Drunk On Vegetables & Metaphorical Rock Climbing, Part One
July 2023
July is maybe my favourite month of them all? I think that’s at least true of 2023 so far, though February weirdly gave it a run for its money in terms of writing bliss. Even if they were tied in some ways, July wins because: I can wear exclusively loose, bag-shaped dresses; the seasonal fruits and vegetables make me fully drunk — I run around the farmers’ markets like a kid, collecting baskets of treasure and thinking non-stop about what I’ll make next (see sampling below); I get a kind of swoony, decadent feeling from the heat that I thoroughly enjoy (this cedes more often to nausea than it used to as I age, but never mind); there are opportunities to swim in lakes; my partner David and best friend Maggie are teachers so they’re off for the summer, which means I get to see them more and they are typically less stressed out. Maggie recently shared this sweet illustration on Instagram, and yes, it’s pretty twee, but fuck, I relate, most especially to that vegetable guy.
To be clear, my July was far from all sunshine and lake swims and zucchini blossoms, but those things definitely helped sand the edges when the rough stuff poked through.
Writing
I can’t talk about July without talking about rock climbing, which I became completely obsessed with this month. Not doing it, obviously! If you know me you know that both times I tried it — once indoors on a gym class field trip, once outdoors with friends in Germany — I had a panic attack and extremely bawled the moment I got literally five feet off the ground. No, this month I got obsessed with rock climbing movies; mostly 2018’s Free Solo, starring Alex Honnold who climbs giant rock faces without a rope, aka “free soloing.” Just typing “without a rope” made my palms sweat anew, no joke. I had no idea why I couldn’t stop learning about Honnold, watching more and more footage of his death-defying climbs, so I started an essay to explore it for this very newsletter. But as occasionally happens to me it became a labyrinth of incoherent metaphors leading possibly to a Unified Theory of Everything That’s Hard, concluding with empirical evidence that Honnold and I are essentially the same person, and possibly to truly nothing at all. Currently sitting at four thousand words, she’s not ready. Maybe next month!
In addition to that thrill ride, I really broke into some of the more fantastical sections of my novel for the first time and it felt great to do. Having never written off-reality before, it felt very scary if I’m honest. I have a light shame-over and “who do you think you are?” feelings when I think back on what I wrote. But I did it, I have strange non-human characters on paper who I rather like, and that’s a bunch of the battle won. I also managed to push through to just about the midpoint of the second draft of this book, which is kind of, sort of, loosely in keeping with the schedule I’d made for myself this year. Not being a literal decade over-schedule is frankly novel for me, so. Inspired by my friend Meredith (see Reading), I’m celebrating the milestone!
Finally, an honest to god hot, hot writing tip for you all, possibly my best to date: isochronic tones, baby. I feel like these are worth a shot for anyone, but if you, like me, sometimes can’t focus worth shit on the thing you desperately want to do and it makes you want to pull out all your eyelashes and scream until your vocal cords smoke, do me a favour and give isochronic tones a try? Am I wearing a tinfoil hat? I don’t know! What I do know is that isochronic tones are “single tones that come on and off at regular, evenly spaced intervals,” used for “brainwave entrainment” meaning depending on how the intervals are spaced, you can get different brainwaves going to relax you or focus you up. For years, I’ve used pop music while I write for the same basic purpose, which I refer to as my “Rodeo Clown.” But lately I’ve also been listening to these nerdy house mixes with isochronic tones built in, and I’ll. Be. Damned. If they don’t make me werk. Anybody else??
Below is my favourite one these days. I was writing on the Earl’s patio in the Yorkdale Mall parking lot the other day (iykyk?), and I felt like I was in a biopic about myself, like this, this, is the very exciting montage where I’m Writing The Novel. Lol. Try it!
Reading
My lovely friend and fellow writer Lauren Bride invited me to another lovely friend, Meredith Cheesbrough’s, table read of the script of her very first feature film, Hitchhike to Yellowknife. I had never been to a table read before, and I was excited and honoured to go, but I was also slightly nervous. My brain is not always the best at following along when stories are read out loud, and sometimes at literary readings I fully fuzz out and just laugh when everybody else does like a kid watching Three’s Company, and after tell the author, “That was so good!” whilst burning with shame. But a table read has actors! People specifically trained to make text more understandable when spoken aloud! Plus we had the script on our phones to follow along! Bliss!
Not only that, the script was so good! I knew Meredith to be hilarious from life and Instagram, but had never read anything she wrote. The script, informed by the real life story of her intrepid aunt, was funny, road-trippy, rom-commy, but also passed the Bechdel test in all kinds of nice ways. Just the kind of movie I like, really. I fully teared up at the end in the basement theatre in Parkdale where we sat in a circle, all these bright talents bringing this well-crafted thing to vibrant life in just their regular summer clothes, sitting in chairs. After, at a bar, Meredith said that it was so helpful to hear the thing out loud, and even if the movie never gets made, she wants to celebrate this milestone, of having a whole draft of a real thing.
Firstly, if any high power producers are reading, please make this movie right away, you won’t regret it! Secondly, I really feel that notion of celebrating. It’s huge to make a thing like that, hell yeah, Meredith! The whole experience made me more excited than ever to keep making my thing, too, to one day invite it out to a bar with the gurls.
Other than that, rough month for reading again, just bouncing around, but I did re-read one of my favourite craft books, Ron Carlson Writes a Story. Carlson features in my possibly forthcoming Rock Climbing Opus, so I won’t go to town on it, but it remains a banger. These days I take issue with blanket statements, and would qualify the sentiment a little more, but I still vibe with his hot tip of “staying in the room.” This quote always motivates and brings on pleasurable delusions of grandeur (provided I stayed in the room that day):
The writer is the person who stays in the room. The writer wants to read what she1 is in the process of creating with such passion and devotion that she will not leave the room. The writer understands that to stand up from the desk is to fail, and to leave the room is so radical and thorough a failure as to not be reversible. Who is not in the room writing? Everybody. Is it difficult to stay in the room, especially when you are not sure of what you’re doing, where you’re going? Yes. It’s impossible. Who can do it? The writer.
Eating
Let’s go!
I got very into strawberries and sour cherries, and also learned about making mini-tarts in mason jar lids from queen Erin McDowell (they can be a little bit hard to release, but otherwise great!) So I made a bunch of my favourite almond press-in dough (pretty much the one from Vegan Pie In The Sky) and froze it in 50 gram portions with waxed paper between, and froze a bunch of prepped fruit, and now I can make mini tarts whenever instead of feeling pressure to mow through a big tart fast, which sometimes isn’t my thing. Also! Pitting cherries with a paperclip is the move.
I had some nice koji from the Izumi sake distillery in my freezer, and I made some fun things with it. Up top left, a shio koji made with tomato water (more here), an idea I blatantly lifted from the fermentation-forward vegan restaurant in Philadelphia, Pietramala, which I’m dying to visit one day. Until then, I’ll steal their ideas. I used the shio koji a la
to marinate the tofu “feta” for my greek salad bottom left, and splashed it on my big beans, bottom right, with delicious results. In the top right corner is an amazake-strawberry sorbet that I made using the sorbet syrup from the Superiority Burger cookbook. It was weird and so yummy and stayed nice and creamy in the freezer due to anything made with koji being brimful with friendly magic.
On the right is a pasta I’ll call Salicornia Scampi, because the farmers’ market had fresh sea asparagus, (aka salicornia, aka glasswort) from Nova Scotia and I got excited and caved on my ALL LOCAL ALL SUMMER law because who doesn’t love a crunchy, naturally salty, sea-like thing to drown in a garlicky wine sauce? Top right is a classic German potato salad with plenty of pickles, served with my latest revelation: sautéed kohlrabi. Get into this, guys, it’s a real mind-blower! I just sprinkle mine with salt, pepper, and a wee bit of smoked paprika and it’s true brassica heaven.
End of July I had a dreamy little trip with two great friends to Prince Edward County, which, if you’re not familiar, is a wine region about two hours drive from Toronto that is really nice, increasingly bougie, a destination for thousands of Insta-motivated rosé-all-day bachelorette parties, and, well, you can get flights of artisanal cider slushies as pictured bottom right, hahaha! But there’s also beautiful lake swimming and incredible vegetables to be bought at places like Vicki’s Veggies, pictured up top, where I went a little wild. Plus we had a barbecue at our cottage, so I brought a batch of my vegan bratwursts and was thrilled that my omni friends enjoyed.
Thanks to going wild at Vicki’s Veggies, I made these beauts upon my return: risotto with snap peas, zucchini blossoms, fennel, tomatoes, the aforementioned shio koji; zucchini blossom fritters; Alison Roman’s Tomato Tart from Sweet Enough, veganized — a triumph due to a large percentage of the crust ingredients being cheese.
If you want more details on any of this food, just ask in the comments or email me, whatever! Thank you for reading, I love you and the summer forever, goodbye!
Worth noting that Carlson was one of the first male writers I encountered in my twenties who alternated pronouns in his craft advice instead of defaulting to “he,” and it was refreshing af.
Very good looking recipes. Yes, stay in the room. Haha
Enjoyed that very much 👏👏👏