Chronicles of a Hopeless Wanderer: Melissa Meals

At the end of May, my cousin Brianna, whom I’ve referred to in a previous post, graduated from high school. Bri is my youngest first cousin from my mom’s side of the family, and she’s pretty awesome. I know that I’m pretty awesome, but she takes my awesomeness to the next level. She graduated with honors, she had a couple sets of cords that she wore with her cap and gown, she’s just all around badass. The weekend of her graduation, the WHOLE family was coming into town (Warner Robins, GA) to see her graduate and go to her graduation party held at her parent’s house.

Just before the graduation weekend, I was starting to get really into cooking. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but now that I’ve moved in with my parents and have an awesome, pretty much always fully stocked kitchen, I’ve been doing a lot more cooking. Armed with this knowledge, my grandmother asked me to help her prepare some of the food that was going to be served at the graduation party. So the afternoon that I arrived at my grandmother’s house, the day before the graduation, my grandmother immediately put me to work making huge vats of chicken salad and pasta salad. There was so much slicing and chopping going on that it’s a miracle that I still have all of my fingers.

My aunt, Brianna’s mom, had also caught wind of my newly discovered cooking skillz and asked me to help make a caprese salad. For any of you who follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I have an obsession with caprese salad. If you don’t know, caprese salad consists of fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, tomatoes, and olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It’s pretty much one of the greatest things you’ll ever put in your mouth, especially if you use a balsamic vinegar reduction. Balsamic vinegar may not sound very appealing, mainly because it has the word “vinegar” attached to it, but once it is reduced, it’s like a tart, caramel-esque, gift from the gods. Whenever I make a caprese salad for myself, I like to cut up a fist sized ball of mozzarella into little bite sized chunks and put it in a bowl with fresh basil and cherry tomatoes and a little bit of olive oil. Then I reduce some balsamic vinegar and drizzle it over the salad. It’s soooo gooood! What is a reduction you ask? It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you heat a liquid to the point where the water evaporates and you’re left with a thickened liquid. In the case of a balsamic reduction, you’re basically making a caramel sauce. When I make a balsamic reduction, I like to let it reduce for a while so it gets thick and syrupy. It may sound a little weird, but balsamic reduction is life changing when you drizzle it over fresh berries. I love to pour it over either strawberries or blackberries.

Needless to say, I was put in charge of making the caprese salad and the balsamic reduction to go with it. At like 10 o’clock the night before the graduation, I was at my aunt’s house cutting up two large logs of mozzarella and two Sam’s sized plastic crates of cherry tomatoes, and delicately layering the mozzarella and tomatoes with basil leaves in a giant trifle bowl. This was like heaven for a caprese addict like me. When I was done, it looked like Christmas in a bowl, with the bright red and green from the tomatoes and basil.

The next day, after the graduation, was the party. All the food was prepared and being set up on the dining room table, and the only thing left to make was the balsamic reduction for the caprese salad. And since I had just recently become an expert in reductions, of course it was my job to make the redution. I had to reduce an entire bottle of balsamic vinegar. Having not reduced a whole bottle before, I wasn’t sure how long it would take. It was like 20 or 25 minutes. And apparently, while the vinegar is reducing, it makes the whole house smell like vinegar. So all of my cousin’s friends and our family were dying from vinegar fumes. BUT IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT! Sometimes when making a reduction, it can be a hit-or-miss kind of thing, either you don’t reduce it long enough and it’s still too watery, or you reduce it too much and you end up with a thick molasses-like consistency. But luckily, I removed it from the heat at just the right time and it was the perfect consistency, nice and syrupy, like a black, tart caramel.

As I put the final touch of the bowl of balsamic on the food table, I looked across at the spread and realized that I’d made half of the food on the table. It was a very rewarding experience to hear all the party goers ooh-ing and ahh-ing over how good all the food was. My aunts and grandmother kept telling me that I should go into catering or go to culinary school. Whaaa? The thought of me becoming a caterer or chef or anything to do with the food world had never crossed my mind. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts, you’ll know that in the past 6 months or so I’ve been dealing with such existential thoughts as, “who am I?”, “what am I doing with my life?”, “what am I going to do with my life?”, and I’ve made lists of all of the things I’ve thought of doing or being. “Chef” was not one of them. But since it was being suggested to me, I thought, why not add it to the list? So I did a little research and found some culinary programs that seemed interesting. My favorite was one where you would study in NYC for 10 weeks, then you would go to Italy and study for 9 weeks, then work in a kitchen in Italy for another 9 weeks.

For now, the thought of culinary school is going to remain a thought. But since cooking has still become something I enjoy doing, I decided to start cooking for my family (I gotta earn my keep somehow). I cook two meals a week, Sunday lunch and Tuesday dinner, and I call them Melissa Meals. Sometimes I just prepare your run of the mill type meals, but a lot of times, I’ll get a little experimental and try new things. I’ve been trying out a lot of no/low-carb recipes, mainly because my mom is on a protein-heavy, no carb diet right now. Two of the no/low-carb recipes that have been amazing are no carb pizza, and no carb chile rellenos (which is my own recipe, btw. Well with some help on how to prepare the peppers from a very nice Spanish speaking lady on YouTube). The pizza is made with a cream cheese and egg “crust”, and the chile rellenos are not fried, but baked in queso.

Another culinary creation that I have stumbled upon, which is in no way whatsoever low-carb, is Nutella milkshakes. OHMYGODNUTELLAMILKSHAKES. When I posted a picture of my first Nutella milkshake on Instagram, the caption was “Ok, I just found something that's better than balsamic reduction: Nutella milkshake. Good gawd.” It’s super easy to make, and obvi, super delicious. It’s just two cups of vanilla ice cream, half a cup of milk, and 4 tablespoons of Nutella. Then of course you mix it up in a blender, pour it in a glass, and then discover nirvana. It really is THAT good.

Since I have no intentions to turn this blog into a food blog, I wasn’t planning on posting any of my recipes, just mouthwatering pictures of the meals (cruel, I know), but if you’re really dying to know my culinary secrets, you can just send me a message or email (my email address is on the left side bar under my picture) and I will be happy to send them to you!