I Remember The Future

An update on the present.

I have been asked a handful of times, this week alone, when I will post the next newsletter. The answer is right now. Other questions often thrown my way - Is it a food blog? What kind of recipes do I post? How many followers…

Today, I find it easier to identify not what this newsletter is, but rather what it is not. It is not, never was meant to be, and never will be a food blog. Rather, it’s a place to talk about how food interacts with our everyday lives. It would be preferential not only to me as the writer, but to you as the reader, to write only of blissful days. Days when the markets are dotted with fresh produce, the meal comes together with neither conflict or unwanted fire, where the guests bring the wine. But the truth is that anything that interacts with our everyday lives also finds it’s place in the melancholy hours during days that stretch on for eternity. During these days, a saltine cracker alone can hold an insecure foundation.

Right now I either cook all day or not at all. I either eat with the appetite of a pre-teen or not at all. During my not at all days, I remember that the balance of the universe at large has generally tipped in my favor, and those scales of unclear adjustment are a waiting game. I have been pulled into the mercurial tide of uncertain days where often up is down and down is sideways, and my appetite is tossed with the waves. I don’t only speak of my appetite for a meal, but the voracious one I’ve personified for cooking, hosting, setting the table, hitting the mark.

Today, before once again being pulled out to confusing waters, I remembered the future. I remembered that summer is coming, no matter what, with it’s warmth and juice. So much is soon ripe, and I nearly flinch at the thought that potentially, maybe, what is to come is good. In this very moment, peaches are still as hard as their own pits, nectarines are a far cry, corn is casually starting to sweeten.

Are you also waiting for something?

Buddhists teach of relaxing in uncertainty. Right now, I swear I could look a docile monk in his face and mock that specific divine guidance. But of course, he would have a point.

To remember that pleasure and delight inevitably visit seems a nearly impossible truth. And yet, we remember the shifty scales. Also an inevitable visit - balance. Joy after suffering, flowers after rain, a ripe peach after months of turnips.

XOXO.