Jun 05, 2018
Flour, Yeast, Water, and Salt: How Breadmaking Helped Me Get Through My Divorce
Breadmaking made me feel purposeful, instead of feeling as if I scarcely had control over anything.
Breadmaking made me feel purposeful, instead of feeling as if I scarcely had control over anything.
This Eid will not be Eid until I’ve spent time crying and laughing, describing the aromas of foods that are not here.
“As a young woman, I was rarely in control of my body or my mind. I had hungers like snakes wildly contorting from my head.”
Holding on to our cultural foods and customs was a labor of love, but labor nevertheless. American Night provided a little respite.
I have forgotten how to speak two languages. But I have learned this one.
“FOE!” he had yelled, when really, phở is more graceful than that.
Herring in Ukraine to fried whiting on my street. Melville to Jewish legend. How easily we eat fish caught from depths we don’t understand.
“Finding joy in food that comes from a bag or a box feels like a sin in a society that demonizes it.”
“To be an amateur is to let one’s leisure activities remain indifferent to the whims of capital.”
“Hold a cast-iron skillet and you’ll feel the weight of this history through the handle.”
“If food is like a language, then menudo is its own dialect in my family.”
I’ve gotten better at eating since rehab, but I’ve yet to explore the pleasure of food; of preparing it and enjoying it.
I want to be the bridge between his memory and her love for cooking.
“We eat meat and tell ourselves these bodies are just burger, ham, filets.”
“Half my neighbor’s sour cherry tree grew over our fence, which made that half ours by law no matter what she said.”
“It’s right, I think, to have death be a part of life; it’s the way it should be.”
“He showed us the realm of good-eating fruit, and we have come to protect this pleasure fiercely.”
Level 1 is not hot (sorry, Sriracha). Level 2 (habanero, scotch bonnet) gets interesting. Then there is Level 3.
