Last Chance Kitchen
February 2023
A few years ago, I started to notice that the sunsets in February are really nice. I noticed this when I still commuted regularly and instead of walking home from the subway hunched against the cold in the dark, now I was hunched against the cold but charmed by an orange ball of light in the sky, maybe some purple streaks, you get the idea: an improvement! I think I’d had some notion when I first drafted this bit that I’d craft the whole newsletter on the theme of the light coming back, something like that, but spoiler: she’s not going to be so coherent. February was a wildly busy month so I’m challenging myself to get this up and out really fast so it sticks with my schedule of “the week after the last month ends.” What a sloppy sentence! Who cares! Sunsets! They’re nice! I only have to commute twice a week now, but I still try to stare out the window for a while after work on my remote days to bask in the idea of returning warmth even if there’s still a few months of ice and snow to come.
Writing:
Last spring and summer when I was writing a first draft of my new novel in three months, coached by the wonderful Heidi Reimer, I kept saying to myself, “It’s Last Chance Kitchen, bitch.” That may not sound like the nicest thing to say to myself, but it’s what I needed at the time. If you don’t know, Last Chance Kitchen is, like, an adjunct show to Top Chef for people who have already been kicked off. They get this one extra-compressed chance to flail away for Tom Colicchio and earn back their spot in the actual competition. When people compete on Last Chance Kitchen, they don’t often look like they’re vibing or having fun, they’re just gritting their teeth, getting through it, giving it the very best shot they can, knowing it’s either all over or they can breathe out and once again do this thing “for real.”
If you’ve been reading this newsletter since the beginning, you’ll know that I spent fifteen years on a book that, though I finished it, I will likely never seek to have published for a variety of reasons. I can’t lie, that experience sucked. So when I signed up for the three month thing, I told myself that if it came to nought, I wouldn’t continue. I would focus more fully on food writing, maybe get a full-time communications job, leave my fiction dream behind. It was actually kind of relieving. I was still so tired and ashamed from failure that maybe I wanted to pack my knives and go. But the other thing I told myself was I had to commit fully to what Heidi told me to do. I couldn’t crap out. I worked every day, and I gave it my best. Some days I had fun, many days I showed up to the page with gritted teeth and just turned off my brain as best I could and spat out my 1000 words knowing I could fix them later. Or not.
Though a lot of writing the fifteen-year failed book was very gruelling and difficult, there were also times that were absolute bliss. I can remember many of those times specifically, many of them weeks spent out at my beloved Artscape Gibraltar Point on my beloved Toronto Island, just going to town, feeling at one with the page, with myself, with the world, with the lake, etc. When the book didn’t work, those memories became painful. How could I have deluded myself like that? How could I have thought, for so long, that those feelings were going somewhere? I have felt scared to let myself connect that hard again.
But I made it through Last Chance Kitchen, and though there was no Tom Colicchio to give what I’d made a taste, I guess what I wrote last month about choosing this novel as my top priority was kind of like letting myself back on the main Top Chef. And reader? I’ve been vibing. I’ve let it happen. In February I finally felt that feeling again, the reason I do it really, this incredible — not always fun, not totally unstressful — aliveness I feel when I really let myself go. It fucking ruled. And now I’m telling you about it. Out loud. Again. Oh god. I’m scared. But really it’s the only way.
I took a week off my day job in February so I could really go feral for a bit, and during that week, truly high on my own supply, I started a new Instagram presenting myself as a fiction writer and followed all manner of people I admired. One of them was
who posted this shortly after I followed her. She wrote:“One thing remains true though — the writing is the very best part, it is the sacred part, the core of this whole thing. If you are writing, you are lucky. When we are writing, we are whole.”
There have been times in my life when I would have barfed in my mouth a bit reading that. But right now, I’m like, “Yes, absolutely. Process is everything. This is exactly where I want to always live.”
I haven’t posted much on that account since work started back up and my head shrank back to its normal-ish size, but I’m going to try sometimes. Mostly I just want to repost reels from Ocean Insta, of whales and dolphins breaching and jumping and living their lives as I research whales in captivity for my book and cry and cry. Here’s a post about when I went to a protest at Marineland in Niagara Falls a million years ago, and here’s some news about Smooshi the walrus and her son, Koyuk, who were just moved from Marineland to a new home in Abu Dhabi. Walruses on an airplane. Imagine. I hope they’ll like it better there. I’ve been thinking about them a lot.
Reading:
I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, which is a sort of sequel to A Visit From The Goon Squad which I have long thought is my favourite novel ever, so after finishing The Candy House (which I thought was very good! must read again!) I had to re-read Goon Squad, thinking maybe I’ll have grown out of it, feeling nervous the chapter done as a PowerPoint would now seem hackneyed and cheap, but listen: that book absolutely still goes, and the PowerPoint part was better than I’d remembered and I cannot believe that we talk about Jonathan Franzen the way we do, for example, but Jennifer Egan is not a household name, like everyone in North America even people who don’t read should sort of tacitly grow up understanding that she is one of our greatest living writers? Like, I know she’s famous as lit fic goes, but…I want more? Also I read this profile of her that said she missed her chance of an epidural because she was writing so hard when she’d already gone into labour with one of her kids and didn’t want to stop to go to the hospital. Which I absolutely don’t get and also kind of do get. Sorry this is just my feelings and nothing about why you might like these books or not. I think I am not great at writing about that? I definitely find it hard. Forthwith, a poll!
Eating:
So alongside finally vibing with my book, on February 20th KojiCon 2023 kicked off, and if you know me at all you know I live for KojiCon. But it also kind of ruins my life because I can think about nothing else. Very quick and dirty: koji is the mold responsible for fermenting soy beans and other grains and legumes into some of the best plant-based umami-givers on earth: soy sauce, miso, shio koji for starters; the traditionally more wild ferments of Korea like doenjang, gochujang, etc. also harness the power of this magic mold in addition to other ambient microbes and, look, I could go on FOR YEARS. But I find that when I do, it’s somewhat…boring? Alienating? But not to my friends at KojiCon!
This was my second year attending this online conference, and honestly it’s like nothing else. There’s a Slack for attendees to hang out in between sessions, share their ferments, trouble-shoot, slide into one another’s DM’s to talk spore strains, etc. and reconvening with some of those folks and letting my nerd flag absolutely fly high for two weeks was so fun and gratifying. I was finally motivated to ferment things though I hadn’t in months, and ended up with a jar of kimchi, a mushroom shio koji, an onion shio koji, baby’s first miso made from lentils, banana ketchup, and these amazing pickles called kasuzuke made by burying vegetables in the lees leftover from sake-making that are still teeming with enzymatic juice. If you’re actually still reading this part, maybe you’re the type of person who wants to get on the KojiCon train? You can still buy tickets and watch the recorded sessions from all three years for a measly thirty bucks. Suddenly it’s Noma in your own house but you can exploit the worker (you!) only as much as you want to! Mold is Gold!
Anyway, an extremely overstimulating but great month, my brain cells are still whirring, I hope this wasn’t too messy, ILY for reading, goodbye!
Yay vibing and thank you for all the kojicon inspiration! I can't wait to dig in to more of it.