an able-bodied human like myself to complain about not being able to exercise. Feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph where I get less irritating. But I depend on exercise to keep me from being a puddle of anxiety. I also have a hard time taking breaks from exercising, which I know has so much psychological subtext that I’m not even going to go there. Instead I came up with new habits like dusting the top ledge of the baseboard and cleaning the tiny ridges in the kitchen mat. But I was a good girl and listened to the doctor.

After exactly two weeks had passed and after more than a month of only half-assedly working out, I wanted to do something to jump-start being healthy again. I don’t own a scale so I only knew how much I weighed from going to the doctor’s office. And while I hadn’t necessarily gained weight, I had lost muscle tone and didn’t feel like my normal self. I felt lethargic and sad. I didn’t want to diet because fuck diets, but I had a new set of workout videos (TurboFire, of infomercial bleached-blonde fame). And the workouts came with a (wait for it) “5-Day Inferno Plan.” Apparently this eating plan would involve going to hell. Despite my hatred of diets and my worry of becoming too obsessive about counting calories, I decided to go ahead with the INFERNO.

The plan involved eating five effing times a day: a small breakfast, a snack, a small lunch, another snack, and a HUGE dinner with some sort of meat, vegetable, and grain. But it appealed to me because it was still actual meals with actual food (and allowed both cheese and coffee). It took me several trips to get everything because the food plan is VERY SPECIFIC about portions and measurements (which I actually enjoyed because it appeals to my control-freak side), and I didn’t want to mess with the calories. It also cost me nearly $130. (And I didn’t even buy their ridiculously expensive branded protein shake, but instead pilfered some of Charlie’s protein powder.) But by then I was literally too invested, so ONWARD.

Each of the days was paired with either a 50-minute cardio video or a 45 minute cardio + 15 minutes interval training video. The point was that all that work means you should probably be eating more, and mostly protein and vegetables with some brown grains. But even with five meals a day, it only averaged out to 1,200-ish calories a day. Charlie thought it was way too little, but I figured I was a tiny little woman and it would be fine.

I started off optimistic as hell. Here are some of the things I ate in the first few days:

Tuna mixed with fat-free ranch dressing and celery; greens, tomatoes.

Turkey, tomatoes, avocado, greens, and Italian dressing on a wheat tortilla.

Adorable vegetable snack. I recommend getting cute and tiny bowls to help with your snacking needs.

Pineapple and cottage cheese breakfast.

I even got to eat bacon twice. Turkey bacon, but still. I discovered that cottage cheese with fruit isn’t terrible. Some of the recipes were actually delicious—like the egg salad pita, tuna salad, and the turkey avocado wrap. The others, not so much. The first three bites of the baked potato seemed good, considering it had cheese, sour cream, and bacon on it. But it turns out that one tablespoon of sour cream and one sad lonely slice of bacon just is NOT the right ratio for a baked potato. I ended up mostly choking down plain potato and feeling sorry for myself.

Deceptively good-looking.

I was hungry all the damn time. 1,200 calories is not a lot of food. Do you know how little four ounces of meat is? I asked the man working at the deli counter for two four-ounce pieces of salmon and he laughed at me. Look at this dinner plate:

Not only did I have to scarf down bok choy (which tastes like the insole of a sweaty shoe), but look at the proportion of actual delicious salmon to vegetable and brown rice. I COULD BE EATING A BURRITO WHAT AM I EVEN DOING.

Even though I love having recipes tell me what to do, I got tired of constantly measuring out every little thing. I became obsessed with googling things like “How big is 6 oz of flank steak?” and “How many teaspoons is 3 oz of shredded cheese?” and other such EXCITING things. I didn’t have a food scale so most of the time I was just winging it and feeling like a failure. But then I started vowing that I’d do better. I started researching food scale prices. I would measure the 1/4 avocado exactly because those precise measurements would make me look and feel good. I’d gotten sucked in, become a slave to the ounces and to counting how many almonds I was eating.

On the third planned day, one of my friends wanted to go out. She was moving away, and it was one of the last days we both had free. I texted her that I was on a VERY IMPORTANT EATING PLAN and might not be able to go out. Was she free on Tuesday, once I was done? No, she wasn’t. I spent hours agonizing over what choice would make me a more terrible person.  My friend was moving many states away, and I had no idea when I’d see her again, versus messing up the plan and maybe having some of the $130 food go to waste. I didn’t want to give up on the plan because what did that say about me? That I couldn’t even commit five days to something? I didn’t want to give up on my friend, because choosing an eating plan over a friend is insane, right?

Eventually I decided that I didn’t want to be the biggest asshole on the planet and that I loved my friend. So I decided to screw the plan for a day and instead eat tapas and drink mimosas and sangria and I didn’t regret a single fucking minute.

After the day off, I finished the rest of the eating plan as closely as I was able. I have no idea (nor do I much care) if I lost any weight. The pictures I took of myself do show a little difference, and I learned how to snack like a grownup. I also learned that some vegetables (cucumbers, red peppers, zucchini) are actually good to snack on, and that almond butter on sliced apples is far superior to peanut butter. I felt like a healthy, active person again.

But I also learned that eating one waffle for breakfast is really depressing. I learned how easy it would be to start slowly shaving calories off my allotted amount. I learned that people don’t like hearing about eating plans, and how easy it would be to lie about what I’m eating. And I learned how quickly those grams of fat and 1/3 tablespoons make you feel like a good and put-together person.

I’d rather not be that sort of person. Instead I’ll maybe try to eat more vegetables and pay closer attention to portion sizes. I will continue to work out and teach myself to take more breaks. I’ll still be proud of myself when I eat well and work out harder. But I want to continue to be the person who would choose sangria with a friend over a bowl of vegetables by myself.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

One of my professors sent me the reading list for my fall literature class ahead of time so that we can go ahead and get started. A cooler person than me might have been dismayed, but it made me thrilled to start school. Partly, I was psyched because I’d already read some of the things on the list, which made me feel educated as hell. And that meant I could reread them, actually remember them, and maybe think of some smart shit to say ahead of time in class. (But not too many smart things — no one wants to be THAT girl, and I don’t want to be shunned at the after-class happy hour.) I’ve already started rereading Nabokov’s Lolita, and have been keeping a list of the beautiful and inventive language he uses so that I can try to learn something while I limp along in my novicehood.

For example: “. . . a poplar playing its liquid shadows all over the local Honor Roll” (p. 137); the backyard with “apple-green light” (p. 31); Lolita with “all four limbs starfished” across the chair (p. 174). Oh dear, I got too Englishy. But if you can’t appreciate the gorgeous prose, then I probably can’t appreciate you. I’m also excited to reread Raymond Carver’s short stories “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and “Beginners.”

I expect to probably be cooking much less when I’m in school, and writing to you about the best ways to jazz up rice and beans, writing a treatise on the various forms of caffeine, or on the best way to discreetly drink wine during workshop. But before I do all of that, I’m headed back to Michigan with my dad’s side of the family and Charlie to go up north to one of my most favorite places.

Lake Bellaire, MI

We all spend a ton of time reading up there, moving from the hammock to the dock, to the pontoon, to a lawn chair, and back to the hammock again. My dad reads exactly one book a year. He always reads it up north, and it’s always about music. Last year I let him borrow my copy of Steve Almond’s book Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, with its companion playlist. The year before that, he read Keith Richards’s Life, and read aloud anecdotes about prostitutes and drug cocktails. The year before that, it was Alice Cooper’s book Alice Cooper, Golf Monster: A Rock ‘n’ Roller’s 12 Steps to Becoming a Golf Addict (which is actually pretty hilarious).

For me, I found a used book at the lovely Green Apple Books called Not for Bread Alone: Writers on Food, Wine, and the Art of Eating, edited by Daniel Halpern. It’s a collection of food writing from well-known writers, including Wendell Berry, Charles Simic, Joyce Carol Oates, and Francine Prose, among others. Before I get started with classes and get buried under class readings, I’m bringing that one up north, along with Julia Child’s My Life in France, which was given to me as a gift and I MUST READ before I lose all steam.

Reading while lying in the sun and/or eating is one of the things I enjoy most. I wish you all a happy summer, and happy reading!

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

A few months later, I saw that nectarines were finally back on the shelves. It was time to grocery shop and to commence panicking.

The gist of the recipe was to slice up the polenta, grill it along with the chicken, and then grill the nectarines and mix those up with the blackberries to make a strange salsa with cilantro and hot sauce. I was already starting off on the panicky side because we don’t have an actual grill to cook with, only a George Foreman. I set up the grill on the counter and went to work.

The first thing to do was halve the nectarines and remove the pits. As it turns out, nectarines would really rather not be parted from their pits. The first one I tried got hopelessly mangled, and even after some internet research on how to actually do it, I still came close to ruining them all.

Poor things.

Next, I started to chop the blackberries. Blackberries are also reluctant to be chopped. I managed to splash purple juice all over myself and all over the kitchen. Several hours later, I found purple splashes on several of the kitchen outlets and on the inside of my arm.

Next up was to rub the chicken and the polenta with a cumin mixture. Before I started, I turned on the grill to heat up for a few minutes. I was feeling good; the chicken was ready for the grill and I sliced the polenta so that it could go on next. While I waited for the grill to heat up, I thought I’d be a fucking efficient chef and multitask by chopping the cilantro and squeezing the tablespoon of lime juice for the salsa. I looked over to check if the light on the grill had gone off, and smoke was pouring out of the sides of the grill. Apparently George Foremans are way more efficient than I am.

I yelled something like FIRE and unplugged the grill. I hadn’t even added any food and I had already managed to burn something. In an ideal world, I could put all the things on the grill at once, but the Foreman was way too small, so I’d have to tag-team the polenta and chicken and nectarines on and off the grill and it was all becoming so complicated I wanted to dump it all in the trash and order a pizza. But nectarines are expensive and I’d already nearly set the apartment on fire, so things could only get better.

After 8 years of dating, Charlie has a fine-tuned ability to sense my building panic and to help me calm myself before I start getting upset that EVERYTHING IS RUINED. When he saw me frantically running around and opening windows to keep the smoke detector from going off, he came over and casually put the nectarines on the grill. I had a sous chef.

One by one, Charlie helped me to grill all the things that needed to grill while I mixed the nectarines, blackberries, lime juice, cilantro, salt, and hot sauce for the fruit salsa. I didn’t know how I felt about hot sauce with fruit, but I was getting too hungry to care.

Grilled nectarines.

Grilled polenta slices.

In the end, I was more of an assistant, chopping and mixing things while Charlie did all of the actual cooking. For a hot minute I thought about feeling like a failure, but in reality I was just happy to be as far away from the smoking grill as possible. Once everything was finished, we put the chopped chicken on top of the polenta slices, and topped it with the salsa.

As we sat down to eat, the power blinked and then went out. If I’d been flying around trying to manage everything on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to finish cooking at all. We lit candles and sat on the couch to eat. Even without power, we had a dinner to eat and I’d had a chef to keep me from melting down or setting things on fire. I was all ready to feel adorable and accomplished.

Instead, the dinner sort of sucked. Between the cumin, the hot sauce, and the cilantro, there were too many strong flavors battling it out for superiority. I think the salsa was supposed to be a spicy/sweet combination, but the blackberries and the nectarines weren’t sweet enough to balance out the hot sauce and salt. Next time it might be better to just go ahead, give up, and order pizza. If we’re going to be nursing heartburn in the candlelight, I’d rather have eaten pizza.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

But I started to get sick of those recipes. We always keep a few packages of shelf-stable gnocchi in the cupboard to make gnocchi with chard and white beans, but when I went to make it last week, I realized I was groaning about the idea of eating it again. That recipe makes a TON of leftovers that don’t taste as good as the fresh stuff, and I just did not want to be eating that shit for the next week. Not to mention the sort of middle-aged sadness of doing the same thing over and over again and aren’t I supposed to be young and doing new things and OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. Eventually the fear of monotony won out over my lazy ass, and I decided to break out of the rut and find something new.

None of that changes the fact that I already had gnocchi in my cupboard and that gnocchi is delicious. Lately I’ve been sidelined from working out by a fucking TOE injury, so I’ve been trying to eat more vegetables to keep myself from losing all the health. I normally sauté some zucchini in olive oil when I make honey-soy broiled salmon, but otherwise I have no idea what to do with it. I found this recipe for gnocchi with zucchini ribbons (?) and parley brown butter from eatingwell.com. I had no idea what zucchini ribbons were or how butter got brown, but it sounded pretty so I went with it.

I wanted to get out of the rut but I’m still lazy, so I also chose this recipe because it doesn’t have a lot of ingredients: zucchini, tomatoes, gnocchi, parsley, butter, parmesan cheese, some spices, and I swapped out the shallots for garlic because ew shallots. To make the zucchini ribbony, the recipe said to use a mandoline slicer. I have no idea what that is, so I just used a potato peeler. I sliced off the ends of the zucchini first so I could stand it up, and cut thin slices downward until I got to the seeds. I didn’t expect mine to look as good as the picture, but they did look pretty cute, if sort of unsettlingly fish-like.  I chopped everything else up while I boiled the gnocchi.

Next, I had to brown the butter. The recipe said to cook it for about two minutes until it starts to brown. That sounded straightforward until I actually started doing it, and then I got worried that “brown” was too close to burn and that I wouldn’t know the difference and then EVERYTHING would be RUINED. While the butter started to melt, I furiously started googling “what does browned butter look like please help” and found something of Alton Brown’s. Most people on the internet, including Alton, seemed to be browning huge pots of butter for some nefarious purpose, whereas I was only doing a tiny slice.

Shrug?

After a few minutes of running between my computer and the stove, I decided to wing it. I waited until after the butter was foamy, when it looked maybe a little bit golden, and decided that was good enough for me. Anything cooked in butter is going to taste fine, anyhow. I added in the cute zucchini:

Aw.

From then on, the rest of the recipe moved super quickly, only cooking each ingredient for a minute or two before adding the next. The strangest thing about this recipe was that it wanted me to add nutmeg. NUTMEG. Isn’t that like, for coffee and hot cider and desserts? But I figured the people at Eating Well probably know what they’re doing, so I stirred it in along with a few red pepper flakes, like some of the commenters suggested.

LADIES AND GENTS — I cannot tell you how effing tasty this is. I don’t know whether it was the nutmeg or if browning the butter makes it extra delicious, but it was so good I made it again the next night. The recipe is supposed to be 4 servings but Charlie and I ate the entire panful in one sitting. The zucchini hardly tastes like a vegetable at all; it was almost like a sort of noodle. Even the picky 8-year-old version of me could probably have been tricked into eating this. I might use a little bit less parsley next time, but even that is barely worth mentioning. Instead of being my usual modest self I could not shut up about how good this was and how awesome I am. I was happy to be out of my rut, but I’ll gladly climb into a new, butter-filled one.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

Last weekend, the temperature shot up to a record-breaking, unseasonably warm 85 degrees, and I went into full-on summer break mode. I slept with the window open; woke up gleeful as if SCHOOL’S OUT FOR THE SUMMER, did my work in sundresses, and froze orange juice to make popsicles. As with everything, I wanted to celebrate with food. Ever since I ate all my Easter candy, the kitchen was back to its usual sad, no-sweets state. But with the heat, the last thing I wanted to do was crank up the oven.

Instead, I found a recipe for a no-bake strawberry icebox cake. I’d never heard of such a thing, but basically, the refrigerator does all the work for you. I was tempted to make the 9″ x 12″ cake the recipe called for, but instead I halved the recipe so that Charlie and I would survive to enjoy the warm weather. I had most of the ingredients already (I left out the rosewater, because when the fuck else am I going to use rosewater?), but picked up some strawberries and whipping cream. The most time-consuming part of this recipe was slicing the strawberries. I took my knife and cutting board to the couch and worked while I watched Battlestar Galactica episodes.

So say we all.

A very sharp knife makes the thin slicing easy. Next, I measured out the whipping cream. I guess that, in order to make homemade whipped cream, all you have to do is whip the shit out of the cream for five minutes. My hand mixer is messed up and only runs on a very high speed, so I grew concerned while I whipped and whipped the cream. I don’t understand the chemistry of it, and I had no idea how whipping something that looked fairly liquid would make whipped cream, but eventually, lo and behold, the cream started to stiffen.

The recipe said to whip until the cream held “stiff peaks,” meaning if you scoop a bit out, the tip doesn’t flop over.

Miraculously, it worked. I added a little vanilla and powdered sugar, and I had an effing delicious homemade whipped cream. I’m in danger of becoming the sort of person who refuses to buy Cool Whip because it’s nowhere near as good as the homemade kind.

Next, I opened the package of graham crackers. I bought the reduced-fat kind because the word “whipping cream” was upsetting to me, health-wise. As if the two would balance each other out. (They didn’t.) I layered the graham crackers, whipped cream, then the strawberries.

By the time I reached the last two layers, I realized that I’d been too stingy with the whipped cream on the first two layers, and compensated by making a very top-heavy cake. To make the chocolate ganache, all you do is heat up a little of the whipping cream, mix it with some chocolate (I used semi-sweet baking chocolate), and drizzle it on. Even though I halved the rest of the recipe, I didn’t bother halving the amount of ganache.

Then, I slid the gorgeous thing into the refrigerator and left it there overnight. After breakfast the next morning, Charlie and I cut slices for our second breakfast. The cake had softened in the refrigerator overnight, so the graham crackers sliced easily with a butter knife. The ganache had hardened, making it look super fancy.

I cannot express to you how delicious it was. In the refrigerator, everything had softened into a sort of tiramisu-like texture, but without being mushy or soggy. It was light (despite the whipping cream) without being too sweet. The chocolate added just a little bit of richness without being too overwhelming. I never knew what made ganache in bakery desserts so tasty, but it turns out it’s the whipping cream.

I plan to take this to all future potlucks because it looks impressive and will make me look cool, but is SUPER easy to make. The cake didn’t last two days — I wasn’t even able to wait until after dinner the next day and ate it after lunch instead. You could probably make this with any fruit and it would be amazing — fresh nectarines or raspberries are next on my list. And next time I’ll know better and will make a full-sized cake.

—

Jill Kolongowski is a writer and freelance editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she sometimes blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

Meanwhile, any sort of normal eating was out of the question. Most of the classes I visited were at night, and after giving myself an extra travel hour to fight traffic and/or get lost, I was on the road between 4 and 9. For a week, my dinners were a pathetic picnic of Lara Bars, miniature clementines, and raw almonds. It may not be coincidence that the last two schools I was deciding on were the ones that offered me chocolate during class.

The rest of the time, my entire brainspace was devoted to agonizing over what decisions I was going to make, how much money I’m going to spend, and whether all of it was going to be THE WRONG CHOICE. I walked around like I was half asleep, doing things like forgetting to shower and going to the sink to brush my teeth only to wash my hands instead and end up back at my desk thinking there was something I’d forgotten to do.

My parts of my brain that are normally used to organize when and what I eat were taken over by an army of anxiety. I’d forget to eat breakfast until noon, eat lunch at five, and my stomach didn’t want anything but tea and toast for dinner. I’ve never been much of an emotional eater — for me, eating is tied to joy, and not sadness. If I’m going to eat a huge block of chocolate, I want to be fucking aware and delighted that I’m eating it.

The week before I had to make a decision, my mom came to visit, bringing with her a bit of relief and an excuse to cook dinner again. She also brought me a dark chocolate bar for Easter. Then my father shipped me a chocolate bunny and three bags of chocolate eggs. Then, as an early birthday present, my mom brought home a chocolate cake so rich it was like eating fudge. Instead of anxiety-eating all of it, all the treats were a little wake-up to stop being so introspective, to get out of my own head and remember that life is okay because there is still plenty of chocolate to be eaten.

On my twenty-fifth birthday, I planned to go and visit my last school. The fact that this agonizing limbo of life decisions was almost over made me feel more human than I had in weeks. Charlie took me out to lunch and I ate a burger, a massive plate of sweet potato fries, and a chocolate malt. I was suddenly 25 and making choices and wanted to feed myself, instead of just eating to keep going.

After much angst and maybe a little crying, I chose a school. After that, I could actually celebrate my birthday by eating an obscene amount of food and getting good and drunk. We met up with four of our friends at a Chinese restaurant famous for (of all things) its chicken wings. I have never been a fan of the gross, coyote-like way you have to eat wings, but these are an exception because their breading is perfection and the sauce is sweet and spicy and so wonderful I would gladly drink it. There were six of us. We ordered six plates of chicken wings.

This was not sadness-eating a bowl of ice cream so fast you forget you ate it at all. This was not tearing through a bag of tortilla chips while you watch TV and surprising yourself by finishing the bag and then berating yourself with guilt. This was a time when things were resolved and I was happy and moving forward and wanted to enjoy the hell out of some food again. I am a grownup and I will joyfully decimate as many chickens as I want.

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Jill Kolongowski is a writer and freelance editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

Because of my irrational breakfast rules, I was never interested in biscuits and gravy for breakfast. While I love biscuits, I could not handle the thought of gravy in the morningtime. I realize that it’s gravy made with breakfast sausage, but I couldn’t separate it from the kind of gravy that belongs on turkey and mashed potatoes, and that kind of gravy should get the right the fuck out of my breakfast.

Then I stumbled on this recipe for homemade biscuits and vegetarian sausage gravy. I’m not a vegetarian, but I love Morning Star’s sausage patties because they’re easy to make and a little bit healthier than regular sausage. The pictures on that blog post looked so amazing, they sold me. More often than not, I reject food outright for no good reason at all, so I decided to give this a try.

First came Alton Brown’s biscuits. I’d never made biscuits from scratch before, and the recipe was asking me to do some awfully strange things. I read and reread the recipe to remember what to do. First, I had to mix the fats (butter and shortening) with the dry ingredients WITH MY HANDS. I had no idea what I was doing. I sort of vaguely smooshed the stuff around until it seemed mixed, though it was hard to tell. Then, I made a well in the middle of the bowl for the chilled buttermilk, as instructed:

I stirred the dough until it was just combined, and plopped it onto the cutting board. In order to keep the biscuits fluffy, you’re not supposed to knead the dough very much at all. I got extremely paranoid about over-kneading because WHAT IF THE WHOLE THING IS RUINED. I formed the dough into a circle (a challenge because the dough was so sticky it didn’t want to move where I wanted), and asked Charlie if it was one inch thick.

“No,” he said, “That’s less than an inch.” I have such poor spatial reasoning I’m incapable of seeing what an inch looks like without getting out a ruler. I folded the dough over, but the flour from the cutting board kept the two halves from sticking together. I immediately started swearing and complaining that I’d screwed it up. The dough did not look cute at all.

The oven was already preheated and there was no point in quitting while I was so far along. Apparently there’s some sort of tool you can use to cut the biscuits into even circles, but I didn’t know such a thing existed. Instead I used a cup to make biscuit slices, putting the leftover scraps together each time to make new biscuits. They were wildly inconsistent.

Into the oven they went, and I started to make the gravy. I cooked the Morning Star sausage patties, crumbling them up as I went, and put them on a plate off to the side. The recipe told me to whisk the flour in with the butter once the butter started foaming. But the pan was so hot from the sausage that the butter started foaming almost instantly, some of it burning in the center of the pan. I panicked and dumped the flour and milk in at once, whisking like it would all be okay if I just WHISKED FAST ENOUGH.

Meanwhile, I’d messed up the timing, and the biscuits were done earlier than I expected. But they looked delicious, if a little lopsided, so I started to feel like perhaps I hadn’t screwed up everything.

It turns out gravy is really simple, guys. I thought you had to add a bunch of spices or corn starch or something, but it’s just milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper. I added the sausage back to the gravy, and let it thicken. I called Charlie over multiple times to check if the gravy looked edible, since he’s much more of a gravy expert than I am. Eventually, it started to look like it should.

We split open a biscuit, and between how fluffy they turned out and the way the gravy smelled, I was willing to admit I’d been totally wrong about sausage gravy.

I worried that it might be bland with just salt and pepper for spices, but hot damn was this hearty and delicious. I wanted to put on some flannel and go split logs when I was done. My apologies to sausage gravy for shunning you for so long. We will have to make up for lost time.

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Jill Kolongowski is a writer and freelance editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.

This isn’t meant to tout my own healthy eating habits, but rather show that the things I buy are an effort to hide my complete lack of self control. If I buy that bag of Cheetos, I will eat them all. In one sitting. I’ll rationalize that if I’m going to eat something bad, I might as well eat it all at once. That way, I get it out of the way. As if that’s how it works.

I grew up in a house without much snack food — my mother always stressed the importance of eating together, so we did not have chips or cookies to snack on between meals. This is not to say we lived in some sort of totalitarian NO SNACKS OR FUN ALLOWED environment, we just focused on the main meals instead of the in-between times.

As a result, when I went to college, that all went to hell. I ate chips and salsa on my dorm room floor at odd hours of the day, trailing crumbs on the carpet. I had energy drinks and chocolate shakes and bagels and cream cheese whenever I wanted. And then, predictably, I got fat. It took me nearly two years to get back to looking how I wanted. When I moved into my own apartment, I made a decision to never buy those snack foods. It made not eating them so much easier.

But every now and then, I’m not able to shut down that voice that’s asking for something sweet and crunchy. Then, I curse past Jill who was trying to be all healthy and shit because the house has nothing to snack on. And I resort to desperate things. I scavenge in the freezer and eat frost-burned blueberries until my fingers and tongue are purple. I eat packages of broken Ritz crackers. But most of all, I eat cereal.

Instead of eating it in a bowl with milk like a civilized adult, I eat it out of the box, preferably on the couch while watching TV so I don’t have to think too hard about what I’m doing. It’s never an easy-to-eat cereal, either — I end up with Rice Krispies stuck to my fingertips and down my shirt. I drop Honey Bunches of Oats flakes between the couch cushions. I always stop before I hit the bottom of the box, leaving just enough to prove that I didn’t actually eat all of it, but not enough for anyone to have a full bowl of cereal. It’s not pretty.

People on diets will convince themselves that eating the thing you crave is not actually that good. But fuck that. Sometimes it’s exactly that good.

What strange things do you snack on, dear readers?

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Jill Kolongowski is a freelance writer and editor living in San Francisco. When she’s not cooking, running, or reading, she blogs at jillkolongowski.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jillkolongowski.