If You Can’t Stand the Heat in the Kitchen, Get Out … the Snacks

It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner with some cartoon inspiration from down under.

A few of our readers have grumbled that the recipes here at BigLittleMeals can be a tad complicated and require too many ingredients.  I’m tempted to respond with Harry S. Truman’s famous words, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” 

But that would not only be rude, it would be contrary to our goal of getting folks into the kitchen. A better approach would be to placate our grumblers by finding dining options that are super simple, require very few ingredients, and can even be fun. As luck would have it, I recently found a source that fits the bill: The Joy of Snacking, A Graphic Memoir about Food, Love and Family by Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell.

Throughout her book Campbell includes recipes for simple, albeit sometimes weird, snacks that even the grumpiest of our grumblers should find approachable. I’ve selected a few promising snacks to include in today’s blog, but before getting to the recipes let me provide a bit of background.

Hilary Campbell’s father has been my primary care physician for the last twenty-some years and her mother is the nurse in his office. So even though I’ve never met Hilary face-to-face, her parents have kept me abreast of what she has been up to since she left Sonoma to live in Brooklyn. Among other things, I’ve learned that she is a New Yorker cartoonist , she does stand-up comedy, and most recently, published The Joy of Snacking. I should add that I learned from her memoir (not her parents) that she also has taken up vaudeville and does something in her act that involves tassels.

Although I love cartoons (why else would anyone subscribe to the New Yorker?) and although I’m a helpless comics fan, for some reason I never thought that I would enjoy a graphic book-length memoir. But being curious about the “snacking” angle, I decided to give Hilary Campbell’s book a whirl. It kept me engrossed through all of its 385 graphic pages. Even when dealing with some weighty personal and interpersonal issues, her underlying sense of humor kept it engaging. I’m sure I learned more about the “food, love, and family” in her life than I would have had she written a text-only memoir.

With that said, let’s turn to the snacks. [Note: be aware that you’re not going to find any of these snacks among the those featured in the recently published NY Times article “Healthy Homemade Snack Ideas” — but so what?]

Snack #1. Emily’s Salami & Cream Cheese
With only two ingredients and requiring little preparation, this is a solid entry-level snack for beginners.

Snack #2 Oreos and Milk
This option also could serve as a dessert. Pay attention to Hilary’s warning that Oreos can get soft “faster than expected.”

Snack #3. Elaine’s Mom’s Grilled Cheese
With three ingredients, this snack is a bit more challenging, but getting it right should be a confidence builder. Spreading the mayo on both sides of the bread is a nice twist (maybe).

Snack #4. White Wine on Ice
I suppose that technically wine should not considered a snack and the ice is definitely a no-no out here in wine country, but it can help blunt the “too-many-ingredients” blues in more ways than one.

Snack #5 Adult Lunchables
My final choice, with its four or more ingredients, ratchets up the difficulty level. To make it simpler skip the fruit and/or nuts; or better yet, skip the whole thing and double up on the white wine on ice.

My hope is that these suggestions have mitigated some of the concerns about the complexity of our BigLittleMeals recipes. If not, as difficult as it is for me to say this, it’s probably time to take seriously Harry Truman’s admonition to “get out of the kitchen.”