All posts tagged thyme

Sweet Potato and Tatsoi Soup

11.06.12 // Comments:24

sweet potato tatsoi soup | foodloveswriting.com

It’s hard to think that while this past Friday, November 2, was a day we’ll remember as the announcement of our little book, for many others, it’s part of the painful weeks of hurricane disaster recovery and rebuilding. This is always happening in life: pain and sorrow hand in hand, celebration smashed up against heartache, joy against grief.

Today, while I bring you sweet potato soup, for example, there’s someone else who doesn’t have a stove, or food, to cook with. While I nursed a cold this weekend, feeling pretty glum, someone else ran a marathon, feeling high on life. My friend’s baby girl was born two weeks before her grandma died. Even as I post these thoughts, on America’s Election Day, many of you have polls and campaigns on your minds, while, simultaneously, others of you don’t. The world is big.

tatsoi | foodloveswriting.com

We’re all dwelling in our own small worlds, inside this larger one, and we know it’s this way. It’s a hard thing to wrap your mind around, the enormity of so many people thinking so many things in so many places, and that’s why it’s often easier to focus on what’s in front of you. But there are times, I think, when we see a different reality, when someone reaches outside his or her immediate perspective and rejoices with someone else who’s rejoicing or weeps with someone else while he weeps.

We’ve seen it in the aftermath of the hurricane, as people send relief and donate to the Red Cross, Nashville Bloggers hold a bake sale and community dinners get organized by a ladies auxiliary in Pennsylvania.

I’ve seen it online in the food world, where bloggers regularly promote each others’ work and spread good content. Kristen at Dine & Dish and Sarah of The Vanilla Bean Blog are particularly good at this.

ingredient prep | foodloveswriting.com

I’ve seen it with our release of the ebook, as you guys have rejoiced with us in our celebration. Every comment, every Facebook share or like, every purchase, has felt like a huge, undeserved gift, and we’ve cherished it. People I’ve never met have emailed to tell me they bought the book. My brother-in-law got it on his iPhone. A girl I haven’t seen since college eight years ago told me that she couldn’t put it down. My friend Jacqui, one of the most gracious people I’ve ever known, wrote an incredibly thoughtful post about it.

It’s all kind of overwhelming, like a room full of wedding gifts or the gift of a Hawaii honeymoon, and when I sit here trying to think of what to say, I almost lose my voice.

We broke even by Sunday, making back everything we put into the book, financially speaking. Thank you. I was so afraid to do this ebook, so afraid that no one would buy it (or, worse, that people would buy it and it would be bad). I don’t tell you that to get your pity but to give you the truth. If you’re out there reading this and wonder about your own visions or dreams or book ideas in your head, I hope this can be the nudge for you to go after them.

sweet potato tatsoi soup | foodloveswriting.com

Sometime last month, I read an ebook called Create: Stop Making Excuses and Start Making Stuff by Stephen Altrogge. Like the book we would end up launching this past Friday, Create is a short, light read, the kind of thing you can breeze through in a dozen quick bursts of downtime or an hour or so of quiet. It’s just $2.99. And I mention it here because a few points Altrogge makes in it have been the kind of things to comfort my anxious mind before the book launched, when it launched, afterwards while we waited for some feedback, today while we consider what to do next.

Altrogge’s main point is that we are all creatives, every one of us; we were made this way. Some of us write and blog; others organize files or decorate houses or build houses or bake cakes; but we all create, somehow, something. You can sit on the sidelines because you’re afraid, or you can get out there on the court and do something. Sure, you might mess up, you might look ridiculous and you might completely fail. But, thing is, when you get out there and try, you are practicing and learning and getting better. You are developing your skill and you’re doing what you were made to do. You’re giving the other guys on the sidelines courage to mess up, too.

One of the biggest things I am learning about creative work is that while your work is yours, from a blog to a book to a mural, it is not you. That’s enormously freeing. We can make imperfect things and be willing to take chances and to get better over time, and we can let other people ignore or dislike what we’ve made while we do. What we make isn’t us; it’s a snapshot of where we’re at at a given moment. When we see this, when we stop being so afraid of what people will say about our work, we can start focusing on using our work to bless them—we can start looking outside our own small world and reaching into someone else’s.

That’s what I’ve hoped to do with the ebook, to get thinking outside my own insecurities and try writing what I know to be true.

What are you afraid to leap towards?*

Ebook Writing + Poached Eggs over Toast

10.26.12 // Comments:24

iPhoneography

I listened to a podcast interview of Sara Kate from the Kitchn this week on Joy the Baker’s “We’re about to Be Friends” show, and, in it, Sara Kate compares the immediacy of a photograph to the long work of writing. She says, from her perspective as a writer, there’s something so satisfying about taking a photograph and, those times when you get it right, knowing you’ve got it; it’s a very different kind of creative work than, say, writing, for example, in which you sometimes have to wrestle and fight and rewrite and pull out the words to say before you reach that same satisfying feeling.

egg | foodloveswriting.com

I was listening to the interview while I was in the kitchen working some dough together. And a few days later, while I sautéed vegetables, I thought of it again. When you go to the kitchen and combine some ingredients into something new, there’s a satisfaction in the immediacy, kind of like taking the right photograph, especially compared to the slower rewards of writing a long project.

chicken broth | foodloveswriting.com

Think about it. Wake up in the morning, nothing prepared, go to the stove and heat up broth; crack an egg into a bowl; and slide it in the warm pot for a few minutes. Scoop out the poached eggs onto toast, shave some Pecorino on top, sprinkle fresh thyme. That’s it, you’re done, there before you is your work completed. It’s nice. It’s comforting.

Writing an ebook, well, that’s another story. True, it’s not that different from writing a blog post. It’s longer and it’s more planned out, but it starts with the same process of opening up a Word document or a WordPress draft, putting words to paragraphs, writing your thoughts to be read. You may have an initial plan for what you want to say; you may have no idea. You sit there, you and the keyboard, willing the words to come, but knowing that, sometimes, they won’t. You also wonder, after some words are finally sitting there, if what you’re writing is any good.

heirloom eggs

I started the ebook project in early July, just before our trip to see family and visit the Wisconsin town where I used to spend weeks of summer as a kid. The ebook was Tim’s idea, something I never would have done on my own, maybe because of fear of commitment or fear of failure or a form of perfectionism or something else. But early this summer, he did me the great favor of forcing me to consider the ebook, something I could sit down and work on right now, and when push came to shove, I knew he was right. And so it was on that trip, while we were relaxing in the cool and the quiet of an Internet-free cabin, that I wrote the first chapter.

I remember looking at it, reading it to Tim, thinking, so this is how people write things like books? They just, write? And then, wow, there’s more value in blogging than people give it credit for. (I mean, seriously, have you read blogs these days? They’re good.)

pecorino

Of course, I know what you’re thinking, the difference between blogs and books is not as small as I want to make it—Books are edited and revised. Books go through some approval processes. Books are longer and more involved and often require more investment. I wrote an ebook, and it’s sort of a fine line saying if it’s more like a blog or a book at its heart.

All I know is that I had a first draft finished by mid-August, after many long work dates across from Tim at coffee shops and Saturday mornings holed up in the dark office/second bedroom where we rarely spend any time. I sent the draft to a few writers/editors/friends and waited. Tim and I went to Gulf Shores. I turned 30. Feedback came in; I worked at the book again.

poached eggs over toast

Right now, from where I type this post, the ebook is done. It’s edited. It’s formatted. All that’s missing are a few small design touches and it will launch. But right now, from where I type this post, we’re a long way from early July. We’re also hours of work (and yes, tears!) from that first moment when I looked at Tim and said, OK. Let’s do this.

And even though four months is nothing like the two years (or longer) typically involved in printed, published books, contrast it with the steps involved toward making a morning meal like this one. Idea to concept, we’re talking 20 minutes, tops.

In these days leading up to the book publishing, I think you can guess where you’ll find me.

Cozy Day at Home + Caramelized Apples and Onions

10.09.12 // Comments:18

Caramelized Apples + Onions | FoodLovesWriting.com

The first time I met Tim, he said something in passing about how he’d much prefer a night in, at home, to endless social activity, one party and get-together after another, and I couldn’t believe how much he sounded like me. They say it’s the opposites who are the ones to attract, but, almost one year into marriage, all I have to say is that it sure is nice to share life with someone who also finds pleasure in picking a new Netflix movie or testing orangettes or reading side by side, before falling asleep at night.

Making Tea | FoodLovesWriting.com fall day at home | foodloveswriting.com

If it weren’t for the great enjoyment we both also find in hosting big dinner parties and attending outdoor gatherings and making meaningful connections with other human beings, and mostly the growing desire we both have to stretch outside our comfort zones and love, I wonder just how easy it would be for us to settle in at home, something brewing on the stove and, stay there, content.

Kinfolk and Tea | FoodLovesWriting.com

It’s something we’ve thought so deliberately about recently that, in an effort to find ways to love other people besides each other, we’ve been filling our social calendar fuller than it’s ever been in our married life. We’ve been hosting and attending and gathering and joining, and it’s been good, all of it, delighting in conversations with friends new and old, hearing how people are doing, laughing and crying and learning, seeing how much there is yet to know.

But still, in the midst of it, I have to say there remains something equally special about those quiet, cozy days (or even hours) at home, the kind where there’s nothing much on the agenda besides laundry and reading and making dinner—and the more rare these chunks of time become, the more precious they feel.

Pound of Apples | FoodLovesWriting.com

Fall is good at reminding us of this. As the days darken and chill and we turn on our heaters for the first time in months, there’s an unspoken push towards blankets and cocoa and the comfort of a warm kitchen.

Caramelized Apples + Onions | FoodLovesWriting.com

October beckons us to roast and to caramelize, to slow-cook and to stew. There’s nothing quite like coming in from the cold to the smell of something brewing, and that’s never more true than with today’s easy apples and onions dish.

Bowl of Apples + Onions | FoodLovesWriting.com

By the time the onions are soft and translucent, your home will smell as good as Thanksgiving dinner; and, standing above the stove, your hair pulled back and your house slippers on, the house quiet and still, save for sizzling, that right there will be so good, so rich, all you can do is give thanks for such a moment and, enjoy.