something new brewing for 2024

Hello, old friends and subscribers!

You’re getting this email because you didn’t unsubscribe to my newsletter when I put it on ice at the end of last year. Lucky you, you’re the first to learn about this newsletter's new name and format: cooking for other people.

I’ll send out a shorter intro post in a couple of weeks. For now, here’s a preview.

Each month, I will release a new essay on, well, like the title says, cooking for other people. The recipes made, the drinks mixed, the stories told around the table.

This is a cooking blog, in some ways, but I think of the cooking more like a delivery system for stories, the way a cracker is a delivery system for cheese. The cracker is tasty, but it’s an excuse to eat cheese. So between the recipes and photos and anecdotes from over the stove, each essay will centre on a relationship, how we connect through food and the broader context from which we are all always cooking.

Because as much as cooking is relational, it’s also social and cultural. My love of food comes from cooking for my siblings and piling my paper plate high at Baptist church potlucks. I continue to find that joy in the kitchen helping my mom in the kitchen, fixing dinner for my boyfriend and mixing drinks with my friends. As I tell these stories, I’ll dig into the histories and narratives, both personal and cultural, that inform the way we feed each other, and how we relate to food.

My hope for this newsletter is that it can feel like eating potato salad on the grass at a church picnic, laughing with your friends over wine at a Friendsgiving party, or the smell of dinner beckoning you down from your bedroom.

I’m excited about this project — it’s an excuse to get together with friends, explore relationships, cook new (and old) recipes, and write about all those things.

Thanks for joining me on this new journey!