three good bowls

a good bowl of slop

Soak some dried pinto beans; forget about them for an extra day; boil them absentmindedly with a parmesan rind and some pepper flakes and garlic cloves until they're just overcooked. Consider how long it will take for you to become the sort of person who can cook a perfect bean. Slosh them into a tupperware with their cooking liquid and remember that pinto beans are not your favorite. Remember you have a wilting head of kale in your crisper drawer. (I think it was Tamar Adler who said crisper drawers are a lie.) Chop half an onion and heap it into a small pot with some oil and paprika and salt. Cook til it's soft, then add the kale that you've already chopped, then cook that until it's soft too, then add more salt and paprika and some red wine vinegar, then grab your beans. Slosh some beans and cooking liquid into the pot. Keep cooking what's in the pot. When you're bored of cooking taste it and futz with it and then put it into a bowl, stir in the last of your parsley—also chopped—and top with a shower of grated parmesan cheese. eat on the couch under a blanket if sad or anxious or normal.

a good bowl of salad-like food

order tom yum soup on a saturday night when you cannot get of the couch because of exhaustion. extra spicy. fall asleep before it arrives. eat half the soup and then tell yourself you'll finish it somehow despite your burning burnt mouth. for lunch on a monday when you've promised yourself you won't spend money on food and you'll eat your vegetables, pull out the soup, and then also the last of the broccoli, and an egg. boil the egg and hope for a nice molten yolk. heat some of the soup's broth in a little pot. chop the broccoli and steam-boil it in the broth. pull it when it's bright green and crisp-tender. pull the mushrooms and the tofu out of your soup. put them in a bowl with the broccoli, and the egg when it's done. mix some tahini and water and cider vinegar for a dressing of sorts. pour over. feel resourceful.

you can undo a mush

overcook some brown rice. it's okay; we all do it. overcook it for dinner then the next afternoon you'll have cold mush. Heat some olive or coconut oil in a pan and break a handful or two of rice into clumps. Drop one grain into the pan, and if it sizzles and cracks, add the rest. sprinkle with salt unless you also oversalted your rice. pat down with a spoon or spatula, and let cook until the bottom of your rice pancake is golden and crackly. start flipping and stirring, then cook, then flip and stir, until you get the sense that the majority of your rice has at least one crispy bit on its person. boil a tiny bit of salted water, and use it to blanch-steam some broccoli and broccoli stems, or some wilting spinach, or both. drain it when the vegetable is crisp-tender (brocco) or dark and wilted (leafy stuff). pile into a bowl with the rice, maybe an egg, and a plop of yogurt. you can stir in a bit of tahini and lemon juice and salt into your yogurt if you like. this is also a nice time to use pickled banana peppers as a garnish. we don't appreciate banana peppers enough. resolve to eat more of them in 2017.