My Ideal Pasta Salad, Plus Recommendations for July

Another reminder (excuse?) to buy the good olive oil.

I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of luxury and pleasure in my life—where do I find it, and how can I carve it out within the constraints of my schedule, budget, etc? How can I offer it to others? How can I strive for pleasure in small ways while not letting go of the structures that make me feel stable? How do I decouple luxury from spending?! And so on and so forth. The answer is often a long stretch of reading, a walk out of the apartment for an iced chai, a new scent, a lay in the park, an excursion to see some art. A fancy condiment, a nice bottle of vermouth. One of my most regular and trusted indulgences in the kitchen is something I find both mundane and excessive: a five gallon tin of olive oil.

I get the big jug of olive oil (this brand) from Saraghina Market, which is near me and sells reliable breads and pastries and expensive Italian grocery items. For roughly a hundred dollars they will sell you five gallons of really good peppery grassy olive oil, which lasts me at least a few months and which I cherish. I decant it into a dark green 750ml bottle and use it unsparingly: to fry eggs or toast, to start and finish soups and beans, to make dressing or pesto or whatever my heart desires. 

You don’t need to buy expensive ingredients to eat well; people who argue this line dogmatically turn cooking into class performance, which is bad all around. Cooking is for everyone because everyone needs to eat and the pleasures of cooking should be available to those who want to get pleasure from it. But! But, I think that if you can swing it, buying slightly better staples will make all of your food taste better, and allow you to do more with less. What I’m saying is, splurge on the good olive oil when you can. What I’m saying is, find an ingredient you love and celebrate it.