Issue No. 32: "A Southern Sunday Lunch If I've Ever Seen One"
Greetings from a land flowing with green chile gravy.
Good afternoon, Sunday lunchers.
I figured since I live inside an air fryer now, I might as well make fried chicken for lunch today. Feeling crispy!
I come to you on this last day of June curled up with my favorite mug of tea despite it being 100 degrees outside. You see, I can’t shake the Sunday afternoon habit of a) pretending to be British and b) pretending to be a very serious writer. This is going super well, I’d say, seeing as today’s issue of great importance is the fried chicken and green chile gravy I made for lunch. So yes, thank you for tuning in as I do my part for crown and country. (I live in Oklahoma.)
XOXO happy reading!
Allison
And before I really get carried away, a special welcome to new subscribers!
If I haven’t met you In The Flesh, I’m Allison. I live outside Oklahoma City with my husband Mitchell East and our two precious children. I am a literary agent, sometimes book designer, and always a home chef, among other things. I run a small bookish agency called North Parade Press. My work here on Substack often explores the intersection of food writing, my faith, and literature. Figured I’d just throw you right in.
I will come to your inbox pretty irregularly. Typical issues of Editor & Chef feature a few segments:
The Journal: usually some kind of essay about food or motherhood or both
The Menu: a more practical breakdown of what I’ve been cooking
The Bookshelf: some thoughts on what I’m reading
The Newsstand: anything, well, newsworthy I think you should know about
I’d love for you to go back and read some past posts I’ve written, and you can find a pretty good archive of those here:
The Journal / The Menu
Today’s brief write up is entitled: "A Southern Sunday Lunch If I've Ever Seen One,” as dictated by my husband
after church today. The Sunday menu in question: gluten free* fried chicken, mashed potatoes, sheet pan carrots and green beans, and a killer green chile gravy. (*Sweet Mitch has celiac, but we do alright around here.)
I’ve been on a bit of a kick where I get things out of the fridge with little to no plan, and as I start cooking, the meal takes shape before me. What’s for lunch, Mom? Who freakin knows!
It goes something like this.
I know I have potatoes, carrots, green beans, and chicken thighs. In my brain, a bit of a decision tree / flow chart of questions emerges. I often ask these questions out loud to Mitch and as I’m thinking out loud, a final version of the meal crystalizes in my mind.
Do we want roasted potatoes or mashed? Okay, mashed.
Baked chicken or crispy? Crispy.
What’s the crispiest it can be? Well guess I’ll fry it.
But I don’t have eggs. Maybe I can dredge it in a mix of milk, dijon, and a dash of vinegar before the bread crumbs. Yes, this is working.
How can we do less dishes? Carrots and green beans roasted on one sheet pan. Great.
If I make mashed potatoes, I’d love some kind of sauce. After the chicken is done and staying warm in the same oven with the veg, what about gravy made in the pan I fried the chicken in? And throw in a can of green chiles for good measure. Hatch or bust. Roux, Green chiles, cream, a bit of chicken broth, lemon, dijon, tons of cracked pepper. Zingy!!!!
Can I get it to all be done at the same time? Potatoes on first, veg in oven second, chicken dredged and fried, sauce sauce sauce.
And there you have it. I’m so sorry to subject you sweet Type A, organized spreadsheet people to this kind of chaos. The way I have been cooking is a super fun albeit completely inefficient way to meal plan, buy groceries, and follow zero recipes. I do not recommend it! Now that I think about it, I probably have to drink my cuppa tea after just to calm down from the surge of adrenaline that comes from all my clanging around.
All that aside, here is what I will say about my lunch. It was the the gluten free version of a platonic ideal of a fried chicken Sunday lunch. And you know, that’s really saying something. Ask anyone, I dare you.
Before you ask me how I made the green chile gravy, ask yourself, “Does Allison seem like the kind of person who measures out ingredients?” I think you will discern that answer all on your own.
The Bookshelf
O now!
I’ve actually been on a pretty good reading kick. Once again, my old formula of read a gorgeous novel and then rip through an Agatha Christie book after proves tried and true and is keeping me moving right along in my reading goals for the year.
Here’s what has been on my nightstand of late.
By Bread Alone by
— First off, absolutely epic to be a baker and your last name has the word slice in it. Solid career choice. I really enjoyed Kendall’s reflections on her journey of faith, food, and vocation. These are all areas of interest to me, so it’s no wonder I enjoyed this memoir. Kendall beautifully draws together the science of bread making, the liturgy of the Eucharist, and her own transformative stories. I was particularly moved by the latter part of the book, where Kendall shared about singleness, longing, and unanswered prayers. If you like food writing with a theological bent, give it a try!This is Happiness by Niall Williams — Aghhhhh I loved this book soooo much. I saw this book recommended by a writer I greatly admire, and I checked it out from the library promptly. If you want to know what kind of writing just does me in, this would be it. The novel tells the story the village of Faha on the cusp of great change. The narrator, Noel Crowe, is an eighty-something-year-old man reflecting back on the summer in Faha when he was 17. The summer it stopped raining. The summer electricity was coming to the town. In a manner only a truly gifted storyteller can pull off, and in a very Irish manner of telling, the most Irish in fact, Williams grafts the reader into the story of Faha. I’m kind of terrible at writing book reviews but please trust me it’s so gorgeous and amazing.
Given how much I loved this book, if you have any Irish novelists you adore, could you let me know in the comments?
Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie — Only the second of Hercule Poirot’s cases, this book was a wild ride. The number of times I thought we were coming to the resolution only to be whipped around into some other crazy antic was a little exhausting by the end. She held my attention the whole time, but I was trying hard to hold the threads of what was going on.
As for articles I’ve loved: I came across this 2019 piece by
and now I’m about to go check out a billion books about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. The Saint of the City Goes Rural: Dorothy Day and the Life of the Land. I’m currently doing some communications/brand work with a farm in Fort Worth with the same kind of missional bent, so this was absolutely fascinating for me to read!
BOOKS UP NEXT:
The Editor by Sara B. Franklin — this is a biography of publishing legend Judith Jones. I am very excited about this one.
I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Unnatural Death and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy L. Sayers (I always just check these out on my kindle from the library).
Also these kind of unhinged patriotic cookbooks. Okay for real though, what is CHERRY SOUP? Can someone please tell me if you’ve eaten this?
I think I have enough books to keep me busy this July. My final note in this issue is this. The squash bugs have come for my zucchini. As a novice gardener, I feel totally helpless but you know what they say, the squash bugs come for us all. Any hope of harvest now lies with my tomato plants. May the peace of the Lord be with them.
Tell me in the comments!
What are you reading this summer?
What are you cooking?
Til next time!
Allison
You gotta let me know if you like I Cheerfully Refuse—need to know how far up my list to bump it.