There’s something about things dying that just gets me going. Maybe it’s the fascination with mortality that many students of English literature cultivate in order to cope with so many poets dying at early ages. It could also be a simple fascination with the irony of celebrating a harvest when things are dying all around you. Really, it’s probably social conditioning. It seems many of us are predisposed to enjoy the cozy feelings that fall and winter invoke, so much so that it’s become a lifestyle craze at various points in time.
Personally, I really like it when it’s cold. I like the smell of wet leaves and cold frosty air and knowing that all of the bugs will be offed by a nice hard freeze. But sometimes, I can’t wait for the cold to creep in. I go from cynical summer nightmare to weird warm fuzzies overnight when it’s still like 85 degrees out. It’s just TIME okay? It’s like those people who start listening to Christmas music right after Halloween. It’s time, they say, as they start ordering their favorite foofy Christmas Starbucks drink. I get it, I too have a foofy Christmas Starbucks drink I live for. But I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian, so Christmas is a really weird time to be living in a westernized, commercialized universe. I listen to my Christmas Sufjan and just try to make it to end without having the annual family arguments.
All of this is beside the point. I’m here to announce that it’s the end of summer because reasons. Make fall baked goods, tote home lorge butternut squashes from the store, buy all the pretty smelling pumpkin candles that they have in the seasonal aisles at your local Target. Eat some unironic kale! Roast a chicken! Layer cabbage under it because hello cabbage is delicious and also Helen Rosner told you to! Or don’t! I can’t tell you how to live your life! The season is short, do something fun for it.
Autumn is a fleeting sensation. Perhaps that’s why people find it so tantalizing. Some of you probably don’t know that I worked at Starbucks for a hot sec, first as a regular barista and then as a shift manager. It was a valuable, albeit stressful period in my life. Pumpkin spice (which, for the record, I still have never had, and never will) is the darling of the commercial beverage world. The level of its popularity will never cease to amaze me. I find the very smell of it revolting, if I’m being honest. But every year, I remind myself that it’s okay for people to like things like this. In the case of pumpkin spice, it should be obvious why it remains so beloved. Yeah, It’s sugar mixed with more sugar and a little bit of dairy, but it’s also something special for the changing of the seasons. It signifies the passage of time, a phenomenon that has been celebrated by all humans in virtually all times and places.
In our largely urbanized and capitalism-oriented society, we are far removed from concepts that have been with us as a species for thousands of generations. Autumn, at least in the west, has been been viewed as a time of plenty. We get a few months of lingering harvests before nature settles in for a long nap and destroys what she made with darkness and cold winds. In this age, with transportation and the grocery store, we merely register a decline in the quality of fresh tomatoes. There may be snow, and it will get really, really cold at some point in January or February. But we don’t have to make sure we have enough grain and cabbage to get through the winter. We don’t have to be concerned about storing small, hard apples properly, or that our vegetables had proper curing before getting stowed away in cellars. Instead, we get to pick up lemons and apples at the store year round. I can pick up an avocado shipped from Mexico to Iowa and take it home where it’ll be perfectly ripe within a few days! It’s an fucking miracle, but what’s the cost of all this opulence? What did it take to get that avocado into my hands?
This is all to say that pumpkin spiced everything has become special thanks to a perceived lack of scarcity and excellent marketing. Shit, the products practically market themselves. We don’t have to toil in fields; we have poorly paid, overworked, unprotected, and systematically exploited immigrant workers for that. Instead, a few of us have the extreme privilege of buying special, seasonal treats to remind us that, indeed, the seasons are changing. Our wealth, after thousands of years of absolute and actual poverty, has blessed a few of us with the ability to enjoy a delightful “taste of the season.” If we weren’t buying into these marketing campaigns, we might entirely loose this elemental piece of our humanity, this little bit of fear that lingers at the edges of our mind. Reckoning with privilege like this should be more than humbling or confusing: it should infuriate you.
We went on a week-long vacation to northern Michigan in late October of last year. Everyone told us that we were going to miss the fall foliage, but we didn’t, and even if we had we still would have had an excellent time. This is something that we absolutely would have done again this year, but it feels irresponsible to travel, especially to more vulnerable places with older populations and less infrastructure to deal with outbreaks. Additionally, living on one income is tight enough that appreciating a quiet weekend at home together is all the “special” we need. Just like pumpkin spice, “special” things and me-time and self care ... these are all very new inventions that we have because we no longer have to fear for our survival. At least, most of us don’t have to fear for it quite yet. The world is a big place. As we’ve seen, everything is capable of shifting and turning on a dime; perhaps it’s beginning to turn already. And at the same time, this modern condition has turned ourselves against us, reaping havoc within our minds. We are anxious and often feel like we have no direction. I don’t want to say that it’s okay, or that it’s going to be okay. I don’t know that. I’m just someone on the internet. But we can still make sure we preserve something “special” for ourselves. Maybe it’s not a festival in honor of a generous harvest we’ve just finished. Something as simple as making a cup of coffee for yourself can be “special.”
Side note: who actually cares about pumpkin spice? We all know that apple spice is the clear and superior fall flavor profile. I mean, people even go for pumpkin spice before maple! Ugh, please. Maple is the perfect seasonal food, though its season isn’t actually fall. However, it’s a precious and beautiful food product, and it deserves far more reverence than pumpkin spice, or even apple. Furthermore, the apple cider doughnut is the clear winner of fall themed foods. I clearly remember the first one I had when I was very little, at an orchard in rural southeast Nebraska. A couple of years ago, I had the chance to have them again. We were in michigan for a wedding. While Austin was recovering from the bachelor party, you bet your ass I drove thirty minutes to the nearest orchard and bought a dozen of little brown doughnuts just covered in cinnamon sugar. That’s one of those fleeting Ratatouille moments that’s crystalized in my head. I’ve got a few burned into my mind, but that’s one that I come back to every year around this time.
Reconciling seasonal feelings with society’s perceived lack of seasonality is difficult, but I hope that this struggle has been at least somewhat thought provoking for you. I didn’t set out to get this dark, but alas, it happens form time to time. I think we take things like pumpkin spice for granted, actually. Seasonal changes are important and natural, and all the more fleeting as we stare global warming directly in the face. That we have come up with artificial means of recognizing and celebrating the passage of time is a good thing, but we should examine the artifice itself. What have we lost along the way?
what I’m cooking right now: It is with great reluctance that I have made and now recommend this recipe for an Apple Cider Donut Loaf Cake from Bon Appetit. It’s been really intense watching this publication be exposed for what it is: elitist and whitewashed. Hearing that the writers and recipe developers that you love and support have been either victims of or complicit in a toxic and racist working environment has been a necessary but rude awakening for me. I’ve been reading this publication for a hot decade; the fury I feel is largely directed at myself, because I didn’t look past the glossy covers. This has been a learning experience. It’s not a matter of “we” or “they” can do better. We must do more to create equitable working environments for all people, while also acknowledging and seeing how our differences and experiences create a more rich and textured society worth living in for all people. It has been a very important reminder to more thoroughly examine what we put into our minds, especially in this digitally centered time. Bon Appetit has long been complicit in producing white-centered food media and we need to interrogate why we allowed this to become the norm. Obviously, white supremacy, intentional or not, played an outsized part in dictating the tastes and aesthetic put forth by this publication, among others.
At the risk of prattling on and sounding like yet another “white person big mad about being tRiCkEd” (I wasn’t, my privilege acted as an enabler and I failed to look critically and closely, I was absolutely complicit, whether I realized it or not), I’ll leave you with this: This loaf cake was a bit fiddly to make but also very delicious. A weekend project for sure, but one that was simple enough to have a nice pay off. I fell for the clickbait into this recipe because I am bananas for apple spice things, and I am still trying to decide how to approach new content put out by this magazine and its writers. On one hand I want to hold them accountable for all of the new promises they’ve tried to make; on the other hand, both of the Black staffers at the magazine have quit. Clearly, things have yet to change at Condé Nast, despite this business as usual but “make it woke” content they keep putting out. I clicked on the recipe but I will not renew the subscription I payed a mere ten bucks for. It’s not worth my time to deal with the hellish bureaucratic system to get it cancelled. Now is the time to be watching what they do with a critical eye.
some links for you to read: Honestly, there’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in the food media sphere right now. In an effort to topple the giants, different writers and creators are coming forward and throwing their hats in the ring. They offer more nuance and insight where most of us just missed the point the first time around. We need more independent voices in food media. It keeps us honest with each other and promotes the content that Big Media wants to keep out of the spotlight. Below are a few of my favorites. There are several more that I haven’t listed, but luckily I haven’t given up on this newsletter yet, so I’ll be sure to share more as we go forward.
Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter is phenomenal, and I have a paid subscription to receive her Friday interviews. Consider subscribing just to get her Monday essays, wherein she talks about everything from luxury to anarchism and how these things affect food and culture. Her insight is thought-provoking, and it forces me to dialogue with myself about what I actually believe and value. That’s immensely important during times like these. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to read her work.
A Whetstone Magazine subscription was one of those midnight Covid-19 purchases that ended up being a great idea. I got the digital subscription for issues 5-8 and wow, what a beautiful publication to be able to scroll through. I’m sure the physical copies are even more stunning. Stephen Satterfield, one of the co-founders, also hosts the podcast Point of Origin. With each podcast, he takes a deep dive into global foodways, exploring the history and culture that helped bring these practices about. Whetstone also recently launched W Journal, which covers similar content but in a blog type setting. I learn something new with each post, and it keeps me coming back for more.
One of the few good things to come out of quarantining is the podcast Home Cooking. What a soothing thing to listen to. Hosted by Samin Nosrat and Hrishi Hirway, the podcast generally covers the topic of home cooking during quarantine. There’s questions from listeners, usually a guest, and a lot of really intense puns. If you need a little bit of cooking-centered listening, this is it.
Questions, comments, cries of pain? Is there something you want me to write about? Respond to this email to talk to me about it! Love y’all, take care!