so I wrote the book…

…and there’ve been commencements too.

The baby bird of the family, my “little” Sous Chef, graduated from college last week. We made a final trek to Pennsylvania to witness the deed and move him a few states closer for grad school; happily, I can do a 5-hour drive in my sleep, but 12 was killing me. Graduation was a dignified ceremony with nearly 200 years of precedent and tradition modernized for a new generation of thinkers, dreamers, and doers. Sitting in a sea of proud parents, truthfully I was quite inspired – commencement really is the far better word choice. That’s precisely what he’s doing – he’s setting forth with all of the promise and risk that any new beginning requires. Looking at my own reinventions and course corrections, it seems I’ve been mimicking his progress for a few years, and guess what? I think I graduated too. So now I shall commence.

After threatening anyone who would listen for the last 6 months, I finally cannibalized/adapted my blog for print and this week self-published Foodishness. Recipes, musings, and amusement from a pandemic kitchen. The XL Working Kitchen edition, as I like to call it, is a 14″ X 11″ edition that is big and readable and there is room to scribble in notes as you cook and perfect your own recipes. The regular version has the same recipes but is a bit more portable, chatty, and narrative. This is a soft launch to friendly fire, similar to the grad school approach – low-stakes easing into reality. Over the next few weeks I’ll make some decisions about scope and marketing. But for right now I just need a breather. Graduations, like any life transition, are emotional whoppers especially when paired with the steep learning curve of a self-published passion project.

Starting in late March, I undertook an intensive two-month lockdown to create this beast, and in an ironic turn I often had to be reminded to eat. It was also suggested I remember I was still a functioning member of society who needed to get dressed in real clothes, stand periodically, engage pleasantly with the other members of my household, and graciously whip up a meal or two every few days. The pleasant and gracious parts were iffy at best, but the isolation effort was 100% worth it. With the final draft finally in hand, I self-imposed a book embargo for the week of graduation to reign in my anxiety about going public – it’s one thing to do it, but another to share it. I know myself too well and wanted to be fully present for my kid instead of typing out grammar edits or unnecessary photo tweaks on my phone. I had to let it, and myself, marinate for a week.

Or maybe, just maybe, I was terrified of hitting the “publish” button.

The graduation exercises did more than release me from the juvenile demands of motherhood or pump me up with a hopeful, heady “go get ’em, class of 2023” speech. Those were great for sure, but with no book, no blog, and no cooking for an entire week, I should have known I’d ultimately find a way to fill the mental void once my boy walked across that stage. The notion of commencement got me thinking, and the 12-hour drive home gave me plenty of rope. I’m sharing a few of the more interesting oral arguments from that drive because going through the mental gymnastics actually gave me some much-needed backbone. None are particularly negative, let alone fatal, and the exercise led to my finally hitting that dreaded button with little drama. Well…less drama.

---

Every morning since 2020, I’ve woken to a flood of sassy emails from Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, NY Times Cooking, or Food 52, all plugging their latest recipes along with a few lifestyle musings and technical cooking tips. Please don’t think I’m incapable of screening or unsubscribing – this is all 100% on purpose. These are my virtual foodie friends, the ones who found me locked down in suburban Atlanta looking for a spark of enlightenment. My inbox has been brimming with inspiration and encouragement for three long years and I was grateful for the company. Their writing is clever, ironic, and neighborly, written like a kitchen convo between two besties. It bounces between nostalgia, snark, and useful culinary tricks, but never fails to sneak in some amusing self-deprecation and topical culture references. I suppose you can understand my attraction.

I’ve always found their advice helpful and their vignettes mostly simpatico, but lately, that familiarity has become a little irksome. It’s like looking in a mirror and seeing myself lost in a crowd, a crowd of those who made the foodie schtick their life’s work and professional craft. It was suggested recently that I could be writing the newsletter for Epicurious or any of those outlets because my blog reads “just like that.” Um, thanks? I did not react well. Am I that insecure? It’s true, I do love a good imposter-syndrome wallow every now and then. Or jealous? I know I have a competitive streak, but it’s usually only unleashed internally, not on out-of-my-league foodie bloggers or celebrity chef pundits.

Or was this worse – that same old needling voice reminding me of everything I haven’t done but could have/would have/should have. I try not to find motivation in what people think anymore, but that comment definitely ignited something. I bristled much like I do when people compliment my sports photography with “You must have a great camera.” It was a compliment, for sure, but I took it almost like a challenge. I love compliments – compliments rank quite high as one of my love languages. But sometimes I need to grow from a defensive posture, à la “I’ll show them.” Which I did and now I have a book. So win-win, but again with too much drama. What did I conclude? I can take a genuine compliment, twist it into a negative, and still manage to make a highly motivated leap forward – sometimes I am my own best handler.

---

That issue settled, my mind wandered back to some of the lovely events of the last week – helping with the graduation hood, packing the dorm room, the final stroll around campus, and this: how come nobody ever told me about Wegmans? If you don’t know, it’s a supermarket chain in the northeast and mid-Atlantic that makes my local Kroger seem like an understocked 1950s 7-Eleven. Ten steps into the store, I was pummeled by a dozen discordant emotions, in this order: awe, anticipation, delight, giddiness, reverence, humility, envy, ridicule, embarrassment, uselessness, futility, and finally resignation. If I had access to a Wegmans during the last few years, you wouldn’t be reading this – I wouldn’t have cooked a damn thing and I sure as $#&! wouldn’t have written about any of it. Fine, I probably would have served some exotic and delicious meals but my only brag would have been about strategic, bougie shopping, not the blood, sweat, and tears of cleaning octopus tentacles or endlessly kneading challah or coaxing cacio e pepe to creamy perfection.

Standing there in supermarket Shangri-la didn’t make me feel stupid or worthless per se, but it sure put my homemade, amateur food blog in its place for a few hours. There was some very real shame when I had to ask myself what had I been thinking? Why did I bother? Was there even any value in my blog? I had to take a moment and sulk in an assortment of really swell olives and ungodly fine cheese crisps until I got over it. Obviously, I got over it, but only by zooming out and remembering the years of joy that my extended cooking adventures have given me. What did I conclude? I can cycle through a lifetime of complex emotions in a single moment – it’s efficient but terribly exhausting. As long as I land on a positive note, I can place the rest in proper context.

---

Since I was already beating myself up, my thoughts naturally turned to my appearance, and I’m not even talking about the obvious poundage gained from the food blogging. Rather, I made a few fun upgrades in 2021 to announce my emerging commencement – I added some ear piercings and dyed some of my hair purple. I went with pink in 2022, then blue and teal in 2023. I practiced with temporary tattoos for about 5 minutes, but they weren’t me. No judgment here, but healthy self-awareness trumps mid-life rebellion every time. These quirky little gestures made me happy during a time when happiness was back-ordered.

I’m keeping the piercings, and apparently the weight, but last week I dyed the last vestiges of funkadelic color back to my natural brown, minus the grisly white strands. Why? I’ve seen one too many millennials with faded streaks of mousy green hair. I may be unamused by maturity, but I’m less amused being part of the pack. The point is I don’t want to be anecdotal because of something dumb like pink hair or a poorly-rendered temporary tattoo. I’d hope it would be for Foodishness or some of my more original antics. Better yet, I think I’m ready to graduate to real issues.

As a reasonable, moderately-informed, daily consumer of news, my tolerance for gun violence has reached a long-overdue tipping point. My blog is not and will not be about politics or activism, but it is about me, and I’ve had enough. This month, in response to a sickening wave of frustration and dismay, I hopped in the car and drove myself down to a rally for common sense gun laws in Piedmont Park. I honestly can’t say I broke free from complacency, but I did walk away and choose a side. I’m never going to agree with every directive of an organized group, but I am smart enough to understand that participation and inclusion in a truly noble effort would never demand uninformed, blind loyalty. If it did, it isn’t truly noble and I’m out. What did I learn? For all of my outward confidence, I’ve rarely taken a meaningful public stand – I loathe confrontation and spent my adult life avoiding conflict. The last five years have changed everything. If my position makes you angry, you can tap out now, only know that I’m not recruiting anyone for my personal beliefs. Rather, I’m advocating for taking an educated stance rather than remaining a fat and happy lemming. I’ll still be right here cooking and laughing.

---

“This blog is not about mythical culinary skills or the unattainable conjuring of imaginative feasts night after night. Nor is it intended as an esoteric tour of world cuisine. Like most of us during the pandemic, I was simply trapped in my house fighting off boredom and hunger. Reflexively I summoned up my passion (photography), my talent (eating), my therapy (laughter), and of course, a little good-natured rebellion.”

Foodishness 12.9.22

With this statement, I intended to maintain the blog for one year just to prove to myself, and only myself, that I could do it. Sure, I dropped the ball a few times and almost quit, twice. This might have been one of my first projects as an adult where I had no end game, other than to not quit. An open-ended project can be a huge ask for the task-driven, so the book was a logical next step. I think.

This post was supposed to be the introduction to my beloved Foodishness book project, yet I’ve managed to overshadow a gentle plug with multiple complaints, unnecessary personal commentary, some not-so-minor political controversy, and of course, my own special brand of drama. I suppose if you’ve stuck with me this far none of this comes as a surprise.

So go ahead, I dare you to buy the book.