1 Good Thing + 1 Recipe

The Good Thing

I AM RECOMMENDING this non-alcoholic cocktail. I have had to drink less for about a year and a half—for various reasons that I will get into at a later date and also because I was (am) kind of a low-level alcoholic? I mean, boy do I LOVE to drink. It is kind of unholy. Anyways, I had to cut down to—wait for it—4 drinks a week. Four! And four drinks a week is really not even close to the amount of drinks I want to drink. So I have been playing around to figure out what works for me as a substitute—either instead of drinking at all, or as a second drink after an alcoholic one. And there are lots of good ones, which I’ll be mentioning here and there—de-alcoholized wines and my own weird DIY whiskey faker and a good hoppy seltzer and The Rose Family mocktail and Trader Joe’s jalapeño limeade. But this Parch cocktail is the very, very best, and I bought sixteen cans of it for the upcoming holiday season! Because I am Bill Gates all of a sudden?

It costs $5 a can. I remind myself that I would spend that on a great IPA at home, or twice (three times?) that on a cocktail at a place, and I try to think of it as an investment in my health. Because it is so delicious. It pours a delicate pink and it’s smoky and spicy and it tastes like a cross between a pineapple and a wood-burning stove into which someone has hurled a pineapple to char before tossing in a bunch of chiles. It is VERY EXCITING! Plus it has adaptogens (?) and if you’re as placebo-able as I am, you’ll adaptogen yourself right into bellydancing with a lampshade on your head. (Don’t tell me what adaptogens even are. Just let me think what I think.) Sadly, Parch is not sponsoring this, and I don’t have a coupon code for you. But buy more and they’re cheaper, and you will love them, I promise. (Unless you hate the taste of pineapples on fire that someone is trying to put out with a hose full of cayenne.)

Your phone will always autocorrect it to “pinata.” But that makes for good party vibes, right?

The Recipe

I have this dream of a recurring feature called “Dinner Is a Can of Chickpeas” and everyone I love will weigh in with their best pantry-scouring chickpea-centric dinners. For now, I’ll just offer you this crowd-pleasing Buffalo Chickpea Salad, which is so good and so easy, and such a nice break from holiday food, even if the photo has a weird shadow cast over it and doesn’t look as mouth-watering as it is.

Buffalo Chickpea Salad
Makes dinner for 2 or a side for 4

Oh this is so good, with the crunchy-tender chickpeas and their buttery-hot gloss of buffalo sauce. The warm beans on the cold, crunchy lettuce and celery? Perfection as is. The blue cheese is just full-on obscenity. I could eat this for dinner every night.

1 (15-ounce) can of chickpeas, drained and spread to dry on a double thickness of paper towels
2 tablespoons of olive oil
Kosher salt to taste (but lots—like a teaspoon)
1/4 cup each melted butter and Frank’s hot sauce, mixed together
1 head of Romaine lettuce, chopped
1/2 head of celery, sliced (I just slice across the whole head, leaves and all, even though this horrifies my mother who likes to remove each individual stalk and scour it under running water like it’s scrubbing in to assist in a gallbladder surgery)
Salad dressing: 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, 4 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1 optional minced/pressed clove of garlic or a dash of granulated garlic aka garlic powder
A scant cup or so of crumbled blue cheese

1. Heat the oil in a medium pan (ideally nonstick or very well seasoned) over medium heat until it is medium hot. Add the chickpeas in a single layer, salt them well, and leave them for a few minutes, unmolested by you and your spatula, so they can start to turn a bit golden on the bottom.

2. Now start flipping and turning them every so often, shaking the pan around, until the chickpeas are as crisp and brown as they could be without burning. This will take 10-15 minutes, and they really don’t need your full attention. Taste a chickpea for salt and add more if they need it, which they probably do.

3. Turn the heat to low and add the butter/Frank’s mixture and toss and stir until the chickpeas absorb most of the sauce. Allow them to cool in the pan while you put the lettuce and celery in a wide bowl and shake the dressing ingredients together in a jar.

4. Dress the salad lightly (you may not need all the dressing—the rest will keep in the fridge for, like, a month) then top it with the chickpeas and a generous crumbling of blue cheese. Serve it right away.

That’s it for now! Thank you for being here. I love this place so much.