My Own Private Time Machine
Seven years ago, on January 1st, 2015, I began a food journal. My first entry said, today we made fresh pasta for the first time. It was delicious. It’s a five year journal, pocket sized if the pocket were in a pair of cargo pants. Each page has a date at the top, with room to write in the day and year and a few blank lines below, times five. Five years per page.
I started it because I wanted a way to keep track of meals I cooked or food I ate that I deemed worthy of remembering. Like the excellent sandwiches on good bread with sautéed kale, pickled pepperoncinis, bacon & cheddar I made on September 19, 2016. Or the roasted strawberry buttermilk ice cream and homemade falafels (good food/cooking day) on June 20, 2018. Over the years it has become more than just a journal about food, it has turned into a daily one line memory capsule of our life together, marking big moments and small, our sadness and joy, new jobs, holidays, visitors, travels, birth, death. There is something about being able to look back a year, or two or three or four, right there on the same page, to remember that life is constantly evolving. Even when things feel stagnant, there’s movement.
Not every meal is one to remember. There are plenty of entries that just say, pasta or quesadilla or breakfast burritos for dinner again. Ramen is a popular entry, especially in winter, although I’d argue that our ramen broth is worthy of remembering. Sometimes the meal is so terrible that it makes the book, like the worst pizza ever from the most depressing pizza shop in the Rondout on September 7, 2017, or the worst nachos ever at a restaurant in Fishkill before going to Home Depot on March 15, 2016. I remember both those meals, astonishingly terrible.
I like the entries that remind me of how I felt during big transitions, like the one on December 20, 2015, we’re out of the south!!! Slept in a rest stop north of Cincinnati. So fun. Ate bread, hummus, cucumbers and chocolate. I like this travel life. We had an RV named Frankie and were moving to the Hudson Valley after six years living in the south. I remember feeling so free after a longtime feeling stuck in a place that didn’t feel like home. A little nervous because of all the unknown, but excited for the very same reason. Much like how I feel now as we begin this next chapter.
It’s interesting to look back to a year ago this week, to the beginning of lockdown, our business drying up overnight, the unknown looming larger than ever before. It was the week where it felt like all the pieces of our life fell like dominos, although now I see it was just a dry run.
Thursday, March 12, 2020: Ramen. This coronavirus is getting real. Maybe one day I’ll want to cook again.
Friday, March 13, 2020: Chicken chili after an apocalyptic grocery shopping trip.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020: Bacon, eggs and roasted potatoes made by Drew. All our work dried up. This coronavirus is real shit.
I was heartened to see that it only took another week or so to find my cooking mojo again. At least until the next dip, of which there have been many. Like lots of people I started baking more, I joined a CSA to bring some pizazz to my cooking, in the form of a seemingly never ending supply of greens each week. I also started cooking out of my cookbooks even more than I usually do. During a week in late March I made four recipes from Melissa Clark’s cookbook Dinner, clinching it as my desert island cookbook since every time I thought my pantry was bare, I’d find another gem. By mid-April I had baked crumb cake twice, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, focaccia, and a lemon poppyseed poundcake for my Aunt Jean’s 94th birthday, which we ate outside in her driveway in New Jersey, in the springtime sun.
A year later, after 365 days of near constant pivoting and adjusting of plans, we have become adaptable ninjas. What felt like an apocalyptic week last year, this week feels more hopeful. There’s still plenty of uncertainty, but it’s less like a tidal wave coming from all directions, and more like something we have learned to use as a guide. I don’t wonder anymore if I’ll ever want to cook again, my food journal shows me that the ebbs and flows are a part of life and the desire comes back around, especially when I’m able to cook for other people. For after this year that’s the key, isn’t it? Other people.