[bittersweetafterdinner]

a very tender journey i've been on today all before noon

nasturtium leaf dolmas stuffed with fried onion, jasmine rice, toasted pignoli, vegetable broth, fresh basil, chives, lemon juice and zest, a splash of chive blossom vinegar, chopped petals, and a little salt and pepper. flowers filled with basil ricotta.

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Going to England to attend a professional cheesemaking workshop and eat Stilton from Neal's Yard Dairy. Afterwards getting Penicillium Roqueforti tattooed in English round hand on my ass, but really really tiny... just kidding, no I'm not

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I struggle so much with enjoying food, and making myself food I enjoy. I worked in a restaurant for years and I can make amazing food for others and be happy they're enjoying it, but I'm not good at nourishing myself. do you have any advice? I hope it's okay to ask this, I just feel like you'd know...

Oh, this is such an important question. I struggle with this too. Working in kitchens and cooking all day is exhausting. I won't pretend for a second that I always come home wanting to cook dinner for myself.

I think you and I are similar in this way, what you say about cooking for others being easier. I think working in restaurants does something to your brain. It's not even that it implants a desire to nourish others and share good food (although it can do that). I think it's more that it creates this impulse, or reflexive response to food: I cook, you eat.

Cooking for yourself is a different kind of trick. For me, it always comes back to appetite. I can't think about these things in the abstract. For example, meal prepping is actually too abstract for me. Although I understand it's straightforward and systemized, it doesn't work for me at all.

You must have some favorite foods or recipes. For me, I gravitate toward pancakes for dinner after a particularly rough day. A short stack with lots of butter and syrup, a fried egg, maybe a piece of bacon, and a glass of Riesling. It’s actually hilarious to type out. But that’s what brings me joy, and pancakes are the ultimate comfort food for me.

Other simple meals I tend to gravitate toward are pastas with tinned fish, fresh herbs, and lemon, or a chimichurri sauce over roasted fish or vegetables.

I think simple is best. Give yourself what you’re craving, and try to tap into that more so it feels unique to you, like a gift to yourself. I hope this helps...

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just wanted to say i came across a mention of curry kraut on your blog last week and was so intrigued I ended up making some. it turned out delicious, tangy and spicy, and I had a beautiful time making it with my partner on a sunny Sunday :-) thanks for sharing your love of food on here!

This is soooo cute n sweet! I'm happy to know it inspired you. Personally I think it's great on egg tacos for breakfast :P

[bittersweetafterdinner]

The day after I arrived the weather was much warmer than forecasted, I was sweating in my sun hat and delirious from jet lag, lugging around my bags, aimless, and at that exact moment, squatting outside the church filming a miniature depiction of the village while the church bells rang. A woman approached me, she startled me actually, because I was almost in a trance with my right eye in the viewfinder and my left eye closed, focused solely on this miniature world in front of me as she yelled from across the courtyard, isn't it beautiful? She was wearing a dark linen tunic and a head scarf and told me she was preparing medieval food in the garden, that I should come take a look. I was curious because I was only just discovering where I was and what was happening around me. Tired and hungry but also with a few hours to kill before my ferry departed and this woman was like an apparition that appeared spontaneously, I had to do what she said, but it was also miraculously exactly what I wanted to do.

[bittersweetafterdinner]

Adrift in Kalundborg

The day after I arrived, the weather was much warmer than forecasted.

Some time has passed, but I've expanded some of my reflections about my arrival in Denmark last summer, and I've kept in touch with Ditte. So this piece now includes an interview at the end <3

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Every spring, I cannot believe what is happening in my life, even the most simple things. I feel deep affection. My heart is open. On my plate: smoked black cod over sautéed mustard greens, roasted Japanese sweet potato and spring onion, and devil's club buds—first blanched, then sautéed with garlic and finished with a dash of soy sauce—per H's suggestion. Coconut oil was used for everything because I've been craving it so much lately…

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My mom's been cleaning her house and she decided to send me everything that was inside my hat box. There was an old journal (many old journals) that included entries from when I was fifteen. I read one last night that expressed my desire to become a good cook, live in a small city by the sea, and probably never get married but fall in love and eat breakfast in the grass. Oh...

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For Thousands of Years All We Did Was Cook Dinner

When I went to my first cheesemonger conference I learned about tyrosine and ate a Tête de Moine rosette filled with mimosa jam.

Your friend and cheesemonger wrote about going to work. And I don't think I care if I'm being corny, I'm having fun writing about cheese 💚

[bittersweetafterdinner]

Celebrating the nettles and magnolias! I made pickled petals to eat with nettle onigiri at C's. They tasted so much like pickled ginger in flavor and texture, crunchy and slippery and slightly sweet. C constructed a giant bakudan "bomb." The very next day I made magnolia blossom baklava and avgolemono to eat with the nettle spanakopita that E had prepared. The baklava was soaked in magnolia syrup and topped with the spent petals, which I coated in sugar and dehydrated, then coarsely ground, and mixed with cinnamon. The syrup tasted astoundingly like cardamom all on its own. I want to use the rest to soak in an almond flour cake! Maybe with a chai whipped cream topping. (Leftovers with a runny egg felt correct.)

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Best peace punk song ever made... currently reminiscing on when I was a punk girl but, you know... I will always be a punk in torn pantyhose.

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The book I'm reading on top of a baking tray I need to bring back to work today and a magnolia we ate half the petals off of

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Wait I'm happy. I was writing all morning. Cleaned my bedroom with the window open. Went to the beach and read my book because the sun was out. Then plucked some magnolias to make syrup. Plans got cancelled and then remade, I got invited to dinner at E's so I decided to forage some nettles for the soup, but I didn't have a bag so I just took off my coat and tied it into knots, wore it around my arm like a basket... god I missed the forest. I need more days like this. But it's spring! So there will be more days like this! Also I got asked out on a date hehe

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Substack legitimately frightens me, but I want to share my writing while I am writing it, before it turns into something else, and I couldn't think of a better place. It's also a more appropriate platform to share with my irl friends and family, but it's hard to even look at the writing that is being circulated, I literally have to publish my post and get off immediately. Tumblr has been the only social media I've used for years and years and years. I haven't had a facebook or instagram since 2015 and I forget how sheltered from the internet I've been. Internet writing is terrible, largely... I don't think anything I'm doing fits a formula, or is at all very relevant to anyone... In all honestly, I don't know if what I'm doing is reportage or food memoir or something more essayistic but it's simply what I'm doing, and I feel a strong pull to keep writing. It feels incredible to be more disciplined. The goal is discipline for me.

[bittersweetafterdinner]

At 1205

At 1205, I hosted dinner almost every weekend for two years.

It's a way for me to write a bit more long-form than I do here. It tells the story behind my blog title, and now my newsletter. This is the first piece I’ll be sharing, though it’s really just part one of a two-part series. The essay here is about food memory; upcoming is an essay about food work, specifically my experiences as a cook and cheesemonger. I’ll be posting less on tumblr and more on substack from now on, and soon I hope to release a multi-part series about my time cooking and farming in Denmark last summer.