The Meth Lunches

All about the Food in the Book.

We are back in Vegas. And given that I have only started to unpack, and get the kids ready for back-to-school, put out countless back-home fires in need of putting out, and Desi’s 8th birthday, which was yesterday is absorbing, as it should be, not to mention grocery shopping, stocking the house back up. And David down for the count for a few days - virus - and you know, suitcases are still packed and jungle moist in the bedroom, have we talked about the sink full of dishes??? LOL.

So I thought I’d change it up today.

In lieu of that I thought I’d give you a little peak inside the food/dishes the are featured in my forthcoming book, The Meth Lunches: Food + Longing in an American City, with St. Martin’s Press. Out October 10th and available for pre-order.

There are NO RECIPES and NO PHOTOS in my book - it’s pure narrative non-fiction - so it’s all food through your bookish imagination; good food, bad food, spoiled food, the absence of food, the disdain of food, commodity food, the discomfort of it, the connection it creates and then the way it allows and perpetuates disconnection.

The idea of this book is to tell stories about people and their food that are not IG perfect, full of viral aesthetics, warm and cozy, and styled to its limits. The book isn’t just about the good things about food, the delicious things - although there is some of that - but also about what “the table” is like when things are fucked up, when people are fucked up, when there is poverty, mental illness, addiction, family loss, scarcity.

As food writers, we are always writing for people who enjoy food, like us. But not everyone loves food. Like the friend of mine who I write about in the book who was starved as a child in her mother’s closet. Johnnie sees food and her hunger as something she has to deal with, but if she could she would never think about food again. It is all but meaningless to her.

I try to think about what home cooking means to a family who can’t cook in their kitchen because their building is so infested with roaches and vermin that they don’t dare eat anything but quickly disposed-of take out. And what does a good meal look like when you are cooking from an anonymous bag of commodity food handed to you at a pantry? The same bag you got last week and the week before? And what about the people who get that bag of food but have no oil or butter or salt to make it actually taste good?

What does it mean when you can’t choose your own food? A thing so elemental and basic that it always takes my breath away because, in this country, in the year 2023, millions of of people aren’t even choosing for themselves what they want to eat. Millions.

What does food mean to a kid who has been traumatized by hunger, terrified that food might not be available to them and so they obsess and worry and freak out and obsess more, and hide the food under their mattresses, in their school backpacks, overeat, pack it all down, so that it can’t be taken away?

I really wanted to write a book about food that isn’t pretty. Or perfect. Or delicious. Or worthy of a TV show or a post on IG. Or chic or posh or only something a few people can have. I wanted it to be the stories of real people and their food….

So that we see as many people as we can.

To see everyone we can. Not just the folks in our tiny tiny myopic everyday circles. I wanted my own lens shift.

So, this list: I’m not entirely sure what to do with this list, maybe a paid recipe section? (Recipe writing is not fun for me because I’m a “handful of this, a pinch of that kind of cook” so I couldn’t do it for free. I would get too stabby. LOL) Ugh. I don’t know. Who knows? I like free, free is good. How could I write a book predominantly about poverty and then stick things behind a pay wall, with the message, you can access this if you have the money? Ugh, again.

I made this list for no particular reason except to document it.

This is food I have cooked for people, or they have cooked for me, or we have cooked together at the pantry in our front yard, which ran during the pandemic. There is also food that we (Our cookbook group Please Send Noodles) cooked for the community as part of a meal program, where people could pick up curbside homemade meals. Much of the food was beautiful even though the surrounding times were hard for lots of people.

This was “trauma food” a concept I talk about a little in my book.

But food holds space for that too: the good and the bad and the hard, the disconnection and the connection, the love and the misunderstanding, the vulnerable and the fearsome.

We all have our food stories to tell. The ones in this book, I hope, aren’t the same old stories. And as bleak as they might sound, they are also full of hope. Because we can prevail over the bullshit and the impossible.

We can change. I hope this book helps a little with that.

Anyways, thank you, as always, for reading. xo Kim

_____________________

Chinese-style fried eggs.

Chapter One: The Care + Feeding of a Drug Addict

A guy named Charlie, deep into his meth addiction, comes to work on our new house. We invite him to eat lunch with us. The lunches help us know each other and when we know each other, the truths and discomforts of active addiction become a reality for all of us.

• Sukiyaki noodle bowl with slices of lamb

• Bacalao al Forno, salt cod with tomatoes + olives

• Bo ssam w/ quick pickles, pickled watermelon rind, homemade radish kimchi, rice, a honey-sweet ssam sauce,  and ginger scallion sauce

• Yakitori chicken thighs +  skin w/ jasmine rice + simple salad

• Scallion pancakes

• Dan dan noodles, chili oil sauce, crumbles of pork, preserved mustard greens, Sichuan peppercorns, with a last dusting of minced scallions.      

• Shaking Beef, chuck, grilled, crunchy and rare, tossed in a mixture of Thai chilies, garlic, fish sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, lime, and sugar, and served on watercress tossed with a light vinaigrette.

• Steamed pork, with shiitakes, ginger, shrimp and salted fish. 

• Catfish marinated in tequila and lime, dredged in potato starch and fried, with a garlic, sriracha, lime mayo for dipping, and quick salad of greens with pear slices, cilantro, olive oil, lime, and salt with slices of hard goat cheese. 

• Negi maki, beef and scallion. Lightly charred lemongrass pork skewers. And chili and lime-grilled prawns with a tub of Romanesco for dipping. 

• Yakitori chicken livers, oysters, neck, gizzard, heart and skin, pork belly, cow tongue, and stuff from the dirt, shishitos, scallions, shiitakes

• Pork Empanadas

• Whole wok-fried snapper with shiso and lemon 

• Screaming-rare, grilled New York strip underneath a melting chunk of shiso-shallot butter. 

• Chinese-fried eggs: eggs poured into scalding oil and fried so quickly the outside is puffy and crunchy, and the inside is runny as all hell, served with oyster sauce, Thai chilies and scallion.

• Chicken wings marinated in mirin, soy, and fish sauce, coated in cornstarch and deep-fried..

Chapter Two: Surveillance of Humans + Their Food

A young mother comes to Vegas with her son. She works, rents an apartment with cash she has saved and ends up being scammed. Police come, she gets thrown in jail. Her son is taken by CPS. We are his foster parents. The rest is a story about this mother getting on her feet, getting her kid back and the system that pulled them apart instead of helping them stay together.

• Red-cooked pork belly on steamed lotus buns with cucumber quick pickles and shreds of lettuce.

• Salt and pepper crispy-fried pork chops

• Lamb sambusas. 

• Spicy chicken drumsticks with sticky rice. 

• Miso-glazed black cod with a leafy salad. 

• Vietnamese-style crab omelet

• Steaks on the grill with baked potatoes, butter, sour cream and chives.  

• Izakaya late night snack: salmon sashimi, pickles (tsukemono) and rice balls (onigiri) with chilled Asahi’s.

• Chuck steaks, garlic mash with parmesan, and beans with almond slivers and lemon

Chapter Three: Hunger, Hoarding + Having Enough

A young girl is locked in a closet and starved as her mother spirals into schizophrenia. The starvation she endures, as does all starvation and scarcity, changes the chemistry of her body, and brain. She spends her life making sure she never goes hungry again. She will work in a supermarket her whole life so she is always around food.

• Arroz con gandules

• Sopa de res con fideo. 

• Sopa de Pollo Con Mofongo. 

• Sancocho with chunks of beef, carrots, yautia, potato, green plantains and cassava

calamari.

Chapter Four: Food That Is Fast + Full of Meaning

A personal story of my relationship with the biological mother of my foster (now adopted) kids that bloomed and blossoms in our local McDonalds, which is mostly about how the system failed to help her, as did I, because she had so many struggles, mental illness, addiction to heroin, homelessness. The system farmed out her kids but offered her little in the way of regaining her life and her family. I explore how parents with complex issues like addiction can be problematic as on-the-job parents but can and should be still be in their kids lives.

• Fish tacos. Grilled cod, warm, corn tortillas with pickled red cabbage, jalapenos, lime and crema. 

• Salmon rice in the donabe. 

• Pork and cabbage egg rolls

• Phat thai (Andy Ricker’s stir-fried rice noodles with shrimp, tofu and peanuts)

• Cacio e pepe

• Vietnamese caramel salmon

• Rare steak salad with peppery arugula. 

• Roast chicken, with the pan fats for dipping meat. 

• Stuffed baked potatoes

• Oaxaca-style chapuline tacos, stir-fried grasshoppers in oil with chili, salt and lime, served in a warm tortillas with fresh tomatoes and creamy queso fresco

• Southeast Asian inspired salad, deep-fried (local) grasshoppers in chili and lemongrass, seasoned with soy sauce, sugar and MSG, served on pea tendrils with a little oil, salt and lime
  

Chapter Five: Charity, the Giving + Taking of Food

There is a fridge and a dry pantry in our front yard during the pandemic. Everyday hundreds of people come looking for fresh vegetables, fruit and staples. We start cooking. This is my education about poverty, and the daily inhumanity and injustices that are heaped on our poorest and most vulnerable citizens. These injustices are reflected in what and how these folks are able to eat, every day, including the loss of choice.

• Nikujaga, Japanese beef and potato stew, seasoned with mirin, sake and soy sauce. 

• Ottlenghi’s lamb meatloaf with a labneh-garlic sauce

• Hasselback potatoes drenched in butter, soft roasted garlic, chives and salt. 

• Green beans with almonds, garlic and squirts of lemon. 

• Spicy chicken tinga on tortillas with cold iceberg, avocado, homemade hot sauce from my garden peppers, crema, and farm cheese 

• Pupusas stuffed with chicharon, peppers and onions with curtido (vinegary slaw)on the side. 

• Pork Tinga: Fatty pork butt meat, chilies, sausage meat in a stewed tomato sauce, served with rice, two eggs over easy, hot sauce, cilantro 

• Pork belly fried rice. Cold rice, pork belly, carrots, celery, edamame, eggs, scallions, fish and soy sauce. 

• Hoshigaki, dried, sweet hachiya persimmons 

• Karaage, Japanese-style fried chicken, thighs dusted in potato starch and deep fried, served with a salad with creamy carrot dressing, rice + homemade spicy Szechuan pickles

• Fiery fried tofu. 

• Confit byaldi, a Basque-style stew of onions, green peppers, tomatoes, garlic, piment d’espelette, Sauteed in beef tallow under whisper-thin zucchini and tomato slices, cooked low and slow, olive oil, Black vinegar, garlic and herbs for garnish. 

• Salvadorian quesadilla

• Julia Child’s Potatoes Dauphinoise, with canned potatoes. 

• Swedish-style meatballs in a sour cream gravy. 

• Edna Mae’s Sour Cream pancakes from Red Drummond + Deb Perelman.

• Cucumber salad with sour cream and dill. 

• Lengua burritos with cilantro lime crema + pickled red onions

• Hummus, from canned chickpeas

• Falafel

• Lamb and chickpeas in a tagine with turmeric. 

• Roasted chickpeas with dill, cumin, cucumbers, garlic-lemon-yogurt and pistachios. 

• Spanish-influenced chickpea salad, with roasted peppers, cumin, paprika, stewed tomatoes and spinach.

• Chickpea bowls with roasted sweet potatoes, seaweed, kale, a tahini dressing and crispy fried shallots. 

  

  salad.

Chapter Six: Food + Housing, Conjoined + Inseparable Twins

On a 117-degree day, I meet a chef panhandling in the parking lot of our local Smiths Supermarket. He is trying to get his family out of their old Saturn and into an apartment. His job cooking is not enough to make ends meet. This begins a long friendship and a Go Fund Me that gets them into a weekly hotel, a destabilizing environment for the poor, but better than sleeping in the car. He wants to thrive, he works hard, but the cards are stacked against him.

• Hot dogs with mustard and home-made NYC onion cart sauce

• Fried cod sandwiches on a roll with cabbage slaw and home-made tartare sauce

• Chris’ special chili cheese dogs.

• Smashed cheeseburgers with pickles, chips and old cans of soda. 

• BBQ sauce with canned pork

Chapter Seven: The Limits + Liabilities of Lunch

We start the pantry thinking it will help struggling families in our community. I am unprepared for serving the unhoused and their complicated needs. Quickly they become a part of our own community, for better or worse, and our family becomes a part of theirs.

• Hawaiian plate lunch: Kahlua pig, mac salad, rice and pickles. 

• Japanese breakfast: steamed rice, grilled fish, miso soup, pickles. 

• Bruschetta with roasted peppers, pesto sauce, soft cheese, olive oil, salt.  

• Salmon and tuna sashimi, sushi rice, avocado, radish sprouts, cucumbers, pickled veg, seaweed, fried peanuts. 

• Sopa Azteca: a whole chicken stewed in tomatoes, onions, garlic, smoky ancho chilies, and chipotles in adobo, with crunchy tortilla chips, lime wedges, radish slices, cotija cheese, crema, avocado slices.

Ham and Swiss omelet, salad, curvy strips of bacon. 

sambusas.for all.

Chapter Eight: Inconvenient People + the Starving Brain 

I meet an unhoused woman at the pantry. She has severe schizophrenia and her body is racked with the aftereffects of a lifetime of intense psychotropic drugs. Feeding her makes me have to consider what it means for me a “well person” to have her in my life. What is required of me? What does she need? Context, I think. A place in the community where she has support, where people know her name, where she can be a neighbor. The housing, either independent or supported, gives her context.

• Duck fat fried eggs two ways, 1) with carrot pesto and 2) with spicy chili crisp. 

• Kimchi

• Unity House oven Brisket

• Unity House roast chicken. 

• Unity House meatloaf with garlic mash. 

• Unity House pot roast. 

• Unity House stuffed shells

• Unity House lasagna.

• Unity House mac and cheese. 

• Unity House Seafood Boil

• Unity House Italian Wedding Soup

• Unity House Classic Fried Chicken

Chapter Nine: Slippage + the Discomfort of Food 

Problems at the pantry. The unhoused are starting to camp out around our house, people have left a quart ton of dried beans at my house which my son has made into a “bean bed.” My front yard is a dump from all the overuse, and people are dumping expired food in my pantry fridge for other people to eat. Someone drinks milk from a gallon jug and puts it back in the fridge. I see the end of the pantry coming.

• Fried pork wontons

• Congee, crispy fried shallots, pork floss, soft-boiled egg, spicy chili crisp.

• Beef cheeks simmered in guajillo and ancho peppers. 

• Grace Young’s Beef and Broccoli, served with rice. 

• Toni Tipton Martin’s Buttermilk fried chicken

• Toni Tipton Martin’s oyster po’ boys 

• Alana Kysar’s Hawaiian Plate Lunch: Pork lau lau, fatty pork and salted butterfish wrapped in green taro leaves and steamed, with rice, macaroni salad 

• Samin Nosrat’s miso-cured eggs

• Samin Nosrat’s soy-braised short ribs, 

• Samin Nosrat’s buttermilk roast chicken

• Samin Nosrat’s herby Persian-style rice with tahdig. 

• Pulled pork with arroz negro, jicama slaw, warm tortillas. 

• 12-hour-brisket slow-roasted in lemongrass, garlic, tomatoes and coconut milk, served with coconut rice and broccoli salad. 

• Garlicky chicken thighs with lemon-anchovy sauce, herby parmesan potatoes, and haricot-verts with grilled lemon. 

• Hawaiian plate lunch: Chicken tonkatsu over rice, macaroni salad, rice, sweet and sour sauce. 

• Ful medames

• Feijão, a clay pot full of pig parts, beef, onion, scallions, tomatoes and bay leaves, served with rice, greens, hot sauce, wedges of orange and farofa, a toasted cassava powder.  

• Bahamian peas and rice.

• Persian sabzi polo, a fava bean and rice dish with dill and turmeric

• Puerto Rican arroz con gandules

• Ghanaian waakye, rice and beans cooked with dried millet stalk leaves. 

• Frijoles de olla, Mexican pinto beans with onions, garlic and epazote. 

• Messeret’s kik alicha, a staple Ethiopian split pea dish with turmeric. 

• Daal 

• Curried vegetable sambusas. 

• Ribollita with kale and thickened with slices of sourdough.

• Smoky, sweet slow-braised baked beans. 

• Black bean soup with avocado crema. 

• Cold chickpea salad with arugula, blood oranges and shaves of parm. 

• Chicken chorizo chili with salted garlic yogurt.

• Long-cooked cassoulet with confit chicken legs. 

• Navy bean and escarole stew. 

• Spanish tapas-style lima beans with smoked paprika and celery, 

• Make-your-own burrito: Leftover chicken guisado, cotija cheese, shredded lettuce, hot sauces, pickley and creamy things, large tortillas

• Deep fried turkey tails, with rice, veg, garlic-yogurt dipping sauce.  

• Turkey pho

• Turkey wonton soup

• Turkey pot pie

• Turkey lo mein

• Steamed ground turkey with ginger and salted fish

• Turkey porchetta

• Turkey Embutido: a Filipino pork-based meatloaf that can handle a turkey substitution.  

• Daal makhani, a smokey punjabi dish that has kidney beans and black lentils

• Sugary Boston baked beans 

• Mexican-style refried pinto beans

Hong Kong noodles.

Chapter Ten: Lunch + the Braided-Up Life

A conversation with Charlie, our handyman, from the first chapter. Where he is, what’s happening? And how his life is right now? And someone else who is right where he was. When do you give up on someone? Is there always hope? Who can come out of a death spiral? Who can’t? What makes the difference?

• Croissants with coconut chicken salad and arugula. 

• Crudite: Peppers, celery, carrots and broccoli with leftover home-made hummus.  

• Crab cakes with a small salad, a remoulade for dipping. 

• Teriyaki chicken

• Stir-fried rice with egg.