The Uncommon Meal

In 2019, I realized that currently I have 52 cookbooks in my home.

So, I want to attempt to explain my relationship to these books. I am not a recipe hound. I rarely ever follow a recipe in my creative cooking adventures. Yet, I do so love my books. I think of them as more of an art collection than as instruction manuals. That said, there is an endlessly broad collection of vital information in these books as I hone my craft. This year I am making a choice to open and honor these books one by one and use them as a source of inspiration to create meals to share with people in my community. My first event just happened on February 1, 2020. I picked this date as my own New Year’s Day because I so completely was not ready for 2020 on January 1. I chose the first featured book for its perfect title, “Everything I want to Eat” by Jessica Koslow of Sqirl Restaurant in LA. I’ve eaten there a few times and I appreciate the playful and wholesome approach to food that drives this place. More on this event will be in the ‘blog post’ page of this site.

In 2019, I also realized that I have many people to share my passion for cooking with.

I live in the Sonora Cohousing community in Tucson, Arizona. We have a fun food culture here and built this community in part out of recognition that sharing meals with neighbors is a foundational building block of community connection. I have the same blessing with my biological and chosen family. We gather together and travel together for occasions of importance and every single time we do this, a primary conversation is around what food we will create (or seek), and share with each other. I love the place of creativity that these conversations open for me. I love to cook! This was true all the way back when I was 6 years old. I have fun with it *and* I take it very seriously, and even if what I am eating (or making) is as simple as a bean burrito or a cheese sandwich, I relish the act of eating as the deeply nourishing act it is meant to be. If I had to pick from ‘two types of people in the worlds’, I clearly live to eat rather than eat to live.