Chloe Cullen's Blog, page 13
December 18, 2023
December 14, 2023
"Fish week has been cancelled due to lack of hustle"
Small life update: I’m doing this manic thing where I’m applying…last-minute…to M.F.A. programs.
In the past, I’ve been torn about applying for something that can be so cost-prohibitive. And when I say “the past,” I mean up until two weeks ago (and maybe a little bit right now as eating application fees.)
Trust me, I’m not going anywhere. Thanks to this space and this series, I’ve been feeling confident about my ideas again now that I’ve had space to explore them.
So I’m doing something that wil...
December 11, 2023
December 10, 2023
Self-Taught Homework #5: Oops, you fell in love with beets
For the first day of vegetable week, you order a patty melt from Harlem Shake. The cheese fries and salted caramel milkshake are icing on top, they’re gravy, whichever food idiom best works with the salty and sweet combination of junk food.
This tendency to lean into the unhealthy, to indulge in the less healthy option, put distance between you and vegetables. Vegetables are rabbit’s food, a lame idiom with an aftertaste of starvation, over-restraint, suffocation. A nibble, not a chomp.
You grew...
December 7, 2023
Self-Taught Lesson #5: Vegging out
Vegetables to me are intimidating because there are so many of them.
Beef = cows
Pork = pigs
Chicken = chicken
Vegetables = potatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms, fennel, okra, bok choi…
And the list goes on.
(Editor’s note: a mushroom is a fungi, not a vegetable.)
helpful but also…what the heck?? (from googling “what is vegetable images”)Truthfully, learning more about produce and developing vegetarian meals could be its own “self-taught” series.
But I’ve already made a syllabus, and we’re back to p...
December 4, 2023
December 3, 2023
Self-Taught Homework #4: Gorgeous gorgeous girls love soup
In a Williamsburg dive bar well after midnight, you ask a friend visiting from Philadelphia what she’s cooking recently. She cooks four times a week, and earlier this summer when Luke made pork tenderloin with a honey glaze, she closed her eyes and picked out the ingredients. You had never cooked with fennel before, and she knew it at a bite.
Before she left for New York, this friend went through her fridge on Friday afternoon. She spotted a leftover Thanksgiving turkey and produce that would go...
December 1, 2023
The November Log: Watches, Reads, Feels
“You want everything?” I ask Luke over the phone on my way to the bagel place. A bird swarm dives in cursive u’s, and my stomach drops. I want my summer order, the bagel sandwich I had on the way to Rockaway Beach. A pumpernickel bagel with avocado, red onion, and something else you can’t remember. Instead of improvising, I order Luke’s everything bagel with cream cheese (toasted) and the “going green #3,” a thick veggie sandwich on pumpernickel.
There was some news article about farmers, or aut...
