I finally made the time to dive into Stone Soup, a newsletter from Sarah Gailey, that I subscribe to on the Ghost platform. She started a feature called Personal Canons Cookbook, with guest writers reflecting on their relationships to food. I’m eager to share some of these voices with you, because they touch on the concepts I’ve been working (clumsily) to spotlight, with regards to the definition of home cooking. Each writer eloquently and generously tells the story of their own relationship to home cooking, and, as if that wasn’t enough, there are recipes at the end of each piece.
Meg Elison - Ode to a Grocery Store Sandwich
The first sentence of this essay was unexpected, and immediately made me reflect on my own assumptions regarding poverty and hunger. The deep memory the author has of the conjoined feelings of gratitude and shame, upon receiving a pre-made sandwich from a grocery store, that they could not afford to buy themselves, has defined for them what it is to be loved and valued. It also inspired the recipe that follows, recreating the sandwich at home. Is the intention to devalue the pre-made sandwich? Hardly. It’s an invitation to the reader to feed the ones they love and value. The sandwich’s origin is not the point.
Sarah Gailey - Who Is Good at Cooking?
Gailey tackles a question I think is adjacent to mine - who is considered “good” at cooking? How is “good cooking” defined? How do we form our opinions about “good cooking”? This essay touches some of the same conditions I offered in my posts - resources, experience, cultural influences - and adds philosophy to the mix, bringing a broader perspective to the conversation.
Rae Mariz - Feeding Future Ancestors
There is so much to absorb in this essay. Mariz manages, skillfully, to weave childhood memories of processed foods, dumpstering (and by extension, sustainability and waste reduction), learning kitchen skills as you go, passing on those skills to your children, and supply chain disruption and its effects on what’s available where, into a cohesive tapestry of experience, then circles back around to a whole discussion of the pros, cons, and cultural importance of Spam. (Yes, there are pros, the prevailing attitudes around Spam in Western culture not withstanding.) She finishes with a recipe, and a challenge for the reader that I can completely get behind.
Hilary B. Bisenieks - Trust the Process
Bisenieks has intentionally narrowed the focus of their essay to their experience of macaroni and cheese, and in so doing, allows us to see a world where boxed macaroni and cheese, creatively altered macaroni and cheese, and from scratch macaroni and cheese all have a time, and a place, and ultimately, pride of place. I can relate to their concept of the recipe “framework”, as I do not think I’ve ever made macaroni and cheese the same way twice. It’s liberating to think of macaroni and cheese as both a carefully crafted holiday dish, and a weekday dish I can make to use up the excess locally-made cheese I enthusiastically brought home from the Farmers’ Market. We can all feel encouraged to “trust the process” in our own home kitchens, no matter what “the process” is at the moment.
I invite you, encourage you, maybe even implore you, to pour yourself a cup of something that soothes you, click on these links, and savor these offerings at Stone Soup.
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