I stumbled across a gorgeous food blog from Lyon, France (written in English) this evening. I liked the blog so much that I decided to write about it. This blog reminds me of an old hard copy magazine that my friend Nancy created, before the “real world” asserted its primacy, called “Chew.†The food blog is called Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook. What I love about it, aside from the beautiful photos of kitchens and food, is that it reminds me of the thoughtful essays and stories about eating & cooking & dining out & shopping for food that Nancy used to write for “Chew.” Now, not to name names, but someone I know has left a real world job and entered that mind-altering transitional in-between-place, where you don’t know if you should just grab on to the next logical, normal job “right thing” to do (and *damn* you feel so much internal pressure to do that), or hang on through the confusion and the daunting silence for your passion, your spirit, to lead the way. Below is an excerpt from a post by Lucy called “Split Personalities”. I think that there is comfort to be found in it for both food lovers and way seekers alike.
There is a certain syntax at work as a person pieces their way, one by one, billet by billet, voyage by voyage, into the creation of a body of work that can be called life work. A vocation is found, sometimes early, sometimes late, and it is in that siren’s calling that we find our passion. As the pieces fit together for me, vignettes summarize the activities that nurture and sustain me spiritually. At a point in a person’s life, any person’s life, they can suddenly name it. The choice presents itself and sometimes it is easy to ease it in among the rest.
The kitchen is the most basic studio for creation - I can find the perfect cyclical patterns arising on a life-sized scale, no monumental accomplishments or revolution at play here, and no single edition miniatures labored over by teams of artisans, but stories that slide naturally into our lives and our minds, like playing cards in bicycle spokes, ideas that repeat, make rhythms, fill us, recharge us. I can put some mindful effort into practice here, day after day, every side of me.
We are repeating what has been done for thousands of years, everyone to their own degree and within their context. The aesthetic and ritual of nourishment. It is ageless and can be classed in so many subcategories and styles, but when it is all amassed together, it encompasses every single individual human memory.
We all associate food rituals intimately with the experiences that form us, eras that shape our personalities, our memories, memories of our mothers kitchens, and stories of their mother’s kitchens. We accumulate it all into our senses. Sometimes we gather it like cotton wool to be spun into threads that will be used to suspend or support other activites or ideas, and sometimes we can take it simply like a wide open spring Saturday that leaves us happy and tired by the heat of the fire. When we can abandon ourselves to the light and the air and then turn our attention to our collective work suspended over the hearth, without ever having the need to suspend our hopes beyond what is right before us - I know we have arrived.
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Garden variety North American Nomad. Born in the Midwest; lived and worked on the West Coast and abroad; studied in the South. Recently spotted putting down roots in New England.