Yesterday, I learned that chef James Kent had died unexpectedly.
Kent’s restaurants are much loved in New York City, where I live. He, the creative force behind them, was also greatly adored in the hospitality industry. Many of his colleagues have been posting heartbroken tributes on social media today.
I never met chef Kent, but I did brush paths with him once, literally. We passed by each other right after I’d finished a meal at one of his restaurants. He must have had a night off, as he was entering the eatery with his family just as I was leaving.
I would register this news no matter what. I don’t work in restaurants, but they’re a big part of my life and my sense of belonging.
I register it even more because it’s the second tragic and unexpected loss that I’ve gotten news of in the past week.
On top of that, June 22nd, my godmother’s birthday, is approaching.
My godmother passed away suddenly in October of 2020. I think about her in the fall, when that tough anniversary hits. But my real time of remembrance is now, as her birthday approaches. We were both June babies.
It’s part of the human experience to be periodically reminded of how short and unpredictable life is, then to drift away from that awareness.
We register the preciousness of it all, then get swept back up into our worrying and overthinking and excessive planning—those very human ways in which we try to maintain the illusion that we’re in control.
I’m sure that I’ll fall back into those habits once this moment of awareness is less fresh.
But today, and on all of the days in which I have that special appreciation of how quickly life can change, I try hard not to take anything for granted.
I remind myself of what really matters to me—friendship and family, love given and love received, being present, enjoying life’s little pleasures—and ask myself whether I’ve been organizing my time accordingly.
Oftentimes I realize that I’ve been prioritizing everything but the things that I care about the most.
It’s easy to talk about orienting one’s life around what really matters yet tough to actually do it. Financial constraints, professional and personal responsibilities, unavoidable hardships, and ego can all get in the way.
One of the things I say and feel about having had depression is that it taught me to really inhabit the good days.
I learned how not to overthink those mornings when I woke up feeling clear and connected. Rather than worrying about whether they’d be temporary, I looked on their possible impermanence as reason to get out of bed and show up fully.
The same goes for these moments of heightened appreciation for life. By mid-week I may be swept up in relatively unimportant personal dramas. I’ll move through this day, however, with a sense of perspective.
Practically, that means that means getting this post written early, so that I can prioritize time with my mom. It means meaningful text exchanges and check-ins with few friends. Practically, it means that I’ve done some meal prep in service of enjoyable, good-for-body-and-soul food.
Not drastically different from any other Sunday, maybe, but the intentionality is greater.
Hope you can spend the afternoon and evening in a way that’s somehow aligned with the things you cherish most. Happy Sunday, friends. Here are some recipes and reads.
Recipes
1. Asparagus grilled cheese—who knew! Also, yum.
2. I’ve made strawberry chia pudding before, but raspberry chia pudding is one that I need to try.
3. Simple, summery squash rigatoni.
4. Grilled pineapple tofu skewers for all of us sweet/savory people
5. This vegan blueberry cobbler has a cake topping, rather than a biscuit topping, which means that it’s my kind of cobbler. And it looks delicious, to boot.
Reads
1. The latest news from the annals of the race to make more technology-enabled, plant-based milks.
2. Eating disorders are mental illnesses with a host of possible physical symptoms and consequences. Nevertheless, I appreciate articles like this one, which present them primarily as mental illnesses, rather than physical conditions.
The article focuses on “atypical anorexia,” a diagnosis that I’m very ambivalent about. At least half of my clients who present with anorexia nervosa are “atypical” in that they don’t have underweight BMIs.
As a clinician, I’d welcome a shift toward diagnostic criteria for AN that focuses on psychological symptoms, eating behaviors, and caloric restriction, rather than weight. If this were to happen, I wonder how obsolete the “atypical” label would become.
3. I’m all about the possible of leather from funghi.
4. Sunscreen myths, debunked!
5. In spite of how terrible it is for my one-woman business, I just can’t get into video as a learning medium. This is true for me both as a consumer and as a creator; I’d prefer a long, detailed, written recipe to a video any day. To say nothing of the fast, choppy food videos that are so popular now!
Not surprisingly, I found much to to appreciate in this article on slowed-down cooking videos. It focuses specifically on food videos created by older folks. In so doing, it encourages all of us to wonder what the big rush is. I’ll have to find that video of Marcella Hazan in (slow) action.
Speaking of my failures as a businesswoman, I’ve fallen behind on recipe posting. Again. But this week, really, there will be something new 😉
Till then,
G
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For most regular cooking give me a detailed recipe. But lately I’ve been getting back into bread baking and while studying Ken Forkish’s book Evolutions in Bread as well as a few other books and blogs, I was relieved to discover that Ken had posted some companion videos on YouTube to demonstrate techniques and how things should look at various stages. They’re very amateur videos–one camera, which doesn’t even do close ups half the time, and barely edited– but they were incredibly helpful in baking my first successful loaf from his recipe this past weekend.