Your January recipe round up includes a favorite nervine tea, plus things to do with all those cranberries you bought

I feel like December was a whirlwind. Beyond the usual holiday reasons, there was an air of tension, of shedding those last bits of old selves off to leave behind in the old year. Of itching to have things concluded, wrapped up, and put on a shelf. It’s a sense I got from myself and something I saw in others, and while I think things are brighter coming out on the other side, it also felt intense.

So, with the new year, as you’re reading this issue, just let your jaw unclench and your shoulders relax a bit. Maybe take a deep breath. We still have a whole year ahead of us, but I feel that new year energy extra strong this year.

In honor of that, I’m sharing a favorite tea I make when I want something in the fridge to sip on when I’m stressed.

And, in honor of repurposing the old into something new, I’m also sharing some ideas for what to do with all those bags of cranberries you bought on sale after the holidays (including freezing them, if anything else feels like too much right now).

Read it, get cozy, maybe take a nap, and let’s get ready for the new year together.

To inspire you, here’s the card meaning for Cranberry Relish from The Fermentation Oracle Deck:

Making cranberry sauce is often a winter holiday ritual, but it doesn’t have to be. Rituals help us mark points in time as special, and adding pleasurable rituals into our lives makes each day special, too. What rituals, big or small, can you incorporate into your life year-round?

Your monthly recipe round up includes:

• Lemon balm refresher tea

• How to freeze cranberries

• Cranberry, persimmon, and apple refrigerator pickle from Essential Food Preserving, building on last month’s unintentional persimmon theme

• Fermented lemon and cranberry relish (from a new project I can’t tell you about yet…but soon)

P.S. There are still spots available in my Our Fermented Lives place-based fermentation and writing retreat in county Clare, Ireland this September.

This 4-day workshop is about half the price of standard package tours (and in my opinion, infinitely more interesting).

We’ll talk and make everything from sauerkraut to butter (and maybe even bog butter?) while building the foundations of lifelong nourishing writing practices, all rooted in a beautiful landscape.

If you book this month I’ll also give you a free 1-hour writing coaching session (a $200 value) to use after we return, so you can get some extra support to incorporate what you learned, and to continue building your own place-based writing practice into your daily life.

Lemon balm nervine iced tea

This soothing tea is nice to keep in the fridge to sip on throughout the week (I use repurposed swing-top bottles). The pinch of salt helps replenish electrolytes if you’re dehydrated, the lemon is uplifting (and if you use the juice, also gives you a bit of vitamin c), while the lemon balm is soothing and a nice, gentle nervine to help your body relax. When I drink this in the afternoon, it feels like my whole body just sighs and unfurls. I highly recommend it.

2 c packed fresh lemon balm (stems and leaves), or 1 1/2 c dried

1 lemon

5 c simmering, but not boiling, water

1/8 tsp good quality salt for electrolytes

Sugar, 1/2 c or honey to taste

• Zest lemon in strips, add lemon zest strips and lemon balm to a large heat proof pitcher

• Juice lemon and set aside

• Pour water over lemon and lemon balm mixture, stirring gently to dissolve sugar and salt

• Allow to steep for 10-15 minutes or until it’s as strong as you like, then strain and cool

• Add lemon juice to taste and stir to combine

• Store in an airtight container in the fridge. Serve cold and use within several days.

Keep reading for a few of my favorite ways to use cranberries when I overbuy (which is often…) plus a nice picture of a lady in a cranberry bog!

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Plus, the launch of my new book-themed unisex perfume

We’re beginning the year with scent, and in particular with the ways I work with scent using one of my favorite kitchen staples (by the way, would you like me to do a full newsletter issue devoted to making scent with aromatic, edible ingredients? Let me know in the comments!)

Lemon cologne is one of my favorite wear-it-whenever scents. I’m picky about the perfumes I buy, and depending on the day I migrate between this scent and a few favorite purchased ones: But for homemade colognes, this is my standard go-to. I’ve shared the recipe below: Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Speaking of scents, an exciting announcement:

BibliOddities, one of my favorite scent makers, have crafted a custom, small batch perfume inspired by my books.

If you had told me when I started writing and teaching about fermentation that some day my work would inspire its own perfume, I would not have believed you.

But life has a way of throwing us cool surprises, and working with BibliOddities was one of the more fun ones.

They’ve named the blend Dreamweaver, which is itself such a beautiful interpretation of my work. And I was so honored to both be their first author collaboration of 2026 and seeing my work described in this way:

Working with Julia was such a gift, and seeing her profoundly generous perspective on community and creativity has been eye-opening and exactly what so many of us need going into 2026.

When we started working together, I was really curious how a fermentation-themed perfume might work as it could go in so many directions: Chocolate/wine/vanilla, tangy, sour scents, yeasty bread, earthy scents like shoyu.

They created several sample scents for me to try, and it was incredibly challenging to pick which one I ultimately wanted. But it was also really rewarding to experience my books through a new lens, interpreted by a reader in a new-to-me medium of literary exploration.

We ultimately landed on this blend because it’s versatile, lasts for hours but isn’t overwhelming, and has a good balance of being light enough to work in summer but not so fleeting I can’t wear it in winter. For me, as a person who really doesn’t like most store-bought perfumes, this blend is also cool because it doesn’t smell like run of the mill perfume, which means it’s something I’ll actually wear.

I was admittedly skeptical of the yeasted bread scent note before I tried it, but it actually smells amazing: More like a slight suggestion of bread you get from walking nearby to a bakery. It’s subtle, and works in tandem with the other scent notes to make something comforting, pleasant, and unexpected.

Lemon cologne

Lemon cologne is a fresh, zesty unisex scent that can be worn year-round. I first encountered it while traveling in Turkey in 2015, where kolonya (lemon cologne) or rosewater are often given to guests to refresh themselves. Since then, I’ve learned there are versions made with lemon peel (like this one) and with lemon blossoms.

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A recent foray into using stream-of-consciousness journaling as a generative tool for exploring time and place

I’ve always been someone who feels very deeply, and for whom experiencing something is just as important as understanding it conceptually. This is probably part of why I got into studying food: Because I can create and experience a tangible something.

What I find especially interesting about studying food history is the way that this research feels so much like a lightbulb going off (literally): A subject or time period will feel closed off, elusive, hard to capture or fully understand, than all of a sudden, there’s a flood of light and the topic feels connected and present.

I can’t speak to other researchers’ processes, but for me, this happens when I let myself slow down and use my imagination: Which gets me to this understanding much faster than just using my logical, empirical research skills alone (obviously I rely on those heavily too). Imagining the lived experiences of the people I study and the foods they eat helps bring it to life, and helps me consider aspects of living that maybe aren’t captured in the records we have, but which are critical to thinking about existing in a place and time (I talk about that more in this issue on visiting Mesa Verde).

The experience often feels like the research has been knocking around in my mind and suddenly whatever shifts so that it knocks on the right door and comes flooding through, alive with nuance and experience.

I love studying food because it gives me a tangible, personal way to connect to these cultures and communities through time that otherwise might feel abstract (particularly the farther back we go). Food helps me begin to see the similarities between us, and not just in a pithy ‘food brings us together around the table!’ Kind of way: But in a way where I can use my experience as an eater to consider their experience as eaters, and in so doing, start to expand my understanding so it ripples outward.

One way I go about building these connections, and producing a more nuanced understanding of a time and place, is imagining myself in conversation with folks from the place and time I’m curious about: Inviting them in to tell me about their lives. I do stream of consciousness journaling, which may or may not make perfect sense, but then I can go back and compare that journaling to the archaeological, historical, and anthropological research that’s been done.

Then, I refine. I ask more specific questions in these conversations. I continue to research, and let my subconscious fill in the experience of what this place and time might have been like in a real visceral, tangible way.

I want to note that the stream of consciousness journaling like what I share below doesn’t replace more traditional research methods. Instead, it’s a complement, another way for me to connect with the work and the people whose stories I’m trying to tell. It’s another way for me to process, understand, and imagine, so the depth of my work hopefully reflects the inner reflection I’ve done on a time and place.

But it also allows the work to be fun, passionate, and imaginative, by giving me permission to do the kind of ‘what if? And what was that like?’ thinking that draws so many of us to history in the first place. And hopefully that passion comes through in the work, too.

So for this last issue of the year, I’m sharing some stream of consciousness journaling from a time period that has felt outside of this tangible reach for me: the Bronze Age. Conceptually, I get it. But the felt experience of that time never really felt present. In particular, I have always felt really curious about the Bell Beaker culture from the beginning of this period. But it’s always felt like there’s a wall there: Then suddenly, when I did the journaling below, I felt like I could start to see over that wall. Like I could begin to do the research because I knew where to begin and how to conceptualize it in a way modern minds might understand.

It is, admittedly, a period of time I want to do a lot more research on, however. This is a peek into the beginning of the research process in its generative, most playful stages.

And there’s a lot of overlap to play around with: People were inventing new ways of storing and moving food, and they were living in a time of technological advancement.

That’s a feeling I understand deeply and so, even though the tech isn’t the same, and other life contexts may be different, the feeling (as in the lived, daily experience and the emotional resonance and the zeitgeist) of being in a time of rapid change, is something we can share with people in this time. By thinking in terms of the changes in technology, I can reach back in time and feel their moment more fully.

And that’s what this journaling revealed to me: It wasn’t a list of historical facts. It was an entry point for understanding. And one I’m excited to continue exploring, however it ends up appearing in my work moving forward.

But first, a fun announcement:

I’m taking a break from the newsletter for the next few weeks to work on a new book. Details coming soon, but this one will be light, cute, and lots of fun.

Also, for gifting season, I’d love to be part of the ecosystem of small creators you support this year, with online Culinary Curiosity School classes and Roots + Branches holistic creative coaching.

That includes my class Finding Your Food Story, where I’ll be including this method of inquiry as part of what we learn together.

I’m working through the month of December this year, so I’m here to help you pick even the most last minute gift (as in, it’s the week of and you forgot to buy anything, or you need something else to round out the gifts you did get).
And, I can send a custom gift email to your giftee, if you’d like.

I can also make a custom gift (think private fermentation lessons or a book proposal coaching session) just for them.

Email me (julia@root-kitchens.com) to set this up or ask me any questions.

I designed each of these classes, and every live program, with long-lasting learning and transformation in mind, so they’re gifts that will continue to give for years to come.

Thanks for supporting independent creators this holiday season!

Use the code SOLSTICE for 40% off anything
(paid subscribers, read to the bottom for 50% off).

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Your December Recipe Round up includes sweet-and-savory persimmon sauce, reducing food waste in holiday meals, raspberry vinegar, and more

Feasting is a big theme for me this month, beyond the usual holiday-related reasons.

Having just handed in the final copy on a forthcoming piece about historical feasting practices (particularly in connection to food waste reduction), I’m thinking a lot about how we’ve gathered together over dinner through time in a very practical way.

Not just what we eat, or how we feel while we eat, but the actual labor of preparing the food, growing ingredients, etc. and how we can honor that labor by putting each ingredient to its fullest use, and allow ourselves to see food ‘waste’ as an opportunity for play and experimentation (my class Preserving Abundance is all about this very thing).

As I pulled together this month’s recipes, I thought a lot about how they can be an expression of reuse as well as play, and a way to honor all the hands that bring me the food I eat each day, whether they’re out in the fields or stocking the grocery store shelf.

I love pulling together these recipe round ups because they give you a glimpse into my kitchen in real time: The experiments I’m currently playing around with, the ideas I’m currently noodling.

As a reminder, I have a few spots left for private, virtual classes for you or a loved one (or for a group) if you’re looking for a unique last-minute gift. Or if you want to book a corporate/friend group wellness retreat in early 2026.

Anything from a 1-hour quick fermentation lesson to a full-day or multi-day immersion (for obvious reasons, I only have a few of those available to book).

Private culinary classes can be booked by emailing me directly (julia@root-kitchens.com)

All other writing/creative coaching sessions can be booked through my calendar (I currently have times available through January: But we can go further out if you need).

Your unexpectedly fruit-forward monthly recipe round up includes:

• Wassail (a family recipe)

• Persimmon sauce two ways

• Quick raspberry vinegar for your 1990s fever dream salads (or your cocktails, or whatever)

• Cutting down on food waste when cooking for a group (ask me questions about this one, please!)

Wassail

Wassail is one of those things I rarely drink as I rarely make spiced, warm drinks for groups. But I love it and it has a decidedly nostalgic tinge for me: Something that plants me firmly in the sensory landscape of the holiday season, even if I were to have it another time of year.

This particular recipe is one my dad’s mom gave my mom, so has crossover between my recipe boxes. It serves 24, says the recipe, so feel free to halve or whatever as you feel called.

Grandma, not a big drinker, doesn’t include alcohol in this recipe, but feel free to add some in (I like whiskey) if you’re feeling fancy.

(I’ve made a few clarifications here to the original recipe card in the image.)

Step 1: Simmer together on low, covered, for 1 hour:

1 c sugar

3-4 c sticks cinnamon

2 c water

3 tbsp whole cloves

Step 2: Strain the syrup and set aside.

Step 3: Make tea, and mix with cider

Pour 1 qt of boiling water over 2 tbsp black tea (or 2-3 tea bags).

Steep 3-5 minutes, then strain.

Add 2 qts of apple cider plus the strained syrup you made in step 1

Step 4: Add remaining ingredients and heat

Add 2 c grapefruit juice

1 c lemon juice

2 c orange juice

And 2 c pineapple juice

Gently heat (without boiling) and add sugar to taste. Keep warm for serving (a crock pot works well for this).

Keep reading for persimmon and raspberry magic, sustainable holiday cooking ideas, and other cozy winter things!

Persimmon sauce

This sauce can be adapted two ways, a move done purposefully in my recipe testing to speak to shifting climate and the fact that our persimmons also shift drastically over the course of their growing season.

In one version, the persimmons are cooked to heighten their sweetness and soften the fruit if you live in a place where they’ve not yet been touched by frost. If the persimmons have been, and have softened into their full, luscious expression of sweet and jammy fruitiness (I love a soft, ripe persimmon, clearly)…then there’s a second version of this recipe that honors the fruit in its frost-kissed form.

Both are delicious, and I recommend playing with both through the season and playing with the ratios on other ingredients to adapt this sauce to a version that speaks to you and your palate (and the growing conditions where you live).

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And devising a modern recipe when comparing multiple historic sources

All classes at the Culinary Curiosity School are 20% off with the code HOLIDAY (paid subscribers, use your paid subscriber discount code for 40% off).

Unique online culinary classes make great gifts, and mine cover anything from reducing food waste to preserving family cookbooks to fermenting food with flowers.

I offer bulk discounts if you buy more than 5 (office wellness gifts or thank yous for friends and family) and discounts on bundles with live sessions. Email me at julia@root-kitchens.com to set any of those up!

(The same discount code also works for Roots + Branches creative ecosystems coaching and classes, if you want to work with me in that capacity).

This month we’re cooking from around the end of the Early Modern period (~1500-1800), which means blocks of narrative text and general guidance, rather than our step-by-step modern day recipes (I wrote about shifting recipe format for Mold Magazine here).

I chose to combine 2 versions of the same recipes from two important English-language books from that period: by American Mary Randolph (1762-1828), and Englishwoman Hannah Glasse (1708-1770). I talk a bit about working with two recipes for the same dish from two different books (which are also decades apart): And how I chose to go about comparing and combining them.

Historic recipe modernizing (or even just cooking them at all) is an art as well as a science, so you may have a different approach you’d take. If you think to yourself ‘I would have done that differently,’ I’d love to hear the approach you would have taken in the comments.

About the books:

Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife was one of the first cookbooks written and published in America (the first American cookbook came out in the 1790s, about 30 years before hers.) Randolph was from a wealthy Virginia family and a distant relative of Thomas Jefferson.

After the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson booted her husband from his government job, and they opened a boarding house to make ends meet. Boarders praised her cooking, and she published the cookbook, which adds quite an eclectic range of dishes to the repertoire of familiar English-rooted ones (for example, she has recipes for East Indian curry, gumbo, and ropa vieja).

Published a year before her death, Virginia Housewife became popular for its easy to follow recipes and simple preparations, and remained in print up to the Civil War. When Randolph died, she was buried below Arlington House, and her grave is the earliest known in what would later become Arlington National Cemetery.

Hannah Glasse published The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy in 1747, and it is widely considered to be the first modern English language cookbook (she began the use of precise measurements and replicable instructions that was later codified by Fannie Farmer in The Boston Cooking School Book in 1896): though of course there were many other English-language cookbooks before this, she experiments with new ways of formatting.

Glasse’s work was popular during her lifetime but, unlike the well-connected Randolph, her authorship was disputed after her death and until the twentieth century, when it was finally accepted that she had written her own book after all. Glasse had a difficult upbringing, and wrote her book to support herself and her children. It became popular across Britain for its approachable style geared towards beginner and advanced cooks. While Glasse became wealthy for a time, she declared bankruptcy, was sent to debtor’s prison, and passed away in 1770 having sold the copyright to The Art of Cookery decades earlier. She published two other books, but neither was very successful.

While the books are about 80 years, and a continent, apart, you’ll see many similarities in flavoring and technique. By this point, some American dishes had diverged from their British predecessors, but in others (as is the case with beef olives) we can still trace direct ties between the two:

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Work with me on your culinary + creative projects through the end of the year

I typically share current course offerings and private session availability in each week’s newsletter as they come up, but after a few requests to bundle it all in one place, I’ve pulled together this overview of all my fall and winter offerings through the end of the year.

Paid subscribers, please scroll to the bottom of this email, where you’ll find a reminder of your discount code and a special discounted booking link for private sessions.

Events and live (in person or virtual) workshops

I’ll come to your home or your office, or you can join me online, for private fermentation classes, wellness programs (as in mindfulness, cooking, etc.), writing workshops, ‘how to build a sustainable creative practice’-focused workshops, or guided retreats. More on retreats below!

For 1-1 or small group sessions (corporate wellness events, a group of friends taking a class together in your kitchen, etc.):

See a list of my ready-to-go culinary + creative events here

And see a list of my holistic creative support offerings here, with testimonials and ideas for events

The prices for these vary and depend on location (Zoom is cheaper than in person), supplies, prep time, etc.

Email me at julia@root-kitchens.com to book!

Custom-built writing and creative retreats

I love, LOVE leading writing retreats and retreats for creative people in general. The more interdisciplinary and exploratory the better.

I design my own private residencies and retreats (this is how I wrote the bulk of my dissertation in 6 months), and in recent years, I’ve started designing them for others.

I can join you in person, if you wish, but for a more affordable option, pull together some friends, book a cabin or beach house or drag some chairs into your living room.

I’ll build a custom itinerary for you, building in unstructured creative time alongside whatever focus areas or goals you’ve set. For example:

• Do you want to use your retreat to deepen your connection to nature AND have time to write?

• Or do you want to build in very structured, goal-driven days with accountability at the start at end?

• Do you want to do a food writing-focused residency, but getting away to travel for a week isn’t practical?

• Or something else?

Included are any coaching materials, journaling prompts, or other ‘stuff’, and I can also jump in virtually for live sessions if you need.

These retreat itineraries start at $500 ($400 for paid subscribers and Mycelia Coven members), and can cover one day or multiple days.

Email me (julia@root-kitchens.com) to book!

Culinary classes

While I am taking a few more bookings for private culinary classes, food writing workshops, etc. through the end of the year (see above) I also have a whole catalog of self-paced classes on fermentation, sustainable food, food writing, and various other food-related topics through the Culinary Curiosity School.

Each class above $10 is offered at 3 price tiers so you can pick the one that works for your budget.

Some class topics include:

• A course on sensory-driven and curious food writing (part play, part writing practice-focused skill building)

• Reconnecting to play and fun in the kitchen

• Connecting to place more deeply through food

• A course on reducing food waste that goes beyond techniques to play with mindset and an expansive sense of wealth (yes, your skills, and ability to engage your resources fully are part of your wealth!)

• Preserving family recipes, papers, and other documents: Using my background in libraries to help you preserve you + your folks’ history.

• A skills and ideas lab for your next fermentation business, book, or other creative project.

Plus guided meditations and preorders are open for Finding your Food Story, a deep dive live, virtual workshop taking place next year.

Not up on the site yet: A course on using food preservation to support self- and community resilience. Please reach out if you want the link when it’s ready!

Creative support and workshops for writers and beyond

I’m focusing the latter part of the year on small group spaces and on 1:1 support sessions.

1:1 writing + creative support sessions

These private sessions last anywhere from 30 minutes to a full day, and are completely customized to your needs and goals.

Mine are unique because they blend together all the different modalities of work I’ve trained in, so you’re getting practical tips for working as a creative professional, balancing creative + other work, plus some of the more energetic and ritual elements that are a massive support to creatives but that often get brushed to the side when we’re overwhelmed.

For the next week only, I’m offering everyone discounted 2-hour sessions: Either a session that blends energy work + creative coaching, or a session that’s purely skill building and/or project-focused (think: Mapping out your next book proposal).

You can book these now for dates this or next month, just look for the two-hour Samhain special in my calendar. As a reminder, the price for 2-hour sessions goes up for any bookings made after October 31st.

Sessions take place on Zoom: Please contact me to discuss in-person options if that’s your preference.

Paid subscribers, scroll down for your discounted link for 1-hour sessions (email me if you want to schedule a longer session).

Self-paced workshops

I also have a whole catalog of self-paced workshops, including:

• Finding clarity during career and life transitions so you can rediscover (or locate) your creative stride.

• Creating a container for your next book or other big creative project.

• Finding, and working with, your own unique creative rhythms.

• Simple practices for building pleasure back into your creative work (this isn’t just a nice to have, optional thing: Pleasurable work is work that is done with greater ease and less burnout, making you more productive and making the final results much better).

• Boundary setting for creatives

I’m completely redesigning my multi-month immersion programs for next year: More details on that soon.

In the meantime, before I retire this version of Bloom, my 8-week program for building a lifelong writing practice, I’m offering one more round that’s entirely asynchronous: So if you’ve been wanting to join but the meetings aren’t working for you, this is a more affordable option.

You’ll receive all the same Bloom materials, plus weekly themes emailed to you over the course of 8 weeks.

$125 for paid subscribers and $175 for everyone else.

Email me (julia@root-kitchens.com) if you want to sign up!

Thanks as always for your support and for letting me be a small part of your culinary + creative worlds! Any questions, just ask. I’m looking forward to working with you!

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And time to make the recipe with the most unappetizing name in history

Winter is citrus season here in the U.S., which means time to preserve fruits at their most luscious and flavorful. In Ireland, I’ve become accustomed to citrus that is passably good, but when you’ve lived for years near or in citrus-growing regions and know the magic of eating an orange pulled off the tree, warmed by the sun and plucked from the branch just moments before?

There is really no comparison.

That said, most of us (including my Irish self) do not have regular access to this exact brand of magic. And the recipes in this newsletter: One savory, one sweet, will work with whatever oranges (or other citrus) you have.

Bonus: The sweet recipe also has the most unappetizing recipe name I’ve ever heard. But I promise, it’s delicious.

It’s also a sneak peek back into my very first book, all about food in Early Modern England. This particular book represents the beginning of my life of food writing, and while I think I’ve grown considerably as both writer and recipe developer since, I’m still incredibly proud of it and its importance to my journey.

Citrus is delicious

Citrus is native to South and East Asia, and our current wealth of citrus are all descendents of a few species (citrons, pomelos, and mandarins) that mutated as they moved around the world and were selectively bred. You can see a nice citrus family tree here.

Citrus fruit is, botanically speaking, a modified berry, and was introduced to the Americas by the Spanish in the 1500s. Citrus had already been imported to Europe for centuries, and was popular, albeit sometimes expensive and often available only in urban areas (just like many specialty ingredients in shops today).

These recipes are a reflection of the movement of citrus between continents, and its eventual entrenchment within cuisines far from its birthplace.

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Maple apple butter, reducing waste from preserving projects, another cocktail, and more

I love autumn cooking. It feels so cozy to make some simple, nice things for myself when the weather cools down, and these particular recipes are all ones that feel like nice little treats for myself that make life just a bit more comfy.

Your monthly recipe round up includes:

• Maple apple butter

• Simmer pots

• How to make apple scrap vinegar from your other projects (like apple butter)

• A simple herbal-ginger cocktail that you can batch out or make one at a time

Simple cat lovers’ cocktail

Last month, I shared early access to the recipe for my Catwings-inspired cocktail, which I created for my Drinks in the Library podcast appearance (thank you again Gigi! Such a fun talk). You can listen to the episode here.

The original cocktail has a few steps, so I also made this simpler version for folks who wanted something herbaceous and warming without the hassle (or if you prefer whiskey cocktails to gin ones).

This is basically a Kentucky mule, with an added herbal garnish and/or herbal syrup (depending on your preference) in place of lime.

Stir together 1 – 1 1/2 c ginger beer to 1 shot bourbon.

Add herbal syrup (below) to taste

Garnish with fresh lemon balm, basil, or mint: lightly crush or roll before adding to the cocktail for maximum flavor

Herbal syrup (makes about 1 quart): Combine 2 c sugar to 2 c water with a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. Add 1-2 c packed fresh herbs, depending how strong you’d like it (like basil, mint, lemon balm, or mountain mint). Simmer on M/L for 10-15 minutes or until aromatic and flavorful. Cool and store in the fridge in an airtight container.

Keep reading for homemade apple vinegar, and nice smelling autumn things!

Apple scrap vinegar

This is one of the easiest, most timeless ways to take your apple scraps from making apple butter or other projects. If you do a lot of apple growing or apple picking, then preserve the bounty, you’re well aware of how many scraps tend to be left over. Peels and cores add up quickly, and as someone who hates wasting food, this is my go-to way to use them.

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A life-changing meal, and the limitations + affordances of writing about life-changing meals

I’ve been thinking a lot about one meal that really shifted things, fundamentally, for me.

In some ways, I think the “I had a meal that changed my life, let me tell you about it!” trope feels, well, like a trope. Overdone, often surface-level, often with little to say that hasn’t been said before.

Typically the changes in question are not a fundamental redirection of one’s life course, they’re revelatory in smaller (though still personally significant) ways: opening the expanse of sensory possibility, deepening a connection. They increase our capacity for what’s possible to experience, or clarify what experiences we enjoy. But ‘life changing meals’ discourse rarely goes much deeper or wider than that.

But popular things are often popular for a reason, and this particular writing theme resonates specifically because it’s something we’ve all experienced. We’re hungry to read that particular story and see if some facet of it resonates with our own significant meals, and our own experiences.

I’ve been reflecting on the different ways “important meals,” as concept, can be differentiated in my world and there are a few broad-strokes classifications I’d offer (do you agree? Any you would add or change?)

• Important memories: Especially good dishes, restaurants, experiences, something that felt really itself in a particular way, or made me feel particularly myself in that moment: Having tea on a river next to an archaeological site, eating oysters on my 40th birthday.

• Strong connections: A meal where I felt not just impacted by the food, but where the main elements of the experience were in the interactions or deepened connections with other people (or in a few cases, the decided lack of connection that felt palpable and that expanded over the course of the evening).

• Shifting trajectories: Meals that, by virtue of one or both of the above (or something else) actually served as a turning point in large or small ways, creating an impact on me and my life for years to come.

I see the first two as more surface level, or at least potentially so: They leave good memories and perhaps stronger relationships, but the fabric of one’s life remains largely unchanged, the weft and weave still largely in the same pattern as before.

The latter allows us to see as the experience of “I had a good meal!” at a deeper level: A place where we’re asked to critically engage rather than simply retell, to analyze rather than just acknowledge. It taps into our feeling, our connection, and the actual functional experience of eating and offers the potential for a shifted understanding of the world and ourselves.

I do still enjoy reading about your favorite dinner with your mom, the time you burned a pan of meatballs, or the time you showed up to a dinner party empty-handed.

But what I really enjoy reading is stories that get me to reflect and ask why, and to seek resonance not just in the meal or in shared experiences (who hasn’t shown up to a party without the right offerings to give?) but in shared understanding, or the possibility thereof. I want to be expanded by your food stories, opened up. Allowed to see the world in a new way.

I’ve been thinking of what this kind of story looks like in my own life, and the first that came to mind was a frankly not-very-good pizza and a slow food dinner in high school.

I can’t assume that resonance exists for others, but I’m really curious how/if it resonates with you: Not because this is an especially complex or unique story but perhaps because it’s not either of those things, and it’s a reminder that large shifts in our trajectory sometimes come from unexpected places and small daily practices.

Transformation through the making of moderately OK pizzas

In my high school, we had a thing called May Term. May Term was a 1 week intensive class, which we devoted the entire week to (sometimes traveling elsewhere for it, sometimes just devoting full days in town to whatever we were studying). All other classes were set aside for the week, and we all eagerly dove into anything from wildlife tracking to Judo to yoga to astronomy.

We chose our May Term subjects a couple months before, if memory serves, and there was a definite race to sign up for the popular subjects (like astronomy, taught by Paulette Gerardy, forever one of my favorite teachers). Each teacher chose a subject to teach for May Term that connected to their interests, whether or not it was what they taught every day in school.

One year, my May Term pick was yoga and meditation. Growing up in Boulder, I had ready access to classes on both, but had never dove in to either in any sort of formalized way. Portia Hinshaw, normally a math and English teacher, taught the class, and took us to a mountain ashram, on walking meditations, to sunrise Hatha yoga, and to the homes and studios of various practitioners so we could learn from them.

When Portia died last year, I thought again about that May Term, and how it exposed to me modalities of healing and practice that I continue to use today, over 20 years later.

But she also exposed me to Slow Food: Both the Slow Food Movement, but also to what eating slow actually meant.

I had had ‘slow cooking’ in the sense that food was made from scratch and local many, many times, but this was the first time it was conceptualized as such. The first time that cooking slowly and intention was seen as a choice that could be personally fulfilling, rather than an obligation or something you did for others. It was the first time cooking (not just eating) was framed as an act of joyfulness and pleasure for me. And clearly that stuck with me (see: The last 20 odd years of my hobbies and career).

Seeing slow eating as an intentional way of eating allowed me to see this practice as a possible way of existing that I could connect with regularly. It allowed me to view food as part of a larger practice of mindfulness, and as part of a way of moving through the world that I coveted: One rooted in excitement, in small pleasures, in intention over rush.

On our final day of May Term, we prepared and ate a slow dinner. The focus of our ministrations during our class’ slow dinner was pizza, and from what I recall, we ate it close to 10 PM because the dough took a lot longer to rise than we anticipated. We also weren’t experts in rolling out dough, which meant my pizza was THICK. Just, a block of dense, whole wheat covered in cheese that mostly dripped off the sides because, since I couldn’t roll dough very well, I also couldn’t roll that dough in a way that kept anything on it.

I can remember the exact flavor of that pizza: With a whole wheat crust, made from scratch, with a little bit of honey (I think we were trying to emulate Beau Jo’s pizza crust, which I at least tremendously failed to do). The fresh herbs, the haphazardly cut toppings chopped by people who had very little experience doing any sort of dicing at all. And, the important lesson that mozzarella packed in whey actually isn’t the best choice for this application unless you make sure you aren’t dripping whey all over the pizza.

The laughable cheese to sauce ratio, too: An act of teenage rebellion against my mom, who always ordered extra sauce on our pizzas (which I hated), I spread barely any sauce on mine, instead coating it with layers and layers of soggy, fresh mozzarella cheese which slipped around like layering silk on silk. I learned many lessons from this pizza, but one was balance: Too much sauce wasn’t great, but it turns out there could actually also be too much cheese, which was a shocking revelation.

It was, frankly, not a very good pizza.

But I can still remember the flavor of it decades later and, more importantly, I still remember how that not terribly great pizza also opened up a doorway for me to learn something new.

It resonates in every class I teach and every book I write now: That perfection isn’t the purpose of this work, but rather to learn, to experiment, and to connect to something in a new-to-you way simply for the act of trying.

Keep reading for your subscriber discount code for 40% off all my classes (I’ve got a new suite of writing and culinary classes coming up this fall).

You can also use the same code to book private 1:1 sessions with me for 40% off.

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Writing about food comes in layers

Years ago, I wrote Afternoon Tea: A History, and as always happens with writing, I learned about A Really Cool Thing (in this case, Burmese pickled tea salad) immediately after the book went to press. A book is never really ‘done,’ we don’t come to a point where everything can be said on a topic or we stop learning about that topic. We just come to a stopping point when the book is ready to be out in the world, perhaps to be revisited yet again in the future.

But back to tea, or specifically to afternoon tea:

Tea’s history in general, as well as the history of that specific meal, are deeply interwoven with violence and colonialism, and it was an interesting challenge to write about that history in relation to a meal that many of my fellow Americans see as a very light-hearted and sometimes-luxurious treat.

I’ve gotten more than a few responses from Americans in particular over the years about how they were surprised about the meal’s colonial legacy (or in a few cases, how I ruined the meal for them by making them think about colonialism at all. Um, sorry?)

The complexity comes from both the overarching reach of colonialism around the world, the layers of relationships we as individuals (and/or specific cultures) have with the meal: Both an opportunity to slow down and enjoy a break and a living tradition that serves as a reminder of colonial rule and the lasting legacy of colonial rule on various regions.

Recapping the book is outside the scope of this newsletter issue (though please give me your suggestions for tea-related deep dives you’d like to see here). For more on the book, Ken Fornataro recently wrote a very excellent, very thorough synopsis, which you can read here. I also talked a bit about tea and ritual in my post on the Teasmade.

In this issue, I talk about tea specifically in Myanmar, and about the pickled tea salad I mentioned above, plus a couple additional recipes/ideas for cooking with tea (including a fragrant, spiced, tea-poached salmon, a personal favorite).

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Your September recipes include a book-themed cocktail, ways to preserve apples, pretend pumpkin butter, and more

This month, we’re moving to cooler weather and to different ingredients. In some places, tomato and basil harvests are winding down, while winter squash and grain harvests are ramping up.

I think of September as a month where I start to get cozy.

For me, this year, it’s the month where I’m wrapping up my 6-month creative expansion group program, which has been a lot of fun (and which I already heave a ton of ideas for for next year), and where I’m leading two other group programs online (Radical Creators and Bloom: you’re welcome to join us!), so I’m really leaning into generative creativity while also relaxing into the cooler weather and possibilities of the season.

Your monthly recipe round up includes:

• Drying late summer and fall produce, plus some ideas for building in extra flavor to dried pantry staples (think rosewater apples for preserving the bounty after going to an orchard)

• Canning-safe “pumpkin butter” (NOT actual pumpkin butter, which cannot be canned!), a technique I learned from Christina Ward

• An herbaceous, gin-based Catwings book series-inspired cocktail (or mocktail): This one is from my recent podcast interview with Drinks in the Library (coming soon!)

• Another version of elderberry syrup, this one fermented with honey

• A family recipe for glazed apples

Canning-safe “pumpkin butter” from Christina Ward

Christina Ward, a Master Food Preserver and author of Preservation, taught me this technique years ago, and as a pumpkin butter lover and lover of canned things it was like a lightbulb went off for me: Of course adding pumpkin to apple butter would be the perfect way to can a pumpkin butter substitute!

Before I continue, note that you cannot can any squash puree, pumpkin butter included.

Yes, that includes pressure canning. Yes, even in small jars. Squash purees are dense, and dense enough that the heat of the canning process cannot evenly penetrate through to the center of the jars, which introduces the risk for botulism (commercial canneries use equipment that can safely package pumpkin puree, however this isn’t possible on home equipment).

By using this method, you can make a canned “pumpkin butter” safely.

Here’s what to do:

Make a canning-safe apple butter (use a trusted recipe, like this one from NCHFP)

Make dried pumpkin powder: Using the technique for drying squash later in this email, dry your pumpkin then grind it into a powder using a coffee grinder (not the same one you use for your coffee) or a mortar and pestle.

Mix in powder to your apple butter until evenly combined (to taste, you want enough for it to taste like pumpkin), check your pH, then process normally.

Glazed apples

My grandmother’s recipe box, like many others (perhaps your grandmother’s, too) includes clippings from unknown magazines and newspapers, cut out decades ago and organized behind tiny tabs in tiny boxes.

I think about the ephemeral nature of recipe boxes and handwritten recipes a good bit, and in this case, even the publication itself: Presumably something durable and knowable, is rendered ephemeral and unknown. Even the author, in this case, has been omitted, though it’s unclear if that was done by the newspaper or my grandmother’s clipping skills.

All that remains is the recipe itself.

Here’s the recipe (and if you know what publication it’s from originally, please share!)

Glazed apples

3 tablespoons butter or margarine

⅓ cup brown sugar

½

teaspoon ground cinnamon

Dash salt

3 unpared tart apples, thinly sliced Melt butter in skillet. Stir in brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Add apples. Cook 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally till apples are tender and glazed. Makes 4 servings.

Keep reading for cocktails, preserves, and nice smelling autumn things!

Catwings cocktail

You’ll be not at all surprised to learn that a book series by Ursula K. Le Guin about flying cats was one of my favorites as a child. When Gigi Howard and I were deciding on a favorite book (or series, in this case) to highlight in my recent interview, I immediately chose this one.

I love the books, of course, but I also chose them because I so rarely get to speak publicly about my other book interests beyond food, and I jumped at the chance to combine my food world with my childhood love of reading. It was really fun and refreshing to speak about reading for pleasure, which I do often, but as a professional author often our discussions of reading and writing in interviews are Serious Business.

If you haven’t read Catwings before, it’s a 4-part series that includes Catwings, Catwings Return, Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, and Jane on her Own (there’s also a paperback boxed set). They’re a short, easy read with lovely illustrations, and are nice for indulging in a bit of cat-themed escapism. I recommend reading them with a beloved pet nearby to snuggle.

This cocktail has a few steps, but I promise they’re worth it: And you can batch out the syrup and tea by doubling or tripling the recipe to make these for a group or to keep the ingredients on hand in the fridge (where they’ll last a week). The tea can be nice on its own, and any leftover syrup is perfect for adding to coffee or other beverages or drizzling on desserts.

For a non-alcoholic version, swap in your favorite NA gin, or try this sea buckthorn-based NA spirit.

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If heaven on Earth were a place, it would probably be in the old Butter Exchange

“This world deserved to be tasted, greedily”

-Asako Yuzuki, Butter

A stone’s throw away from Cork’s city center (and, conveniently, also a stone’s throw away from my house) exists one of the greatest museums on Earth: The Butter Museum.

I love butter.

I live in two butter-loving places (the US South, and in Ireland), so it’s hardly surprising that a rite of passage for me in settling into my new Irish home was visiting the Butter Museum (followed by the nearby and also iconic Shandon Bells).

But the visit was about more than just learning about a cool subject. I wanted to understand the place I live more deeply: To get a sense of the history of everyday life (not just of big touchstone events) as part of calling a new-to-me city and country home.

First things first, the museum is 100% worth a visit (I talk more about what stood out to me as a cultural heritage professional below).

The Butter Museum is (surprise!) a museum about the history of butter, but more specifically, about the history of the butter industry in Cork and around Ireland, and how the butter industry has shaped Cork, and vice versa.

It’s housed in a historic building, The Butter Exchange, where butter was bought and sold in one place so that the industry could be better regulated, and it outlines the story of the butter industry in Ireland, including key moments (like the opening of the Exchange) and the current landscape.

They do a fantastic job of not just giving an overview of the industry itself, but also teasing out some of the magic of everyday history and placing it front and center:

Highlighting the stories and uses of crocks and firkins (quarter barrels), for example, or how butter moved in and out of the city, or using butter wrappers to understand the story of Irish butter.

But for me (and, I think, for other Corkonians too) the Butter Museum isn’t just a cool museum about an interesting subject.

It’s a source of local pride (or at least, a source of local pride for many of the folks I talk with).

I also get a sense that it’s a trusted institution: One people point to regularly when discussing the city’s cultural heritage or looking for examples of who is doing this work right. As someone who maintains a foot in the world of cultural heritage (and is a former museum curator myself) I love to see when a museum becomes an identity marker for the community/ies it represents.

This trust doesn’t exist with every museum, but when it does, it can offer us lessons as cultural heritage workers (and in the case of food-adjacent museums, food historians) about what ‘doing it right’ might look like.

So what does the Butter Museum get right?

It’s situated in a historic district (Shandon) that contains some of the most iconic buildings in the city (you can see more in this virtual walking tour, this overview of some of the important buildings, and this more in-depth neighborhood overview), and while its focus is on the butter and the building, it also makes mention of how this building relates to the larger district’s story.

In other words, the curators don’t try to frame the story of the museum, and the story of Irish butter, in a way that makes them artificially exist in isolation. It recognizes the complex interconnection of local and regional history in telling the story of Irish butter.

The Butter Museum also considers this story in connection with larger social and cultural histories. Granted, many museums also do this, but I find some subject-specific museums often gloss over larger contexts or disregard them entirely. The Butter Museum strikes a pretty good balance, contextualizing Irish butter’s history without getting too far in the weeds.

Connected to the above: History does not just remain in the past. It’s interwoven with the story of Cork today, and with contemporary issues. This is, to me, absolutely critical when we’re talking about and teaching history. If our visitors/readers/etc. don’t see themselves in the history we’re telling in some way, they’re unlikely to care or keep engaging with it.

It’s engaging, without feeling like it’s forcing engagement. I love a good interactive museum display. But they can sometimes feel forced, or like they’re using new technology just for technology’s sake. The Butter Museum has digital displays a multimedia, but I also appreciate that the interactive parts feel approachable and fun (like stamping your own butter wrapper), rather than like yet another complicated digital menu to navigate.

What digital elements they do use (like these 3D models of historic objects on their website) feel intentional and well-done, rather than like an afterthought. I’ve been in the room when museum leadership has said ‘we need more technology in this exhibit to remain relevant or draw in more visitors’ and the resulting exhibits often feel ‘off’ in some way. That’s not what happens here: They choose, and use, their tech with care.

Multiple modes of sharing information. I appreciate that many modern museums do a good job of educating visitors using different formats, tools, writing styles, etc. rather than just sticking to dense text next to objects in cases (though I appreciate that, too). The Butter Museum is no exception: There are objects in cases with useful interpretive labels, but there are also timelines, graphics, dioramas, etc.

They have a bog butter. This is, to me, the most beautiful crowning achievement of any museum, ever. A bog butter! That you can look at! It’s right there!

Longtime readers will be aware of my obsession with bog butter. Being able to be in the same room, or even the same building, as a bog butter is my personal heaven.

(This last point is foreshadowing to next week’s issue, by the way, where I’ll be talking more about bog butter. I may even share a short story I wrote about bog butter, but I haven’t decided yet).

Have you been to the Butter Museum? What did you think?

P.S. paid subscribers, keep reading for your subscriber discount code for 40% off all my classes (I’ve got a new suite of writing and culinary classes coming up this fall).

You can also use the same code to book private 1:1 sessions with me for 40% off.

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And how to make your own

Smoked sauerkraut has become a staple side dish and topping for my meals, adding lots of depth and a surprise hit of smoke that’s complex without overwhelming.

The combination of sour and smoke with the gentle crunch of fermented cabbage makes sandwiches sing, particularly when I’m craving savory depth. If you don’t eat meat, or eat little meat, it can add some of the smokiness you might miss from smoky meaty things (but if you do eat meat, it is also good with smoky meaty things).

I really can’t say enough good things about it.

But since sauerkraut requires raw cabbage to ferment properly, how exactly does smoked sauerkraut (which, yes, is made on a smoker, though I do have another way I make it without one) work?

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Your monthly recipe round up includes tulsi chocolate syrup, tea, and more

For a while, I’ve been sporadically sharing recipes a couple times a month in my weekly newsletters, but I’ve decided to shift to this monthly recipe round up format so you have the bulk of them in one place.

I may still share recipes in other issues too, especially when I’m talking about the history or preservation uses of a specific food, but look forward to getting monthly round ups rooted in simple techniques for utilizing what’s growing right now.

These round ups are meant to be practical, and give you techniques and ideas you can start using right away with your garden bounty and farmers’ market hauls, and I love to hear your suggestions for what you want more recipes for.

Do you love this new format (or not love it?) Do you have a kind of recipe or an ingredient you want to see more of?

Let me know in the comments!

Your August recipe round up is all about using fresh herbs and foraged berries, and includes the following recipes:

Heart soother tea:

A simple herbal + black tea recipe I like to sip in the mornings when I’m feeling tender and need a little extra support.

I use this with dried herbs that I process using the technique I share below, and it gives me a way to enjoy the herbs from my garden and my foraging walks well into the winter (you can also use store-bought herbs, too).

Lemon balm syrup:

A simple herbal syrup that’s good for the nerves and delicious in summer drinks. You can add in or swap out other herbs you like, but when my garden has a profusion of lemon balm, this is what I make.

Tips: How to dry herbs without a dehydrator

If your garden is like mine, everything is bursting forth at once, and if you don’t have a dehydrator or don’t want to run it constantly, processing your herbs can feel like a chore. Here’s the simple technique I use to evenly dry them by hanging up without risking mold or discoloration for the herbs at the center.

Tulsi chocolate syrup:

New, improved version of my favorite chocolate syrup. This one is thick, rich, and deep rather than overly sweet, and the depth of the chocolate really compliments the sweet, floral brightness of the tulsi. If you’ve never made this before I highly recommend it!

Elderberry cough syrup:

Does just what it says on the label. This works more gently with my body than store-bought syrups when I have wintertime colds, and actually tastes good too. It’s deeply comforting and easy to make with foraged elderberries.

Heart soother tea

This tea is gentle and delicious, and great for when you want something floral and soothing that also feels decadent. It also offers some gentle nervous system support for when you’re feeling grief or like things are just too much. If you don’t do caffeine, you can omit the black tea or swap in another herbal tea you enjoy (peppermint or lemon balm are a nice choice here).

Makes about a quart

2/3 c black tea

1/3 c dried hibiscus flowers

1/2 c dried mullein

3/4 c dried rose petals

-Add all ingredients to a bowl and gently mix to evenly combine.

-Pour into a foodsafe, airtight container and seal the lid. Store out of direct sunlight at room temperature, where it will last for months (but for best flavor and aroma, try to use it in months, not years).

(As with any recipe for herbal preparations I share, this isn’t medical advice: listen to your body, common sense, and talk with your healthcare provider when you have health questions).

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A peek into my inner world of fiction writing

All my published writing is nonfiction. But recently, my unpublished writing has become more fiction-heavy (I share one of my short stories below).

I’ve long craved the ideal of writing interesting and successful fiction, but my academic brain has put up guardrails against sharing things that aren’t rooted in our shared, lived reality and in historical facts and data.

A year or so ago, I started writing fiction (again). I wrote fiction a lot as a child and teen, including a story I wrote when I was 8 or 10, about two conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War, who dodged the draft and moved to Canada. This was inspired in part by my regular dives into our collection of World Book encyclopedia and year books (see one from 1970 here), which I loved because I could see how people were reporting on the war (sorry, ‘conflict’) as it was unfolding.

The sociopolitical complexities of the Vietnam War were a special childhood focus of mine because I was a very normal child with normal child interests.

Anyhow, fast forward to the present day.

The last time I wrote fiction with any regularity was before I graduated high school, and while I’ve dabbled here and there since then, it has been incredibly expansive and refreshing to write fiction again.

In particular, to imagine stories and lives that map to the histories I cover in my books, but for which in many cases we don’t have records of the lived experiences of those histories.

How exciting is it to imagine what it’s like to be the person who buries their butter in a bog, or be the person who blends together various non-tea things to make fake ‘tea’ to sell. What were their lives like moment by moment?
What intricacies of that moment in time, and the particular calculus of living within it, informed each thing they did in connection with food?

The latter, which I share below, was inspired by my research for Afternoon Tea: A History, where I cover the high price of tea in England and the resulting tea adulteration, and laws around tea adulteration.

Writing fiction about the histories I’ve worked with sheds new life on the histories because I’m able to dive in with greater nuance an depth, and to consider those histories in new ways (my thinking on food history and the experience of place has been really helpful with this).

When I talk about trying new things and being flexible and curious as writers, this is what I talk about: I am always pushing my clients and students to explore the world in new ways because the payoff is enormous and the process is often also really fun.

We can only go so far as writers when we work with the tools and experiences already in our toolbox. Getting back into fiction has felt like adding a whole new shelf to the toolbox, filled with exciting new-to-me gadgets to explore.

Here is one of my short stories, written about smouch.

Smouch is a slang term from the 1700s/1800s in England, and refers to imitation teas made using not-tea ingredients, from random leaves from nearby trees to dung and beyond. It was really interesting to write about the experience of choosing and blending these ingredients so they were just passable enough that you could keep selling the ‘teas’ without alienating potential customers (or poisoning them, or at least not poisoning them too much).

I’d love to hear what you think!

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What if “resource use” were relational, not extractive? What if reading were a conversation, and cooking a symphony?

The current moment is full of reminders of our very human tendency to be extractive. Extractive in how we engage with each other, the natural world, with our own ideas. We focus on what we can get.

But that also isn’t the whole picture, because while modern society in particular rewards extractive behavior, we aren’t simply extractive beings.

We’re also collaborative, caring, curious, and this collaborative tendency extends well beyond just 1-1 human interactions.

So, what if we found a new way of being? One where we viewed the natural world as a collaborator, not “a resource” to be ripped from whenever we so choose?

This is less about thinking of the world in a new way, and more about returning home: A homecoming to a way of thinking that was and is a part of many Indigenous perspectives on interrelationship and care.

One that we have been intentionally divorced from, so that we are kept small by viewing the world through a rugged individualist lens.
One where we are separated from the beauty and wonder and awe of existing alongside a world full of other beings where our thriving and survival is interconnected (rather than each of us as an island in a sea of never-enough resources).

One where our responsibilities and a sense of reciprocity remind us that when we actually live a collaborative life, we are able to have our needs met, and to be discerning about what is a need and what is just filler that keeps us from doing the inner work to perceive our needs.

We see echoes of this desire for interconnection rippling as undercurrents beneath our current (extractive, often junk-filled) food systems: Even if they don’t come to the surface, we know there’s something more to be had.

This is evident through our relationship to food (when was the last time you thought of that jar of sauerkraut on your shelf as a community of collaborative partners, versus just a condiment?), and through our relationships to ourselves and eating (e.g. our larger societal view that imagines a false separation between our personal food consumption from larger social and environmental issues).

We are all to varying extents interwoven within that system, but we can all also feel those undercurrents.

This exploration list offers a few of my favorite thinkers in the world of collaborative living and eating: Folks who encourage us to view our food through the lens of the world around us.

Plus activities for building up your own sense of collaborative eating and living in relationship to the natural world.

I’m curious to hear: Who are your favorite thinkers, artists, writers, musicians, or anyone else who talks about our relationship to the Earth in a way that excites you, causes you to pause, sends a shiver down your spine (in a good way), or inspires you to act?

Exploration list: Collaboration

Writing about collaborative living and eating

When I first started writing about food, people would glaze over when I’d say ‘everything is interconnected!’ (sometimes they still do).

The concept of interconnection (with nature, with each other) was not a part of the larger discourse, at least in the sense that it trickled into our collective consciousness in any meaningful way until more recently. And, as current events unfold, it’s clear that the message still has not reached everyone. That for much of the world, there’s still skepticism that all of our liberation is bound up together, that we’re a part of nature, or that the bubble we currently live in could ever possibly burst.

Living a collaborative life in a collaborative world is an act of remembering.

We’re remembering how to be in relationship with each other. To ask of nature rather than just taking from nature.
This isn’t a rose-tinted glorification of bygone days, but rather a recognition that we really do function in the world in ways that maybe don’t align with how we’re programmed. That some of the issues of the current world are unique to this moment.

Those include the scale at which we consume information and ‘stuff,’ the amount we’re expected to work, the number of relationships we try to maintain, the constant scrutiny that comes from living in a networked world (what my friend Ellen calls “the witnessed life versus the scrutinized life,” more on that in another issue).
That’s on top of the kinds of issues that have always been there, and in some cases I think exacerbate tensions and divisions considerably (see: the current political climate in the US, or the pushback against public figures who even mention the name Palestine).

Collaboration also means remembering what’s a need to have versus nice to have (I’m thinking of this one, especially, as I experience the disconnect between world events and the hundreds of unsolicited ‘Prime Day deals!’ emails from PR companies that keep flooding my inbox).

I’ve been turning to, or returning to, thinkers for whom collaboration is woven into the fabric of their work, particularly in relationship to food systems and the natural world. Here are a few favorites:

Lydia Lynn Haupt’s Rooted sits at the intersection of science, nature, memoir, and creative nonfiction. My favorite part asks us to reflect on the words ‘kith’ and ‘kin’ and to consider which more fully embodies our relationship to the natural world.

I’ve mentioned Alicia Kennedy’s writing before, which blends political, personal, and culinary in a way that’s approachable but also smart. I leave every issue, whether it’s about putting together a sandwich or about the complexities of farm labor or gender and cooking, inspired and inquisitive.
It’s the kind of writing that feels generative, because even when the subject matter is heavy or challenging, it pulls me outside of myself. It views the piece as a beginning for the reader’s own explorations, not as the be all and end all (and I very much appreciate fellow writers who view the work as a conversation and invitation, not as a platform for shouting their calcified perspectives).

Robin Wall Kimmerer is bound to make an appearance on a list about collaboration and reciprocity and the natural world, and for good reason. Braiding Sweetgrass is her most famous (and well worth the read, or audiobook listen), but her other work has had just as much of an impact on me.
Read The Serviceberry for lessons about reciprocity and abundance, using a plant that’s probably in your neighborhood’s landscaping as an anchoring point (this one is good for when you want to be reminded that abundance is a natural state and does not always mean what modern folks think it means. Abundance can exist in quiet, sharing ways, not just in flashy performative shows of wealth).
Or, possibly one of my favorite books of all time, Gathering Moss, is one of those books that asks you to shift the lens through which you view the world. Gathering Moss asks us to think small, get curious, tap into wonder, but also to remember that the sometimes small and often overlooked parts of our world are often the ones really doing a lot of the work to hold everything upright (a lesson that applies to our food systems, and many other things besides, too).

Some other books I’m sitting with right now and slowly reading (or re-reading) my way through, all of which touch on climate, hope, and interconnection: How to Fall in Love with the Future, What if We Get it Right? Visions of Climate Futures, Reaping What She Sows, and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.

I’ve also just started down another rabbit hole into the world of enthnomicrobiology: I have a lot of thoughts about fermentation as collaboration, and am eager to expand my thinking in this area and to dig further into research about the whole web of collaborations that make up your jar of sauerkraut or morning bowl of yogurt.

(P.S. when you use the Bookshop.org links in this post, I get a small affiliate commission, so thanks for supporting me and supporting small bookshops!)

Collaboration in the kitchen

I like to think of collaboration broadly, to include practices that might seem individual and private: cooking becomes a collaboration between myself and the food I’m making (I even extend that to spice blending: Jenny Dorsey’s spice-blending technique that reminds me of a perfumer’s organ, but can also be related to music, is one of my favorites).

I often talk about fermentation as a collaboration between self and microbes, which bears out in my books Our Fermented Lives and The Fermentation Oracle.

Collaboration between text and reader

This article on finding (or not finding) meaning in Heathcliff cartoons mentions meaning-making as a collaborative effort between reader and artist, which very much reminds me of discussions of meaning-making in Library & Information Science and in Book History.
You can see my thoughts on this collaboration in this newsletter, where I discuss Wolfgang Iser’s interactions between text and reader, by placing books in conversation with each other, and through exploring the concept of traces of use.

Related to this: Carlo Ginzberg’s Cheese and the Worms is one of my favorite books I’ve ever assigned my students (though they’re usually confused about why I’m assigning it).
But I do so to illustrate the fact that collaboration between the self and ideas does not always have the same outcome for everyone: In the case of this book’s protagonist, that’s taken to extremes.

And finally, Aiden Arata’s book unboxing video is my all-time favorite, in part because it discusses the impermanence and permanence of books as objects.

Exploration activities: Collaboration

When I want to feel in my collaborative element, I start small, with the kinds of collaborations that allow me to go slowly and deliberately:
I make a jar of sauerkraut, or I do nature crafts like making inks and dyes from what’s in season (I cover this in Preserving Abundance: paid subscribers remember to use your discount! I’ve put it below so you don’t have to dig).

For entering into a collaboration (or just, going out in the world) with fellow humans, in that way that speaks to the interconnected, returning home way I want to feel around other people, I begin with reciprocity:
What am I giving (or can I give) in this space? What do I hope to receive?
You could also reframe the former by asking what responsibilities you have by being a part of a given community.

Increasingly, another concern is asking if myself and loved ones will be safe in that space. I often consider if I’m sitting down at a table where I’m welcomed versus one where I need to elbow people over to fit a chair in to sit down (and which one of those scenarios I have the energy for). Obviously I get more done and enjoy myself more in spaces where my collaborators value me: But once in a while I stretch myself.

That consideration, of reciprocity and receiving, might be a useful jumping off point for you, too.

Another good jumping off point is finding places correlate to your interests: I love nature, so maybe I find a local hiking meetup or something, but could also find a local crafting group, silent book club, or fitness space where I can weave my environmental interests in while also expanding my potential circle of collaborators to include people who wouldn’t be immediately obvious.

I have so many more things I could say about collaboration, but I’m also doing book copyedits so writing a small novel is out of the question. Instead, I’ll end by encouraging you to find one new collaboration this week: Either in your kitchen, in nature, or your human community.

(And paid subscribers, remember to scroll down for the discount code I mentioned).

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An unexpected exercise in preserving abundance

I adore frozen yogurt, but despite having an ice cream maker and a constant supply of yogurt, I rarely seem to make it. Frozen yogurt and ice cream feel like things that are so luxurious that it feels somehow taboo to make them just for myself, as though freezing the yogurt fundamentally changes not just the texture of the food but the morality of consuming a quart of it solo.

But nothing shifts your perception of a food (or food in general) so much as having too much or too little of it, and an abundance of an ingredient pushes me to ask how to use it to its best effect. I’m forever informed by earlier moments in my adult life, where ‘too much’ was rarely a problem I encountered with food, and which has shaped me to continue preserving food and engaging with food stories in ways that continue to ask me to stretch and think in new ways.

Case in point is frozen yogurt, and this particular method was born from a twinned desire to use the gallons of excess yogurt at my disposal (more on that in a moment) and a desire to expend as little energy as possible doing it.

As an added bonus, I have finally found the sweet spot for the ratio of fruit to yogurt to sugar to salt, a process that has taken years and many less-than-palatable (mostly just bland, or runny) batches to achieve.

A case of too much of a good thing

In my normal life I eat about a quart or so of yogurt every week. I have yogurt parfait for breakfast most mornings with homemade granola and whatever fruit is in season and/or on sale. My consumption goes up on weeks where I strain yogurt overnight for labneh, to spread on bread or to dollop on main courses before studding with herbs and fresh pomegranate seeds (p.s. Samin Nosrat recently wrote a list of ideas for using labneh in your cooking).

This past week or so, I’ve been testing various yogurt makers, and in so doing, have been blessed with an abundance of yogurt, to the tune of about 3 gallons of it.

This coincided with an abundance of peaches (last weekend I canned about 20 jars of jam and made quarts of peaches in syrup, plus peach puree), fresh herbs, and mangoes.

One of my favorite things about cooking is that it asks us to take what we know and stretch it.

Recipes don’t (or perhaps, shouldn’t) exist to give us exact prescriptions for how and what to cook, and when.

Recipes offer us guidance that we then fold into our lives. A technique, a process, an iterative set of daily acts that build on each other into what becomes our own personal process of cooking.

Just like I was feeling like frozen yogurt was Too Luxurious, I also realized it was one of the few logical answers. And was reminded that a personal practice, made simply to nourish myself, deserves to be as luxurious, as pleasing, and as over the top as anything I do that involves other people.

Frozen yogurt

I have spent YEARS, and I do mean probably closer to a decade, trying to make frozen yogurt that wasn’t too sweet or bland, that had the right balance of fruit, and a texture I liked.

And I’ve finally gotten it.

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And my new favorite cocktail addition

As part of my multifaceted professional career, I occasionally test cookware and other products for a national magazine.

The latest iteration was testing a cast iron Dutch oven for camping, resulting in standing outside in the Georgia summer heat, wedged between both a campfire and a charcoal grill, testing said oven in various conditions.

I had enough food for a week, and my pores have never been clearer.

I don’t talk a ton about the product-focused work I do here because, frankly, it’s not at the core of my food writing and there are plenty of places to find product reviews. But sometimes doing that work does give me some unexpected gifts: In this case, enough excess heat leftover on my grill and smoker to experiment with some new things.

The greatest success was mangoes: which I turned into one of my new favorite summer beverages.

My favorite part about this recipe is that it’s playful, and messy, and for me was more about the tactile experience of making than about worrying about if I got it “right.” Despite my lack of worry, it did turn out right, in that it’s delicious and incredibly easy.

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An affordable, fun way to reconnect to the playfulness of your work, on your schedule

We start June 1st. Read to the bottom for 40% off!

Several years ago, I had a sudden flash of inspiration to host a writing workshop and call it Writing Playground.
Longtime subscribers may remember the early newsletter issues describing the workshop, as I navigated sharing this new facet of my work in a newsletter primarily dedicated to food (my writing/creative support now has its own newsletter).

The goal of that workshop was simple, in theory, but touched on something many creative folks struggle with for a variety of reasons that are not always simple: Reconnecting with the pleasure of our work, and that passion that drove us to create in the first place.

Especially for people whose creativity intersects in some way with how they earn a living, it’s easy to try to systematize and checklist the soul right out of our creative process. Which then makes the work harder to do, and less fun.

Writing Playground was my antidote to that, and over the course of several iterations and 100 or so students, it’s overwhelmingly been a success in helping fellow writers in the ways I wanted to. People come back to me even a year or two later and say how the workshop has shifted, and continues to shift, their relationship to writing.

It was also the jumping off point from which I founded Roots + Branches, where I’ve helped hundreds of fellow creative folks through workshops, private support, and self-study classes.

That’s a long way of saying Writing Playground ultimately changed my life, not just the lives of my students.

All the best part of my work have an iterative element to them, and I get to be a part of their continued evolution: And Writing Playground is no different.

Support for food writers

I realized that I hadn’t yet created something specifically to support food writers (though it’s woven implicitly through Bloom and other programs), so I’ve taken the template of Writing Playground and made it specifically about food.

You can see what all I’ve included in Food Writing Playground in the section below.

There are prompts to help get you out of your subject matter and writing style ruts.

There are practical resources on building a writing practice but also on the craft and business of being a food writer (which we also discuss during the program in Slack).

And there’s a virtual space (in Slack) where you get real-time support from me, can share work if you wish, and ask questions.
The coaching-related component of these programs is one of the most valuable parts, and something people point to again and again as being the most transformative for them. So the more questions you ask, the richer an experience you’ll have.

If you’re a food writer who’s been wanting to work with me, this is an affordable, accessible way to do so.

In past versions, Writing Playground has had weekly meetings, but I’ve gotten feedback that people struggle to commit to 5 weekly meetings, so we’re trying a meeting-free (but still interactive) model this time, which also makes it more affordable for you.

I’m very open to feedback about that! If you want future programs with live meetings, or there’s a specific topic you want me to cover, I’d love to hear about it.

Paid subscribers, use your paid subscriber discount code (see below) to get 40% off this and all other classes.

Food Writing Playground begins June 1st

Here’s what’s included:

• A Slack channel with coaching support every weekday: So you get the support you need to build the writing practice you deserve.

• Weekly writing prompts exploring a different facet of food writing and/or our relationship to food: You can share your work, or not, as you wish (this workshop is about getting into the flow of writing, not doing critique on drafts).

• New bonus prompts for this session: Additional weekly writing prompts and activities to explore your work through each of your senses, including proprioception, one of my current obsessions.

• A resource library filled with everything you need to build the foundations of a lifelong pleasurable, productive writing practice. Along with resources specific to food writing (like crafting a pitch).

• Audio deep dives into the creative process, so you can tap into inspiration, direction, and practical guidance wherever you are.

• Free bonus gifts at the end of our workshop, worth up to $800 each, simply for engaging in the Slack channel each week: Including gifts like access to classes (including one entry to Finding your Food Story), intuitive guidance sessions, and free access to a weekly virtual co-writing group

• 3 pricing tiers so you can choose which one fits your budget. No questions asked: Just choose the one that works for you.

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A guide for writers, business owners, and other creative people with cool ideas to share but who are also afraid of annoying people

In today’s newsletter, I’m sharing one of the more nuts-and-bolts parts of my work: When/where/how I send out press releases, without hopefully annoying my journalist colleagues too much and still getting some press.

Give it a read and let me know what you think
(or if you have a totally different process. Or, if you’re a fellow journalist, if there’s anything you DO NOT LIKE or REALLY DO LIKE in relation to getting cold pitched).

But first: Surprise! Paid subscribers get free access to the new 7-day version of Radical Creators, a program rooted in daily practice that supports your creative unfolding.

Take a peek after the paid break for your unique sign up link.

If you want to join and aren’t a subscriber, it’s $21. You can sign up below!

How to craft PR Pitches: A guide for writers, business owners, and other creative people with cool ideas to share

I used to be TERRIBLE at talking about myself.

Truly terrible.

I had a bit of exposure therapy in my PhD program, where we crafted elevator pitches to talk about our research and teaching (basically “turn that research statement into a couple of sentences, and be sure one of them is just about why the work matters”). That was HARD, but good, and started me on my path away from dreading any time I had to hype myself up.

Today, I feel confident talking about myself and describing my work to people unfamiliar with it, even when the stakes feel high. However there’s forever more to learn about the nuance of sharing your work, and I feel like now the greater issue is streamlining these conversations: Not because I don’t want deep, rich, nuanced discussions (those are the best) BUT because of the practicality of being a person who needs to get ideas in front of many eyeballs, and has a limited well of energy to draw upon to do it.

For a long time, I struggled with exactly how to balance customizing reach outs to folks with templates and systems. I want the people I connect with to feel the care and appreciation I have for them, and the interest I have in their work. I also want to be sure to have enough time to reach out to everyone.

Thus, my PR pitch template system was born.

I created this system a couple years ago, but my use has been sporadic until recently, not because it doesn’t work but just because I was creating so many systems at once to streamline businesses, writing, etc. that it kind of fell through the cracks.

In a moment of divine/cosmic timing, I recently offered to share these with my fellow Fermenters Guild members, which reminded me that I hadn’t sent out a round of pitches in a while. And got me to revisit my templates and update them for the current suite of offerings I want to pitch this summer.

I’ve used this method to share my writing with folks: I work with an AMAZING marketer at Storey, Emma Sector, who does all the launch-related PR (thank you Emma), so I really only send these out for books when I want to bring some fresh eyes on something that’s been out for a while, or to share writing outside my books that might have local interest or something (e.g. if I wrote a magazine article that includes a local restaurant and want to make sure the city’s newspaper sees it).

If you’re doing your own book marketing, then this is good to do at the launch and then again after some time has passed.

In my case, I mostly send out press releases for Roots + Branches (p.s. I have a separate newsletter over there too), and the Culinary Curiosity School.

I use it to share new things, of course, but also to reconnect with folks about projects that have been around for a bit that are timely in some way, or that I’m just feeling pulled to draw attention to.

One important aspect of this work is assessment and iteration: You can go as much into the metrics as you want here, but at a basic level you want a sense of who is most responsive as well as the kinds of responses you receive.

If a lot of people are asking for clarification, that tells you to put in more details (and what kind of details) next time around.

Which is where the iterative part comes in: You will not be amazing at this immediately (I am not a professional marketer but I hear this is universally true from every marketing pro I’ve ever spoken with). That’s ok.

Most people will never write back. That’s ok too. Sometimes just seeing the pitch (or seeing your name in connection with a specific topic) gives a news journalist/podcaster/etc. something they mentally file away for later. In other words, you’re getting on people’s radars in ways you may not fully see (or may not see immediately).
Writing pitches gets you comfortable with rejection and radio silence out of necessity, and if you continuously reconnect to the emotion and energy around your excitement/why this matters/why you’re the person to do it, you’ll have a much better time.

The example docs below are all from my 2023 version of Writing Playground, but the format can be adjusted to just about anything.

These include: A sample email, plus a customizable press release template and a sample press release so you can see the template in action.

Ready to tell people about your book/cooking class/new product/whatever else?

Here’s what I do:

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A recipe for any weather

Ginger beer reminds me of sitting on my porch in Florida, glass in hand, the spicy kick of the ginger beer slicing through the humid weather like a knife, waking me up from the trance I seem to fall into when faced with unrelenting heat.

I make my ginger beer strong, very strong: So cloudy it’s opaque, which means you’re unlikely to drink it by the gallon (though, you could).

It’s great on its own, or with rum or whiskey.

Making ginger beer, like any ferment, is part intuitive, part technique, and part sensory experience.

We weave together our sensory experience of the ferment, its bubbling, hissing, its changes in flavor, with our ever-growing intuition about how long to ferment or how much of an ingredient to add, which is rooted in continued practice.

Ginger beer is fermenting the way our ancestors ferment: The way I talk about often in Our Fermented Lives and in the Fermentation Oracle.

Here’s the recipe I’ve been making for almost 20 years, plus some new variations, with everything from flowers to tulsi to masala spices, which I haven’t shared before.

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A calm, generative space to imagine new worlds

Our next food zine party is on Saturday at 2 PM GMT/9 AM EST

The theme is Planting Seeds: So bring your seed stories, your seed paper, and your ideas big and small to a chill, crafting space.

We meet on Zoom for about an hour to chat and create: Then when we’re done I compile all our pages into a digital zine to share.

Zine parties are extra important right now:
When things often feel grim and many of us feel isolated and scared, a creative space where we imagine new worlds rather than hyperfocus on the problems of the present is a boon to mental health but also to creative problem solving.

Our creativity, our imaginations, and our sense of possibility and a feeling that the universe is conspiring in our favor are often the first things to go out the window when things go sideways.

Zine parties might seem frivolous in a moment where so much big, serious stuff is happening, but they help reconnect you to your own creativity and imagination in a low-stakes way, and give you something to do with others that is more generative than doom scrolling.

Zine parties are free for paid subscribers! For everyone else, they’re $10.

Not a subscriber, but want to come?

• Venmo me $10 (@rootkitchens)

• Or send via PayPal friends + family (juliaskinner07@gmail.com is my PayPal email) with ‘zine party’ and your email address in the notes and I’ll shoot you the link.

Or, become a paid subscriber if you’ve been waiting to: We’ve got more zine parties coming up (the next one is on writing your own food story), so you’ll have plenty of opportunities to join and create!

Paid subscribers, mark your calendars and find the zine party Zoom link after the paywall.

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Culinary memories past and future

“Everywhere the same message: food is more than itself. It is not everything, but it is touched by almost everything: memory, weather, dirt, hunger, chemistry, and the universe.” –Bill Buford

(As you’re reading this, I’m sitting in Dublin awaiting my appointment for my Irish Residence Permit. Wish me luck!)

Throughout the culinary memories series, I’ve discussed various aspects of cookbook history, of food writing, and of our relationship to food through time, through the lens of two very different anchoring texts (Brillat Savarin and Salvador Dali), to hopefully help us think about food history in some new ways.

But I’ve also shared some glimpses into my life in libraries and museums: And some of the joys and challenges that come with designing programs and exhibitions around the history of the book, or using books in an exhibition to explore other histories.

In this last issue in the series, we’re bringing it all together, looking at past, and future, and perhaps even situating ourselves within that story.

I often talk about each of us as being a bridge between the past and the as-of-yet-unwritten future. We reach back to the past and carry things forward into the future by bringing them into the present moment. Through our daily actions, we decide what we carry forward and leave behind: Whether it’s a food tradition, a favorite flavor, or a social norm.

Never is this more true than in our exploration of the history of food writing.

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Othering, connecting, and the social history of cookbooks

There is…a lot to say about the social history of cookbooks. Since cookbook history is social history, just as food history is not just about the experience of eating solo but, as a history, becomes the story of eating, cooking, thinking, sharing, producing, etc. as a collective.

In cookbooks, we see the interplay between the individual and the collective: And the many ways that the small, everyday acts that make up our lives are informed by, and inform, the larger world.

In today’s issue of the culinary memories series, I’m sharing insights about several aspects of the social history of cookbooks, including desire (building on last week’s issue), as well as how food and eating practices in not-cookbooks also serve to other and degrade, or uplift and venerate, their subjects.

Through depictions of everything from cannibalism to royal banquets, the social history of food writing and cookbooks casts a light on how we use these mediums to reflect and challenge social norms.

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Collective memories and individual aspirations

Our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. -M. F. K. Fisher

In this installment of my culinary memories series, we’re looking at some of the social aspects of cookbook history: Something I’ve touched on before both in the newsletter and in pieces like this one for Mold.^[i]

But we’re also exploring the cookbook as an aspirational object: Who a cookbook inspires us to be and how we aspire to be as we move through the world. Unlike our other installments, this particular essay is not actually from the exhibition materials themselves: Tt’s a new one I’ve written to give you a behind-the-scenes look into the kinds of things I think about when designing an exhibition.

One thing I find interesting about cookbook history is that it highlights longing and lack as well as abundance and the procuring and sharing of food: Cookbooks, from design and photos that are aspirational, produce longing for the food itself or the lifestyle implied within their pages. Cookbooks not only remind us what is possible to cook, they remind us of our current landscape, and the distances between the food presented and the food we’re making right now. Sometimes it takes just a step or two to bridge that gulf: In the case of some books, the expanse is much more vast. Reading a book like Robert May’s Accomplisht Cook is a good example: it showcased the foods and customs of aristocratic homes, serving as not only instructional document, but an aspirational one for would-be social climbers.

But on the other hand, cookbooks can also serve to highlight loss and lack: Food history in general is also the history of a lack of food, of poverty, of starvation, of the specific sort of food-related traumas and memories interwoven with foods one had to eat during times of hardship.

And this is reflected in cookbook history too:

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From Hoosier jars to beach sand, some of my favorite glass-related rabbit holes

An unofficial theme for me this month is containers.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the process of dividing the tangible objects that make up my life across two different continents (have you ever tried deciding which continent should house each part of your cookbook collection? It’s an emotionally trying experience).

The stakes are high in some ways: because if I put something in the wrong place, I won’t be able to access it again until I’m next in that country. But they’re low in other ways, since all of this stuff is still, technically, accessible, just not at all convenient.

This has led to adjustments and sweeping changes (another theme of this month/year), both in how I use objects, how I associate them with place, and my understanding of what objects are necessary or enjoyable versus just “important” through momentum: In other words, valued simply for having been around for a while, not even for sentimentality.

I’m sure I have many more essays in me about being a person who cooks, and who relies on specific objects to do her job and enjoy her life, and who also lives between two continents (and now that I’m done with all but the last round or two of edits on the giant preserving handbook, finding the time to write them will be much easier).

But for today, we’re thinking about glass.

And, to a lesser extent, about replication: Because one of the challenges of having strong preferences for culinary tools when you live in two places is the challenge of either hauling them back and forth, or buying a duplicate for one place or the other.

I dove down the rabbit hole of making this list while purchasing a second vintage Hoosier jar for my kombucha SCOBYs to bring to Ireland (I only store my SCOBY in Hoosier jars, in part because I’ve done it for about 25 years, and the wide mouths of the jars lend themselves to some beautiful SCOBY growth).

I call this an exploration list because it’s more of a ‘browse around and look at things’ compilation than a list of books and articles. I’m noticing more and more that my ‘reading lists’ tend towards being ‘multi-modal browsing lists’, though that’s kind of a clunky name for it. So for now at least, exploration list is the term we’re using.

So here are some of the things I’ve been reading, perusing, and playing with from the world of glass. As always, I welcome your additions in the comments!

Our next food zine party

Our next food zine-making party is on May 3 at 9 AM ET/2 pm GMT.

The theme is Planting Seeds: So bring your seed stories, your seed paper, and your ideas big and small to a chill, crafting space.

We meet on Zoom for about an hour to chat and create: Then when we’re done I compile all our pages into a digital zine to share.

Zine parties are free for paid subscribers! For everyone else, they’re $10.

Venmo me $10 (@rootkitchens) or send via PayPal friends + family (juliaskinner07@gmail.com is my PayPal email) with ‘zine party’ in the notes and I’ll shoot you the link.

Or, become a paid subscriber if you’ve been waiting to: We’ve got more zine parties coming up, so plenty of opportunities to come and create!

Paid subscribers, mark your calendars and find the zine party Zoom link after the paywall.

Additional news

Paid subscribers will get the rest of the Culinary Memory series starting next week: I’ve gotten some great messages from folks who’ve enjoyed the series so far, so I’d love to see what you think in the comments (or, message me) as they come out.

My Symbiosis creative expansion and practice workshop opened April 1st, but you can still join us!
The workshop takes a handful of hours per month (maybe 5? 10? depending what you’re doing) and goes through September.

Use the code WRITERFRIENDS for 25% off (paid subscribers, scroll down to the bottom for a 60% discount).

Other upcoming workshops in food writing, hands-on fermentation techniques, and a live session on fermentation as a transformative practice all TBA soon!

Exploration list: Glass

Glass history

We’re starting with Hoosier jars, the inspiration for this list, and working our way outward, beginning with the history of glass in Indiana (for readers not familiar with Hoosier jars/glass, it’s an American craftsmanship tradition from Indiana), including Coca Cola bottle’s birthplace in Terre Haute, also included in this High Museum exhibition.

Today there still is a company called Hoosier Glass, though they make architectural glass, not housewares.

And you can still find Hoosier jars, like my kombucha SCOBY hotels, for sale in antique stores or sometimes online: Or see examples in the Virtual Museum of Historic Bottles and Glass.

Speaking of museums, the Corning Museum of Glass is high on my museum bucket list, and a likely future visit since I have a surprising number of friends who work for Corning. They have demos and events, but also historic glass (I’d be especially interested in seeing examples of canning/preserving vessels, of course).

CMOG also has an Ask a Glass Question forum where you can learn, among other things, about the history of purple glass.

You can also learn about irradiated glass from The Glass Encyclopedia.

If you’re wondering why some mason jars are blue, it turns out it’s thanks to the mineral composition of the sand from the Hoosier Slide, a dune on Lake Michigan that no longer exists, thanks to our ancestors’ insatiable appetites for blue glass.

Glass manufacturing and care

During an elementary school field trip, I asked why old glass rippled, and was told “it’s because glass is actually a liquid, just a very thick one, so old glass ripples because it’s very slowly dripping.”

So is glass actually a liquid? The answer is well, yes and no.

But glass doesn’t ripple because it’s liquid: The ripples in glass are a result of different manufacturing processes.

This video of glass bottle manufacturing is surprisingly soothing: It shows each step of bottle production without any voice over, like ASMR but for people interested in industrial manufacturing processes (while researching this list I also discovered that same YouTube channel has a bunch of similar videos for various industrial processes: Good to keep in your back pocket if you want something to watch without narration).

There are also glass inspection checklists, and articles on the mineral composition of sand for glass production.

And finally, here’s a video showing examples of different types of wavy glass used for restoration.

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Emotional Ties to Food through History

“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.”-Brillat-Savarin

This week, I’m using Brillat-Savarin and Salvador Dali’s writing on food to explore emotional connections to food, in the past and today (for more on this series, see this introductory post).

Food is deeply connected to our emotional selves: Food is connected to emotionally charged memories that result in longing or comfort or revulsion or any number of other feelings. Certain flavors and textures elicit reactions not necessarily based on past experiences but on personal preferences or even just how we’re feeling that day.

None of this is groundbreaking stuff: The above is something you experience every single day without me telling you that’s what’s going on.

But when I was thinking about emotions and food, I started to think about how this looked for people before me, too. How did hunger, or abundance, influence my ancestors’ relationships to food? How has that trickled down to me today?

I also talk about the unique challenges of selecting museum exhibits meant to spark a universalized discussion of emotion and food, when our emotional relationship to food is so personal.

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Food as a physical experience

“Whenever we cook we become practical chemists, drawing on the accumulated knowledge of generations, and transforming what the Earth offers us into more concentrated forms of pleasure and nourishment” – Harold McGee

Over time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical experience of connecting with the world: How I feel in my body at a given moment or in response to a certain food/movement/situation, rather than just how I feel emotionally.

I’ve talked here before about mindfulness and pleasure and about mindful eating in general, which is one way I bridge the gap between my ever-active intellectual and emotional self and the physical experience of being in the world.

But how did that look for folks throughout history? How did we draw connections between the physical experience of food, and our experience of food writ large?

I also talk about the science of eating well, albeit briefly, since science and food is a whole area of inquiry that can and does fill books. If you want to dive a bit more down that rabbit hole, read this essay on humoral theory’s influence on modern western flavor pairings.

This week is the second in a series on culinary memory: On drawing parallels between cookbook history and our own experiences, using two historic books on food as our guides. Be sure to check out last week’s post for an introduction to the series and the subject matter!

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The Many Ways of Viewing (Cook)Book History

Back in the sands of time (9 years ago) I was still deep in my career in rare books and museums, and as a part of that work, I developed an exhibition examining cookbooks and book history through the seemingly very disparate lenses of MFK Fisher’s translation of Brillat-Savarin, and Salvador Dali’s Diners de Gala cookbook.

These don’t, on the surface, make a lot of sense as comparative texts, outside of the fact that they both broadly deal with food: But in working with both, I was able to draw connections for museum visitors who otherwise might have found cookbook history to be a boring or dry subject.

Recently, I decided to revisit the text from this old exhibit, and thought I’d revive it here, with some extra context and discussion to go around the original text.

I’m big into finding themes as a way of categorizing broad, messy, interdisciplinary topics, and just like I did with Our Fermented Lives, I located themes for this work too. Those themes are rooted in Fisher’s and Brillat-Savarin’s work, and I use them to tie together broader concepts of book and food history.

Why these books?

There are plenty of versions of Brillat-Savarin’s writing out there: But my beat up copy of MFK Fisher’s translation, filled with marginalia, remains my forever favorite. The combination of both their work feels like a naturally flowing conversation, and as a reader it feels like a conversation I’m a part of.

The Dali book is very different: Meant to be experienced as a viewer experiencing Dali’s work rather than participating and reflecting. It’s more exhibition than conversation.

One is all text, no illustrations, and more of a philosophical musing on the nature of food and eating, while the other is (kind of) a cookbook with a metallic gold cover, glossy, full color image-splashed pages, and its own musings on food.

Where did their seemingly very different works overlap? Where did they diverge? Through the lens of these two books, I considered the different ways we experience food physically, emotionally, and socially.

And it started with the imagined conversation below.

I’ll be sharing each theme over the coming weeks, but today, we’re beginning with the introductory text on cookbook history, an introduction to both books and their authors, and orienting you into the approach I took in writing this work and organizing the exhibit.

Where it makes sense throughout this series, I’ll also connect each to different recipes and essays in this newsletter along with artifacts used in the exhibit.

I’ve also included some reflection/discussion questions: And I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or the subscriber chat!

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And thoughts on the perception of preciousness

For years, I kept chickens and quail (longtime subscribers will be familiar with my travails after a predatory developer sued me for the land my chickens were on, hence why I no longer keep birds).

Keeping birds is a lived lesson in the fluctuating value of eggs: In summer, a glut means that more eggs than you probably know what to do with. And that you end up finding ways to preserve them out of necessity. Whereas in winter a fresh egg is a precious thing: Few, if any, make an appearance, particularly with a small flock like mine was, and so you supplement with eggs you either preserved earlier or buy in from elsewhere.

This moment’s egg prices reminds me of that fluctuation: Whereas in summer it’s easy to take eggs for granted (they’re always there!) in winter, each egg is a surprise and delight. Its rarity makes it more likely to be appreciated, and I think this moment in the US is making many of us appreciate eggs perhaps more than usual.

I wonder if it will also make us more aware of, and eager to improve, food systems that focus on profits and just-in-time logistics over the health and well-being of people, animals, and planet, though I also am admittedly a bit skeptical that it will.

Over the years I’ve preserved eggs in many ways, though I’ve never tried water glassing (a historic method for preserving whole raw eggs that some modern folks swear by and others swear is unsafe). Since the folks who have urged me to not water glass my eggs are food scientists, I’ve deferred to them and chosen other methods.

Many of you have emailed or otherwise reached out asking for ways to preserve eggs, whether freezing or pickling or whatever else, so I made this guide with a few of my favorites so you have them all in one place.

You can find some of my egg preservation guidance in this issue, and this one, both of which are primarily focused on various kinds of pickling beds and brines.

But there are other options, too: I encourage you to try a couple that seem interesting and that maybe expand your relationship to eggs a bit (e.g. eggs made in pickling beds might not be your favorite to eat as-is, but can you slice them and use them as a topping?)

Here are my favorite ways to preserve eggs:

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Plus my recipe for pomegranate seeds in honey

The pomegranate is a food that exists between worlds. This is true in mythology (like story of Persephone) but it also evokes that in-betweenness in our bodies. Or at least in mine. The pomegranate is sensual, yet cerebral, connecting us to the earth in a visceral, blood-colored, and delicious way, while connecting us to the realms of our minds and imaginations. A pomegranate takes presence and intention to prepare and to eat.

The pomegranate is also one of the contenders for the fruit in the Garden of Eden. It was an innocent-looking piece of fruit that gave us the power of knowledge and discernment. While modern Biblical interpretations pretty consistently point to an apple, but other, older interpretations suggest a fig. And very occasionally, someone suggests a pomegranate.
But when I look at a pomegranate, I can see how that fruit would be irresistible: A pomegranate, heavy with juice and hanging from a branch, waiting to be plucked, is a very hard invitation to ignore.

Both the apple (or fig, or even maybe just maybe the pomegranate) of Eden and the pomegranate of Persephone are warnings of the dangers behind lusting after something, but also the inevitability of change that is being forever created through our desires. Their beauty and sweetness beckon us, sparking our desire, but we know that by taking a bite the world will be different than it was before.

In Greek mythology, the pomegranate symbolized fertility and death, a natural choice for the changes in season brought about by Perseophone’s journeys between worlds.

I’ve pulled together this reading list, of works I’m revisiting or visiting for the first time, as I continue to explore the magic of pomegranate (plus, a bonus book about figs).

What are your favorite pomegranate stories, either from mythology or your own life?

To reads and a few have-reads

If you want to explore the magic of pomegranate through eating pomegranates, pomegranate seeds make a frequent appearance in many cuisines including Persian. One book I’m currently going through is Pomegranates and Artichokes: A Food Journey from Iran to Italy.

If you want to learn about the Persephone myth in audio form, check out this recording. Frustratingly, many of the books I’ve picked up over the years about Persephone and Demeter have ended up not fitting the bill for me (no shade on romance novels, which have such a fascinating history and importance of their own, but it’s just not my personal favorite genre, and there seem to be a ton of Persephone romances out there).
I have however been recommended Persephone Unveiled, which (I’m told) is less historical authority on the myth in society and more a retelling of the myth itself. If you’ve read it and have thoughts, let me know!

There are also children’s books on Persephone, including this one for 4-8 year olds that is described as “haunting” (I haven’t read it, but that has me hooked, though 4-8 year old me might not have been).

And of course there’s pomegranate in food as well as myth. For more on Classical foods from Greece and Rome, The Classical Cookbook is a wonderful guide to exploring flavors (see also, Grainger’s latest book on garum).

On my fruit-related to-read list: The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales, this book on the Jewish American crafting movement (which is, admittedly, only very tangentially about pomegranates),

Bonus fig book: Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers (good for fruit lovers in general, as well as for folks curious about the fig and the Garden of Eden myth).

Recipe: Pomegranate Seeds in Honey (canned and refrigerator versions)

This is a recipe from my forthcoming Essential Preserving Handbook, and is a nice partner to the pomegranate recipe I shared with you two weeks ago.

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An overview of the life of an author

Today is book club meeting day, though I have learned in hosting it that scheduling for 2 PM on a Thursday didn’t work for most folks’ schedules. Live and learn!

This presented me a great opportunity, though, because I realized I hadn’t really ever shared with you the journey of writing multiple books over the course of two careers and about a decade and a half of time (you can see all my books here).

So in this talk, I walk through the story of my writing journey, in relationship to books about food (I didn’t talk about my writing in Library Science or my non-book writing about food, not because they aren’t interesting, but because this is a food book club).

There are a lot of things I didn’t cover: Like a day in the life of a professional writer, or the process of getting my book deals (shout out to Lisa and Sally Ekus, and please follow if you aren’t already!)

So if you have questions: I want to hear them! Anything goes: About the books themselves, the writing process, juggling writing and the rest of life, or whatever else.

Watch the video replay below: And please drop your questions in the comments or our subscriber chat!

P.S. if you’re struggling for last minute Valentine’s gifts, an online culinary course, or a workshop or class for a creative spirit you love are great options.

Please let me know when you order if you’d like me to send a custom gift email to make it feel extra special!

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Travels, workshops, and plenty of chances to learn together

This spring is going to be jam-packed in the best way: While last spring was largely about hunkering down with the book manuscript, this spring I’m leaning into lots of workshops and events: So if you’ll be at a conference, please say hi! Or if you want to take a workshop, I’d love to support your creative and/or culinary journey.

Of course, in between all the public-facing stuff there’s naps with cats and nature walks to be had, ferments to make, new ideas to explore (I’ve started writing short stories based on my Our Fermented Lives research. I may share them with you some day…or maybe not).

Here’s what I’m up to the next few months:

Workshops, classes, etc.:

Tomorrow (!) is our Our Fermented Lives book club chat (grab the Zoom meeting details here). Come with your questions and your own fermentation stories to share.

February 24th: the Mycelia Writers’ Coven opens, and we’ve already got an incredible community forming. I created this space after seeing a need for writers to have private, supportive community spaces outside of social platforms,
AND after seeing + receiving many requests for a space that combined practical writing knowledge with magical ritual (but you don’t need to identify to any particular magical tradition to join us). Creative folks from all disciplines are welcome.
Learn more here!
As a bonus, anyone who joins before we open on the 24th also gets Radical Creators for free.

Speaking of which…

Radical Creators, a 21 day sprint for unlocking your next level of creative expansion, opens March 20th. I did a similar program, but for money and business, last year, and it absolutely transformed my relationship to my work.
I realized there was nothing like this for creative professionals (or folks with a dedicated creative practice at all), and also realized how much having a space to dig into new habits and to practice the art of living as the creative person you want to be, in community, for multiple weeks, could really serve people who are stuck and ready to commit to their creative growth.

This program involves one guided meditation and short journaling/reflection per day, plus it includes space for community celebration and support, and deep dives into creativity from me, based on my experience as a creative professional and coach.
I’ve love for you to join us (and it’s like 1/4 the price this week so…that might motivate you too!)

This spring I’m also opening Symbiosis, a 6 month program to grow your creative practice through expansion, grounding and play. I’ve been working on building this out for YEARS and I am so excited about it.
In this program, we explore the symbiotic relationship between our creative ecosystems and the rest of the world, using a monthly expansion activity, a monthly grounding practice, and clear goal setting and community support. It’s the kind of thing that would have absolutely changed my entire trajectory as a creative professional and a person if I’d had a program like this even five years ago.
(You also get free access to Radical Creators with this program, too!)
Sign up here!

And of course, the courses at the Culinary Curiosity School are still going strong: If you’ve been wanting to join one of the self-study classes, or get an intuitive guidance session, this is the time to do it!

On the horizon:

Lots of good stuff coming up at the Culinary Curiosity School this spring and summer, including:
Finding your Food Story (a very deep dive program for food writers, researchers, and storytellers)
Food Writing Playground (an expanded and food-focused version of my popular Writing Playground workshop)
Plus the addition of some new self-study classes like Ferments for Transformation.

I expect both Food Story and Food Writing Playground to sell out pretty early, so grab a seat now if you’re interested in joining us!

I’ll also be reopening a few spots for Hawthorn, a private 1:1 support space for experienced writers facing burnout and looking to reconnect to their work.

As always, paid subscribers get extra discounts on these! Just use your paid subscriber discount code when you check out (or scroll down to the bottom of this email).

Conferences:

Kojicon (February 21st): This virtual conference is an annual favorite. This year I’m speaking on Fermentation and a Sustainable Creative Practice: Using my love of fermentation and fermentation metaphors to give folks a toolbox for making big dream projects happen.
(P.S. if you sign up you can win a giveaway for Fermentative Creation Lab or Ferment + Chill!)

Organic Growers’ School (March): Where I’m presenting a half-day Friday workshop on Preserving Food, Nourishing Self, and Building Community.

MFK Fisher Symposium (April): I’m not speaking, but I am attending, so if you are too, please say hello!

Etc.:

I continue to do book talks and talks and demos on fermentation and on writing (among other things), and I’d love to talk with you if you’d like to host such an event with me.

I’m doing a signing at Organic Growers School conference (see above) on the Saturday, and you can always gets signed copies of my books shipped to you from Charis Books and More in Decatur, GA.

What country am I in?

As I adjust to living on two continents, I’m also adjusting to a workflow that includes scheduling around my bicontinental lifestyle: And a big part of that, which I keep forgetting about, is telling folks roughly where/when to find me.

So, if you’re trying to schedule an event/workshop/etc with me:

I’m in the US until mid-April.
I’ll be in Cork from mid-April to mid-late May.
Then, back to the US!

I’ll be back and forth between the two more frequently after May: I try to schedule my time in each place based on work/life needs, but it is a bit of a juggling act so I appreciate your patience as I get used to the rhythm!

What are you most excited about this Spring?

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A luxurious treat that takes minutes to make

Harissa-Pickled Pomegranate Seeds

Harissa-pickled pomegranate seeds are such a luxurious food. I’ve canned them before (the trick is small jars and a short processing time to keep their texture intact), but I much prefer them as refrigerator pickles.

Try them on labneh or yogurt, with feta and mint, with roasted chickpeas or on salad. They’re truly perfect on just about anything.

I developed this recipe over a year ago for my next book, The Essential Preserving Handbook, but we could all really use a luxurious boost right now: So I’m sharing with you early.

Scroll to the bottom for the recipe, plus a bonus recipe for smoky lime grenadine!

Beyond the Kitchen

Outside of my kitchen, I’ve been preparing for a couple months of whirlwind presenting on fermentation, writing, and more, while traveling to conferences and giving talks online.

You can find me online at Kojicon later this month: where I’ll be talking about building a sustainable creative practice, specifically tailored towards culinary pros who want to make consistent time for their culinary creativity.

I’ll also be presenting with Ashley English at Organic Growers School in WNC next month: We’ll be talking about Preserving Food, Nourishing Self, and Building Community during a half-day workshop.

I’ve also been giving talks on The Fermentation Oracle and Our Fermented Lives here and there: You can buy them online or, get signed copies shipped to you from Charis Books and More (just be sure to ask for a signed copy from them when you purchase).

You can also buy ebooks from Bookshop.org now, which is great news, so if you’ve been looking for Our Fermented Lives as an ebook: You can get it here and support an indie bookstore at the same time.

Recipe: Harissa-Pickled Pomegranate Seeds from the Essential Preserving Handbook

I find the texture of delicate pomegranate seeds can break down when canning, but they do make a truly delicious refrigerator pickle. By balancing pomegranate’s sweet and sour flavor with a sweet and sour brine and a flavor burst of harissa, I have a flavor-packed meal staple to serve alongside rice, roasted vegetables, seafood, and meat (give it a try with roasted brussels sprouts!) The brine is also delicious whisked with olive oil for a simple vinaigrette.

Makes 1 pint

Ingredients

Seeds and juice of 1 pomegranate

1 ½ – 2 tsp harissa (or 1-1 ½ tsp if using fine powder)

Brine:

½ tbsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

½ cup ACV

½ cup water

-Place seeds and spices in a pint jar.

-Whisk brine ingredients together until sugar and salt are dissolved.

-Pour brine into jar to the bottom of the band.

-Screw on lid, allow to pickle overnight in the fridge.

-Lasts 3 weeks or more.

Smoky lime and classic Grenadines

Here’s how I make regular ol’ Grenadine, plus a smoky lime version which is absolutely luscious with mescal or rum. The latter has become a staple: In a home with many, many fruit syrups and other flavorings always within reach, this one has been one of my consistent favorites over the past year.

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On community and the future

First up: Our Food Traditions zine is ready! Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Give it a peek at this link.

Our next zine-making party will be this spring, and I want your feedback about what we cover. Let me know in this poll what you want to see! (If you pick something else, I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments).

Zine parties are casual gatherings, akin to our 1990s-era zine-making parties but held online. They are free for paid subscribers or $10 a piece if you want to sign up without subscribing.

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Our final book club session

This is the fifth and final; installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers.

Our book club includes weekly discussions through the month of January (and the first week of February), plus a live author Q&A session and over 60 pages of never-before-shared material from early drafts of the book, footnotes and rambling historical asides intact.

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

Community and the Future

It’s easy to throw around the word “community” and have folks nod approvingly without really pausing to interrogate what it means for you, and means for you in that context. We all like community, but rarely do we consider it with the intentionality it deserves. One of my goals with this chapter was to really dig into my own interpretation of community, and to consider the different ways we think about community in different contexts.

This meant coming up with a specific framing for understanding “community,” and for me that meant one that fit the context: So micro-scale (microbial communities) and macro-scale (us). I tried to address community on a smaller, localized scale and its influence on fermentation traditions (e.g. passing on a specific variation in kimchi making within your family/town/kinship group) as well as larger collective community contexts (e.g. the impacts of trade, war, tech, etc.)

Preserving stories was also really important for me: and a big goal of this chapter was not just to show what we’ve done before, but to encourage each reader to become an active participant in history by sharing and saving traditions that are meaningful to them.

We’re at an interesting time right now because on the one hand, we still have these traditions and in some ways are better able to preserve and share them than we could in the past, but we also have a lot of fermentation-specific technological advancements. I think we can live in a world where both exist happily and side-by-side because they occupy different roles in our lives, but I also think preserving traditions is critical so we stay connected to our food and to our ancestors.

This week’s bonus material touches on some of this, but also dives into some of the materials I’m asked for most often (like on fermentation and religion). I can’t wait to hear what you think!

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And the many facets through which we view our bodies

This is the fourth installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers.

Our book club includes weekly discussions through the month of January, plus a live author Q&A session and over 60 pages of never-before-shared material from early drafts of the book, footnotes and rambling historical asides intact.

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

Chapter Four: Ferments for Health

When I was writing about health, I ran into some of the same considerations I ran into with flavor: Did I want to provide a distant, objective birds eye view? Or did I want to write something that people feel invested in and that makes them curious about their bodies and their world?

Writing about health in particular introduces a conundrum because you want to make it clear that you are talking about health and medicine but not offering your reader medical advice. This is easier to avoid in a historical discussion than a contemporary one. To use a non-fermentation example, if I’m talking about herbs used to “treat” hysteria (talk about a case in point of sexist medical history), you probably aren’t going to assume that I’m offering you advice for how to fix your wandering uterus.

But when I talk about foods we’re still eating today, and the health benefits we’ve long derived from them, a bit of intentionality is required (as Sandor Katz says, no food is a panacea, ferments included).

I also wanted to include non-Western medical systems, and to discuss how ferments continue to be a part of medicine not just for probiotics. A big theme of the chapter is balance, as well as intentionally considering the lenses through which we view health and the various social and personal contexts undergirding our perspectives.

In our materials for the week, I include the text of a poem that helped me understand our ancestors’ relationship to microbes centuries and centuries ago, as well as an excerpt from another one of my books (Afternoon Tea: A History) that relates to the Our Fermented Lives drafts.

There’s so much to cover here, so let’s go ahead and dive into our resources and questions!

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Improvising new directions with a favorite dish

During my doctoral program, I was introduced to one of my favorite foods, ever.

Tkemali, a Georgian sour plum sauce made from red plums or green plums, is divine, and possibly my favorite topping for eggs. When I received a jar from the wonderful Lela Gibradze while studying for my PhD, I was hooked. But I also struggled to find the green plums to remake it.

The recipes I’ve looked at over the years tend to include fresh herbs like cilantro and/or dill plus garlic, but there’s a lot of variation within the theme of savory and sour plum sauce.

Today, I had a strong craving (and no plums): Nor did I have most of the rest of the ingredients. I wanted a sour, fruity sauce, but without braving the pre-holiday grocery store. So I improvised: Using tkemali as a (very) loose template, then adding a few dashes of the khmeli suneli sent to me by forager and friend Mallory O’Donnell.

Khmeli Suneli is a Georgian spice blend, and while normally an ingredient in the plum sauce, I decided to combine these two gifts from friends to make something new.

The result? I now have another favorite sauce for my eggs, all using ingredients I had easy access to.

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And all the ways our palates shape how we experience the world

This is the third installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers.

Our book club includes weekly discussions through the month of January, plus a live author Q&A session and over 60 pages of never-before-shared material from early drafts of the book, footnotes and rambling historical asides intact.

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

Chapter Three: Ferments for Flavor

There were a lot of directions I could have gone in a chapter on flavor and fermentation. I could have discussed, and indeed I did touch a bit on, things like: the science behind flavors (e.g. the Maillard reaction), our perception of flavor and shifting perceptions of flavor over time, and the relationship between different fermentation processes and ingredients and different flavor profiles.

But I also didn’t want the chapter to feel detached from the reader: In other words, I didn’t want them to just read about how other people experience flavor, and how flavor works from an objective perspective. I wanted them to have a chance to reflect on their own relationship to flavor, too. I hope as you read the chapter, and read the bonus material this week (which is some of my favorite text) it helps you think about the individual, subjective nature of taste (as flavor/as other things maybe too), and to think about your own relationship to the flavors in your world. How do they shape your experiences? Are you seeking out or avoiding certain places/dishes/etc, for example, because of the taste/olfactory experiences they offer? Can you imagine how that might have looked for our ancestors, too?

This chapter also includes one of my favorite poems, which we had to cut but which I’m thrilled to share with you in its original context.

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A book club discussion on what it means to preserve and live seasonally

This is the second installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers.

Our book club includes weekly discussions through the month of January, plus a live author Q&A session and over 60 pages of never-before-shared material from early drafts of the book, footnotes and rambling historical asides intact.

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

Ferments for Preservation

The second chapter of my book deals with fermentation as a method of preservation: Because we tend to think of this attribute of fermentation first when considering its history. But I wanted to encourage readers to think beyond preservation as just an act of lengthening shelf life and supporting food security, but also to think about the concept of preservation generally. What are we preserving when we preserve food, beyond the food itself?

At the beginning of this chapter, I classify ferments into categories based on Steinkraus’ 1997 research. I would be curious to know: Do you classify ferments the same way? What might you add or change?

Since publishing Our Fermented Lives, James Read has also published a paper classifying fermented foods and beverages. What do you think of his classifications? Is there one system or another you like better? Anything you’d add?

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The first installment is here!

We’re starting the new year in this newsletter with a program I’ve been asked to offer again and again, and so at long last here it is: A deep dive-y virtual book club, filled with my first drafts and notes, lots of room for questions, and a live Q&A at the end.

I adore doing this kind of deep exploration in community: It reminds me of some of my favorite moments teaching and taking various college courses, but in particular I love that this format lets us all view a work from our own perspectives and experiences, and the group gets to benefit from the connections you or I draw between ideas that others might not.

I plan to host book clubs like this with other food- and history-focused books, and I would love your recommendations if there’s one you really want to dive into (hopefully we can even get the author in for a talk). Since the community we’ve cultivated here is one that loves exploring the connections between things, is driven by curiosity and a love of food, I’ve decided to call this the Book Club for the Culinarily Curious.

Please let me know your dream book club book in the comments!

If you don’t have a copy of Our Fermented Lives yet, you can snag one from your favorite local bookseller or from Bookshop.

In the meantime, here are the details of this book club:

• This newsletter book club is for paid subscribers only

• In each installment, I send you some of my notes and thoughts on the chapter, plus never-before-shared early drafts of book sections subscribers have asked to see over the years.

• Each installment also includes discussion questions for us to explore in the paid subscriber chat in Substack and in the comments.

• At the end, we have a live Q&A where I answer your questions about the book, about research and writing, etc. You can submit questions ahead of time, if you can’t make it, and it’ll be recorded.

Ready? Keep reading for our first installment, all about ferments for life (and save this email, because it has our Zoom link and schedule for our live book club chat).

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Open to join us on December 29th

Yesterday, I mentioned our zine making party on December 29th:

It’s free for paid subscribers: So if you’re a paid subscriber (thank you!), keep scrolling to grab the link, and save this email so you have it handy on the day.

Want to join, but aren’t a paid subscriber yet?
You can subscribe before 12/29 to unlock the link and supply list at the bottom of this post
OR Venmo/PayPal me $10 to join the class without subscribing.

More details on the zine making party here.

See you on the 29th!

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Plus, a free workshop to dreamweave together for 2025

2024 marks another year when reading, and writing, continue to transform me: subtly (sometimes drastically) shifting who I am and how I see the world.

Many of you who I’ve spoken with this year have had similar transformative experiences. Few of us are the same people we were when 2024 began.

This newsletter offers a few favorite books from the year: And an invitation at the end to collectively dreamweave together in 2025.

A big theme for me this year has been thinking intentionally about what I consume: Like most of us, I’m probably on social media more than I should be, in part because I have four (!) business Instagram, etc. accounts to manage. But I’m on there less, and focused more on posting and connecting rather than scrolling.

I’ve long been intentional about consuming physical products (see my gift guide as an example) and keeping waste as minimal as one feasibly can, but this year I’ve been getting rid of more ‘stuff’ and letting myself live with fewer unnecessary trappings (if you want to buy an RV, let me know. Seriously).

But the biggest shift has been in the information I consume, and how I curate my inner world:

I’ve deepened my daily meditation practice, and I’ve stopped clicking on as many headlines, both of which have done wonders for my sanity. Unless I’m watching with others, I tend to be pretty minimal in my watching/streaming habits, though I have gone through a good number of audiobooks.

Rather than feeling like I need to read every single thing in my various professional fields to stay current, I’ve been cherrypicking a bit more, and saving room for pleasure reading, too.

I’ve also started writing food history-based short stories. Will these ever see the light of day beyond my studio? Who knows. But they bring me a lot of joy (which I’ll talk about in a later newsletter).

Here are some favorite things I’ve read and cooked this year:

An incomplete list of books in food and beyond that I’ve been enjoying this year. See the whole booklist on Bookshop.

What have you been reading this year?

Food Books:

A Season for That: I wrote about this book before on my list of books on enchantment, and it really is a good example of writing, and memoir, as an enchanting read that remains relatable. I’ve long been a fan of Hoffman and his work, and this has only deepened my appreciation.

Bethlehem: Fadi Kattan’s celebration of Palestinian cooking is a masterpiece on its own, and it feels like a glimpse into a private kitchen: Like you’re sitting down with Kattan and learning at the kitchen table, rather than reading a stale recipe.

Chaat: Chauhan’s book is one I turn to again and again, as someone who has a very snack- and grazing-heavy diet. The book’s focus on Indian regional snacks is a nice entry point to learning about regional differences across the country, something I’m admittedly still learning about (and probably always will be: Indian cuisine is a vast subject).

Mayumu: Balinget, as a person, exudes a playful energy that’s evident in this book. I love the ways it sparks my excitement to (re)imagine dessert.

When Southern Women Cook: A book that represents food history, and food storytelling, done right. I appreciate the way Toni Tipton Martin and Morgan Bolling carefully handled the complexities of storytelling that honor, and don’t erase, the many layers of nuance that come with studying women’s stories in this region.
(Be sure to check out page 35 for my essay on salt rising bread).

The Joy of Cooking: Granted, this is a go-to for me most years, but this year in particular as I’ve been writing the Essential Preserving Handbook, I’ve appreciated its straightforward and scientifically-rooted approach to preparing food well.

Holy Food: Ward’s deep exploration of religion’s impact on American diet and history is engaging to read, well-researched, and shows some of the surprising ways religion and food intersect in this country.

Bake Joy: I admittedly do little baking these days, but when I do, I’m leaning more into the playful and experimental side of things, so this book has been a treat.

The Ethnomusicologist’s Cookbook: This is an older book, but one I still love to turn to for fun and inspiration. I’m hoping I can do a paid subscriber potluck based on it next year so, stay tuned!

Mastering the Art of Plant Based Cooking: I love the careful, intentional way Yonan handles vegetables. There’s such a love and tenderness in the way he works, and it’s evident in this book, too. It’s also evident in the contributors he chose to work with, including perennial favorites of mine like Alicia Kennedy. I also contributed several fermentation recipes to this book (it’s currently the only place you can get my recipes for tempeh and miso).

The Fermentation Oracle: Obviously I am very proud of my own book that came out! Buy it at the link, or contact Charis books if you want a signed copy (or a signed copy of Our Fermented Lives).

Other favorite books:

The Human Cosmos: I often choose books in bookstores based on their seeming likelihood to spark a sense of wonder, and nonfiction books that get me curious about the world are always front and center. I picked this one up at Worm Books in Schull not long after it came out, and I’ve been savoring it as a bedtime read.

The Red Tent: Laura, one of my high school teachers, gave me a copy of this book when I graduated (which, like the next book, I loaned out and sadly no longer have). I dove into it eagerly, but hadn’t read it since I was 18. So in the past week, I’ve started listening to the audiobook again in fits and spurts. I appreciate Diamante’s rich storytelling and development of a sense of place.

Women who Run with the Wolves: In keeping with revisiting old gifted books, another high school teacher (Dante) gave me this one when I graduated. I revisit it every few years and always find new gems not only about storytelling and finding stories hidden in plain sight, but also insights for my own journey.

The Alchemist: Coelho’s book is a longtime favorite for many folks, but somehow I hadn’t read it before now. I’m glad I did.

A True Account: I’ve enjoyed Howe’s earlier New England-based historical fiction, and this one with a more nautical theme does a really wonderful job of pulling the reader deeply into the characters’ world. Usually, a book about pirates wouldn’t spark my fancy but with Howe at the helm of a book about a woman who kind of stumbles into piracy? It’s an absolute treasure.

The Lost Bookshop: Last but not least, The Lost Bookshop was the first book I read this year and definitely one of my favorites. It has a lot of things I love (bookstores! history! magic! Dublin!): And while writing about a magical bookstore runs the risk of being fantastical and maybe a bit twee, this book doesn’t go there. It rides the line between sparking the wonder and imagination you’d hope for while still being grounded in the real world.

2025 dreamweaving: A workshop giveaway

2025 is a year when we’re all being called to step fully, and as fearlessly as we can, into ourselves and the work we’re called to do in this world.

It’s not a year for being timid, or hiding our voices (except when we have to for our safety: That’s another conversation).

As part of my own role in that work, I’m giving away two free workshops for paid subscribers: To enter, comment (or email me) with one big dream you have for 2025.

It can be anything you want: Something you want to create, a new habit, a new skill, whatever.

Here’s what I’m giving away:

• One free spot in Bloom, my 8-week program to help writers (any format/genre) build a sustainable writing practice.

• One free spot in the Fermentative Creation Lab, a self-study incubator for fermentation professionals and enthusiasts (whether you make products, write, teach, or whatever else), so you can tap into, and articulate, your biggest goals and dreams, and set goals you can actually reach.

Both include versions of my one year goal setting roadmap, which breaks down your biggest goals into discrete and doable chunks.
I’ve been developing it since about 2019 and it’s what I use to set all my professional goals.

Let’s dreamweave together in 2025!

The giveaway is only for paid subscribers.

If you’re a paid subscriber (thank you!) read to the end for your updated course discount codes for 2025.

As a reminder, the cost of paid subscriptions will go up next year, as we’re adding more good stuff (both content-wise and events).

Paid subscribers get exclusive recipes, essays, and more, plus the ability to comment on every post.

They also get:

Discounts on classes and writing support:

• 40% off every class at the Culinary Curiosity School. This includes self-study classes plus classes with live sessions.

• 40% off every single writing coaching program and self-study class I offer through Roots and Branches. This includes group programs like Bloom.

Additional gifts:

• A friends and family rate for my 1:1 services, including research services or consulting. It even applies to my speaker fees.
  I’ll automatically apply my discounted rate whenever we work together.

• Paid subscribers get occasional bonus content, like digital recipe books or the chance to do live author Q&A sessions. Keep an eye out for this in your email throughout the year.

• Starting in 2025, paid subscribers also get exclusive access to live virtual talks, workshops, and potlucks with myself and special guests.
  
  These aren’t events people can buy separate tickets for: They’re just for you as a thank you for supporting my work. Keep an eye on your email for details on these throughout the year.

• Paid subscribers also get occasional other gifts, like free course giveaways, book/product giveaways, and big extra discounts on classes.

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When there’s so much food to preserve, what do you choose to write about?

As I’ve been slowly poking away at the edits for The Essential Preserving Handbook, I’ve been thinking a lot about framing in food writing.

In this case, the actual visual metaphor of a frame has been useful, because in nearly every case, when we look at a complete landscape, we can’t fit the whole thing inside one discrete frame.

What we choose to center also means something else is being oriented to the side, or cut out completely.

So how do we make those choices with intention?

I have many opinions about this, which you can probably intuit if you’re a longtime reader (e.g. not just including the most obvious/powerful voices, allowing our narratives to be complex and scientifically and historically grounded, etc.)

The frame you choose ultimately shapes the view of your reader, and so as food writers shaping the landscape itself with out words, the frame has to be chosen with intention.

For fellow writers, this is not a groundbreaking statement, but I mention it because it’s important for me as I write to keep in mind the fact that my writing does actually shape worlds in some small (or maybe even big?) way: It informs readers, and it creates a precedent for a certain perspective or idea existing in the world and/or builds on existing precedents in various ways.

In writing The Essential Preserving Handbook, I was faced with the challenge of intentional framing while also trying to be comprehensive (or as comprehensive as you can be in a single volume).

When food preserving contains infinite possibilities, which ones do you put at the center?

My decision boiled down to two things:

-The way I cook

-The way I think readers will use this book

The way I cook is very vegetable-forward. I am an omnivore, but my meat consumption is relatively minimal, though I do eat my share of dairy and fish.

The book covers preserving every type of food, to some extent, including meat. But in my framing, I chose to put meat to the side, for various ecological reasons and because meat preserving is frankly less of a passion of mine than vegetable preserving. If I can cover the basics, point readers towards resources to dive more deeply if they want, and then focus readers on where my talents shine, then I’m doing us all a service and not trying to be an author that I’m not.

The ways my readers cook vary considerably, but from what I’ve experienced over the years many are also cooking with vegetables (though not exclusively) and many are willing to branch out and try new things (a big reason why I founded the Culinary Curiosity School).

Some of you garden, some shop from local farmers, some are local farmers. There’s an emphasis on good quality and preferably locally grown ingredients that I see again and again in my conversations with readers, and as I considered how to frame this book, the preferences you all have shared with me over the years sit front and center.

This book is meant to be used by home cooks and by culinary professionals looking for an overview of preserving and looking to preserve specific ingredients: And honestly, much of what we preserve at the home scale is vegetables (and fruit).

So my vegetable and fruit-forward framing speaks to my interests and helps me best serve my readers. It’s the best of both worlds, right?

But framing has to take something else into consideration: Not just how will the reader use the book (i.e. how to frame the subject matter itself) but how will they use the physical book: In other words, how do I organize my work so that readers can engage with it in the way that I know will serve them best?

In my case, I organized preserving methods by ingredient rather than organizing by preserving technique, cross-referencing each ingredient’s entry frequently to overviews of techniques.

So for example, corn points to freezing and canning guidelines outlined at the start of the book, but also includes recipes unique to corn (like sour corn, a personal favorite).

Now, as I edit, I’m revisiting all of this and refining: And thinking of that frame, and imagining how specifically my readers will use the book really helps. It’s always helpful, but with a many-hundreds-of-pages tome? It’s priceless.

P.S. If you’re a fellow food writer, or a writer of any subject matter who wants to write with me, I’m offering two sliding-scale, pay what you can spots in Bloom, my 8 week writing workshop happening in early 2025.

Shoot me an email (hello@root-kitchens.com) if that would help support your work!

I’d love to see as many of my fellow writers who are also readers in there, too: use the code WRITERFRIENDS for 20% off (paid subscribers, scroll down for a reminder of your 80% discount code).

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Plus 80% off all classes for paid subscribers

Earlier this week, I shared a gift guide with you with some ideas for food-focused gifts that aren’t necessarily food.

After writing it, I wanted to do more: I wanted to share something that reflects appreciation for subscribers in a way that’s meaningful and fun. And, hopefully sparks more conversations between us here and elsewhere about food, place, history, and fermentation.

So with that in mind, here’s what I came up with: a short and sweet list of things I am giving to you, dear newsletter subscribers, this holiday season.
Some of these I mentioned in my gift guide, but some are new, so keep reading even if you read that guide a few days ago.

And, like I said in my gift guide, I’m happy to make recommendations to help you find the perfect gift (whether or not that recommendation is for one of my classes, though I highly recommend those!)

Class giveaways

I’ve decided to offer three of these, just for newsletter subscribers (paid or free):

• All class purchases enter you in a drawing for free entry to Finding your Food Story.
  This is in addition to the other giveaway I already have going, for 2-for-1 entry to the class (in other words, buying the workshop means you, or a friend, could attend as well). So technically there are four giveaways.
  

• AND, all class purchases also enter you into a second giveaway: a free class (or reading) of your choice. Anything in the course catalog that strikes your fancy.
  I’m giving away two of these!

I’ll be choosing and contacting winners after the new year!

Other gifts for newsletter subscribers:

• All subscribers get 50% off everything with the code GIFT.
  This includes the Culinary Curiosity School’s entire course catalog
  Sales during this season help support writers and small business owners significantly through the coming months, so if you’re looking for a Black Friday deal, start with your smaller businesses (again, happy to make recommendations!)

• All subscribers also get 50% off all writing and creative coaching, and self-study courses, through Roots and Branches. Just use the code SOLSTICE.

• Paid subscribers get 80% off everything in the Culinary Curiosity School catalog AND 80% off everything from Roots and Branches, too.
  If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll see your discount code at the end of this email!

• $30 mini-readings just for newsletter subscribers who book by December 10th
  Get one for you, one for a friend, or whomever. They’re a great, fun way to find some clarity during the holiday season. Visit my gift guide for details on how to book.

• Paid newsletter subscriptions are 30% off. If you’ve been wanting to join, this is a great chance. I’ll be raising the price next year as I bring in some more experiences to the mix, like book clubs, virtual potlucks around unexpected themes, and occasional free classes.

There are books, of course, too: my latest, The Fermentation Oracle, is 20% off with the discount code ORACLE if you order from Hachette.

And, like I said in my gift guide, signed copies of Our Fermented Lives are available from Charis Books & More in Decatur, GA (they ship!)

Thank you for another wonderful year of supporting my work, for enlightening and fun conversations in the comments and all the other places we interact, whether on social media or in person at a conference.

It’s such a joy to write for you, and I’m very grateful for each of you and your presence here.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

P.S. In our coming newsletters, I’ve got a few fun things coming up, including how I choose fermentation containers, and the story of bog butter (and my obsession with bog butter). Stay tuned!

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Here’s my answer (plus a roadmap to help you on your journey)

The question I get asked more than just about any other, when I say I am a food historian, is “how do I become a food historian?!”

So, I wrote a little non-exhaustive guide that might be useful.

First things first: As with any term, labeling myself as a food historian is an imperfect science because (as fellow historian-but-technically-not-a-historian KC Hysmith notes here) my PhD isn’t in the field of History.
My PhD is in Library & Information Science, and while I used historical research methodologies and studied historical topics for both my Master’s thesis and my dissertation, not everyone would label me as a historian because my PhD isn’t in that field. But, many people would: And I refer to my work as food history when I’m studying, well, the history of food.

I’ve talked a lot about my work, and my path to this work before, so I’m focusing this particular guide outward on discussing food history work in more general terms: But I’m happy to answer your specific questions about my work, too!

You can also read this really wonderful interview on my historical research practice with Contingent Magazine from earlier this year.

So, whatever you label me, keep reading to see a bit more about my historical work: And how working with food history might look for folks like me who are not specifically studying food-focused topics at a History department at a university.
If that’s you, you probably have a handle on your research area and the kind of work you want to do after graduating: But maybe this guide will give you a bit of inspiration, too!

First of all, what is food history?

Food history is the study of, well, the history of food (I know, surprise): But I use the term broadly to define not only culinary history (the history of foodstuffs, and of cooking and eating), but also the many histories that connect with food. From this perspective, there is a food story within whatever historical work you’re doing (labor history, women’s history, history of a given geographic area, etc). As KC Hysmith says, every story is a food story.

If you want a good lay of the land of what food history is, how this area of inquiry developed, and what food history looks like today, I LOVE this overview from Sarah Wassberg Johnson.

Food Studies, as a discipline, is more broad: Associate Professor Emily Contois says Food Studies “examines the relationship between food and all aspects of the human experience, including culture and biology, individuals and society, global pathways and local contexts.”

This means people working within this area can be approaching the topic of food from many different angles: and be studying many different subjects. But what I love about our work is, even if we’re studying very different things, we are still able to share ideas and learn from each other’s approaches. It’s (in my experience) a very generative, dynamic field.

There is so much more I could say about Food Studies and studying the history of food, but a couple key takeaways are that it’s work that’s often interdisciplinary, and researchers who study food (whether at a university or in other capacities) often come to the work from outside the field of history. They might, for example, be in Media Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Medicine, Art History, Museum Studies, or Library Science (among many other things).

Here are a few resources to dive in a bit further (and please share your favorites in the comments, if you have them!):

• The Association for the Study of Food and Society is a great resource for learning about the interdisciplinary study of food and society and find resources (like graduate programs).

• The Food Timeline’s food history research tips.

• The Oxford Symposium includes an in-person symposium plus virtual programming throughout the year, focused on food research.

• There are various regional and local culinary history groups, though some also offer virtual programming. See for example the Culinary Historians of New York.

• Johnson’s article (above) includes some good resources, too.

• Check out food-related organizations connected to your interest areas or geographic focus, which might have educational resources plus events like conferences you can attend: The Southern Foodways Alliance is a good example.

Whatever you do, find trustworthy resources that share good research but also research that really excites you: Read their work, learn from them, and follow your excitement and interest to see where it leads.

What can you do as a food historian?

For researchers who are university trained, there’s academic research and teaching, of course, but also depending on your interests and your training you could also work in any number of areas (and not all of them need a PhD, though some, like librarian jobs, may require a Master’s degree). Here is a non-exhaustive list:

• Historic interpreting (like at a living history museum) and cultural heritage work generally (which can include the next two bullet points to varying degrees: Many cultural heritage-related positions involve wearing a lot of hats).

• Caring for food-related collections in libraries and archives, or with collections at another institution (like an art museum or house museum).

• Outreach, programming, and exhibition design: This could be with, say, a library or museum, but could also happen through other community and cultural organizations. You might do community programs (talks, events, etc.) as well as exhibits.
  Food programming at museums can go so many amazing directions: A longtime favorite of mine is the Tenement Museum in New York City (here’s an interviewbetween Sarah Lohman and Anya von Bremzen, who have both done fantastic programming at the museum). You might also work at a food-focused museum in some capacity (one of my favorites is the Butter Museum).
  I offer some more ideas about programming below, and I’ll be sharing more information about food-related exhibits with paid subscribers in early 2025.

• Writing: Writing makes up a lot of my current work, and is a good choice once you have an established niche (like mine in fermentation and food preserving: My other niche was English food history but I’ve not stayed quite as engaged with it in recent years). You might stick just to your niche or, if you’re like me, you might write about related topics too (see for example: this newsletter!)
  I talk a lot more about this in my class Finding your Food Story (which starts next year, it’s still wild to me it’s almost 2025), and there are other resources out there too (like Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter workshop).

• Consulting: While consulting comprises a pretty small chunk on the pie chart of my work, I do still do some consulting (for example, when a filmmaker needs input on set design or a script, or when a private client needs research services for whatever reason). This work is primarily referred to me by word of mouth, though I also list my services (but not my prices, which vary by project) on Root’s website.

• Education: Teaching is a big part of my work, too, and I usually designing virtual courses and teaching online, which helps me serve more students (who come to me from around the world). In-person programming is lots of fun too: And is a chance to combine hands-on activities (like sauerkraut making or drawing) with historical instruction.

• Other interdisciplinary work: The study of food intersects with A LOT of other fields, so you might be interested in food history and also work in (for example) archaeology, anthropology, government policy, or nutrition.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, though: Food history can connect with so many other career paths! If you have woven food history into a type of work not listed here, I’d love to hear about it!

Whatever you do, start by identifying not only what you want to focus on, whether that’s a time period, or topic, or region, but then really get clear about why it matters to you.

That ‘why’ will help guide you towards the work that feels meaningful and aligned, and makes it easier to spot opportunities that align with your purpose behind your work (and pass on those that don’t).

If you’re in a position that involves public outreach, also think critically about who in the community is currently being served by your work, and who might be interested or find value in your work, but who you haven’t yet reached out to or who otherwise might not have access to what you offer.

If you want to learn more about my approach to outreach, I wrote about it here, and here on my now-archived (but still available to read) library blog.

Here are a few outreach examples from my life in special collections (rare books and archives). Not all are food-related but they give you an idea of the breadth of possibilities:

·      teaching classes to incarcerated scholars in a local prison (I partnered with Common Good, an Atlanta-based educational organization who are amazing and do critical work). I also taught calligraphy (here, and here).

·      a rare books and beer pairing event with Homestead Atlanta.

  Bringing rare books to low income senior housing around Atlanta for residents who weren’t able to leave and go engage with cultural programming.

·      Exhibitions and programs focused on interaction rather than just walls of text next to exhibit objects (think pieces of vellum folks could touch, rather than just seeing vellum behind glass: You can purchase vellum from bookbinding supply companies).
If you want to learn more about how I design exhibits, I’ll be sharing my process, specifically for culinary exhibits, with paid subscribers early next year.

There are tons of other examples and ideas out there in the world, too, depending on your interests and who you’re trying to reach!

Networking with folks in emerging museum professionals groups, in library and archive professional organizations, or state, local, and regional organizations is a great way to make connections for collaborative programming and get feedback on ideas.

A few favorite food history folks

There are way more people than I could ever fit on a single list, but here are a few examples of people out in the world working with and talking about the stories behind our food in interesting ways:

Michael Twitty has, for the decade or so I’ve known him (and before) been a tireless advocate for preserving and sharing African American food stories and establishing the link between Southern food and African food. He writes books, does media appearances and educational work, and does historic interpretation to help people understand the lives of enslaved cooks. His interpretive work, and his writing, are incredibly powerful: And if you’re looking to do work that centers the history of an oppressed and marginalized group, his work can serve as an inspiration and information.

Sally Grainger studies ancient Rome, and like most food historians, practices making the foods she studies as part of her research (which, I think, is a critical part of understanding a food). That theory-meets-practice approach applies to the work of everyone on this list, and you’ll see lots of it the more you dive into food history, see for example Ken Albala’s experiments: Not all strictly historical dishes, but all informed by his research and interests).

KC Hysmith is, like me, a PhD who, rather than going the academic path, has focused her work on writing about food.

A few other favorites: William Rubel, who studies bread in its many forms, Farrell Monaco, who does edible archaeology focusing on the Mediterranean, Toni Tipton-Martin, whose work highlights and honors invisible Black cooks, Casey Corn, host of Recipe Lost & Found, and Adrian Miller, the Soul Food Scholar, who writes and speaks on soul food and whose speaking page is a great example of framing the “what” and “how” of your work for people who might potentially hire you to speak for them.

Again, this is a super-not-at-all-exhaustive list: But just gives you a sense of a little bit of the work being done around food history.

If you have a favorite food historian, please share in the comments!

I hope this guide inspires you to explore the connections between history and your work: And shows you that food history can be woven into a number of career paths.

If you’re already doing food history and want to share about your work in the comments, I’d love to hear it: How are you weaving history into the work you do?

If you want to dive way deeper into your own journey as a food writer and historian, Finding your Food Story is the way to do it: And it’s a 2-for-1 class until December 31st.

Finding your Food Story combines how-to information on conducting research, plus lots of activities that help you identify your own niche, and, most importantly, why you care about that work and what you want other people to get out of it.

It’s a multi-month, deep dive space that has lots of room for self-study with our resource library, and opportunities for community and connection through live meetings and a dedicated virtual conversation space.

I also give everyone who stays engaged through the whole workshop period free gifts: Some worth hundreds of dollars, like 1:1 consulting sessions and private readings, plus free access to other classes.

If you join before December 31st you get some really sweet extra gifts, too:

• 2-for-1 classes: Everyone who preorders Finding your Food Story in 2024 gets free access an extra class. You get your choice of Ferment and Chill,Rooted in Place, or Creative Cooking Playground. 

• You get entered into a drawing to win an extra, free spot in the class: Which means a friend can join you for free (or, if you’re giving it as a gift, you can join for free).

There isn’t another workshop like this anywhere out there: I specifically designed it to bring in elements of my academic teaching experience (assignments are optional though!), and my more reflective, journaling, intuitive-focused work (like I do with 1:1 clients in Roots and Branches).  

Use the code CURIOSITY for 40% off the preorder price (which is $200 off regular price).

That discount code works for every single Culinary Curiosity School class: Which are a unique, clutter-free, and fun gift for the holidays (perfect for people who want experiences, not more stuff).
Plus, you’re supporting a small business (and like I said previously, I’ll even make you a custom gift card to give your giftee. Details here).

And if you’re a paid subscriber, keep reading past the paywall for a sweet little extra discount for you.

Thank you, thank you, for letting me be a part of your own food story!

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Booze-free and boozy versions of a historic holiday staple

Psst: A holiday gift idea for you:
How about combining a copy of The Fermentation Oracle with a class or meditation? You can take 20% off both with the code ORACLE (the code for the book discount only works on Storey’s website, not on that other big box one).

If you’re looking for another read or listen as you mix up your cherry bounce, check out my interview with Wisconsin Public Radio from last week.

Cherry Bounce

I adore cherry-flavored things: And preserving cherries when they’re in season during the summer means I can enjoy their deep red hue and rich flavor when it’s cold out and I’m particularly in the mood for that.

Drinking cherry bounce, to me, tastes like being wrapped in a heavy- to medium-weight red velvet cape then relaxing on a slightly overstuffed couch (remember my synesthesia? This is an example of that in action).

I’m not the only one who loves it: The drink has actually been around, and enjoyed, for centuries in the US. Traditionally made with brandy, I made a nonalcoholic version while writing my last book: And I love it just as much as the boozy one.

Grab the last of those cherries from the grocery store, and you can have this drink ready just in time for holiday meals.

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Some favorites for root vegetables, quince, and more

It’s fall.

This year has been a lot. Lots of good, and lots of, well…lots.

The fall is when we begin to take stock, to look at our storehouses and peek into our cupboards and assess the harvest of the year, and while this year, and this week in particular, has been a pins and needles affair, the pleasures of the year are what I’m leaning into.

I talk a lot about pleasure and gratitude being a way to help us navigate everything from the biggest community upsets to our own personal triumphs.

I’ve been finding pleasure in seasonal food, which is a surprise to no one: and this round up of recipes features old favorites like fire cider and quince marmalade, plus new favorites for root vegetables that are a sneak preview from my next book.

I hope you make and enjoy them for your cool weather, short day meals. And as each is an act of tending to myself, I’d love to hear how you’re tending to yourself in this season, too.

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A snippet from my early drafts

This is the second installment in my series where I share first drafts, footnotes, typos, and run-on sentences intact, of Our Fermented Lives.

You can subscribe here or, for those of you who don’t want to send your $ through Substack, you can subscribe from my website or on Patreon, which will give you the same benefits.

Our Fermented Lives book club: On the history of cheese

Today, we’re diving into the world of cheesemaking: I pulled these notes out of my larger drafts to add a bit of historical background to the Essential Preserving Handbook (which I’m currently writing), though ultimately I’ll be distilling that history into a very general paragraph or so for the handbook so we can focus our attention on the cheesemaking process itself.

Read on for cheese! And please ask me questions in the comments about process and product here.

A fun note:
For this series going forward, I have compiled whole documents of draft material for you, plus book club-style discussion questions and activities.

You’ll be getting those once this next book is in!

For now, and the next several months, I’m focusing my attention on sharing the notes I’m pulling out of my drafts as part of my research and writing for my next book. It’s really fun to go back and play with and learn from old writing as I create new work.

This is one small taste of everything I wrote on cheesemaking, so if you have an area you want me to dive into more, I want to know!

If you want to ask me your specific questions about how I use content across projects (without veering into the territory of self-plagiarism or derivative work), I’m also happy to answer those.

Now, on to cheese!

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An Essay on our networked lives

How might our sense of self shift, if everything were at the center?

I wrote this very stream-of-consciousness essay during a session of Writing Playground this summer, in response to one of the prompts I created for the workshop.

Mycelial networks are fascinating, offering lots of space for exploration as well as rich metaphors for our own lived experience (Sophie Strand’s writing offers some excellent examples like this, and this).

I like this flowing, playful kind of writing because I can just let my pen play across the page, and I also find some of my greatest insights in doing so. In this particular case, my mind wandered to the concepts of collective consciousness and interconnection.

Since I’m a food writer who also thinks a lot about natural systems (and who ferments food literally every day) my mind immediately went down a microbiological and mycological rabbit hole.
What I emerged with was a prelude, of sorts, plus a short essay.

I’ve long thought of collective consciousness in mycelial, microbial terms, but have started teasing it out a bit more during my early morning writing sessions. This is something that I’ll continue to refine, and further define, as I work on a couple new projects (I’m adding more ‘stuff’ to my Mycelia writing group beyond our meetings, for example, but there are other TBA things in the hopper, too).

I hope you enjoy!

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On remembering a culinary language I don’t often speak

This is the second installment of our Our Fermented Lives book club: A series for paid subscribers where I share my first drafts, footnotes, run-on sentences, and all, and answer questions about the research process and the book’s contents.
It’s an opportunity to dive deep into never-before-seen drafts and to have the chance to have access to an author in a deep, ongoing way.

I want to hear your requests, too: What topics do you want to see first drafts of? Let me know in the comments!

And, stay tuned for some future installments that will include book club-style discussion questions, a live Q&A with me, and more.

Over the last few months, I’ve been working on the chapter of the Essential Preserving Handbook that I’ve been most intimidated by: Preserving animal proteins.

I feel pretty comfortable with fish and dairy, and particularly with making basic fresh cheese and making yogurt and cultured butter. I even wrote a modern adaptation of the pickled oyster recipe mentioned in The Big Oyster.

But what about meat?

I do eat meat, but honestly not a ton, so preserving it isn’t often at the top of my priority list (though I have done it), particularly now that I no longer raise my own birds. This month has been a crash course both in remembering techniques I’d forgotten and infilling my own knowledge by solidifying my understanding and practice of techniques like curing: And it requires me to look to many knowledgeable sources like Meredith Leigh (whose books here and here are great resources for beginners and experienced folks alike).

As part of recovering and expanding my meat preserving knowledge, I turned back to my early drafts of Our Fermented Lives, and remembered one thing I found fascinating about researching global meat fermentation traditions, which was the language used to describe preserved meats.

As meat requires raising animals, it also intersects with agricultural histories and histories of land use (e.g. common land in Britain), and the techniques of preserving meat also overlap with techniques for preserving fish. There’s lots to unpack, so I’ve added in a few sub-headings to make it easier to navigate.

Here’s the first draft of “preserving meat” my first draft of Chapter 2 (Ferments for Preservation):

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Recipes to honor this fruit from pit to peel

Before we get started…

My latest piece, part two of my series on wayfinding through the history of the cookbook, is out in Mold Magazine. Give it a read here!

Now on to mangoes:

A ripe mango is truly one of the greatest treats: and for the dedicated among us, when mangoes go on sale or a neighbor has a bumper crop, we can’t resist stocking up. If you find yourself with six mangoes (or more), you might be hungry for ideas beyond fresh eating.

Here’s how I use every part: peels, pits, and all.

For more mango goodness: Check out the mango coriander recipe in my new book, The Fermentation Oracle. It is, hands down, one of my very favorite ways to enjoy a ripe mango.

And be sure to fill out this form for your free preorder gift once you order!

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Plus my favorite ways to bring the magic of trees into your kitchen

To see all the books on this list on Bookshop, head to this link.

I am a lifelong lover of forests. And like any love that expands across decades, there is a depth that accompanies that breadth.

Over time, my knowledge of the “how” of forests has expanded to accompany the magic of experiencing a forest: I now know, for example, that the soil of the forest floor is as important to making the forest well, a forest, as the trees are.

This reading list is a small snapshot of my love of forests: Beginning at the forest floor and moving up through the canopy, before reflecting on the future of forests and our role within it.

The forest floor

The soil of the forest floor is teeming with life.

In just 1 tsp of healthy soil, you’ll find more microbes than there are people on Earth. Some of these microbes are the same ones we use to ferment our food: A practice that may have contributed to the development of our frontal lobes and that has dramatically shaped how we eat over millennia.

Mycelial networks spread out across the floor of the forest, between the trees and plants: Most famously described by Suzanne Simard, who discusses this unfolding in her scientific work and elsewhere, including her memoir, Finding the Mother Tree, that follows her relationship to forests, and the key moments that led her further down the path towards her work that would change how we view and understand the soil beneath our feet.

Mycelial networks share information between trees as well as nutrients, showing a sense of collective strategizing, resource sharing, and real-time adaptability that we might not associate with beings who live their lives standing in one place.

And the magic of these networks highlights intelligence that we tend to reserve for our own species (or maybe, if we’re feeling generous, to mammals, but never to plants): Ones like continuous care for offspring as they grow. Our understanding of these networks continues to grow and to deepen into the public consciousness thanks to authors like Merlin Sheldrake and to research by Monica Gagliano and others.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the shape and function of these networks mirrors other more familiar networks in nature, including our own nervous systems, that we’ve become fascinated with them.

Of course, this unfurling and branching is part of the roots of our forest’s trees and plants, too: It’s a shape that speaks to sturdiness and connection, to depth and expansion, perhaps to understanding ourselves as part of something bigger than just us as individuals (for those who have worked with me in other capacities, this was part of the inspiration for how I chose the names for Root and Roots + Branches).

The Understory

Ferris Jabr’s 2020 interview with Simard underscores the fact that moving from soil to trees is not a clear delineation: Rather than discrete categories, it’s an interconnected map. Each area of the forest being a single node, rather than the nexus, of the landscape. So as we move to the understory, it’s wise to bear Simard’s comments in mind:

“An old-growth forest is neither an assemblage of stoic organisms tolerating one another’s presence nor a merciless battle royale: It’s a vast, ancient and intricate society. There is conflict in a forest, but there is also negotiation, reciprocity and perhaps even selflessness.

The trees, understory plants, fungi and microbes in a forest are so thoroughly connected, communicative and codependent that some scientists have described them as superorganisms. Recent research suggests that mycorrhizal networks also perfuse prairies, grasslands, chaparral and Arctic tundra — essentially everywhere there is life on land. Together, these symbiotic partners knit Earth’s soils into nearly contiguous living networks of unfathomable scale and complexity. “I was taught that you have a tree, and it’s out there to find its own way,” Simard told me. “It’s not how a forest works, though.””

When I talk with others about forests, I tend to find they focus on the trees or, increasingly, also talk about the health of the soil. But the understory plants and smaller understory trees? Often overlooked, and underappreciated.

The understory makes me think of the magic hidden in plain sight: An opportunity to pause and look more closely and to truly observe what we are seeing.

Where I live in Georgia, our forests are filled with a dizzying variety of understory plants as well as overstory: Making some forests almost a solid wall of green in certain seasons. The shaded world of the understory contains its own magic that simply can’t exist in the full sunlight: Perhaps just as the parts of ourselves we keep hidden in the shadows contain their own magic if we’re willing to access it.

We often think of shade plants as primarily being a bunch of leaves: But the shade contains more treasures for those willing to pause and look. The pawpaw is delicious magic: The flavor of place that also tastes, surprisingly, like the flavor of places with very different ecosystems.

Part of the magic of the understory is that its members participate in the forest community in a way that’s essential, but not towering: A reminder that our contributions to our own networks are essential whether or not we’re the biggest or most visible person in the room.

On my to-read list is the book Understories, about the stories beneath the main narrative of a story, and I’m curious to read it because in forest terms this feels so appropriate for the role of the understory as well as its name: The story underneath the larger, more visibly present part of the narrative (in this case, the overstory): the under story, then, may not be center stage, but without it, the larger story of the forest simply could not exist.

The Overstory

The overstory is where giants live. The trees that tower over us on our hikes and shelter our homes. The trees that feed us and our

The overstory makes me think of the ways our language shapes our understanding of the forest: The words we choose, unconsciously or not, may be part of our under story, but become so interwoven with the main event that, like our forest understory, the two are inextricable.

I love to be transported by Robert MacFarlane’s writing, and in Landmarks, he explores the language of place, both how the choices we make in how we describe place and what aspects of it we highlight or ignore, but also how place shapes our language.

Like the understory and overstory, the words we use and the places we are become interwoven and that bond is strengthened or diminished by how deeply our words remain rooted in the physical spaces where we experience them.

In Rooted, Lydia Lynn Haupt encourages us to consider the term kith rather than kin when describing the natural world, as kith offers the possibility of intimacy rather than just relatedness. Rather than relatives we see on holidays and otherwise ignore, each member of our wild world is respected and their agency in the world recognized.

But because of our intimate connection, they are being we turn towards out of love: Like the family member or friend you text first thing when anything noteworthy happens, or the friend whose company you relish and look forward to. Rather than nature being “over there,” allowing ourselves a deep, intimate connection reminds us that we are nature. That the interconnections of the forests are here, too.

The Overstory is an experience of language’s connection to place, and our connection to ecosystem, in a narrative structure I find absolutely compelling. Without giving too much away, I appreciate that the actual movement of the narrative in the book mimics the mycelial network of a forest: Showing bits of hyphae spreading between storylines, but the layout of the forest itself is unclear until the end.

And speaking of connections, we humans also love trees and forests as metaphors for other non-tree things (though in this case, often made of trees): I enjoy climbing around on the various branches of Ann Willan’s Cookbook Tree of Life.

A forest can be many things and exist in many places: I always associated forests with mountains as a child, growing up in the Rockies, but now I know forests exist within many environments and intersect with many species and communities of species, including our own. Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood remains a beloved favorite, weaving memoir with the ecology of place, anchored to the story of species emblematic of place: in this case, the longleaf pine.

Like Simard, the memoir maps an unfolding relationship to place, and of how place shapes the trajectory of our lives. And how even the memories of a changed and changing place (such as those longleaf forests, now almost a rarity in the region) can shape us for our entire lives. That’s the power of a forest. And the power of our relationship to the beings within them.

The Forested Future

When we take a birds-eye view above our forest, we can ask what the future looks like for forests? What magic do we find by connecting with the forest? And what losses, as in the case of the American Chestnut, tower over us and demand our attention?

A thriving future is an interconnected one: And we are in a moment that asks us to radically reimagine what that looks like and means. In recent months, I’ve felt anxiety about the liminal yet tumultuous nature of this moment: Something far from unique to me. You’ve probably felt it in some shape or form, too.

Something shifted when I let myself feel the fear of old systems breaking down or changing, but also let that fear also step aside for excitement: Because I’m here, as you are, at a time where we get to participate in building what’s coming next.

You know how I talk about us being a living bridge between the traditions of the past and the not-yet-birthed world of the future? We’re living it, y’all, big time and in real time.

Part of shaping those systems is an opportunity to reimagine our relationship with what’s already here: Maybe building something new isn’t starting from the ground up. Most of it is returning to appreciation of, and connection with, what we’ve taken for granted.

There is a need to listen to, and learn from, Indigenous perspectives on land as partner rather than land as resource. And listen and learn also means acknowledging how we all fit within that system: Rather than “listening and learning” as an extractive, performative act. This includes rethinking our perspective of the wild (and each other) as “other” and wilderness as “over there” (as my friend Jeffery Darensbourg tells me, “wildnerness is a colonial concept.” You can read more about colonialism and wilderness here).

So what forested future are we building? Perhaps one where we journey with and listen to the plants themselves, as Maria Rodale does. Perhaps we’ll view our forests as social, vital spaces in their own right rather than simply our own recreational spaces or places to extract resources. Maybe, if we slow down and listen to the wisdom at all the levels of the forest, we’ll remember their magic, and that we’re a part of it.

Recipes: Cooking with the magic of trees

You probably already work closely with trees in your kitchen, perhaps without being aware of it: from aromatic nutmeg nuts and mace (the spicy, fragrant webbing that surrounds the nutmeg itself), to warming cinnamon (which is a bark), to pecans or any of the other cultivated nuts we love to eat (though pecans may be my favorite).

But there are some ways to expand this practice to work with trees that are closer to home. Here are my favorites:

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Here are four of my favorites

Welcome to Process Pieces, a series for paid subscribers that explores my writing and cooking processes and the lessons I learn from examining my creative journey as a food writer.
I’d love to hear from you too: The comments are open for you to talk about your own processes as a cook and creator. I hope you enjoy!

Pickling and salt curing are two of my favorite ways to preserve eggs, as they offer a simple, accessible, and delicious way to preserve your eggs that results in some decadent ready ingredients to use in later meals.

Most Americans think of preserved eggs as, essentially, eggs pickled in a vinegar brine, but the truth is that there are so many other processes out there, and just like any culinary endeavor, the results of those processes can be varied to suit your larger cooking practice and tastes.

Whole eggs are, in most cases, hard boiled then peeled prior to being plopped in a jar of brine or rolled in a pickling medium. But, for every rule there’s an exception, and you can cure raw eggs too: cured egg yolks remain one of my very favorite ways to instantly add richness to a dish.

Here are three of my favorite ways to preserve your eggs: All are simple, packed with flavor, and offer a savory addition to your favorite meals.

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My first-ever share of the complete research drafts from my book, footnotes and all

Our Fermented Lives is, without doubt, one of the things I’m most proud of in this life. And, like many food history books, only about 1/10th (ok maybe like 1/4) of the first drafts made it into the final version.

I’ve been asked to share my first drafts on many occasions: these are unedited, deep divey, full of footnotes, and much more academic in tone than the final. They are kind of a different beast in some ways, but a beautiful, complementary one. And so I’ve decided to do it.

As the author of this newsletter, and the book, I’m in the perfect position to share the drafts exactly in the way I want to.

This is the first installment of the Our Fermented Lives book club for paid subscribers, which I’ll add to monthly. Rather than buying my book (though, please do!) and going through chapter by chapter, this is a chance for you to interact with early versions of the work, see the footnotes for each piece of research in place within the text, and for those want to go deeper into the subject and have the chance to ask me questions about either the drafts themselves or the research.

One friend referred to it as my grimoire of fermentation history, which speaks to the magic of both fermentation and writing as practices. But ultimately, the power in this work comes from sharing and conversation: An inherently communal act, fermentation is made more powerful by our collective study and discussion.

I’ve lightly edited here and there for clarity: And I really want to hear what topics you want me to share about first. So please, tuck on in, ask me questions, and use this as a launch pad for your own research and culinary projects.

In the future, we’ll also have discussion questions and a live Q&A (and whatever else we decide).

Today, we’re starting with a whirlwind tour of grains.

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A reading list for eating plants, and thinking about plant-based food

Plus, my recipe for grilled veggie salsa!

For many years, I was a vegetarian: Though technically never vegan, at times my diet would tend almost towards that end of the scale. But it turns out I love cheese just a little too much. Even as a kid, I dabbled in vegetarianism, and have never really felt drawn to big slabs of meat as a go to meal option, save for the very occasional exception.

These days, I’m an omnivore, though I still eat mostly a vegetarian diet. There are a number of environmental and ethical reasons I could cite, but ultimately and perhaps selfishly, what makes it easy to stick with those convictions is that I really enjoy eating plant-based foods.

I find such delight in cooking with fruits and vegetables, and feel like they offer me so much more variety and possibility than when I cook with meat at the center of the plate.

We tend to treat building more vegetables into our diets as a chore, perhaps a leftover tendency from many folks’ childhoods where vegetables were tagged as healthy and as such, something kids had to be forced to eat (my parents never really did this, from what I recall: The vegetables were just there, as part of the meal, so I didn’t feel any reason to resent or resist their presence).

But I love Mollie Katzen’s approach to vegetarian eating that she weaves throughout her career as an author: Essentially, to celebrate vegetables as they are.

Rather than masking them or treating them as a substitute to meat, why not let vegetables be vegetables?

This list includes some of my very favorite books from the world of plant-based eating and thinking. I’d love to hear yours in the comments, too!

In Praise of Plants: A Reading List

• Joe Yonan is a prolific author of some of my most beloved veg-focused cookbooks (like Cool Beans), and also one of the genuinely kindest people you will ever meet.

  
  Be sure to preorder his latest, Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking, which is an absolute treasure trove of recipes and information, and includes my recipes for tempeh and white miso.

• Mollie Katzen’s books were my first exposure to cookbook writing that was explicitly, and unapologetically, plant-based. The beautiful illustrations in tandem with the very intimate, familiar recipes is the format that inspired my design decisions for Rooted in Place.

  
  Katzen’s writing has always had an air of comfort about it for me: The food tastes like foods I grew up eating, the recipes feel like I naturally tend to cook, and she strikes a good balance of clear guidance and intuitive creation.

  
  My first Katzen book was The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, gifted to me by my dear friend Justin almost 2 decades ago and still a (now somewhat worse for wear) regular fixture in my kitchen.

  
  She also wrote the iconic, beautiful The Moosewood Cookbook which I strongly, strongly recommend as a starting point for falling in love with vegetable-forward cooking and eating.

• Alicia Kennedy’s No Meat Required came out last year, and her thoughtful critique of modern food systems is a great complement to the practice of cooking and eating plant-based food. I also appreciate that she structures her book in a way familiar and dear to me: By exploring both the history, and future, of her subject.
  

• Dr. Sarah Ballantyne’s Nutrivore is one of the few dietary books that has actually resonated with me. I despise diet culture with a deep and burning passion, and find most books about eating healthy contain some of that language, even if its subtle. Most books that explain why eating more vegetables supports health also tend to fall into diet culture traps, but Ballantyne’s whole approach is about education and offering nutritional information about different types of food: But rather than giving specific advice for what to eat, she just encourages folks to start shifting towards more dietary diversity and healthier options. Very low key, doable, and nonjudgmental.

  Note that this isn’t purely a vegetable-focused book, but if you’re curious about the nutritional profile of your favorite vegetables, it’s a great pick.
  

Some other favorite books for sparking your vegetable-loving curiosity:

Jess Starwood’s Mushroom Wanderland features some really beautiful ways to prepare and serve foraged and cultivated mushrooms, and I love that the mushroom occupies a place in Starwood’s world as a source of wonder and delight.

Some favorite fermented vegetable books include: Kirsten and Christopher Shockey’s Fermented Vegetables and Fiery Ferments, and Pascal Baudar’s books including The New Wildcrafted Cuisine.

Most fermentation books have some veg-focused recipes in them, as vegetable fermentation is so widespread and so easy to do, so be sure to leaf through the ones in your collection. I’ll also be talking about a special sub-set of these (books on koji) in a future reading list.

I also love Preserved: Condiments and Preserved: Fruit, both by Darra Goldstein, Cortney Burns, and Richard Martin, Nigel Slater’s Greenfeast (both autumn/winter and spring/summer), and Joanne Lee Molinaro’s Korean Vegan.

And finally, some of my old standby favorites, which have lived on my shelves since my 20s: Veganimocon, Vegan Cupcakes take over the World (try the margarita cupcakes and thank me later), Vegan with a Vengeance, and Food for the Vegetarian: Traditional Lebanese Recipes (this is where I learned to make labneh!).

What are your favorite plant-based books?

Recipe: Grilled veggie salsa

This versatile, delicious sauce responds to what you have to hand from your summer garden or market, and is to me the pinnacle of summer eating. Swap out what you have (peaches are one of my favorites), allow yourself to travel down new paths by using ingredients you maybe didn’t think of before. This recipe is more template than hard and fast rule: And like with all recipes I encourage you to make it your own.

I adore this salsa as is eaten as a dip, but I especially love it on fish or alongside hearty main dishes like rice and beans.

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An update on my mirin experiments from yesteryear

Welcome to Process Pieces, a series for paid subscribers that explores my writing and cooking processes and the lessons I learn from examining my creative journey as a food writer.
I’d love to hear from you too: The comments are open for you to talk about your own processes as a cook and creator. I hope you enjoy!

Almost one year ago, I embarked on a journey to answer the question: Can I turn my leftover oatmeal into mirin?

Yes, as it turns out, I can (though of course it’s not traditional mirin, but made using a similar process), and I can make many other kinds of mirin-style seasonings with various other grains, too (something I plan to discuss at greater length in the Essential Preserving Handbook).

Read the original mirin making piece here, and read on for updates + flavor notes now that everything is bottled up!

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Plus my recipes for freezer-friendly lion’s mane cutlets and mushroom jerky

I’ve been eating vegetable-based ‘meats’ since the early 2000s.

What started as a convenience food before I really knew how to cook (and when I was still vegetarian 100% of the time, rather than 90% or so like I am now) turned into a convenience food for the sake of convenience.

Over time, I found that some simple home cooked foods, ready in the fridge, offer an equally convenient stand-in that’s more in line with my principles and interests, particularly in eating and learning about traditional/historic food (which, yes, we’ve imitated meats in many ways over the years in many places, but this current iteration is kind of its own beast). And so, the imitation meats have kind of gone by the wayside.

We all need to have convenient foods, but in my reading of Alicia Kennedy’s work among others, I’ve learned a lot about the ways vegetable-based meat substitutes still tie into the systems many of us want to separate from.

I love a veggie nug on occasion still, but the truth is that they’re still deeply interwoven into the monoculture-focused, shitty labor practices-heavy big ag that keeps us from dietary diversity, ecological diversity, and autonomy over our food supplies.

They also separate us from the magic of the ingredients they contain: Vegetables made to mimic meat, rather than being celebrated for themselves. They make a vegetable-focused diet seem like it’s lacking something that has to be replaced, rather than something to simply be enjoyed as-is.

To paraphrase Mollie Katzen, why can’t vegetarian cooking be about the vegetables?

And, if we’re going to make fake meats from vegetables, why not harness what makes those vegetables unique?

I was exclusively a vegetarian for many years, and still most of what I eat is veg: I didn’t find that I missed meat a ton, but that may be because I built in lots of savory umami flavors to my meals: So the satiation we associate with them was still part of my daily diet.

When it came time to start writing the Essential Preserving handbook, I was tasked with writing about meat as well as vegetable preservation. I started to think about how we could make and preserve our own vegetable-based “meats” that do more to honor their ingredients than just turning them into form-pressed paste (again, I eat homemade veggie burgers and other ground up things, so this isn’t a criticism of veggie burgers: But it’s also not the only option).

I’ve been leaning into mushrooms for this: emerging from the kitchen with mushroom-based “scallops” (the recipe for which will be in a future issue) and lion’s mane cutlets that work in lieu of chicken cutlets.

And, I’ve made mushroom jerky that I actually reach for and enjoy (as opposed to meat jerkies, which I tend to find underwhelming). The scallops and cutlets are easy to make, both freezer-friendly, and easy to thaw and reheat.

I’ve also been playing with other ways to bring more umami-rich flavors into my diet (you guessed it, fermentation plays a role here): Particularly as I get many more requests from fellow cooks to cook more vegetable-focused fare.

Read on for the recipes, plus some additional ideas for folding umami into your dishes (and if you want to make two of my favorites, tempeh and miso, my recipes are in Joy Yonan’s next book, Mastering the Art of Plant-Based Cooking).

And if you want to read more about the magic of mushrooms, make sure to check out last month’s reading list, The Forests Beneath our Feet.

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Plus a recipe for raspberry beet jam from my in-progress book

News from the world of my writing life: I’m offering two very special writing workshops this summer:

• Bloom (an 8 week program to start or finish your book)

• Writing Playground (a playful space to expand your writing and build a consistent writing practice that will serve you for the rest of your life).

I’m also taking on just two more private writing clients (and only a handful more intuitive guidance sessions) before my calendar is full for the summer.

If you want an ecosystems-based approach to your work that starts from a place of curiosity and joy, rather than strict schedules and “productivity hacks”, I hope you’ll reach out.

Last week, I talked about how adding flowers to my food added layers of complexity not only in terms of flavor, but also how I consider creativity: Both the act of creating, and the creations themselves.

This week, I have a recipe to share from my next book, as flowers and fruits are ripe for the picking (and eating). And some more thoughts on how working with flowers helps me think about reciprocity.

This week’s recipe is for raspberry beet jam which, yes, we’re a bit past beet season, but you can still get them: And this recipe is so delicious, it’s worth holding onto for next spring if you can’t find fresh beets where you are.

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Preservation and Fermentation Books for your Summer Harvest

Years ago, I designed Preserving Abundance, an online class where I reimagine the possibilities of food scraps. Preserving Abundance, as name and concept, captures my approach to food and food preservation generally, which is to see the possibilities to be found in every ingredient.

Each part of each ingredient we work with (unless it’s poisonous or otherwise inedible, for example potato leaves) offers a universe of ways to explore and play, and in designing my course and in my later writing about fermentation and food preservation, I’ve talked a lot about each as a form of everyday magic.

It’s the sort of magic that seeps into the cracks, taking root in how we cook and why we cook: The kind of magic that’s passed on between people whether or not they believe that magic exists.

When I’m looking for a favorite fermentation or preservation book, I turn towards those with a similar approach to my own: Rooted in science and best practices, but also ones that encourage readers to play within the boundaries of those practices. In other words, books rooted in the possibility each ingredient contains.

There are many dozens of fantastic books on fermentation and preservation out there, many of which I turn to regularly (which means if you have a particular book round-up you want to see, I probably already have the books to recommend!)

Some of these books are purely preserve-focused (like It’s Always Freezer Season), others include preserving as part of a larger culinary conversation and practice (like Joy of Cooking).

Likewise, there are endless ways to prepare your ferments and preserves: The possibilities are truly endless. This is a small selection of some of my favorite go-tos, which may become some of yours, too.

To see the whole list on Bookshop.org, head here

(FYI I earn a small commission if you buy through the links in my shop, and you get to support small booksellers. A win-win!)

Preservation and Fermentation Books for your Summer Harvest

It’s Always Freezer Season by Ashley Christensen and Kaitlyn Goalen

Fermented Vegetables 10th anniversary edition, by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey

Joy of Cooking by John Becker and Megan Scott

Our Fermented Lives by yours truly

Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

Wildcrafted Vinegars by Pascal Baudar

Ball Canning Back to Basics from the Ball Canning Test Kitchen

Koji Alchemy by Jeremy Umansky and Rich Shih

Preservation by Christina Ward

The Complete Guide to Home Canning by the USDA

Southern from Scratch by Ashley English

So Easy to Preserve (available only from the University of GA press)

The Noma Guide to Fermentation by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber

And finally, the beautifully-illustrated Of Cabbages and Kimchi by James Read: this book will be available more widely in the US soon, and is available for purchase online atBlackwell’s as well as the big-box online retailers. Or, order from your favorite local bookseller!

I’ll be adding to this list over time, too (there are so many great books I didn’t list here!)

What are your favorite preserving books (and what are you putting up this season)?

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A Reading List on Fungi (and a birthday gift for you)

The fungi of the forest contain past and future: Ancient beings, both expansive in their reach and miniscule in their size, who contain multitudes and many truths at once. Like our body’s own microbiome, these fungi nourish and support the body of the forest, offering nourishment, protection, and even a channel for communication. They are both ancestors and descendants of the forest, their fate intertwined with all the other members of the forest community. 

In a moment when our climate is in crisis and forests are being razed (including the Welaunee Forest in Atlanta, several miles from my home), perhaps instilling a sense of wonder in the magic of nature might compel us to walk more lightly on the Earth. 

The forests beneath our feet

Fungi are in the spotlight in recent months: The UK Parliament recently held a special session to educate members about the potentials of fungi,  followed close behind by the National Geographic Society’s announcement that they now classify fungi as wildlife.

At last, it seems, we’re just beginning to acknowledge the importance of these beings in our world.

Suzanne Simard’s work on mycelial networks is the place to start, and she influenced Sheldrake’s work and many others. I’m currently enjoying Finding the Mother Tree, part memoir and part scientific text, and utterly engaging.

Merlin Sheldrake’s Enchanted Life is a go-to for learning about fungi, and for good reason. He also grew mushrooms on the mushroom book, which really checks the boxes on a lot of my interests all at once, and reopens some of my favorite fun mental rabbit holes: What is a book? What is information? What does it mean to read?

I recently came across some great Longreads pieces on fungi: this and this on the social life of forests, and their links out to other stories led me to Alanna Mitchell’s writing on bioacoustics and the changing sounds of our planet due to human destruction of habitat (related: my newsletter issue on taste, sound, and place). In it, she notes ” scientists say the thready networks of root fungi that link forests may be as gabby as a schoolyard at recess.”

This quote from the same article reminds me of how I feel in relationship with the microbial world generally, and with the mycelial networks under my feet:

“Sound is intimate. Its waves pound against our bodies, penetrate the inner ear, pulse through our skin, flesh and bones. Sound tells us where we are, but it also evokes the memory of where we used to be. It carries with it a sense of time and place. We humans use the sounds we make to delight, woo, warn and even worship.”

If you want to hear music made in collaboration with flora and fungi, check out sardonik grin, a project of my friends at Savage Craic.

I also love Joanna Steinhardt’s work on the ways fungi help us clean up and reimagine our world and take out the trash. The piece also mentions Matter of Trust, which makes mats to contain oil spills, and to whom I sent all my hair to during the BP spill: Chopping off something like 2 feet of it as one tiny piece in the network of folks clearing up that disaster.

And of course, there’s the community aspect of mycelia: Of place as a collective, rather than a static point on a map. Place can be a giant, ancient golden fungus in a forest in Oregon, or it can spring forth as a precious few oyster mushrooms in your backyard each autumn.

Perhaps ‘place’ is not geography, but living, and sentient. The more scientists learn about mycelia, the more magical they become. Our sense of wonder is deepened by our new understanding: That same wonder that’s felt by Simard, Sheldrake, myself, and anyone who’s plunged their hands into warming, fertile soil in the springtime.

We humans tend to consider ourselves the most thinking, feeling creatures on this earth (we do love to delude ourselves), but more and more research shows that fungi, individually and collectively, embody consciousness and decision-making capacities.

Fungi have neural networks (like we do), and a forest contains countless neural connections beneath your feet, belonging to sentient beings who can feel, make decisions, and have short-term memory (and, almost certainly long-term memory, too). See for example this study,  and this one. A simple online search for “hyphal and mycelial consciousness” reveals plenty of others.

This consciousness serves as a living map of an ecosystem: A fungal network does not grow to a predetermined set of boundaries, but expands itself to fit the container in which it lives. I love Sophie Strand’s writing (as you know), but particularly this quote on the relationship between fungal networks and myth:

” Fungal systems are constituted by thread like mycelial networks below ground. With no predetermined body plan, they become maps of relationship wherever they grow. They branch and fork and fuse to constellate the connective network of other species and beings. I like to say that just as when you pour fungi into an ecosystem it becomes a map of relationships, so should your myths pour themselves into your web of kinship, becoming a map of your ecology of relationships. Fungi are maps of ecosystems, so should myths represent webs of relatedness, rather than a single species or narrative perspective. Just like fungi taught plants how to root into the soil, so do myths teach us how to root into relation with our actual homes.”

And, last but not least, if you like visually striking documentaries. Fantastic Fungi is an enjoyable watch to dive into the world of fungal wonder: The cinematography captures the beauty of these complex, interconnected beings in a way I love (it’s available on Netflix, or you can learn more about the documentary at the link above).

Finally, a (wedding) announcement

Speaking of connections and relationships, I’m tying the knot in Copenhagen on May 14th, and celebrating my 41st birthday at the end of the month.

I’m feeling very blessed, and really soaking in the abundance of this moment (and I also will be away from my newsletter, email, our Mycelia group, etc. for those two weeks as I celebrate).

BUT I also want to give a gift to you, dear readers, through the end of May.
50% off any of my classes or anything else from each of my small businesses:

Root: where you’ll find online fermentation + food waste classes, oracle decks, and culinary oracle readings

Roots + Branches: Classes and coaching for writers, plus our Mycelia co-writing group.

Just use the code BIRTHDAY when you check out.

(if you order a reading or a coaching service, we’ll get started when I’m back from my honeymoon!)

And paid subscribers, keep reading for your 75% discount!

Tl;dr: I’m gone the rest of May, I’m so grateful for you and our own mycelial network of friendship we’ve built through this newsletter, and I want to give you a gift to thank you:

Take 50% off everything I make for Root and Roots and Branches with code BIRTHDAY.

Thank you!

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Pickling and witchcraft past and present, plus a free intention setting journal

Beginning with gratitude, and a gift:

You know I love a good journaling prompt. Recently, when asked how I want my writing career and my business to look in 5-10 years, I struggled to articulate what exactly I wanted.

I know what impact I want to have, and the kinds of things I want to be doing, but the shape of each in practical terms? Not quite as clear.

So, I meditated and reflected, and came up with these journal prompts which use abundance and your biggest impact and greatest work as guideposts for future planning.

I plan to dip into answering them myself this week: The new moon (May 7) is the perfect time to work with intentions and future plans, but these prompts will serve you well whenever you decide to use them. Enjoy!

On to the pickles!

This is an adaptation from my recent class on fermentation + witchcraft with Jennifer Billock: Shared here for my readers who want to learn more about how people tie the two together in their magical practices.

I’d love to hear how you connect magic and fermentation (however that looks) in the comments!

The magic of fermentation

Fermentation has long been associated with magic, otherworldly realms, and power, and it has a long association with deities (like the Viking mead of poetry and inspiration and Cerridwen’s brew of knowledge and wisdom).

And our pop culture image of witches, standing over a bubbling cauldron wearing a big hat, with a broomstick and a cat, is actually based in fermentation too:

Women were, historically, the ones usually in charge of brewing beer for their communities in western Europe. It was one of the few ways women could earn money and become financially independent from men.

But in the 1600s and 1700s, men decided they wanted to take over brewing, and so formed professional brewers guilds that women couldn’t join. And, they started a smear campaign against women brewers so the public wouldn’t trust them. Being called a witch at that time was a pretty surefire career killer, so women soon lost the ability to brew professionally and also lost one of the few avenues they had to make money.

Women brewers’ cauldrons of wort and beer, the broom they used to sweep away grain, their cats that kept rodents from the grain stores, and the big hats they wore so they were visible on the street for those looking to buy their wares, all became symbols of witchcraft but are, in fact, symbols of women’s autonomy and independence. But of course the two often go hand in hand.

Today, women make up something like 2% of all professional brewers, so even now we aren’t anywhere near the number of women in the industry we once had (you can also see this piece where I interview several women in brewing and discuss that history).

Women brewers being cast as witches is one of many examples of witchcraft being used as (at best) negative PR and (more often) as a death sentence for community members who were considered different in some way. Fermentation history, as with any food’s history, is filled with stories of abuse, manipulation, and oppression. This is just one example.

Modern witchcraft and ancient ferments

As any fermenter knows, fermentation itself is truly magical, and so it’s no surprise that many kitchen witches today have been returning to it as a way to practice our art. The magic of making ferments is empowering, a way to reconnect with traditions and to create a future story for fermentation that’s independent of historic attempts to destroy the livelihoods of the businesswomen who relied on it.

Fermentation is a really powerful, fun, beautiful way to connect more deeply to your food and your craft. This isn’t all just fun and fluff, these are practices rooted deep in historical traditions. And it’s all about transformation and community too, and thinking of our ferments as transformative communities is a practice rooted in scientific fact. 

Whether you are an active practitioner of magic, or just curious how fermentation fits into the world of magic, I’ve written this guide to spark your curiosity and perhaps some inspiration.

One thing I like about this work is that in setting an intention with a spell, you’re already aligning yourself to take action towards that intention (this is true of intention setting generally). So, you’re the secret magic ingredient!

If you want to learn more, make sure to check out this virtual class with myself and tyromancy (cheese divination) expert Jen Billock (bonus: You’ll get to see a very sweet proposal from my fiancé, a wonderful surprise while we were teaching, and frankly very fitting place for me to be proposed to!)

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Plus recipes for Rainbow Roots Soup Starter and 3 Root Paste, my go-to quick meal staples

At last, it’s Spring: Time to plant seeds (or time soon, for more northerly readers), and anticipate the harvests ahead. This time of year always fills me with excitement: The air smells heavy with possibility and warming soil, and everyone, from my friends to my mechanic, is talking about what they’re growing.

I think of all the wonderful things I’ll be preserving and pickling, particularly this year as I wrap up the long-awaited Essential Preserving Handbook and hand it in to my publisher.

I also think of the regenerative cycles of my home garden: How those bits and bobs from my preserving practice make it into my compost (here’s my composting guide, if you want to learn how!), which turns them into new soil to continue nourishing me and the land as the cycle begins anew.

As I’m in a transitional phase this year: Moving towards a life lived abroad (and in a different growing zone) as well as here with my established garden in Atlanta, I’m having to rethink what and how I plant. I’m opting for many more perennial herbs and shrubs, for example, and sadly keeping a lot of my annual fruit and veg planting more subdued than I’d ideally like.

But I’m still thinking a lot about plants, and frankly still growing a ton of them, even if I’ve scaled back, and each year I find such incredible joy in meeting and re-meeting my friends as they emerge from the soil.

This springtime reading list is in their honor, with some of my favorite reads for curling up with in the sunshine or after sticking my hands in the dirt.

Many of you are probably familiar with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, which I love, but I also encourage you to explore her book Gathering Moss. It’s such a moving, beautiful exploration of the small, often overlooked, but oh-so-important beings in our ecosystems.

Eoghan Daltun’s Irish Atlantic Rainforest is a perennial favorite, a love letter to place but also a love letter to the changes of place at it becomes more itself. Daltun’s rainforest land is such an inspiration for our 10-ish year plan in Ireland: To care for (and rewild) acres of land in West Cork, while continuing to care for the acres here in Georgia.

In my to-read and to-reread pile currently on this topic, I have What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses by Daniel Chamovitz, which explores how plants experience the world with their senses and which scratches a few itches for me: Both my desire to learn about the science of botany but also to learn that science in aid of connecting with plants more deeply.

And finally, I’m currently reading Manchan Magan’s Listen to the Land Speak, which explores the ways the Irish landscape has shaped Irish myth and identity.

As I deepen my connection to the two once-connected places (the southern Appalachians and Ireland) I call home, I’m also deepening into learning about the spirit of the land itself, and its influence on us humans. In particular, how the land has shaped us over time, in the same mountain range stretched across two continents. And, perhaps, how that learning can help us take better care in return.

I know some of this for the Appalachians, having family rooted in the region (though I’m always learning more!) and I’m so curious to further explore the overlaps between here and Ireland.

P.S. if you’re looking for spices for your garden bounty, I’m really proud of this pickling blend I made in collaboration with Burlap + Barrel.

If you add the 1.8 ounce peppercorns with grinder to your cart, you get them for free when you order this (or whatever other B&B spices), too: Just use the code ROOTKITCHENS when you check out!

Recipes

As we transition fully into warmer, longer days, I’m reflecting on the ways I can fully honor the last bits of my root vegetable harvest.

These two recipes, for Rainbow Roots Soup Starter and for 3 Root Paste, are my tried and true stand-bys for quick meals: Toss them in the water you’re boiling for pasta, use as the basis for a miso soup, or use them in sauces (the paste is what I use instead of prepared garlic).

Plus, since you make them once and then have lots to last for many meals, getting some healthy, delicious food in your stomach is easy even when your days are super full.

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Easy ways to play with your food while on the road

Mycelia, my co-writing + skill-building virtual community for women + NB folks, is one of the perks I give to current subscribers and to any subscribers who sign up before the end of the month.

You’ll have access to the group as long as you’re a paid subscriber to this newsletter, and I’d love to write with you! If you want to join, please shoot me an email. And if you’ve been thinking of subscribing, now is the time to get access to this vibrant, productive, fun space.

The curious fermenter’s guide to travel

I’m going on a road trip this week. In particular, I’m going on a road trip to my beloved old stomping grounds in the Florida panhandle, to officiate a wedding.

I’ll be returning to Grayton Beach, where I wrote roughly half my dissertation in the state park cabins a decade ago, waking up for sunrise dips in the Gulf before a frenzy of writing, a lunchtime dip, writing frenzy, then beer on the little screened in porch. It was idyllic, and one of the most productive moments in my life. And that process, of rooting my productive creative energy in play, also served as an anchor memory for me in how I create now: remembering that being in that state of fun, and flow, is more productive than anything else I can do for my work as a writer, cook, and human being.

Road trips, even just day trips, are a favorite way to do this, and one I plan to plug into more this year as days get warmer and longer. In Grayton Beach, I’ll get to reconnect with the Gulf of Mexico, which remains my favorite body of water on Earth, in part due to my personal and familial connections to it, and in part due to the fact that it’s just such a pleasant body of water to spend time with. I’ve always really resonated with the energy of the Gulf, especially in northern Florida, so in preparation for my road trip I’ve been thinking of ways I can bring some of that energy back with me: Like a thread between two places, hundreds of miles away.

Connecting to and exploring place through food is a practice I’ve taught for years and have consistently practiced myself for even longer.

Oftentimes, I think of this in terms of an individual place: My home, a favorite beach, etc. But how does this look when we think about the movement between places?

This is my road trip guide, for building in connection to place not only at your destination or your origin point, but everywhere in between.

If you want to dive deeper, adventure is a big theme in my next book, The Fermentation Oracle. When you preorder you get lots of really, really cool thank you gifts that I’ll be announcing soon!

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Wrapping up winter by playing with a favorite root

Pssst, I’m having a sale on paid subscriptions to my newsletter!

From now until the end of the month, get 20% off your subscription, or 25% off a group subscription.

Your subscription gets you:

• All my recipes (like the ones below!)

• writing/creative tips

• free online culinary classes

• extra discounts on my paid courses and sales (including for the forthcoming Culinary Curiosity School, launching late 2024!)

• various other bonus surprises (including a whole online resource library!) that are only available to you.

Paid subscribers will also get access to my new premium subscription (which goes live early next year):
With it, you’ll get access to all my online classes for free, an exclusive private community space to connect with your fellow food lovers, and more goodies TBD.

It will have a higher price tag than current subscriptions when it launches, but not for you, dear reader: You’ll get all that included in your subscription as a thank you for supporting my work and my lil’ newsletter!

In celebration of the changing seasons and the excitement of warming days and higher energy, I’m holding an Equinox sale for both Root and Roots and Branches.

• Root: 30% off everything, from oracle decks to food waste and fermentation classes to culinary oracle readings and one of my favorites, Ferment + Chill.
  

• Roots & Branches: An extra 20% off private writing coaching, Boundary Setting for Creatives, oracle readings, and the Mycelia co-writing community space (and everything else).
  That’s an extra 20% off the sale prices listed on the website, so if you’re eager to start or finish a writing project this spring, or build a more sustainable writing practice to support you this year, now is a great time to do so.

Just use the code EQUINOX at checkout! Happy Spring!

Pastrami-spiced beets primer

Few things make me happier than beets.

Yes, they stain your countertop and they can, to some palates, taste a lot like dirt, but I consider those bonuses: Their rich color makes my food beautiful and makes a fantastic ink and dye. And their earthy flavor is so comforting, particularly layered with beets’ sweetness and satisfying crunch.

I’m a big fan of exploring vegetable-based meat substitutes that are, well, actual vegetables, and I love finding ways to use savory flavors we typically associate with meats on earthy, rich veggies to scratch my umami itch.

While I do eat meat, I don’t eat a ton of it, and tend to get my protein from other sources, but as I am an unabashed lover of all things savory, I’ve noticed that my cooking practice this late winter has been heavy on the umami-rich ingredients, like shoyu (soy sauce) or miso, but that I’ve been eager to explore some new directions.

Enter the pastrami-spiced, pickled beet. These are incredible, truly incredible, on a sandwich with some slaw or on a bed of grains. I’ve also taken to eating them out of the jar, always intending to eat just one but instead having to stop myself after half the container is gone.

They’re such an embodiment of this season: Their rich, sweet, and hearty texture and flavor a reminder of this season’s call to take a cue from the earth and take space for rest.

The warming spices feel so at home at a time when the weather is cold, but you can feel the possibility of warmer days on the horizon: A flavor both familiar and rooted in this season, but also liminal and flexible. They are, to me, a flavor that speaks to the pleasures of the moment and to my eagerness and excitement for the changes to come.

I’m not the first person on the planet to make pastrami beets, but I’m really happy with how these batches turned out, as are the friends I shared them with: enough so that the recipes are going in my next book. I’ve been playing with my beets in other ways, too, which you can see if you scroll to the end!

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And How Our Ephemera Defines our Process

Welcome to Process Pieces, a series that explores my writing and cooking processes and the lessons I learn from examining my creative journey as a food writer.
I’d love to hear from you too: The comments are open for you to talk about your own processes as a cook and creator. I hope you enjoy!

For many years of my life, labels have served a utilitarian function, doing the one task their title suggests. Names and dates on jars of home-canned food in my pantry, or cambros of ingredients at a restaurant, simply serve as a marker of identity within space and time: They don’t reveal any secrets of the process behind them, the many choices that were made to get this food, as it currently is, into the container in which it exists.

Choices like, for example: What shape and size are we cutting each vegetables? What ingredients go into the pickle brine, and is it hot or cold? Are there spices, and are they cooked into the brine or added after? And the countless other tiny steps and choices, some of which we make subconsciously or habitually, that go into bringing a dish to life.

At one point in my kitchen, I found myself testing a recipe without the usual scraps of paper (usually the back of junk mail envelopes) at hand. I like to write down ratios and revelations as I work, giving myself a real-time record of my process that I then take to my computer and refine into a product that’s legible to others.

Using the backs of envelopes isn’t really a conscious choice I make, it’s just a way to squeeze some use out of a thing I often have in excess and that I usually store on the coffee table right next to the kitchen. I tend to, instead, start testing a recipe then realize I need my paper, my eyes darting around to locate something, anything to write on before my ideas flutter away.

It was in just such a scenario that I found myself one day, making a recipe for chow chow. I’d made it plenty of times, but my ratios on this one were perfect: One of those moments where all the flavors sing. I scrambled around, unsuccessfully, to find a piece of paper, before my eyes fell on the roll of masking tape I use to label my food.

Well, I thought, it’s better than nothing.

I hurriedly wrote down my notes about the recipe on masking tape, wrapping it around the jar containing the chow chow, the recipe serving as both identifier and marker of process.

I think I had assumed this would be a one-off, that I would start to neatly compile my notes in a single notebook (ha) or would be more fastidious in my efforts to keep paper nearby. What I found was that using labels to describe process was liberating: By being forced to confine my ideas into these small strips, I had to distill down what mattered to me most about the recipe, and in so doing get to the heart of what I was trying to create more quickly.

Rather than a rote practice, recipe testing became a site of creative joy: By writing out my ideas and putting them on the vessel itself, it created a tangible connection between the food and the writing about the food. The recipe, rather than being a tired summary of a dish prepared, was imbued with the excitement of discovery and the rush of confidence that comes from making a dish you want to make and making it well.

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The saddest fruit roll ups you’ll never taste

Process pieces is a series for paid subscribers that explores my writing and cooking processes, and I encourage you to comment with your own processes if you feel so called. I hope you enjoy!

Part of the joy of process (in recipes and life) is the joy of learning and refinement.

We have a lot of baggage around the word “failure”, and while each of us experiences that baggage in unique and different ways, the overall commonality is that failure is bad. If something didn’t work out the way you wanted, it’s a moral shortcoming on your part or something inherently wrong with some other aspect of the situation.

We tend to be very hard on ourselves, whatever we’re writing or making, if the end result doesn’t meet expectations, and in so doing we rob ourselves of the joy and maybe even the learning to be gleaned from process.

Since process pieces is all about, well, process, it’s high time we include all aspects of process, including those that don’t work.

So today, I want to focus on “failure” as central to process, and how I use it to learn and grow as a writer and recipe developer. I’m not scared of failure any longer (I do still get frustrated by sunk time and cost, but even less of that as time goes on).

My hope is that this process pieces reminds you that process can matter as much as product, whatever it is you’re creating.

And I hope you’ll enjoy the recipes at the end (ones that did turn out how I wanted: I’ll spare you the one that didn’t).

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I spent my entire life thinking I hated banana chips. It turns out I was wrong.

Process pieces is a series for paid subscribers that explores my writing and cooking processes, and I encourage you to comment with your own processes if you feel so called. I hope you enjoy!

A fun announcement: I’m teaching a virtual workshop on tyromancy (cheese fortune telling) and pickling (including pickling’s relationship to shellwork!) with Jen Billock on the 22nd.

We’d love you to join us! (And we’ll send around a recording for anyone who can’t make the live session).

Please bring your own cheese, and your pickling questions, and come learn with us!

Details and tickets are here.

Ah, banana chips, the bane of my snacking existence. About as exciting as munching on a chunk of drywall, but with less flavor, most store-bought banana chips have a terrible texture and either taste artificially banana-y or taste like nothing at all.

I’m not being dramatic when I say that I have been a lifelong avoider of the banana chip: If I see them in my trail mix I will eat out literally everything else and save those chips for the compost. If someone offers them to me at a party, which has happened more times than I really expected it would, I pause to consider whether or not I want to attend that person’s parties ever again (I’m joking…kind of. Please keep inviting me to your parties).

About 1/4 of the way through my next book manuscript, I realized to my horror that I was now contractually obligated to not only make banana chips but also consume them in the name of recipe testing.

So, while writing Essential Preserving, I’ve given myself a seemingly insurmountable task: Make a banana chip that not only stays crisp but that I actually want to eat. Not just one I tolerate, but one I would seek out as a snack in my kitchen.

Was I able to do it?

As it turns out, yes I was, and to great effect.

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Links to our co-writing space, new Slack channel, and more to support your amazing 2024

In the post-holiday haze, many of us are turning our attention towards the new year.

We tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do more and do better, which IMO is not the healthiest way to approach our goals, BUT a new year does offer an opportunity for some new goals and dreams to emerge. And maybe offers space for your best work to emerge, too.

I mentioned before that paid subscribers get free access to Mycelia for the entire year (which is normally $55/month, so you’re getting a screaming deal here), along with my 2024 visioning guide.

Mycelia is my co-writing and skill-building space: The sort of space I’ve been craving for quiet, focused writing time alongside specific guidance for building a sustainable writing practice.

My hope for you is that it gives you the opportunity to find accountability and community in a virtual writing group BUT also helps you hold that space even beyond our writing times.

For those who want to join, the information is below!

And if you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can become one or you get 50% off Mycelia’s monthly cost (even as a free subscriber) using the code SUBSTACK.

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This is the paid version of my newsletter. Thank you so much for your support of my work: It means the world!

Do you know someone who might like my work? Please send them to the link below to sign up!

Two quick notes:

• I’m offering a discount on annual subscriptions through the end of the year: A great gift for yourself or for a loved one with a creative, food-loving spirit.
  With additional, very exciting bonuses for paid subscribers to be announced soon.
  Head to this link (or the button above) to sign up!

• Burlap & Barrel has kindly offered a free cotton gift bag with every bottle of my pickling spice blend you buy this holiday season.
  Just add both to your bag and use the code JULIASKINNERBB at checkout!

William Kitchener and the Magazine of Taste

William Kitchener loved footnotes. They’re peppered throughout his book, The Cook’s Oracle (1817). Reading my copy, the 7th edition (1840), is an exercise in restraint: I love underlining in books, making marks, scratching out marginalia in response to my frenzied thoughts as I read. But with Kitchener’s work, I hold back,* perhaps because his many footnotes, which call to mind Brillat-Savarin’s writing (and who would was alive around the same time, too), give me plenty to digest. Like Brillat-Savarin, Kitchener was not a culinary professional: The former being a lawyer, and the latter an optician.

Is the fact that food was a passion, not profession, make both feel like they had greater license to muse and meander than some of their contemporaries? Did both draw the connections and conclusions they did because they weren’t siloed within a culinary profession, and thus perhaps felt less encumbered by that profession’s norms and perceptions of taste? Certainly part of the equation, at least, is that both were white men, relatively wealthy and well-educated, which made whatever they said more likely to be listened to.

Both were eating and writing during the very latter part of the Enlightenment, the significance of which would require a different post (and the significance of that period’s name, too: it certainly doesn’t speak highly of those ‘unenlightened’ folks in the Middle Ages, does it?)

But while Brillat-Savarin’s work is much more about his personal philosophy of eating and understanding of food’s various roles in our lives, Kitchener peppers such musings within a manual that’s grounded in the practical. You can take Kitchener into your kitchen with you, and many other writers, including the famous Mrs. Beeton, did just that.

Kitchener’s footnotes, and his approach in general, tends to be more didactic than Brillat-Savarin’s, and tends to not throw its tendrils out quite so far into other fields of inquiry.

He leaves me with questions, too, and I scribble notes that feel to me like entering into a conversation with the author: Why did you say this? What do you mean by that?

But sometimes answers and ideas emerge, too: Where Kitchener suggests cayenne, I offer the possibility of substituting with my own fire cider powder (or elsewhere, I might suggest fire cider itself). Instead of zest and lemon juice, I opt for more shelf-stable preserved lemons. And on and on.

In this way, my own Magazine becomes very much ‘inspired by Kitchener’ rather than ‘exactly like Kitchener’: Something that builds on the foundations set by the cooks that came before me (and that reminds me of the many conversations I’ve read and had the last few years, including those by Nigella Lawson, Alicia Kennedy, and others, on recipe creation and re-creation as active, reflective, and experimental).

Like a cabinet of curiosities for your palate, the Magazine of Taste was Kitchener’s attempt to compile a ready-made suite of ingredients encompassing whatever flavors he needed to employ.
Having them at hand made seasoning easier, certainly, but also more expansive: When I don’t have to rummage around for the flavors I want to layer into a dish, I’m more likely to layer with abandon.

I tend to have a similar (though less organized) suite of ingredients on hand, and my experiments that led to the magazine themes and ingredients below really helped me be more intentional in my kitchen: Both in terms of what I’m making and stocking, but also in expanding my own practice to connect flavors together I otherwise may not have.

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