I made myself a cup of coffee this week and actually sat still enough to drink it while it was hot. It was that moment I knew things were shifting.

The catering gigs wrapped up, and I’ve got a nice little quiet stretch before the next round of events, and I’ve just been...existing in our apartment at a normal pace...catching up on sleep, cooking things I actually want to eat, watching Millie be eleven in real time and feeling something that feels like overwhelm…but in the very best way.

She graduates from fifth grade in a few weeks. I can’t fully explain what that means to me, but you know I’ll try to anyway.

Millie started kindergarten in New York City in September 2020. The world was in the middle of pandemic-everything, school was hybrid, and she went some days and stayed home other days, and her teacher was a little square on a screen, and she was five years old, and she just...kept going. I think about that time a lot…the absolute audacity of being five in 2020 in New York City, showing up in a mask with a backpack, not fully understanding any of it, and just freakin’ going.

In the five years since, her dad and I separated and then divorced. We each moved twice. We both got remarried within the same year, and Millie’s parental unit grew from two to four almost overnight. Two households, two rooms to keep track of her things, two very different versions of Sunday morning. She navigated all of that while she was eight, nine, ten years old.

She struggled to read for longer than was comfortable...it didn’t really click until third or fourth grade...and I watched her working twice as hard as everyone else for half the result and I could see it wearing on her in ways she had no words for (or would never speak them out loud to us). Then came her ADHD/Anxiety diagnosis in third grade…followed by an IEP where things started to click and her school actually showed up in ways I wasn’t sure they would. When the support finally matched how her brain was actually working, she began to take off.

In the margins of all of that: ballet, baking classes, photography class. Two school musicals...Matilda and then Charlie Brown. Girls on the Run. Broadway Dance Center every year. Therapy. A talent show with her best friend this spring. Her first little boyfriend. She grew approximately two feet and somehow, in the middle of all of it, became a whole person.

She is so sharp. One of the funniest people I know, which I am taking at least partial credit for. She is silly and goofy (that’s probably what I should actually take credit for) and fierce and stubborn in exactly the right proportions for everything she’s been asked to handle. She has come through situations that would level most adults and has emerged with more curiosity and resilience than I had at twice her age.

Middle school isn’t ready…I am genuinely not ready.
Millie, however, is SO ready it’s almost annoying.

Come set the table for the weekend…ours will likely be covered with mood boards and shopping lists as she puts together her “LEWK” for graduation day.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• A Sunday Reset for Feral Women Who... from The City Apartment Diaries
  "Feral women who" is the entire energy, and you KNOW if you KNOW. Read this one on Sunday morning before the week starts its very specific nonsense.
  

• Is Community the Newest Side Hustle? from Still Unlearning
  I've touched on this before, and I'll keep touching on it: the way we've turned every human need into a product worth monetizing deserves more scrutiny than it gets. Good questions being asked here.
  

• Momentum Loop Theory: Step Into a Loop from Midnight Crumbs
  Hannah again, because she keeps writing exactly the thing I need right when I need it. Small actions build loops…loops build momentum, and I have been leaning into this and my own momentum loop all week.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

The Fridge Check-In
I heard from so many of you after The Fridge is Lying to You. Your messes, your guilt, your photos, your stories...I loved every single one and I want to keep it going. We are in this together and knowing that is genuinely what makes it better.

The one-minute audit: did you do it? Did you open the door, look at what was actually in there, and throw something away...even just the guilt? Because that is the whole exercise…it’s not to have a totally cleaned fridge (although YAY if you got that far!)…it’s the throwing away of the guilt that we are here for. If you threw that away this week, you did the work.

Tell me how it went. I mean it, I really want to know.

Leave a comment

THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Table for One: New York City from A Tiny Bit of Advice
  I credit New York City with bringing me back to myself. The gumption, the independence, the most ALIVE energy of a city that has absolutely no patience for nonsense and somehow also makes room for everything you are...I'm 7 years in, and I feel it more now than I did in year one. This piece put language to exactly that. Read it if NYC has ever done anything for you, or if you're still waiting for it to.
  

• Between Wanting, Uncertainty, and Possibility from Kindred Mothering
  "I used to seek worthiness by doing, accumulating, and achieving. While I'm still human and deeply entrenched in this societal depiction of worth, I have chosen another way." That hit me square between the eyes, and I keep re-reading it this week.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

Have you listened to our playlist yet?
Millie and I have been singing it loudly and proudly all week and I would LOVE for you to join us. Save it and share it…sing it with someone, loudly. It has the BEST energy for these warm days and there is something very good for the nervous system about just opening your mouth and screaming along to Alanis in your kitchen. Trust me on this one…get loud.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

Expectations from a Wounded Place
Okay, so this is more of a thought-share…a thing my therapist said this week that I wanted to put in your hands.

I have very high expectations...of myself, of the people I love, of the people I’m around. Most of the time, the people in my life have no idea these expectations exist, let alone that I’m quietly keeping score when they don’t meet them. Virgo red flag? Yes, maybe. I’m working on it.

But what really caught me by the ponytail this week...my therapist said: “Expectations aren’t necessarily bad or good. It’s where they’re coming from that often tells you more. Are your expectations coming from a wounded place, or are they coming from a healed place?”

I literally laughed out loud and raised my hand. My expectations, especially the ones I hold for myself, are coming from a very wounded place…they have been since the wounds took shape. I have held myself to a standard that a hurt version of me set a long time ago and called it discipline.

So in the same motion as throwing the guilt out of the fridge, I’m doing a one-minute audit on my expectations. Which ones only ever produce disappointment? Which ones were set by a version of me who needed to earn everything to feel like she was worth anything?

Those I’m setting down…and you know? I already feel lighter…less anxious and less angry. Baby steps, I guess?

Two audits this week: the fridge & the expectations. Both asking the same question underneath: what are you holding onto that’s only making things heavier? What can you actually set down right now without waiting for the perfect moment to do it?

You don’t have to understand it all…or resolve it with a bow tied neatly on top…you just have to notice what’s there...and give yourself permission to let some of it go.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

The Big List of Whimsical Artists by Lauren Sands
Whimsy is the word of the moment, and this piece dives into it, head first.

“When we follow a whim, we’re being playful with our personal curriculum. It’s not about learning the right thing in the right way. There is something loose and organic about chasing whims that leaves room for magic. Rigor and fun can coexist when you take your curiosity seriously. It just needs time and air.” Being deeply curious is the most fundamentally whimsical act there is.

What whim are you following this week?

Happy Thursday, turkeys! Be kind to yourselves out there!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. This Sunday on The Steady Table: Your Gut Already Knows...what a divorce, a 33-pound weight loss & a whole lot of kimchi taught me. I'll meet you there. ♥

I’m writing this to you from inside my very own disaster zone.

The state of my refrigerator right now is ridiculous (pictured above) and absolutely doesn’t even remotely resemble the food storage of a woman (and a professional chef ) who has it all figured out, or better yet, does this for a living. You see the aftermath of four back-to-back catering gigs, and a refrigerator that looks like a yard sale of half-thoughts. There’s a container of congealed oil marinating god knows what (maybe smoked olives?), three different kinds of onions in varying states of not-onion-anymore, and somewhere in there are foil-wrapped science experiments at this point.

I literally have three different types of mustard (I can’t explain this to you, I just can’t). A container of berries I bought on Sunday, that is, as of this morning, is rapidly becoming another thing. Everything is packed to the brim, everything vaguely chaotic, and every single time I open that door, my jaw tightens just a little bit more.

I am in the thick of it, and I know something needs to change. Yas and Millie are literally terrified to open the fridge for fear of something falling out or launching itself at them. Yes, I’m a professional chef and not to mention, a former professional organizer…I KNOW the right way to exist, the right systems to implement, the why behind the need for a tidy kitchen. But just because I KNOW doesn’t mean I DO. So why can’t I DO? That’s what I’m working through…that and fixing my fridge situation that looks like a storage unit where someone once cooked.

I was diagnosed with ADHD late last year, right after I turned 42.

My late diagnosis of ADHD felt like a door I’d been pushing against my whole life that had finally just...swung open. The room on the other side was relief, mostly, but I also experienced a huge wave of exhausted fury that it took me this long to get the freakin’ thing open. Turns out I’m not lazy, or full of excuses. I’m not broken at basic adulting, I DO know these things…with ADHD, my brain runs on what they call an interest-based nervous system. That’s the clinical way of saying I can cook a 12-course dinner for 20 people, but I will absolutely lose a pound of chicken thighs to the back of my own refrigerator because the moment it leaves my sightline, it stops existing. Out of sight is literally, neurologically, out of mind. I am a professional chef who regularly loses ingredients in her own fridge-abyss…so there.

Why the Fridge Breaks Us

What happens at the end of the day...whether you have a diagnosis or not, whether you’re a chef or have never once made a meal plan in your life...is that your brain is just done. It’s overloaded…quiet, cumulative…done. Your prefrontal cortex (the part that sorts through information, makes choices, keeps impulses in check) has been running since the moment you woke up. These small tasks, small decisions, and maybe some big important ones too, but all are relentless with our minds.

What do I wear to work today? What does this email mean? Is this an emergency, or does it just feel like one? When did I last drink water? Do I really have to take all 20 of these supplements this morning just to feel normal? I really hate swallowing these mega pills. Did I remember that thing I needed to do? What needs to happen first?

An entire day with these thoughts, the invasive and running dialogue in our heads all dang day, and by now it’s 7 pm, you’re standing in front of the open fridge, and that part of your brain is running on absolute fumes of whatever you started the day with.

When we open the door, our brains see a wall of noise instead of seeing dinner possibilities. The stacked containers and whatever’s been shoved in front of whatever else is back there, all of it asking to be sorted…evaluated…decided about. Our brains, which have been deciding things all day and are fatigued, route us to the easiest thing available…even if that easy thing is a bowl of cereal over the sink…again.

Last week, I mentioned our sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) gears that our bodies shift between all day. The allostatic load is the running tab our bodies have been keeping for years, all the times we’ve braced ourselves…adjusted and accounted for the gap between what we need and what we get. It’s the physiological wear and tear on our bodies where we find ourselves cracked and broken from the chronic exposure to stress. Our nervous systems are stuck in that sympathetic first gear, and no $80 adaptogen powder is going to out-supplement a body that doesn’t feel safe.

So…the reality is…the fridge isn’t a storage problem, it’s a stress response. The spinach you put in the drawer last Wednesday? If you’re like me, once that drawer closed, that spinach literally ceased to exist in our brains. We didn’t “forget about it”…it was never there. That wilted spinach isn’t evidence that we’re disorganized or failing…it’s evidence that our nervous systems have been running too hot for too long. When we’re stuck in fight-or-flight, our brains literally cannot prioritize what doesn’t seem urgent.

Combine that with a nervous system that’s already over capacity, and you have a well-oiled guilt and shame machine. That big box hums in the corner and whispers, every time you open it, you tried and failed, and you’re still trying & you’re still failing.

I am here to tell you…that fridge is lying to you.

(I definitely just said that in my best Brian Fellows-voice…iykyk)

These refrigerator failings are NOT evidence of a flawed character, it’s all clear evidence that your body has been on high alert for so long that it literally has NO bandwidth for vegetables.

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I have spent years cleaning out my mom’s fridge every time I visit. She doesn’t ask, but she knows it’s one of the first things I’ll do…especially when I go for a snack and an avalanche of leftovers tumbles out. When I’m there, I can feel what that fridge is carrying, so it’s a small service I can do for her without having to say too much about it (notwithstanding the occasional witty jabs at her ability to grow aliens in there).

For a long time, I thought I understood the problem. If she would just change her shopping habits, buy a little less, stay on top of things...she’d feel better. I’d sort everything, put it in order, and leave with the quiet satisfaction that I fixed something for her. But I didn’t…it was just a temporary band-aid. What I missed was that no system can hold tightly when the nervous system underneath it is struggling.

She wasn’t drowning in her fridge because of a lack of discipline or neglecting to rotate the produce. Her body was running on a low-grade dysregulation that made every small thing feel like too much, and the fridge was just where that showed up most visibly. Whatever organization I left behind fell apart within a day or two, not because she didn’t want to maintain it...but because we had only treated the surface. The root issue was still there, somewhere underneath it all.

Now, when I go through her fridge, I’m not trying to fix anything; I just do it. Every time there’s this shift...like something loosening, something she’s been carrying getting set down for a minute. She looks lighter, and the air in the kitchen changes. That small act of service, of love, reaches her in a way that the organizing ever did. I’m not asking her to change immediately or be different from who she is right now…I’m just saying: I see you, I’ve got this…come and sit, let’s eat.

We’re all carrying some version of this…the organized fridge will follow when the person living with it starts being tended to.

———

What Restaurant Kitchens Taught Me

In a professional kitchen, the refrigerator does not get to be mysterious.

There is a system called FIFO (First In, First Out), and it’s one of the least glamorous but most useful things I’ve carried from restaurant life into the rest of my existence. Every kitchen I’ve ever worked in runs on it…it’s embarrassingly simple: the thing that came in first gets used first…new stuff goes behind the old. That and…ALWAYS label and date everything when it arrives or when it’s made. FIFO’s two best friends are masking tape and a Sharpie. The older things live in front, the newer things live behind, and the decision of what to use next has been made for you before you even open the door.

The reason it exists isn’t that restaurant chefs are more organized than everyone else. It’s because food cost and food waste are NO JOKE. At the end of a long service, when everyone is exhausted, running on fumes, and the kitchen still has to be broken down…nobody has the bandwidth to investigate expiration dates. The system does the thinking, so the people don’t have to. You open the walk-in, the oldest thing is in front, you use it, and you move on.

Our home fridges have no system; we have mystery boxes or science experiments in place of food, and the thing that permeates the most (beyond the rancid smell of said mystery box) is the guilt and shame that you wasted money and didn’t use those items before they went bad. The yogurt from last week and the one you just bought look identical, so you grab the newer one without realizing it. The chicken you meant to use on Tuesday gets pushed further back by Wednesday’s groceries. The spinach migrates to the very back of the crisper drawer where, as we said earlier, it ceases to exist. None of this is about being a disorganized person...we simply do not have a system in place that can run on autopilot when our brains have already checked out.

So here’s where I’m starting this weekend…three simple things because these days, I can only handle doing the smallest possible intervention with the most return.

Tape and a Sharpie by the Fridge
Date on anything you open, anything you cook, anything you transfer into a container. Not the expiration date...the date you opened or made it. It literally takes 2 seconds and will save you from doing calendar math at 10 pm…the label does that for you.

FIFO, for reals.
Once a week, before new groceries come in, rotate. Older items move to the front, and new things go behind. If something has been so far back for so long that it’s now unrecognizable, it gets trashed.

A Priority Shelf/Bin
This is for the things that HAVE to be used first. That’s their home, and every time you open the door, you see that shelf first, and the decision is already made. You’re not starting from chaos at 7pm...you’ve have a front-and-center sight line of things that need to be used first for dinner.

Giving ourselves a little organization is the first step to helping our nervous systems shift into that second gear, where we can try to catch our breath.

______

A few years ago, I worked with my friend Laurie and her organizing company, Simplicity Organizers, in Charlotte, NC. I only worked a few shifts while I had a toddler-sized Millie at home, but I learned so much from those amazing women. To take such a cluttered mess and transform it into a systematic organized space, they gave the gift of freedom from stuff, and it was beautiful work.

The impressive part, the real work, was mental and emotional. As organizers, these women knew the clutter wasn’t a character flaw; it went deeper than that. They never organized for the client. Instead, their process involved hands-on work where they would counsel, model, and walk each client through the process of going through the cluttered areas and setting up systems that would help them not return to that overwhelmed state in the future. And, every time, they did it with grace…with kindness…and with patience.

I remember the ways of Simplicity, and even now, in my super-busy, overwhelmed state of mind (and by consequence, SO cluttered), I remember their practical, approachable methods. Simplicity taught me…you don’t start with the problem, you start with what’s still there. So let’s start with what’s still there…in our fridge.

I’m not talking about a visit-container-store-first kind of project…seriously, tuck that credit card back and bail on that Amazon cart you’ve already filled with over-priced plastic containers. This isn’t even a Sunday-afternoon-soundtrack-of-shame. This exercise starts with a very easy, one-minute audit…three questions so that we can maybe rest easier. While FIFO gives us the ongoing maintenance…this one-minute audit gives us the reset button when things get away from us.

What’s still good?
Open the door and look… what can you actually still use? A jar of olives, half an onion, eggs, a wedge of cheese, that miso paste you bought (thank you, past self), butter, etc. These are the wins, and honestly, there’s probably more there than you think. By physically putting your hand on these items and organizing them, you are pulling the food back into existence in your brain. Take this moment to also label things that need it…it’s a simple kindness to your future self.

What needs to be used today?
Not later on, but today. The half-onion…the opened can of tomatoes…the herbs that have one good day left. They get an immediate job…not to be complicated by a recipe…these items just need to do the work of being food, nourishment. The onion is going in a pan tonight, with whatever else…start there.

What makes you feel guilty or mad every time you see it?
These are the ones that inflict fear in Yas and Millie…the things that are stacked precariously, anonymously just waiting for an unsuspecting but firm pull of the door. These are the containers of leftovers from ten days ago…the mystery liquid in a jar… that random thing wrapped in foil that you’ve been avoiding eye contact. Throw that shit away now, without hesitation. There’s no guilt-tax here…there’s no “but I spent money on it” stress, no narrating the loss. Just throw it out.

When you throw it out, go ahead and toss away the guilt that goes with it. It’s important to free yourself from the shame of paying too much for something and then letting it go to waste. We should not be prisoners to the clutter in our homes, much less in our refrigerators. In the wise words of En Vogue…Free your mind, and the rest will follow.

There’s relief in looking inside and not being judged, not being reminded of seventeen small failures, and that relief is a parasympathetic moment. That’s your nervous system finally taking its hand off the gas and switching into second gear.

Your one-minute audit requires less time than it takes to scroll through one round of Instagram where you’re inundated by the algorithm trying to romanticize our wellness routines…trying to convince us to hop on whatever supplement bandwagon they're peddling.

Let’s choose freedom here…free your mind from any other plans or compulsion to buy any other quick fixes, and let’s just do the next best thing right at this very moment. Throw it away.

Small Shifts, Small Pivots

These shifts, over time, will have the biggest impact. When you veer off course or find yourself stressed and back to a packed fridge…it’s okay, because these shifts don’t require a full triage, they only ask for a small restart, a small pivot to help reset. I told my therapist this week that I’m already SO overwhelmed and weighed down by the weight of my own expectations…I’m desperate for these shifts to be simple and small…easy lifts that don’t require many brain cells because, well, I have none to spare.

These small shifts aren’t some new protocol or regimen; they’re just a few things I’ve been paying attention to in my own kitchen and my own body. The best part? None of them requires an extra Trader Joe’s run (especially since mine is closed for renovations for the entire summer…I see you 72nd st).

One Warm Thing…every day
Not necessarily a full meal, but maybe just a bowl of broth or a mug of miso? Better yet, do that cup of bone broth with a swirl of butter and salt…SAY LESS. Anything warm, in a bowl or a mug, will help your body recognize it as care and not medicine. Your gut and your brain are connected by a nerve called the vagus nerve, which is basically the main communication line your body uses to decide whether it’s safe or not. When something warm, savory, or fermented hits the back of the throat, your vagus nerve celebrates.

Protein Before 10am
From my limited understanding, there’s a cortisol spike in our first hour after waking. Our body does this on purpose…the cortisol awakening response…and it’s how we get from horizontal to functional. But, without protein to stabilize that cortisol response, that spike crashes by mid-morning, and your blood sugar goes with it, and then you are chasing it for the rest of the day. As soon as I crossed over the 40yr-old-threshold…protein entered the main chat…in my inbox, at my doctor’s appointments, on my socials. And no, I’m not talking about the chalky-powdered drink kind of way because kill me now…I can’t and won’t.

When we’re in a constant state of stress, especially through restless nights of sleep, our cortisol is already elevated, our glucose is already volatile, and our bodies are desperate for something stable to build on. That’s the jelly bean grab at 11:30 am, the potato chip spiral at 3 pm, or the 10 pm cereal. The morning cortisol spike and our response to it sets the tone for the day…start with two eggs..some greek yogurt…a piece of leftover whatever. This dose of protein first thing gives our nervous systems the message that food is coming, and it’s coming in a form that our bodies can actually use.

The Meal You Know by Heart
We all have one…it’s the thing you could make in the dark, half-asleep, that needs no recipe or decision, just the muscle memory of having done it a hundred times. If you don’t have one, building one is the first step…just one dish you can cook from nothing. For me, it’s eggs…fried, poached, or soft scrambled on toast with some sort of chili crisp mayo situation. When everything is loud, and you have to feed yourself anyway, this is the meal that gets you to the table without further overloading your system. ADHD friends, this is especially for you. The fewer decisions between I am hungry and actually eating food, the less your nervous system has to do. Pick yours and cook it until your hands know how to do it without you.

Sit Down to Eat…Even Once
I know…in the hustle, more times than not, we find ourselves eating on-the-go or even standing at the counter while scrolling, and okay, that’s just what it is. But once a day...try to sit down to eat a meal, even for ten minutes. Standing up or moving while eating keeps your body in a low-grade stress posture (shoulders braced, jaw tight, already preparing for the next thing) and your nervous system reads that posture as information. It doesn’t fully shift into rest-and-digest mode (gear 2) because your body thinks you’re still in the middle of something. Ten minutes in a chair, the act of sitting down tells your nervous system that you’re stopping…it tells that vagus nerve, connecting your gut to your brain, to chill the EFF out. It says “we have time for this,” and your body’s digestive system responds appropriately.

Throw Away the Guilt AND the Bad Food
It’s that important…so, I’m saying it again. Yes, food waste is a huge global issue and one that is SO important for us to play our part in combating. And, yet…you’re only hurting yourself as you allow food to continue to rot in your fridge while you’re stuck feeling guilty for the waste. We need a larger reset on our nervous systems, and it starts with these small steps, these small pivots. When you open the fridge and see the spinach that quietly expired in the crisper drawer...just realize, your nervous system bought it during a moment of calm…when you were briefly in gear 2…briefly imagining a version of the week with more time in it. That was your body trying to take care of you…it just happened to run out of runway before the week came to an end.

The guilt is a LARGE part of what’s making us sick, not the food. Compost the guilt, the food can follow if it needs to…but the guilt goes first. And next time, label and implement your little FIFO steps and maybe…just maybe…there won’t be as much waste the next time, and that small step in the right direction is a HUGE step to giving us the balance and regulation we so desperately need.

What to Make Tonight
Eggs…Because they’re my favorite and well, we’re starting here, and we’re starting simple.

Are they trending again? Who cares? I am of the philosophy that almost everything can be made better by putting an egg on it (and quite possibly the title of my memoir). Eggs were the very first thing I actually learned to cook on my own at the stove when I was in middle school. But beyond the hype…the nostalgia…the general obsessiveness from me, eggs are SO great because they actually also provide protein, fat, B vitamins & choline (a nutrient your brain uses to make acetylcholine & one of the main calming signals in your parasympathetic nervous system). Eat the eggs, these are the brakes, Kurtis Blow.

Simplest dinner when the fridge is testing you…heat olive oil or butter in a pan until it moves and shimmers. Pull forward whatever came to the front of your FIFO shelf...whatever vegetable, whatever greens, whatever odds and ends needed to go today. Salt them, season them, get sassy with them. Let ‘em cook without fussing for five/ish minutes. Make a well or two, crack the eggs in, lid on, low heat, three minutes. Toast underneath, or reheated leftover rice if you have it, or nothing if you don’t.

In total, like 10-12 minutes and less than $4, and is collectively doing the good lord’s work on your nervous system and regulating your body to a place of balance…which is more than I can say for the contents of that takeout bag on your counter that you may or may not have grabbed in a drive-through or from the hands of an UberEats courier…I’m not going to call it out, but we both know it’s there. (I have it, too. We do not need to discuss it.)

———

Next week we go deeper into why your body wants what it wants when it’s running on empty...and why those cravings are not random or weak or evidence of anything except a nervous system that is trying, very specifically, to tell you something. Let’s figure out how to actually hear it instead of just pushing through it.

For now...tape and a Sharpie, three things to the front. You know what to do. It’s not glamorous, and it’s certainly not photogenic, and it doesn’t help the wellness culture sell you more. But it is...quietly, slowly...how our nervous systems begin to learn to take its foot off the gas.

Your fridge is lying to you…let’s change that.

xoxo,

Jess

I drove back from the Catskills Sunday afternoon with the windows cracked and a cooler bag full of leftovers, smelling like fresh sourdough loaves and schnitzel and something I can only describe as three women who cooked their hearts out...and I had maybe four hours before I needed to be back in another kitchen. One in Midtown, another in Flatiron. Different art, different city, same energy.

Somewhere in the middle of all that driving and pivoting I was dealing with family news that weighed heavily, and I’ve been trying to find space to hold it all together.

The pop-up at Café Mutsi was exactly what it was supposed to be. Two days, three chefs, one kitchen in Andes. Nicole was my first boss in this city...she’s seen every version of me as a chef, every pivot, every moment I didn’t know what I was building but kept building anyway. Yas and I even got engaged at Café Mutsi last year. Her first opening weekend, Millie and I worked in that very kitchen together...Millie on dishes, me wherever I was needed. Now Mutsi is two, and I was back as a chef, cooking my food alongside hers and Maria’s. The chow-chow was good. The weekend was better. Come see what it looked like.

Then I came home and dove headfirst into work…daily private chef grind at the jewelry company in Midtown and then down to Flatiron and into D’Aquino Monaco for an opening I was genuinely moved by. The show featured woven textile works by my dear friend Rose Seccareccia (one of the most quietly powerful artists I know), ceramics by the extraordinary Linda Sormin, and the Wash Line Story Project…I was totally not emotionally prepared to witness all this greatness and it’s all still lingering with me. Wils assisted me and I built a menu I’m genuinely proud of...a grazing experience in three chapters across the space, designed to sit in conversation with the work on the walls. Food as its own kind of visual act. More on that below.

Last week handed us some hard news…my uncle passed. My mom is grieving and I’m here, far from her, watching her try to hold it all while her mom, my Nanny Sis, was also in the hospital recovering from a fall the very same week. My mom is strong but she is still not getting the rest or relief she needs to really hold all of this herself. I wrote that piece Sunday about the nervous system keeping score and now I’m watching someone I love doing exactly what I was describing, carrying too much with no room to set any of it down. Not because she won’t…but because she literally can’t. The table between us feels very long right now.

But you know…spring is finally here in NYC…the sun is out and it is HOT. The city is finally sunny and warm and actually means it for the first time in months. I walked home through the park and fell back in love with New York the way you only can in May, when the green is so green and the air is so thick with possibility. I didn’t even have my headphones in, I just walked.

I’m trying to figure out how to hold all of it at the same time this week…and you might be, too. Come set the table.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• The Chronic Experience of Ambient Overwhelm by Hannah Bay
  Opening the cupboard to grab something for dinner and ending up standing there for five minutes while your brain quietly starts listing everything the week is about to ask of you. Hannah has named this feeling exactly and it lives in me. “A state of chronic, low-level stress caused by the constant background noise of contemporary life.” Not one big thing. Just the permanent, low hum of too much. This one is doing real work right now, especially alongside Sunday’s piece about the nervous system. Read it slowly.
  

• From Controlling My Body to Belonging to Myself by Angelie Wallace
  How we absorb the stories handed to us about our bodies before we’re old enough to question them, and the long, slow work of coming home to yourself. Oof…it’s good.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

A Pressed Garden: the D’Aquino Monaco menu
I want you to have this. The show at D’Aquino Monaco asked for food that could live alongside the art rather than just fuel the room, and so we built a grazing menu in three chapters, one table per chapter, across the full space.

• Chapter I…The Wash:

  • “Linen” Cured Fluke with radish, coconut broth & gochujang vinaigrette

  • Beet and Radish Carpaccio Crostini with honey lemon goat cheese

• Chapter II…The Stitch:

  • The Pentimento Vertical Canvas spread with whipped feta, heirloom tomatoes, basil, micro greens & focaccia

  • Mortadella “Silk” Mosaic with burrata, Castelvetrano olives, marinated artichokes, roasted pistachios & mint pesto

• Chapter III…The Vessel:

  • Shattered “Porcelain” of broken meringue, vanilla mascarpone, balsamic-macerated berries & lemon curd

  • Dark Chocolate Kintsugi Shards with raspberry & gold powder

Wils, thank you for your hands and your steadiness and the whole thing.

• Ramps: a mild dissent
  Everyone in every kitchen and on every food account has been losing their minds about ramps for the past few weeks, and I’ll just say it out loud: they’re just okay. Punchy and funky and genuinely fun for about two days before the window closes and they’ve turned into something significantly less charming.
  
  The season is so short that by the time I’ve thought about what to actually do with them, they’re already at the back of the fridge looking accusatory. Green garlic does nearly everything a ramp does and stays around long enough to actually cook with. If you’re ready to move on, there are more interesting things in the market right now.

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Joyful, Porous by Kate Bowler
  Kate’s conversation with Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, on longing and joy and staying open when life keeps closing doors. He called it “warm humility”...the particular spiritual quality of people who let the world get to them without being wrecked by it. I’ve been sitting with that word all week, thinking about my mom, thinking about what it costs to stay porous when everything in you wants to seal up and get through it.
  

• The Wash Line Story Project
  I went to this show assuming I was just there to provide the food and left thinking about what I experienced for the last two days. Take a look at what they’re building, it matters…it’s so very special.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

The walk home from my Sutton Place meal prep yesterday. The windows cracked for my long drive home on Sunday…then today, walking through the park, no headphones, just the green, the flowers, and my purest love for NYC in the spring. That’s the whole glass this week. Sometimes the refreshment is just a route you take slowly when you don't have to be anywhere anytime soon.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

Grief doesn’t schedule itself, but neither does gratitude. Sometimes, ironically, they just show up in the same week, the same hour, and honestly, it’s not necessarily our job to sort them out or decide which one is appropriate to feel. Both can hold the same space, at the same time, and neither requires immediate resolution.

This week, let’s just let whatever we are carrying right now be complicated and messy…let’s give up the need to tie it up in a pretty bow.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

• The TWEEN Girl SQUAD Playlist
  Millie is home this week, and we've already re-dyed her hair Wendy's Girl red, which I fully support. The other day I was working in the office and heard a familiar song start up from the living room...Millie on the couch with a snack, lightly singing along. I jumped out of my chair SO fast…ran in and belted the whole chorus at full volume with her! She is deep into female rockers right now, music you can scream and dance to, and in that moment, I saw my own eleven-year-old self so clearly...sitting in my room, collaging, singing as loudly as I could to Alanis, Fiona, Traci, and anyone else who understood exactly what it felt like to have a lot of feelings and nowhere to put them. This playlist is for the ladies. A little 90s flashback, and a few of Millie's current top picks. Scream along and release your inner tween this weekend.

• The Mutsi Weekend in Full
  Last weekend was the perfect entry into this beautiful spring season! The weather was gorgeous, and the kitchen was alive with the most fierce femme energy. Spanakopita, chow-chow, deviled eggs, lamb manti, okra…three chefs…the Catskills in May. The reel is here if you want a peek at the fun! Follow @cafemutsi...there will definitely be a next time, and I promise you it will be worth it.

Happy Thursday, turkeys! Be gentle with yourselves out there…let’s ROCK it out!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. Sunday: The Steady Table continues...we're opening the fridge. The real one. The one with the good intentions and the guilt and three jars of something you bought during a phase. I'll meet you there. ♥

I spent the last week checking in with my friends…in particular, the ones who are moms….because, well, the post-Mother's Day check-in is a necessity these days.

And honestly? What they replied with wasn’t a regurgitation of the soft-lit-matching-outfit-brunch photos that were all over socials. Nah, these texts were filled with the unpolished, unedited reality of the day. For most, the day came and mostly went like any other Sunday, except possibly with the addition of flowers on the counter from a last-minute grocery run and maybe a card the kids were semi-forced to sign. Beyond that, nothing seemed to change from the normal…because, well…lunch still needed to happen, someone still needed to be at some sports practice somewhere, and the ship still needed someone to sail it. These moms… even still, were the ones to do all of that, the ones who continued orchestrating life as they always had.

A lot of them said some version of the same thing: I don’t even know why I expected anything different.

The sentiment…the exhaustion…their thinly-veiled disappointment lingered with me. Beyond the reality of unmet expectations, it all tells me how these women are currently living their lives. Braced…already adjusting…already accounting for the gap between what they need and what they’re going to get…and as women, we are all burying it deep down so we can JUST KEEP MOVING.

Come to find out…that gap has a name…it’s actually a real thing scientists study, called allostatic load. And despite our best efforts to hide it and forget it, our bodies have actually been keeping a running tab on it all, for years.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about nervous systems and regulation. My therapist and I have been working on my awareness of my own body…what it’s feeling, where it’s feeling it, and how to release & regulate in a healthy way (instead of slamming doors or screaming the way I might be tempted to in my moments of disregulation).

I want to share a little of what I’m learning, but what I’m NOT going to do…I will NOT tell you to do more.

I will avoid suggesting a supplement or a morning routine or a thirty-day reset or anything that requires time and money that we don’t have…or anything that adds one more thing to the list of ways we’re apparently already falling short.

Let’s be honest, friends…in this economy, the grocery store receipt is its own catalyst of trauma. If the ‘healing food’ you’re being compelled or encouraged to buy makes your stomach knot up when the grand total pops up on the screen, it’s not actually healing you, is it?! It’s just another bill your nervous system, and your budget (does anyone really even follow a budget anymore?!) have to figure out how to pay.

Most wellness content is honestly just the same stress, but this time, it’s wearing a pretty linen cross-back apron with beautiful, freshly picked flowers and nicely curated vignettes of food on the countertop. And…I just…cannot. My countertops currently have last week’s tupperware that never made it into the cabinet, along with various water bottles, a stack of bills “that I’ll get to later,” and a remote that goes to something….somewhere. That’s my vignette:)

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I’ve been learning about nervous system regulation these days…not because I have this newfound curiosity…but more out of the very real-life necessity to “get my shit together so that I don’t have a mental breakdown under the weight of all the plates I’m juggling...and freak out on all the people in my orbit.” Anyone else??

I want to know what’s actually happening in my body…in our bodies…when we’re running the way most of us are running. What’s the real reason our jaws won’t unclench, or why doesn’t sleep actually seem to restore us these days, or why is the blankety-blank fridge full of expired good intentions AGAIN? You know the ones…the kale you were definitely going to use or the yogurt that’s now taken on a furry layer of the latest science experiment…all those things, coupled with the sheer exhaustion and guilt we feel as we stand in front of that very refrigerator at the end of the day…feeling vaguely (sometimes loudly) accused by everything in it.

That fridge isn’t evidence of our failures…it’s actually evidence that our nervous systems have been on high alert for so long they can barely remember what it feels like to not be. Fight or flight, baby.

Here’s the science part, real quick. Our nervous systems run on two gears…one is the gas pedal (the sympathetic branch): the part that handles stress, threat, urgency, the thing that needs to happen right now. It’s the one that’s got our heart rate up, muscles ready, brain scanning for problems.

The other is the brakes (the parasympathetic branch): rest, digestion, repair, the part of you that can actually receive nourishment and process it and use it to restore something. A healthy system moves fluidly between the two…but the reality is…most of us, right now, are stuck…stuck in first gear.

It’s not because we are weak or failing at life…it’s that we’ve been pedaling for a long time without any opportunity to stop.

The wellness space seems to avoid these realities and instead wants to reduce it all down to the beautiful one-pill fixes or the golden elixir that heals all, for the low price of $300 per bottle. What the actual what?!

We simply cannot out-supplement a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe. We cannot green-juice our way out of a body that thinks it’s still in the middle of an emotional war zone. The $80 adaptogen powder does NOT know that we’re the ones still keeping the whole operation running. But…our bodies do…our bodies know it ALL. It sees us holding on, staying alert, craving whatever can deliver the fastest hit of energy or relief… especially in the moments we cannot afford to slow down.

And, the safety our bodies are actually starving for? It’s called metabolic safety…and I want it. I’m wondering…is there a correlation between how food…especially when eaten at a table…and in a body that finally feels unwatched…can be one of the most direct paths to nervous system regulation.

That craving for sugar at 3 pm isn’t weakness…the quick grab for salty potato chips isn’t necessarily a junk food addiction, either. The fact that salmon sounded good at the grocery store, and now it’s Thursday, and it’s dying a slow death in your fridge while you’re eating a bowl of cereal over the sink. Are these all character flaws or signs of our weak-wills at work? I think the answer is no. I think, in fact, that these are actually the very REAL signs of our bodies making triage decisions with whatever they can. When our nervous systems are stuck on the gas pedal…on high alert, our brains are burning through glucose like a house on fire. Our nervous systems aren’t looking for salads; they’re looking for survival. They want the sugar because it’s the fastest way to keep the lights on for another hour.

As I’ve been learning about my own nervous system, I’ve been paying more attention to the actual signals my body is sending. I’ve taken note of what’s going on inside when I reach for that handful of jelly beans around 11:30 am, or that bowl of BBQ potato chips at 3 pm (I LOVE chips. The end.)…or why I need that bowl of cereal at 10pm. What is it about those times of the day? What’s my body going through? My nervous system apparently was feeling something or trying to tell me something an hour earlier, but I ignored it, and by those times, it’s done trying to give me signs…it’s straight up fatigued and reaching for those quick fixes.

Being a chef, I obviously have a love-love-love relationship with food. Food is fuel, food is healing, food is nourishment and medicine, food is JOY for me. I’ve cooked in so many different rooms and spaces…homes, restaurant kitchens, corporate kitchens, private spaces, catering events, etc.

I’ve witnessed what food can do…the nourishment, the way it pulls people together, what it builds. And at the same time, I’ve also seen what it can do in a room where something warm, made with care and intention, is eaten while sitting around a table. I’ve watched what that kind of meal can actually do to change the temperature of a body…where it lands in the body, the way a deep exhale does.

I used to think that was just good cooking. But the more I’m learning, the more I’m discovering that there’s actual science behind it as well. Long before I even knew what the vagus nerve was, I knew the sound of those tables finally breathing. I knew that the smell of onions browning in butter does something to a clenched jaw that a pill simply cannot.

Come learn with me as I start exploring how important food actually is for our nervous systems. This isn’t the wellness angle, folks…it’s the one that belongs in the kitchen.

What can we eat when nothing sounds good? Or how the humble, ‘poor people’ food our grandmothers made…the pot of lentils, the slow-cooked greens, the starches that stick to your ribs…how those might just be the original nervous system medicine. Why is it that our bodies want what they want at different times of the month and what to do about it…maybe in ways that don’t require hiring a nutritionist, paying $10k to attend a wellness retreat that literally boasts eating meals around a table and offering you free time to read a book by a pool…or by becoming an investor in the latest bottle of liquid gold collagen.

Let’s figure out how a bowl of lentils cooked right might just do more for our stress responses than most things being sold as quick-fix solutions…or maybe how just sitting down to eat, even for ten minutes, is one of the cheapest and most underused tools any of us has.

The table is life-giving infrastructure. I’m diving in and hope you’ll join me over the next few weeks as we figure out why feeding ourselves well is not indulgence…it’s the foundation, the literal thing that makes everything else possible.

Next week, I’m going to tackle the fridge…mine and yours. You know the one…the one filled with good intentions and guilt. Let’s talk about what’s actually worth keeping, what to cook when you have nothing, and what your body needs right now, in this specific season, more than anything trending on TikTok.

For today, I’ll just say this: whatever your Sunday looked like last week or today… whatever got left undone or unrecognized or half-finished, your body was there for all of it. She was taking notes…doing the work…and honestly, she deserves better than that bowl of cereal over the sink.

Nobody brought you a plate…not on Mother’s Day, not on the average Tuesday, not at the end of the longest week. So this is me, saying…let’s figure out how to bring one to ourselves…and to each other.

Let’s figure out how to move on to second gear.

xoxo,

Jess

By the time you read this, I’m probably already in the car.

Tomorrow is the pop-up at Café Mutsi in Andes, and I have been in full prep mode all week...roasting chicken skins for deviled eggs, getting my okra dish dialed in with buttermilk ranch, and finishing a batch of southern chow-chow that I’ve been working on and that I am genuinely very proud of. Three women, one kitchen, two days, and a whole lot of female energy in the Catskills. Come find us if you can get up there…it’s going to be a good one.

This one is super special too...Nicole was my first boss in New York City, back when I was working at Meal Prep Chef and figuring out what being a chef in this city even meant. She’s been there for every single version of me since...every pivot, every reinvention, every moment I wasn’t sure what I was building but kept building anyway. And this time last year, Yas and I got engaged at Café Mutsi. And for Mutsi’s opening day and then first birthday a year later, Millie and I worked in that kitchen together...Millie on dishes, me wherever I was needed, both of us watching Nicole’s dream take shape around us.

Mutsi just turned two. It has grown into something feisty and real and entirely its own thing. It’s quite beautiful to see the best creative work when someone refuses to let it be anything other than exactly what they envisioned. To be back in that kitchen this weekend as a co-chef, cooking my food alongside Nicole’s and Maria’s...it’s the full circle moment that only makes sense in retrospect.

Southern freckles, Mediterranean badass, Nordic simplicity. This Friday & Saturday, May 15 + 16. Come experience the beauty of the Catskills…one plate at a time!

For this upcoming Sunday, I've been deep in research and thinking this week about the connection between food and nervous system regulation...what we eat, how we eat, and the way our food systems are quietly woven into our ability to feel safe, steady, and present in our own bodies. I upped my therapy sessions to weekly, and since then, I've been learning to actually listen to what my body is telling me when it's dysregulated. All of this is colliding with very real concerns about supply chains, local sourcing, and what it means to feed yourself and your family intentionally when the world feels uncertain. It might just become multiple essays…more in a few days.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• We’re Not Supposed to Live Like This by Julia Christina
  This one has been on my mind all week…everything I’ve been working through in therapy, everything I’ve been noticing about how my body holds stress and signals dysregulation...it’s in here. Read it slowly.

• First Quarter, First Impressions by Nik Snacks
  Honest and specific…this is the kind of food writing I love the most. It’s a good one to sit and read with your weekend coffee. I’ll give it another gander with mine, for sure.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

A little Summer Solstice Pantry Box…coming your way soon!
I started pickling rhubarb this week, and that must mean it's almost time. The Freckled Fork Summer Solstice Pantry Box debuts later this month...a tight, curated drop of things I've been making and testing, small batch, only 15 available this round, complete with another adorable ceramic piece by Sarah Buffaloe. If you want your name on the list, shoot me a text or DM. First come, first serve:) More info soon!

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Roots Before Petals: The Expensive Truth About Building Something Real by Jackie Summers
  What does it actually cost to build from the foundation up? Before anything blooms, before anyone notices, in the long quiet season of just doing the work.
  “A dandelion bursting through concrete is not pluck. It is a seed finding a crack, enough moisture, sunlight, stored fuel, and room to stabilize a stem before the next insult. Concrete didn’t disappear. The flower did not heal the sidewalk. Hostility did not end. It simply failed at total containment.” UGH. So freaking good.

• Groceries, Restaurants and Policy by Andrew Zimmern
  With everything happening right now...supply chain disruptions, the news cycle, the creeping anxiety about where our food actually comes from...this piece is essential. Zimmern on the real stakes of food policy for the people who grow it, cook it, and serve it. Read it and then go find your local farmer, ASAP.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

Mother's Day, the way I actually wanted it

A long time ago, I figured out that waiting for other people to celebrate me the way I wanted to be celebrated was a reliable path to disappointment. So on the heels of my first divorce, I took matters into my own hands (bc they were the only ones I could control:). This Mother's Day, Millie and I did a full bakery tour of Manhattan, and it was exactly right. Every single bite. Watch the Reel, hopefully it’ll make you smile and better yet, inspire you to get out and try your own little progressive tour to stop at a couple spots “on your list”.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

Your nervous system is keeping score even when you’re not.

This week, notice one moment when your body signals something before your brain catches up...a tightening in the chest, a held breath, a sudden need to scroll.

Don’t rush to fix it…just notice it…and write it down if you can.
That’s the whole assignment...for now.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

Café Mutsi Pop-Up • May 15 + 16 • Andes, NY
Southern chow-chow meets Mediterranean Chicken Milanese, deviled eggs with pickled ramps & roasted chicken skins, whole trout stuffed to the gills with herbs, spanakopita, okra with buttermilk ranch & the biggest kabocha buns you’ve ever seen! Three women chefs, two days, the gorgeous Catskills. If you're anywhere near Andes this weekend, come to the table. Follow @cafemutsi for all the details.

Happy Thursday, turkeys!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. Newest essay in the works for Sunday…nervous system, food, and what it means to actually take care of yourself in a world that makes it very hard…to actually feed yourself in a life that doesn’t seem to stop for you. I'll meet you there. ♥

I remember the email.

It showed up like any other one...buried between a promo code and some shipping notification for something I absolutely don’t remember ordering, and right there in the subject line, cheerful as anything: “Happy Mother’s Day.”

Maybe someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea to send to an entire email list without stopping to consider that some of the women opening that email were not, in fact, mothers, and were very much in the thick of grieving that very thing, quietly, privately, on their own.

Infertility is one of the quietest and loneliest griefs there is, something you carry in your body, silently, while the world just keeps sending emails and throwing baby showers and asking when it’s your turn, as if your turn is something that just hasn’t come yet rather than something your body has been refusing for years.

For years...and I mean YEARS...I wanted something my body wouldn’t give me. On the outside I labeled it as just unexplained infertility, but inside, silently and painfully, it all felt like more evidence of something fundamentally wrong with me. I mean…women are designed for this, right? Or so I told myself. We are literally the only humans on earth who can create life, and if my body won’t do it, what does that say about me? Am I even fully a woman if the one thing women are built to do is the one thing I cannot?

I know how that sounds…ridiculously over-simplified. I also know that knowing how it sounds doesn’t actually stop you from feeling it at 3am.

Mother’s Day was the hardest...not because I begrudged anyone their day of celebration, because I really didn’t. I genuinely love the mothers in my life. I showed up for every baby shower and meant every card I signed…I held their babies and felt real joy...and also knew I would completely fall apart in the car on the way back home. That grief has a very specific texture: loving people through an experience you want so desperately for yourself.

Joy and grief share the same room, both of them real…and both of them mine.

That pain was real…I still feel it with everything inside of me. It’s a constant tug-o-war between my inherent positivity and cup-overflowing with joy and contentment with my life as it is vs. the cynical and painful feelings of unworthiness or brokenness.

I’ve had some pretty intensive therapy sessions since January, and the result is that I’ve been sitting with a lot of different questions lately. I’ve been reframing my thoughts, my assumptions, my why…And the past couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about those early days of wanting to be a mother, and my infertility journey as a whole…I’ve been thinking about the hurt I carried…and wondering if it had to hurt quite this much?

There’s a path, and some of you know this all too well...maybe in a church bulletin or a holiday dinner conversation or just the general ambient pressure of being a woman in a place that has opinions about what you should do with your body. Graduate, get a job, find a partner, get married, have kids, in that order, in that timeline, the whole conveyor belt of acceptable adulthood predestined as if someone decided the sequence and forgot to tell you it was optional. In the South where I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, that path wasn’t a suggestion…it was THE measure of your success…your worth…your having it all. And in the evangelical South where I grew up, the church reinforces every rung of it, because family is sacred and motherhood is a calling and your body, apparently, is purposeful.

So when my body didn’t cooperate, I didn’t just feel sad about it...I felt like I had failed a test I didn’t even have time to prepare for. I mean, a test implies a score-keeper and a standard…a standard that implies someone decided what the right answer would be…and I’m pretty sure that someone wasn’t me.

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I emailed my friend a few days ago…one of my closest friends who has been in New York City for over 10 years now. She and her husband don’t have kids and don’t really ever talk about it. I emailed her to see if she would share her feelings about Mother’s Day. With my questions ready and my narrative already half-formed, I assumed I would find something recognizable in her experience…that I would see some similar version of my own grief, my own defense, or my complicated relationship with a choice that wasn’t entirely up to me.

But, she didn’t reply to my email, she called me instead.

She told me, gently and graciously, that my questions were leading her somewhere she’d never actually been. That she actually had NOT spent her life defending her childless choice or even grieving some parallel life she didn’t take...it just wasn’t her reality. She had aunts and uncles who didn’t have kids, her family never made it a measure of anyone’s value. Conversely to my experience, she didn’t grow up in the church. She moved from the South in her twenties and built her whole adult life in a city where nobody tracks your reproductive timeline like it’s a scoreboard. That weight I carried...the one I thought was a shared weight and experience...had not landed on her the same way or even at all.

She didn’t feel the mold, which meant she never felt the cost of not being able to fit it. So, she politely declined to answer the questions because they were leading her to a place that didn’t quite resonate or fit her experience. I love her for her words…for her honesty…and I love her for the way that she tore through my assumptions and helped me reframe and reconsider the whole dang thing. I sat with all her insight and what she shared for a long time after we hung up.

The thing I still think about, the question that still makes me fidget with discomfort is…Would I have even called it infertility if I’d grown up somewhere else?

If I’d been in New York in my twenties, working on my career and living in a place that didn’t measure a woman’s worth in reproductive milestones...would my body’s inability to conceive have felt like failure? Or would it have felt like...just information…just a true thing about my body that wasn’t necessarily a verdict of my worth…just merely a condition of my body in that moment rather than an indictment of my womanhood as a whole.

Would I have gotten married as young as I did if nobody was keeping quiet score? Would I have spent those years feeling fundamentally broken, or would I have spent them living my life without the constant low hum of not being enough?

I genuinely don’t know, but reconsidering it all is doing a LOT of unraveling…a lot of reframing all the things I thought I knew and felt.

All things considered…I do know the grief I carried each Mother’s Day wasn’t made of just one thing. Some of it was a real and honest loss...the pregnancy I would never have. That grief is real…it’s mine…it existed and I still carry it even today. But some of it…some of that grief, I’m realizing…was borrowed…and maybe was inherited from a place, a region, maybe even a religion, or a culture that handed down a very specific definition of womanhood and measurement.

Finally, after years of infertility, I did become a mother.

I became a mother through adoption, and Millie is mine in every way that matters and even in ways I don’t even have words for. I wouldn’t trade her or our story for anything. And yet…if I’m being honest, there is always a ghost of the other thing lingering...the wondering, the quiet curiosity if my body will ever decide to start working…the manic “checking” process (IYKYK) if I’m even a day or two late.

I’m learning that I’m allowed to hold both of those things at once…the fullness of the love I already have and the realness of the loss I carry. I’m also learning, slowly, to tell the difference between grief that is actually mine and grief that was assigned to me…between mourning something I genuinely lost and performing a loss that society expected me to perform.

Knowing the difference between the two…matters like hell.

In the middle of all that grief, all that reframing, all that slow and painful unlearning...a single thought keeps filling my mind and my heart, and it continues to lift me now.

I was never actually alone in it.

I have been mothered my entire life…ferociously…specifically…and by women who showed up in every chapter and held me in ways I didn’t always know I needed. Some of them were mothers in the way the world counts it, and some of them never had children or never wanted any, and every single one of them was and is a mother to me.

My own mother first, obviously, because she is the best and I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it...she worked full time and raised three kids with my dad and they busted their asses to give us every opportunity and the space to grow without hovering over every inch of it, and I am so deeply proud to be hers.

And then there’s Linda Branham from my early church days, who kept up with me and my life and let us come swim at her pool and have a place to breathe. She genuinely cared about who I was becoming as a person and not just who I was at the moment. She still keeps up with me virtually all these years later and is rooting for every single thing I’m building now...she is a mother to me.

My friend Nicole Verrone, who had small children of her own at the time but whose arms, whose strong and steady arms, held me and so many other twenty-somethings wading through the beginning days of adulthood. She was one of the first people to hold all of me…sitting at a table over a meal. She provided the table and made sure everyone had a seat, had time and space to just be, and had a heart big enough and ears open enough to hear whatever was weighing us down. She writes the most beautiful poetry and calls us her little birds…she is a mother to me.

And Tachi and Linda...sisters, two of the most remarkable women I’ve ever had the privilege of being loved by...Tachi, a former teacher with the most inspiring passion for flowers and monarch butterflies and herbs and castles and cooking. She stood shoulder to shoulder with me in a cooking class with thirty years of age between us and not a single inch of distance in spirit. She mothered me through my early days of infertility by painting me peaceful watercolor prints and showing up with tiny pottery pieces. Tachi was my very first paid Substack subscriber and has been by me every step of my adult life...and her sister Linda, mother to one of my dearest friends Massie. Linda gave the gift of her porch swing and a bottle of wine (or two) after a hard day of work. She has a way of grabbing your arm and pulling you in for the kind of hug where you could lift your feet off the ground and just float because she has completely, entirely got you. They are mothers to me.

My friend Laurie Martin, beautifully sarcastic with the most genuine heart of any woman I’ve ever known, who says the thing you’re not supposed to say but gets away with it because you know her heart is pure and her curiosity comes from wanting real connection. She walked with me through infertility, we were part of a support group we affectionately called the Infertile Myrtles, and she wrote me a journal about the kind of mother she knew I already was, even without kids, and the mother she knew I would grow into. Laurie’s hope and faith held me up on the days I had none of my own. She is the one who drops everything to bring someone dinner, who sees someone in need and rallies, who pulls people together and makes them feel genuinely seen. She mothered me the way she now mothers her three kids and the way she’s mothered everyone who’s walked through her door or battled her in ping pong. She is a mother to me.

And my girl Sals, wise beyond her years in ways that have always quietly stunned me...we met when she was in her twenties and I was in my thirties but she has always mothered me, she’s taught me that laughter is the best medicine and that rest is not laziness and that standing up for yourself is non-negotiable. She taught me that things are just things but when they carry a story or a meaning, they are worth more than gold. Sals taught me that your word is currency, and if it has no value then you have nothing. She’s a mother to me.

My dear Nicole Godshall, more accurately my sister from another mister but the first actual mother in my adult friend group…joy explosion…and she has always been exactly that. Nicole taught me the value of fun and the fundamentals of gathering people, and how to make a beautiful spread of food out of whatever’s left in the refrigerator. She is the busy little bee in the background making sure everything is available for whoever needs it, and she is a mother to me.

And Marie, my best friend since freshman year of college, the only teenager I ever knew who wore Merle Norman makeup and was therefore always, clearly, operating on a completely different level than the rest of us. She is a caretaker in every sense of the word, a provider in more ways than should be humanly possible. She has organized, celebrated and marked every occasion. She has cried and screamed and laughed me through every chapter from our college days through first marriages and first divorces…through infertility and first kids and big moves…and through second marriages and beyond. Marie is the one who shows up at your door with your coffee order memorized because she knows you need it...that and a hug, and that is genuinely everything, and she is a mother to me.

Then there are the women who mothered me without ever knowing my name...Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Erykah Badu, Jewel, Florence and the Machine, Adele and Amy Winehouse, Rihanna and Sade and Lauryn Hill and Cleo Sol…even motherfucking Missy Elliott. Their words carried me, lifted me, and wrapped me in strength that finds you at 16 with the volume maxed out in a parking lot somewhere, or in moments when you can’t explain why you’re crying, or when a song comes on, and suddenly you remember who you really are. They gave language to the things I felt inside. They showed me that women can be complicated and angry and tender and fearless and broken and whole…sometimes in the same song, sometimes in the same breath. They mothered me, too.

And Heather, Sarah, Renee, Olga, Nicole, Nancy, Emily, Sally, Marie, Sara, Michelle, Olivia, Catherine, Rachel, Erica, Gloria, Jennifer, Tammy, Sis, Donna, Patsy, Megan, Ashley, Carol, Katie, Anna, Alyssa, Maggie, Wendy, Sherita, Jen, Kim, Chris, Caroline, Kristin, Tania, Nadia, Rifat, Nimi, Joy, Selena, Char, Christine, Lila, Leah, Allison, Amy, Vanessa, Lara, Tiffany, Lorean, Virginie, Lisa, Collette, Lauren, Yasmin, Cami, Kayla, Brenna, Brooke, Bri, April, Camille, Mika, Bracken, Rose, Christie, Angela, Monica, Zikki, Grace, Courtney, Ria, Kari, Lindsay, Leslie, Kriska, Diane, Blair, Haley, Sandra, Emma, Amelia, Julie, Mai, Erin, Phyllis, Gaby, Robin, Ruth, Martha, Chloe, Greer, Katrina, Hannah, Jess, Susan, Melissa, Zenovia, Kasey, Carr, Iris, Louise, Roxanna, Julia, Karina, Kat, Kelly, Mahrina, Kristina, Shannon, Tracy, Lia, Lilla, Ellie, Livi, Mary Kate, Memme, Kate, Molly, Liz, Kara, Meredith, Michelle, Muna, Lucy, Paige, Patty, Krystle, Mary Ruth, Lori, Rebecca, Rosa, Margaret, Molly, Alexis, Isabela, Jean...all of you and more. You mothered me.

It’s Mother’s Day today, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t dread it the way I used to...not because everything is resolved or healed, because it’s not. I feel love and joy for my daughter, for my family, for all the women who have mothered me. And now, I feel gratitude for the clarity I’m getting…understanding which feelings actually belong to me and trying to let go of the ones that don’t.

If you’re reading this and today is complicated, in any direction, for any reason, I see you. For the women who wanted children and couldn’t have them…the ones who chose differently and are exhausted from explaining themselves…the women who are mothers and yet, still feel like something is missing…the ones who are somewhere in the middle, still figuring out what this day even means for them. For the women who would give anything for one more day with their mother taken too soon…or the ones whose relationship with their mother or with their children is complicated and messy and painful. I see all of you, every last one.

If any part of the grief you’re carrying feels like it doesn’t quite fit or feels like it was handed to you by someone else’s measurement or expectations...you’re allowed to hand it back. You don’t have to keep hauling that shit around like it’s yours.

Happy Mother’s Day, friends.

xoxo,

Jess

I went back to climbing this week.

A throwback…and MY back doesn’t QUITE look like that anymore…

Seven months…off the wall. Seven months of slowly, quietly, without even fully realizing it, letting go of most of the things I had built around myself to stay regulated. I like to think about it like scaffolding. These self-case rituals are the scaffolding that support and encourage my growth upward, but aren’t necessarily built into the structure. My scaffolding included climbing 2-3x/week…walks around the city…monthly deep tissue massages & realignment…facials at my Chinatown spot (I have a package that lasts me all year!)…even something as simple as grabbing my afternoon flat whites from Black Press….all the small, private rituals that didn’t feel like much, but I absolutely depended on them. I’ve been SO busy building other things...The Freckled Fork (getting intentional about what it can be and what I actually want it to become), showing up for Millie in the ways she needs right now, being present for Yas. And in the midst of all that building, I let my scaffolding fall away…leaving me unsteady.

I tend to store tension in my chest, in my throat, in my shoulders. I wrote about it in The Quiet Rage...the way women learn to carry things in their bodies instead of putting them down. For me, climbing has been the one thing that physically forces it out. Climbing isn’t just another gym commitment… it's not a wellness trend or even something I’m half-assing on a Tuesday. Since 2022, it’s been a necessity…in every sense of the word. When I’m on the wall, I’m not thinking about anything else beyond solving the problem in front of me. With everything I have, with literally my entire body and all my strength, I’m hyper-focused and with every push and pull, my body is realigning…along with my mind and my heart. I mean…all that rage has to GO somewhere.

Millie’s felt the unsteadiness…the absence of my wholeness. Yas has definitely felt and experienced the unbalanced version of me…and I’ve felt it in ways I don’t love admitting.

So I’m back…on the wall, I’m walking home from work (getting back to those 15K+ steps/day), and I’m working to reinstall the other parts of my scaffolding as well, slowly and intentionally. It turns out there’s a difference in climbing walls vs. building & hiding behind them. I’ve been doing the latter for seven months, but it’s the former that gives me life.

I’m sure there’s a journal entry or an essay in there somewhere...but for now, I just needed to go back. So, I did.

Since we're on the subject of Millie...Mother's Day is Sunday, and if you haven’t read last week’s post My Daughter Doesn't Trust Me …it’s a real one. It’s the hard but necessary work of raising a kid with intention and with truth, no matter how rude it might feel. For this Sunday, I'm bringing you something new...I spent years grieving something my body wouldn't give me. But this time, my reflections on this day are taking a different turn,

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• You Cannot Carry Every Version of Yourself by Ode to a Poet
  I read this at exactly the right time last week. Something about giving yourself permission to put down the person you used to be...not as a loss, but as a necessary act of moving.

• When You've Outgrown Your Old Life by A Tini Bit of Advice
  This one pairs with the one above, from February, but it still resonates and holds true. They're basically a two-part permission slip.

• Menstrual Cycle Self-Care: Your Body Needs Week to Week on The Good Trade
  I love that women are getting more intentional about this...finally moving away from the idea that we should be the same person every single week of the month. We're not. This framework for thinking about the cycle as four different seasons is genuinely useful.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

• Why Making Someone Their Favorite Food Is an Act of Love by Food Stories Told
  This is exactly the kind of piece I want everyone to read and then go cook something for someone they love without making a big deal about it. The whole thesis of what I try to do with The Freckled Fork.

Share

THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Motherhood Makes You Disappear by Life with Ryan
  This one…especially this week, especially with Mother’s Day coming, especially with everything I wrote above about. It’s not easy to read, but it’s important.

• I Didn’t Burn Out Because I Failed by Myleik Teele
  Myleik again…she keeps showing up in my feed with exactly what I need to hear. This one was an eye-opener after seven months of quietly dismantling everything that was keeping me upright.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

But if you listened to them…does it count?
For the girl who didn’t actually finish reading one book last year, it’s already May, and I’ve devoured FIVE…count ‘em….FIVE whole books so far this year…All because of the accessibility of Spotify audiobooks. So far this year, I’ve read The Book of Alchemy, Awake: A Memoir, Famesick (just finished last week, LOVED.), Next of Kin (this one was a hard copy, bc I love GH) and then Obsessed with the Best (technically a cookbook, but we all know I read these cover to cover like the trashy romance novels they are for the gourmands of the world)…and I’m almost done with Extra Sauce (also hard copy bc I just couldn’t help myself). Audiobooks while I cook and while I walk? Groundbreaking.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

What did you let go of this winter that was actually keeping you sane?

Not what you gave up because it wasn’t working. The things you let go because life got loud and they were quiet, and quiet things are easy to deprioritize.

Name it and then figure out how to get it back.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

A Women’s Kitchen Takeover at Café Mutsi • May 15 + 16.
Three Women Chefs, two days, one kitchen, a table you definitely want a seat at… Southern freckles meets Mediterranean badass meets Nordic simplicity. Details coming soon via @cafemutsi…follow them so you don't miss the info when it drops…and totally worth the trip to the Catskills next weekend…if I do say so myself:)

Thinking About This Week…

Stop building walls & hiding behind them…go climb them instead!

Happy Thursday, turkeys!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. The Mother’s Day essay drops Sunday morning…if this day is complicated for you, in any direction, I wrote it for you, too. Thanks for being here and for sharing this little table with me ♥.

She literally just turned 11 a couple of weeks ago, and she’s growing like a weed…physically, emotionally….mentally, hormonally. Just one inch shy of five feet, has a little boyfriend already, and a pre-teen angst that totally crept in, unannounced and uninvited. And she said this to me the way 11-year-olds say hard things...without armor, without cruelty, without any idea of it’s impact or how it would just hang there…heavy…in the room between us.

My first instinct was to defend myself. To list every sacrifice, every flight booked, every trip taken, every birthday made enormous...Paris…London…Disney World. Every night I stayed up late rocking her to sleep or in the early morning hours when it was just her and me while her dad went to work. Every version of myself I burned down and rebuilt, trying to be the best version of myself and her mother that I could be. I wanted to open my mouth and let all of that spill out and ask her to look at it, really look at it, and reconsider.

But I stopped myself, I didn’t do it. I just gave Yas a little eye roll that said can you believe this? And he looked back at me with wide eyes and a smirk that said actually...she might have a point.

Yas, my sweet neurodivergent partner…my person. The man who can look me dead in my face and tell me I’m wrong…and we are working on those truths being delivered with the right amount of love and tenderness required to make me not throw something. In this instance, he didn’t say a word…he didn’t have to.

So I sat with it, I let it pierce my insides, and considered all that started to ooze out. And ooze out it did.

When did I lie to her?

At first, my mind blanked…and then, all at once, it came rushing to me. Maybe it was when Millie was three, and she asked if she came from my belly. I told her the truth, but just enough for a 3 yr. old to handle, I told her no, that another woman “had” her for us, but that I was her mommy from day one. She rolled with it the way toddlers do...nodded, moved on, went back to her snacks. But I’ve always wondered what happened in the quiet after. Whether something small and certain got rearranged inside her…maybe it was the first time she understood that the reality she was certain of could be different from what she thought it was. Three is young enough to absorb a thing like that without language for it, and old enough for it to settle somewhere in uncertainty…in the body where language doesn’t reach.

Or maybe it was every time I said just one more email and then an hour disappeared, and the light outside changed, and it was just too late to go to the playground or play that game I’d promised to play. Or the times I convinced her a new school would be amazing and that she’d make so many friends...because what else do you say when your kid is looking at you with those wide, trusting eyes and when you need her to believe the world is going to be kind to her even though you have absolutely no evidence of that? And then she didn’t have that experience…not at first, and not very easily…even though I said she would.

Don’t even get me started on Santa Claus…or the Easter Bunny…or the Tooth Fairy and the wildly inconsistent exchange rates. The years I spent building up those mythologies for her...leaving cookie crumbs and boot prints and writing tiny notes in handwriting that looked nothing like mine...and then having her come to find out it all wasn’t true…and it wasn’t me that gave her that truth, I was the one engineering the lie. It’s a particular kind of betrayal that we all subscribe to and agree somewhere along the way that it’s the way it is. It’s what you do…and honestly, I’m still not sure who it all benefits, but here we are.

And then…there were the bigger ones…the ones that required their own conversations, their own careful conversations and omissions, their own deep breaths before I opened my mouth.

We’re moving to New York. It’s going to be an adventure.

Your dad and I are getting a divorce. But I’ll be right here. Nothing will change for you.

I have to work at the restaurant tonight, but I’ll be home in time to tuck you in.

Ugh…that last one. How many times did I say that and then not make it home in time? How many times did the restaurant pull me under...the tickets pouring in way past a “closing time” that doesn’t exist, someone calling out, a table of ten walking in twenty minutes before said close with an energy that says we are going to be here for a while...and I would surface somewhere on the other side of bedtime, still smelling like onions and fryer oil, checking my phone on the walk home and telling myself she was asleep anyway, she didn’t know, it was fine.

But she knew…she always knew…she remembers.

When she was nine years old, she was learning how to triangulate two stories from two parents who weren’t speaking much, and she figured out which version of reality she wanted to believe. That’s a lot of mental and emotional back-and-forth for someone so small…for a little girl whose biggest concern should’ve been whether her best friend was going to save her a seat at lunch.

And then, within that next year, everything shifted again. Her dad got married and moved across the river to Jersey. I moved in with Yas, and then six months later, Yas and I got married. Three massive tectonic life events stacked on top of each other so fast that I don’t think any of us fully processed one before the next one arrived. Honestly, I think Millie stopped expecting solid ground and started bracing herself for the next shift instead. She learned to keep her knees soft, she learned to stop asking, is this it? because the answer kept being no, not quite.

I knew and felt it, most acutely when I moved out of our first apartment when her dad and I first separated. That was the first real physical severance...it wasn’t just the divorce in theory, it was my actual body leaving the apartment she knew as home. The apartment where her room, her foundation, was, where the sounds were familiar, where I could be found if she cried out in the middle of the night. I left that, and in her mind, I left her.

And then, my job as Head Chef of the restaurant. The 80-hour weeks…the chef life I had chosen…the one I needed…the one where I found my true self…and it was also the one that was also eating us both alive. I was juggling SO much at that time, but I did the best with what I had. I tried to love her out loud every chance I got. The entire time I was away from her, she was my reason, my why. But the brutal reality was that at the time, I was only seeing her two days a week. And on those two days, I tried to lean into the quality, not quantity, of it all, but I was often so tired that the version of me she got wasn’t the best one. I was treading water and getting beaten up from all sides of life. I didn’t put on my proverbial life jacket before trying to take care of hers.

You can love someone with everything you have and still be the reason their world got harder. You can still be the reason why they have trust issues, why they’ve pulled inward and struggle to make progress in the outside world. All those things can be true at once.

There’s a realization that bubbles to the surface in parenthood…the reality that no matter how hard we try to do all the right things, say all the right things, provide all the right things, and have all the best intentions for our kids…we are still going to manage to fuck it up. No matter what, we will most likely be the source and subject of their future therapy sessions. I don’t think there’s a parent alive who hasn’t lived inside that reality, but even knowing other people carry it too doesn’t make it any lighter to hold.

Millie’s not wrong… I did lie to her…I have lied to her…I still lie to her. I lie to her the way parents lie...sometimes to protect her, sometimes to protect myself, sometimes because I genuinely don’t know what else to say, sometimes because I believe the thing when I say it, and then life just goes somewhere else entirely. None of it was ever malicious…but all of it still counts.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The practice is thought to have started in the fifteenth century…legend traces it to the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who cracked a favorite tea bowl and sent it back to China for repair. It came back held together with ugly metal staples...functional but brutal, like someone had stitched a wound without caring about the scar. Japanese craftsmen looked at it and decided they could do better. They could make the repair more beautiful than the original.

The process isn’t fast…you truly can’t rush it. The lacquer, called urushi, is applied in thin layers, and each one has to cure and harden before the next goes on. Weeks of patient, deliberate work just to fill a single crack…and then the gold...its purpose not to cover the crack, not to disguise it…but to trace it…to illuminate the fault line and make it the most celebrated part of the whole piece.

The philosophy underneath connects to wabi-sabi...the Japanese understanding that impermanence and imperfection aren’t flaws to fix but truths to hold. The crack is actually part of the history…you don’t hide it…you don’t pretend it was never there…you fill it with something precious so that what was broken becomes the most visible, most illuminated, most honest part of the whole piece.

This concept of Kintsugi is a beautiful one I’ve always resonated with on a personal level, but I didn’t quite realize I’d be applying it to my relationship with Millie. Especially when my little girl looked me in the face and told me she doesn’t trust me.

Millie’s 11 now. I know, there’s so much more she can hold, so much more she can understand, so much more truth that she actually deserves to have access to. Truth given in the right doses, in the right moments, and from me...her person, her mother, her original safe place, even when I was also the one who made it feel less safe than I ever wanted to.

The hardest pill for me to swallow is that I know I can’t go back and un-say the things that planted doubt in Millie’s mind. I can’t give her back the years I was spread so thin, or un-move from Charlotte, or un-divorce her dad. Nor would I ever want to. The cracks are there; they meant something then, and they mean something now. They will always be there; they’re part of her story and mine. And even though I don’t regret the decisions I made, I am plagued by the negative impact they all had on her.

And yet, I know now that I can start filling in those cracks with gold.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like quite yet, because I don’t. I’m guessing some will be little shifts with big impact…the slowing down, telling the truth even when it’s awkward, the saying I don’t know instead of manufacturing certainty to comfort her. Some will be the boring, unglamorous work of being consistently present...not in some grand gesture way, not in a Paris-trip-can-fix way, but in the Tuesday afternoon way. The I said I’d be here and I’m actually here kind of way. And I think the hardest way is by letting her be angry and feel hurt by the cracks without rushing to explain them away. There’s beauty in letting her hold them up to the light on her own timeline, and not when I tell her to.

The urushi takes weeks to cure…you really can’t speed it up. You keep applying thin layer after thin layer and trusting the process even when it feels like nothing is setting.

She said it so casually. I don’t trust you because you lie.

I think she said it because somewhere she still believes I’m worth saying it to. That somewhere underneath the doubt and the too-many-moves and the nights I didn’t make it home...she still thinks I’m the person who deserved to hear it. Maybe she knows that I hear her…that I won’t stop until I make it right.

Maybe she trusts that I’m going to be worth it. Because she is, too.

Friday night at Barclays, somewhere in the middle of “Cosmic Love” I stopped being self-conscious about how wild I was moving.

I was there with Tiffany and Amy...two women I’ve known since the 90s, since we were teenagers in South Carolina, since before all the many iterations of me. They knew me as the girl eating raw brownie mix from a bowl. And Florence...her beautiful spirit…her incredible voice filled the room, and it felt purely physical, like the air shifted and changed. It felt less like a concert and more like a collective exhale…a room full of people who needed it most. I sang every word I knew and a bunch I didn’t…at full volume and totally off key. I was fifteen again and also very much the 40+ woman I’ve been becoming…both of them existing in the same body for three hours. Those moments don’t happen often, but when they do, you hold on a little bit longer.

Before the concert, we found ourselves at Lola’s. Chef Suzy Cupps is a Carolina girl, too, and the food…creative and honest…made these 3 SC girls feel at home. The food is dang good, and it was the best way to pre-game.

The next day, I worked my first Cherry Bombe Jubilee as a volunteer…which meant I got to be behind the scenes instead of just a face in the crowd. I spent most of the day working with the incredible team behind DONA tea in Bushwick. The tea is quite fantastic, but the women who run it…they are quite special.

Throughout the day, I had moments that made the world feel small and also enormous at the same time.

Lucie of FROM LUCIE was there. I’ve ordered my birthday cakes from her since she was baking out of her apartment during the pandemic...years before the East Village shop, years before the cookbook that just dropped and is, predictably, as beautiful and dynamic as she is. I watched her build something real from what was a hobby, maybe even a survival mechanism, maybe both. I hugged her and introduced myself, and she seemed to know just who I was. I told her I’d been ordering her cakes for years…she was gracious and warm.

I also got to pop my head in for a few moments on the main stage. The Sophia Roe and Nara Smith conversation felt light and natural, like two girlfriends catching up and talking cookbooks on a couch. And then the legacy of Edna Lewis...Toni Tipton-Martin and Nina Williams-Mbengue, moderated by chef Adrienne Cheatham…who I actually hugged right before she went on. The conversation was about what it means to carry a culinary tradition forward…who gets to tell the story…what gets preserved. The day ended with Rita Sodi and Jody Williams of Via Carota and iSodi, so freaking amazing, such badasses, neither went to culinary school, both are still killing it in all the ways.

I came home full...from being around food people, from being in rooms where women were serious about what they do and why. There’s an energy that comes from that…I came home and wanted to build something.

And this week delivered…three new gigs booked for the spring and a few more in conversations that look promising. Busy season incoming for The Freckled Fork, and I am ready.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• Stop Borrowing What You Need to Build by Myleik Teele
  Myleik hands us something we already know but can’t reach. This piece is about resource and self-trust and not waiting until conditions are right...which, if you read anything I put out last week, you know is exactly where my head has been. I sent this to three people before I even finished it.

• What’s Trending: The Art and Science by Sally Ekus
  On trend culture as a system. What it means to try to build something real when the algorithm keeps moving the ground under you. Read this if you’ve ever caught yourself chasing a moment that was already gone by the time you noticed it.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

• Lucie's debut cookbook — CAKE FROM LUCIE
  She started baking birthday cakes from her apartment during the pandemic. Then an East Village shop. Now this. The cookbook is exact and beautiful and tastes like intention on every page. If you're in NYC, the shop is on East 10th Street and is totally worth the trip.

Share

THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• High Tide by Jo Sexton
  I read this twice. The ocean has always been my place of clarity...the thing I go to when I need to understand something about myself that I can't get to any other way. If you read last Sunday's piece about the algorithm as water we're all swimming in whether we understand it or not, this one lives in the same current. Something about the way it holds a moment without explaining it to death.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

• Lena Dunham's Famesick —
  I do an annual rewatch of GIRLS...sure, there are those that still annoy the shit out of me…the self-involved and narcissistic 20-somethings they are, and yet, the show still catches in me in places I'm not ready for. I finished the rewatch just as Lena’s latest novel dropped. The timing felt serendipitous. Famesick is about what sustained spectacle does to a person. Famous or not. I've been thinking about it alongside last Sunday's essay about the brand where a person used to be…there's something there…in the overlap that’s sticking with me…something about the difference between being seen and being watched.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

Think about the people who knew you before the version of you that the world sees now. The ones with that kind of history.

When’s the last time you were actually in a room with them?

Not a text thread. A room. Make THAT happen, before it’s too late.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

Two things:

• Extra Sauce by Zahra Tangorra
  I’ve followed her on the ‘gram for awhile and have been counting down to the release of her memoir — I LOVE a good memoir, especially when it involves food. Grab your copy today!

• Lola’s
  Go! Chef Suzy Cupps is the real deal and the food will take care of you. And they serve lunch now, too! Reservations here.

Thinking About This Week…

Three new gigs, a life-giving weekend & a stack of reading that kept me honest this week. More soon.

Happy Thursday, turkeys!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. Essays on life, motherhood, identity, purpose, food and belonging…these babies drop on Sundays. If you had a weekend that reset you, I want to hear about it.

Thanks for sharing your love for The Table Between & all things Freckled Fork…pass along to your friends, share, like, heart…do all the things. I really appreciate it more than you can ever know <3

A couple weeks ago, I left off in Part One by saying we needed to sit with discomfort for a minute…to sit in the truth of the algorithm and the part we all play in it. I hope some of the numbers and stats really sank in…that the reality of what these platforms are actually doing fires up our bones. It’s important to pull back the curtain, see what’s behind it, sit with it, and then decide what to do with it.

But, you guys, I’d be lying if I said I practiced what I preached.

While I was writing that piece, while I was connecting the dots between dopamine loops, loneliness, and the infinity ladder of connection…Yas had literally been trying to have this exact conversation with me for months now.

How did I respond? I did the thing I do when I assume something doesn’t really impact me, or worse, when something goes a little over my head. I just listened enough to engage, I gave a “yeah, uh-huh” without even looking up from my screen, and I mentally filed it under “for later” or “Yas’ work stuff,” and quickly changed the subject. That and then I also revert to my bad habit of doom-scrolling Instagram, which…in hindsight…is an almost poetic kind of irony…given what he was actually trying to tell me.

It’s not my best look, not something I’m proud of…and YES,
I should have paid more attention.

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In his brilliant AuDHD-minded way (not at all even a little annoying…wink wink), Yas sends me articles to read daily…or he will conveniently (strategically) have a YouTube podcast “on” when I get home from work. It typically is about marketing, reach or something about how a particular platform decides what gets seen, or why a piece written years ago still finds its way to people or how the mechanics of how anyone shows up on top.

I’ve introduced my lovely and freakin’ brilliant husband Yas, but what I didn’t share is the part of his background that makes him different from most of the people in his field. He didn’t come to this work through a computer science degree, he actually came through film studies and photography. Which means he doesn’t think about any of this the way most people in his world do. He thinks about things in the way a filmmaker thinks about where to point the camera.

What’s the viewer drawn to? …and why? What lives just outside the frame?

That eye, that way he sees the architecture underneath things…it’s a rare combination. He IS a rare combination of SO many beautiful complexities and a huge reason why I married a man who can sit at our dinner table and explain something about the mechanics of attention in ways that I actually care to hear, even when I initially don’t want to.

When I started really thinking about how I wanted to show up in the world…in the kitchen, in a room with strangers, on the couch with friends, on the page and at a table…that’s when things started to fall into place, and the dots started connecting. All the concepts and the philosophy behind the algorithm that Yas had so patiently tried to explain before, it all began to make sense, and even more so, I began to understand why it was so important for me to pay attention to.

And my honest first reaction to this realization…was a significant eye-roll. I do NOT like admitting I’m wrong or that I may not completely understand something. I’m a Virgo, after all.

Because at the end of the day, I know enough to be messy…and probably a little dangerous. I know enough to know what most of this looks like from the outside, and how uncomfortable it makes me. The keyword-stuffed articles written by no one for no one…the content that looks like content but means nothing…the hollow, scammy, gaming-the-system tactics of being visible.

And honestly, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that. I am a chef…I’m a mother…I’m a wife…I love people…I love to cook…I love to write…I am not a content machine.

Yas has been patient about that, too. He knows the ick version of SEO and optimization that exists. He’s not trying to defend it; he wanted me to understand it was something much bigger. He wanted me to understand that the algorithm is the water that we are all swimming in.

Are we swimming? Or are we just treading in one spot, on the verge of drowning?

We are all in the water whether we like it or not. So what are we going to do about it?

I don’t even think he understood the connection for me. You see, the ocean has always been my place of peace, the place I would go to clear my head, understand my heart, and those inner places that were hidden away. The waves would expose and wash over me, leeching away anything worth shedding or not needed anymore. The ocean both terrifies me and enamors me all at the same time. It is my happy place.

The water analogy was what I needed for it all to start to make sense.

One night while we were watching TV, Yas said something to me, casually and randomly as he does…the way he drops these bombs when I’m least ready for it.

He said: somewhere in the last decade, humans started performing like brands. And the algorithm, the one that gives you the ick, is a huge reason why.

Once he said it, I couldn’t unhear it…and I immediately hated it.

When your visibility…your ability to be seen, to be heard, to build any kind of following or career or even just a sense of existing in the world…becomes SO dependent on metrics, you inherently start performing. Consciously or not. You post what gets responses…you calibrate your personality to what gets likes…you edit your life into a feed.

The scariest part is you don’t always notice you’re doing it.

With the instant feedback, the instant gratification, and engagement, it starts to feel like connection. It starts to feel like people are really seeing you…but they’re not, not really. They’re seeing the version of you that the algorithm rewarded. Which, coincidentally, is the version you’ve now started becoming. Which is…I mean, do you see the loop, the dangerous “if, then” cycle we start to fall into?

In Part One of this series, I brought up the dopamine cycle…the scroll, the pause, the reward, the scroll again. This is essentially the identity version of that same loop. You post, you get feedback, you adjust, you post the adjusted version, you get more feedback. And slowly…

Identity formation…the messy, private, experimental, allowed-to-fail-quietly kind…is now happening in public…in real time, and in front of an audience that provides instant numerical feedback on every single move you make. The algorithm rewards the performance of authenticity over actual authenticity, because performance is designed to perform.

The real thing…the messy, unresolved, still-figuring-it-out real authenticity…doesn’t really get the likes, or the saves, or the shares…and it starts to feel like it’s not enough. So we edit. We curate. We perform.

Hearing this made me BOIL INSIDE. I was so fucking furious…not at Yas..but at the setup, and more honestly, I was furious with myself. Because I recognized that I have been falling into this loop, too.

A person is a person, messy, complex and full of contradictions. When a person starts constructing themselves the way a brand does…performing care instead of giving it, curating vulnerability instead of being vulnerable, building a personal brand where a personality used to be…something essential starts to erode…erosion in the bones, in the foundation of who they were.

I wrote about this in Good Bones last week. About how we’ve replaced presence with process, connection with content strategy, and care with white-washed customer service. About how we’ve turned hospitality into a vibe, and vibes are not bones. As I sat down to write this, I started putting these pieces together and realized the algorithm is the mechanism underneath that very erosion. The feed didn’t just change what we see…it’s changing who we are actually becoming. And most of us (me!) don’t even notice, because we’re too busy checking our engagement (likes, views, even unreplied-to text messages) to really consider what it might be costing us.

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What does it mean to stay true to a mission…a foundation…the bones…personal or professional? This is what I’m working through…as a chef, a writer, a mother, a wife, a friend, a person trying to make something honest. How do we stay grounded and true to ourselves when the conditions we’re working under keep changing…when the rules of how to be visible change every six months? When the version of yourself that gets rewarded today might not be the version that gets rewarded next month? When the platforms you’re standing on can pull the rug out from under you whenever they feel like it?

I don’t have a clean answer for any of that, and I don’t think anyone does. Yas doesn’t either, but what he is showing me is that trying to avoid the questions or pretend they don’t apply to me…thinking I can just opt out, refuse to look at it, stay above the fray because I’m a “real” chef or a “real” writer or whatever flavor of authenticity I want to claim…isn’t a position. It’s just denial dressed up as integrity. Because you’re in the water either way. Swim or drown.

I’m trying…trying to understand the system without becoming it. I’m trying to figure out what staying true to my mission actually looks like in a moment where everything keeps shifting...so quickly. Some days are easier than others…and then some days, I catch myself checking the likes on a post I wrote from my actual heart and feeling deflated when the numbers are low. That’s when I have to sit with the fact that I…the person writing this whole damn series about not letting the algorithm run your life…just let the algorithm run my feelings for a solid forty-five minutes.

It’s humbling, for sure. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think more of us feel this way than are willing to say it out loud.

Understand the system. Know what it is. Know what it wants from you. And then decide, deliberately, what you’re actually going to give it.

In my heart of hearts, the metric I care most about isn’t reach…it’s resonance. It’s the moment when someone reads something and feels joy or feels seen… “she said the thing I didn’t have words for.” That moment can’t be engineered or gamed…it can only be honest and earned. Resonance requires the same thing I wrote about in Good Bones…you have to actually see the person on the other side of the screen. You have to give something real, freely, without counting what comes back.

The algorithm doesn’t reward that; it rewards performance. And knowing that, I’m choosing to do it my way anyway, because I think the bones matter more.

How any of this actually shakes out for me…what staying true to a mission looks like in real time, on the ground, in this kitchen, on this page…that’s where Part Three is going. And, honestly, I’m still figuring it out.

I’ll meet you there.

This is Part Two of The Feed. Part One was on the push and pull of algorithms, the dopamine loop, the infinity ladder, and the business of manufactured loneliness…is here. Part Three is coming.

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We talked about meeting during the pandemic, opening Margot without outside funding, the diner almost breaking them, and why they kept going anyway. About being women in an industry that wasn’t built for us...and why leading with your heart on your sleeve is actually the advantage. About what it costs to bet on yourself when the industry is contracting, and what it means to take care of people and never do it casually.

“In New York where there’s a bajillion people and a bajillion restaurants...it’s easy to feel lonely and to feel like not known, and not seen and not acknowledged. And I think the best restaurants do that well where they just take care of you and they know you.”

The audio is mid. One mic quit. The restaurant behind us didn’t. I’m not a production company...I’m a chef with a camera, sitting across from women I want to celebrate, asking you to love us.

📍 Cleo: West Village, NYC
📍 Margot: Brooklyn
📍 Montague Diner: Brooklyn Heights
📍 Three Top Hospitality

Between Bowls is a series by The Freckled Fork where real conversations happen after the apron comes off...over a bowl of cereal.

🥣 Convo 1: Chef Haley Duren of LongCount

🔗 The Freckled Fork
🔗 Substack: The Table Between
🔗 Instagram: @thefreckledfork

The Table Between

Chef multi-hyphenate living in the space between who I was and who I'm becoming. Thoughts about food, motherhood, ambition, and the messy, beautiful truth of all of it. More about The Freckled Fork: thefreckledfork.com

By Jess Haque

#betweenbowls #thefreckledfork #threetophospitality #cleo #margot #montaguediner #womeninrestaurants #nycrestaurants #hospitalityindustry #cheflife #restaurantlife #westvillage #brooklyn #cereal #cinnamontoastcrunch

A hilarious chef that I follow posted a reel this week, trolling content creators and I literally almost spit my coffee out on my walk to my chef gig. Roasting those who think interviewing chefs on a podcast is a new, unique idea…groundbreaking, really.

I died…because maybe I’m doing that very thing with Between Bowls? I get it…I, too, see the hundreds of posts every day on my feed…I’m drowning in it, you’re drowning, we’re all drowning in chef video content. It’s having a moment, for sure. Which is why I almost didn’t publish the latest episode of Between…but then I did…because, you know what? The badass women of Three Top Hospitality just opened their third restaurant in 6 years…Cleo, in the West Village last weekend. And that’s not nothing…especially in today’s dumpster fire of society.

Why did I hesitate? Why have I been sitting on this video after I interviewed them 4 weeks ago? Well…honestly, because I am NOT a glossy production company by any means…and it shows. I totally roll up in these places and spaces with my one camera, a tripod, and a couple lav mics. And I’m humble enough to admit…my production quality is mid…at best.

My first conversation was with the amazing Chef Haley Duren. I used my iPhone, so the lighting was not great. For this next cereal chat with Kip + Halley? One mic took the day off & didn’t let us know until it was too late…and then my latest convo (set to release in a couple weeks)…I filmed on the road in Chicago with goddess Chef Chloe Gould. We literally had to film twice because I lost the entire first file to the cloud gods. She was gracious, and yes, I was mortified.

So yeah, I get it…I may not have premier production prowess, but I am one fiesty Virgo with a camera, two mics (that may or may not work), and a refusal to wait for permission or better equipment. And before the “stay in your lane” comments roll in… I know.

But the lane I’m in is this…I wanted to elevate these women. Kip and Halley…Haley and Chloe…and more. I want to sit with them, share a bowl of cereal, and just chat about things. I can’t sit around and wait for someone with a gaffer and a sound mixer to decide they were worth filming.

I’m leaning all the way into the fact that I’m a chef with a camera, sitting across from women I want to celebrate, asking you to love us. Groundbreaking or not, it gives me joy, and hopefully makes you smile.

And, I also know this...The Loring Place just announced its closing last week. Dan Kluger’s iconic spot was just a few months shy of hitting the 10-year mark. A neighborhood spot that was a piece of the fabric that makes NYC so special, and it’s closing.

The market isn’t too crowded…it’s too quiet.

We’re losing the middle-aged restaurants. The ones that survived year 3, made it past trend, got good at their actual jobs…the ones with good bones. They’re disappearing while the masses continue to chase the newest opening…the see-and-be-seen supper clubs and controversial $40 chicken.

And yet, Kip and Halley opened Cleo last weekend during “the worst time for restaurants.” And Dan’s closing Loring Place just a few months from now. The throughline isn’t over-saturation…it’s under-attendance.

The over-saturation of chef videos & content isn’t the bigger problem…the empty tables are. And showing up…to restaurants and also, in life, ...is the whole point, it’s the only way to save the ones we don’t want to lose.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• When No One Shows Up: Hospitality as a Spiritual Discipline by The Rabbit Room
  About the home table, but it's the same love language in restaurants. Hospitality is hospitality...whether you're plating for guests in your dining room or filling a 40-seat room on a Tuesday. So what happens when the guests don't return? Don't attend? Don't bother to RSVP and then don't show when they say they will? Read this, then make a reservation.

• The Courage to Embrace Our Humanness by Kindred Mothering
  About motherhood as a mirror...how it surfaces the parts of yourself you've been too afraid to hold, and the work of carrying your wounds consciously so your kids inherit love instead of unhealed pain. I'm currently sitting with this as I edit my piece for Mother's Day. But it landed here too, because opening a restaurant and raising a child ask the same thing of you: show up imperfect, do it anyway, let it change you.

• Joy That Makes No Sense by Kate Bowler
  Bowler has quickly become one of my favorite writers. In this piece, she writes about joy as interruption...not a reward for a life well-managed, but something stranger that shows up when you say yes to small, unnecessary, beautiful things. "Absurdity doesn't fix anything. But it does interrupt despair." Go out to eat on a Tuesday when the news is bad, and your budget says stay home. Joy anyway.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

• Brooklyn Kura Revisited Wrote about this here in last week’s Setting the Table. We are opening our bottle of Secondi, a limited release bubbly sake, this week as I finish the edits on Ep 2 of Between Bowls with Kip + Halley...it pairs with everything, including the chaotic audio mishaps. Nihonshu wa ryori wo erabanai...sake doesn’t fight with food. It doesn’t fight with bad audio either…there’s room at the table for it all, the good and the bad.

• Good Bones...applied. Last Sunday’s piece about how bone is 70% mineral, 30% collagen. How mineral without collagen shatters, and collagen without mineral collapses. How the places we love need both: structure and warmth. Loring Place had both…for 9.5 years…and not even the good bones could keep it alive.

  

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Shut Up, Everything by Jess Sowards
  "A nervous system in crisis cannot look away...they keep our nervous systems in crisis. It's not a conspiracy, it's just a business model." Sowards on algorithms fragmenting our shared reality and why the antidote is the garden, the kitchen, the front porch...anywhere people can sit across from each other and disagree without becoming enemies. If you're reading The Feed series, read this too.

• The Dinner Plan: Trinity Mouzon Wofford by Maggie Hoffman
  On weeknight cooking without a meal plan...foundational prep on slower days, quick assembly on busy ones. "It's like a base layer of clothing, but for cooking." Read for permission to not have it all figured out in advance and still feed people well.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

Between Bowls: Cereal Chat w/ Kip Gleize + Halley Chambers
Use headphones (and turn them to the max to make sure you don’t miss the good stuff!).

Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cleo’s grand opening, Superpowers, and more! We talked about the pandemic bringing them together, opening Margot without outside funding, the diner almost breaking them, and why they kept going anyway. About being women in rooms that weren’t built for us...and the way a maternal instinct shows up in hospitality when you stop being ashamed of leading with your heart on your sleeve.

I brought up my love for neighborhood spots like Jeffrey’s Grocery that I keep coming back to: “In New York, where there’s a bajillion people and a bajillion restaurants...it’s easy to feel lonely and to feel like not known, and not seen and not acknowledged. And I think the best restaurants do well when they simply take care of you, and even better when they know you.”

That’s the whole thing. That’s why I’m having these conversations…even with janky audio and one working mic. Because taking care of people is not something these women do casually...and you can’t fake that with a lav mic.

And I didn’t want to wait for perfect conditions to show you that and document women while they’re in it...not ten years later when someone decides they’re important…the bones are good…the women are special…and the sound issues? Well…I’ll figure it out, people.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

The “Good Bones” Restaurant Audit From Sunday’s essay, applied:

1. Name 3 restaurants open 5+ years you’d be gutted to lose.

2. When did you last go?

3. Can you go before July 14?

If #3 is no, that’s why Loring Place is closing. And it’s not because it wasn’t good, it’s because we got quiet.

Bone remodels under pressure...Wolff’s Law. Use it or lose it. That’s true for restaurants too.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

Two reservations to make, one shared mindset.

1. For the beginning: Cleo Week two. They don’t need your like...they need your reservation or just go walk-in. Sit at the bar and order the rotisserie chicken…and stay for the amazing cornbread. Tell them The Freckled For said HEY!

2. For the ending: The Loring Place Closing July 14. If you can get in before then, go. If you can’t, go to your version of it. Head to your spot in your neighborhood…the one with good bones...the one that’s been there, that’s consistently doing the work, off the “hot” “new” list, but excellent as always.

Thinking About This Week…

What’s your spot? The one you assumed would always be there. The one you’ll post “gutted” about when it closes, even though you haven’t been since 2023.

Go out to eat…this week. For continuity, for self-care, for community-care…because someone needs to be in the room. Restaurants don’t die from bad reviews…they die from silence…and from us all assuming they’ll always be there.

They won’t. The market isn’t too crowded…it’s too quiet…and quiet kills restaurants faster than rent.

Let’s go eat!
xo, Jess

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Setting the Table drops every Thursday. And Part Two of The Feed..."The Eye Roll That Cost Me Six Months"...comes this Sunday. Thanks for sharing your love for The Table Between & all things Freckled Fork…pass along to your friends, share, like, heart…do all the things. I really appreciate it more than you can ever know <3

On the flip side (especially in NYC), I’ve seen kitchens that are about five feet long and two feet wide. Everything stacked…floor to ceiling…because they had to work with what they had. One cook, one chef, a lot of invading each other’s space, and none of it mattered because there was an absolute JOY plastered on their faces and sweating off their foreheads. A making-the-best-with-what-we’ve-got energy filled the room in a way all that square footage never could. A smile that wasn’t just on their face, but in their eyes, too. There was a knowing permeating that tiny space...they truly loved being there, loved what they were doing, and they understood, even if nobody was saying it out loud...they were an integral part of the experience, giving life to the people on the other side of the glass...the wall...the pass.

On the surface, those spaces may not look like much or may look like chaos, but underneath…the bones…the bones were good.

It has good bones.

We say it about houses, we say it about faces, we say it about the neighborhoods everyone writes off, but others see their potential. We say it, too, about the company that looks like a mess from outside, but their people have been there 15 years and still talk about the work like it truly matters. It’s a phrase that everyone just understands.

It means that what’s on the surface isn’t what really counts...the surface can be a mask, it can be fixed, renovated, rebranded, regrammed. But the bones? When something has good bones, it means there’s something underneath worth building on.

The concept of good bones has been running on a loop in my mind, in my plans, even in my therapy sessions lately, so I decided to go a little deeper.

Houston, we might have a hospitality problem.

In 1990, 3% of Americans reported having no close friends. By 2021, that number had risen to 15%...a fivefold increase over thirty years. Did people get less likable? Maybe. Did we get more divided because of politics? Money? Social issues? Probably. But maybe at its core, it’s because we’ve actually been building a world that makes it increasingly harder to really know each other. Derek Thompson called this the Anti-Social Century, and the numbers back it up.

Since 2003...before smartphones, before the algorithm, before any of it fully took hold...the average American started spending an extra 24 minutes a day alone…that’s 12 more hours a month. By 2019, time spent with friends had dropped from more than 6 hours a week to less than 4. We didn’t lose each other all at once...we’ve been losing each other in increments while we were too busy trying to perfect everything else. And underneath all that isolation, all that division, strangers have become a liability...they’ve become some THING to manage or contain instead of some ONE to welcome.

We’ve replaced presence with process, connection with content strategy, and basic care with white-washed customer service. And in ALL that polishing, we’ve lost the actual thing we were supposed to be building. And, honestly, the hustle…the pursuit…made it worse.

We’re the most productive society that has ever existed, and also, by nearly every measure, the loneliest.

We’ve turned hospitality into performance. Into a vibe…and vibes are not bones.

What’s strange is that this isn’t new…every civilization had some form of hospitality built into its moral foundation...as a fundamental, woven into the fabric of how people lived. The ancient Greeks had a name for it: xenia… and it was law and a theology, all at once. Zeus himself walked the roads in disguise to test which doors would open. And, the part of the Greek hospitality ritual that my heart beats for...before a host could ask a stranger their name or where they’d come from, they were required to first offer them a bath, a meal, and some rest.

You were cared for before you had to explain yourself.

Even the poorest homes had a xenona...a room set aside entirely for receiving strangers.

A room, set aside, for the stranger who hadn’t arrived yet.

We haven’t evolved past this need or the importance of it…we’ve just convinced ourselves that it’s not safe, it’s not necessary anymore, or not important enough. Instead, we’ve built an entire economy around the performance of the thing we used to have so fundamentally…a foundational value that we’ve quietly lost.

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What bones are actually made of

Bones on the brain…and I’ve been wondering, what is bone actually made of? Not just in a metaphorical, poetic sense, but the literal bone. If I’m to figure out why the bones are so important, maybe I first start with the science of it all.

Bone is roughly 60–70% mineral, a calcium phosphate crystal called hydroxyapatite, and about 30% organic material that is mostly collagen. There’s water threaded through all of it, too.

Neither component can work alone.

Collagen without minerals is rubbery with no capacity to carry weight.

Mineral without collagen is rigid, past brittle, and shatters on impact.

But woven together in precise proportion, they make something that can carry an enormous load without fracturing.

The mineral gives hardness.

The collagen gives flex.

They are each other’s completion.

(I told my therapist this, and she just looked at me like...yeah, Jess, that’s also how relationships work, too…I know…I know.)

Bone also isn’t static...this is the part that got me.

It’s constantly rebuilding through three types of cells:

osteoblasts that build new bone…

osteoclasts that break down what’s old or damaged…

osteocytes, the long-lived cells embedded deep in the structure who direct the other two…

…sensing stress and signaling where to build and where to release. The bones you’re carrying right now are not the bones you had a decade ago. Same shape, same architecture...but entirely new.

Bone is perpetually becoming.

And there’s Wolff’s Law: bone remodels in response to what’s being loaded on it. The places you use grow denser and stronger; the places you protect or don’t use will grow thin and fragile. And then the marrow...invisible from outside, generating roughly 500 billion blood cells every single day. The most life-giving work in the entire body happens on the inside.

You become what you practice…the bones just make it literal.

The bones of hospitality

There’s been something building inside me for the past few months…as if I’ve been peeling back layers and layers…years and years of masks and things I “thought I knew”, and finding underneath everything…the true meaning of hospitality…in my heart, in my mind, and through my hands. A refinement and a reckoning…a realization of a growing philosophy…

Hospitality is the bones.

At home, true hospitality looks like having creamer in the fridge for guests when I only drink black coffee…or having gluten-free snacks on hand for my friend with Celiac, or sending Postmates breakfast to family in the South for their birthdays, or sweet treats for my best friend’s mom battling cancer. It’s the little gifts picked up for someone at random or texts to say “you’re on my mind,” or even the simplest act of making sure my people are fed every day. All this without expecting anything in return…because that’s true hospitality, taking care without expectation or without transaction.

In business, the offer, the aesthetic, the deck, the menu, the brand voice…they are all secondary to the bones, to the core. The bones are the weight-bearing architecture...what precedes everything and outlasts everything, what remains when the performance falls away.

And like actual bone, the bones of hospitality are two things that need each other: warmth and values...collagen and mineral. Warmth without values is formless, nothing to offer when real weight gets applied. Values without warmth are brittle and fracture the moment a real human being shows up with a real need. The organization built on only warmth collapses…and the one built solely on values shatters. But those who have both can carry anything.

I’ve been working through what those bones actually are. A real look into what holds things together when everything else falls away. What started as a list of 40 things I'd learned by that age (ahem...a couple years ago) has turned into something closer to a manifesto. It's not done yet, but here are two bones that are solidly on the list.

See the person

The first bone sounds almost embarrassingly simple: see the person.

See, value, and trust the human being who walked in, sat down, sent the email, booked the call, and is there with you…hoping, at some level, to be received. The whole human...before the ask, before the order, before the brief, before you’ve categorized them into a persona or a segment or a profile.

I’ve had conversations where the other person clearly has an agenda or zero space for a different perspective. I’ve watched a chef plate a technically perfect dish for a table, but never once made eye contact. I’ve been on the receiving end of both.

You can feel when you’re not being seen, and it doesn’t matter how good the product is.

The first act of real hospitality isn’t a gesture, it’s attention. It’s the practice of actually looking at what’s in front of you before you start performing your role in the exchange. It’s noticing the body language, the hesitation, the thing someone said, and then walked back…it’s the question underneath the question they actually asked.

Remember the xenona...that room set aside before the stranger arrived? That’s what seeing someone looks like in practice.

You were thinking about them before they got there.

You anticipated their presence instead of reacting to it. That’s the sequence we’ve inverted. We figure out what someone is worth to us before we’ve actually looked at them, or give them space to even arrive. And people can feel that shit. That feeling and knowing that your value or worth has already been measured and assessed before you even get to speak a fucking word. We all know that feeling.

The fastest way to lose someone is to make them feel unseen...and most people don’t even realize they do it.

Give freely, without transaction

The second one is the one that makes most people uncomfortable when it’s said, which usually means it might matter the most.

True hospitality is a one-way flow…given, not counted.

It’s beyond contracts, beyond what’s expected…with no running tally racking up in the background while you smile and do for others. This is what separates hospitality from entertainment. Entertainment is reciprocal...you perform, they respond, value exchanges hands. Hospitality is directional…you offer something of genuine value because the person in front of you is worth it.

That’s it.

Every tradition that has hospitality at its center operates this way. The Greek host gave the bath and the meal before they even knew who was at the door. Abraham ran toward three strangers in the heat of the day and produced a feast before he knew a single thing about them. Baucis and Philemon, a poor elderly couple, were the only ones in their village to welcome two wandering travelers...and those travelers happened to be Zeus and Hermes, in disguise. They welcomed them, sat with them, and drank wine together. While Baucis kept refilling the wine cups, she noticed the jug never emptied. The more she poured, the more it gave back. The entire village ended up getting destroyed, but the couple was spared. They didn’t give because they knew who they opened their home to; they gave because that was who they were...in their bones.

I know it might sound naive...believing something can survive without a calculated profit margin. Eat or be eaten...blah, blah, blah. But look at the people and businesses with good bones. The content freely shared before the sale, the advice given without a meter running, the call returned that didn't have to be, the gesture everyone remembered. It becomes the whole model...one that thrives from abundance, not scarcity.

Over time, it’s the only real edge you actually have, because it’s the one thing that cannot be copied or tested or focus-grouped out of you. It either comes from somewhere real or it doesn’t come at all.

The scarcity mindset convinces us that giving is depleting. But the hospitality mind knows the jug finds a way to always refill. True hospitality pours out of the abundance of grace you’ve received.

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What’s worth building…

There's more coming. A manifesto built on ten of these bones...what I believe, what The Freckled Fork Collective believes, and how we want it all to work. I'm writing it the only way I know how: live it first, then write it down, then keep living it some more. This is the foundation, not the finish.

The houses with good bones are good because there’s something there...something that preceded the mess on the surface and will ultimately outlast whatever renovation comes. That’s what we’re after, that’s what I want in my own life, too. In the people I come across, with the ones we may work with, in the actions we take, in the work we make, in ourselves on the hard days when everything looks rough, and the outside noise is humming too loud.

Good bones. You can work with good bones.

Wolff’s Law says they get stronger where you put the weight. Every place you demand something of yourself and mean it...that's where the strength builds. But the inverse is also true...the places you avoid, the places you refuse to press into, those bones go thin. They hollow out quietly while you’re busy reinforcing the parts that are easier to carry.

So maybe the question isn’t whether you have good bones. Maybe it’s...where have you stopped putting the weight? What have you been protecting from pressure that actually needs it? What’s gone thin while you weren’t looking?

Start there, press into that, and see what holds.

Yas and I have been sake people for a while now.

Ever since we first started dating back in 2024, it’s been one of those subjects we don’t stop talking about. Over time, it’s definitely become our libation of choice, something we get genuinely excited about when a new bottle shows up on a menu or in our fridge.

We’ve gone to sake tastings and sake-paired dinners with my friends at MTC Sake & Kru over in Brooklyn, and those events only deepened our love of it as we sit elbow to elbow with Sake Masters, purveyors, and enthusiasts…swapping stories about the craft, the skill, and our collective excitement around sake. When I worked in the restaurant, I even got to attend a VIP day at the Japanese Food & Restaurant Expo with MTC. I spent a whole day tasting and learning all the nuances and depth of sake, shochu, and more.

Last fall, it was no surprise to our friends and family that our wedding signature cocktail was a custom Apple Cider Sake Sangria situation. Since then, we’ve become Kura Kin members with Brooklyn Kura (our favorite brewery in Industry City that’s been making sake in New York since 2018), and now, a box of their limited releases shows up at our apartment on a rhythm that gives us a jolt of new life each time it arrives. Our newest shipment just got here in the beginning of April, and dang, if we didn’t feel such a rush of anticipation as we cracked open those bottles…it actually made me want to finally sit down and write a little ode to sake.

So this week, the whole table’s about just that…my little love note to all things sake. Pull up a chair, pull out your tiny glass & dive in.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• Kura Shochu Cocktail Competition at Rule of Thirds, Sunday, April 26, 6 PM: Brooklyn Kura’s distilled-spirit side gets its moment: bartenders around the city competing for best Kura Shochu cocktail at one of the best izakayas in Greenpoint. Shochu is its own animal…distilled rather than brewed…and absolutely worth knowing if sake is what pulled you in.

• The Joy of Sake NYC, Thursday, April 30: The world’s largest sake tasting outside Japan returns to Metropolitan Pavilion with 492 competition-level bottles and sake- inspired bites from restaurants including Bond St, Sakagura, and Hirohisa. If you want a crash course in what sake can be, this is the room. Tickets are $140 and include unlimited pours and food.

• Sake & Cheese at Murray’s, Friday, May 15: The pairing that keeps converting wine people. Co-taught cheese pros and sake experts, this is a deep dive into selections from Murray’s cheese case that have been beautifully paired with five Brooklyn Kura sakes. It’s a one-of-a-kind tasting event made for food lovers who want to think beyond wine with their cheese. *more on this below

• The Global "SIP" Shift: Here is a wild nibble for you…Did you know that North America now accounts for 28% of global sake consumption?! We aren't just "trying" it anymore; we're officially the second-largest market outside of Asia, and premium craft varieties make up nearly 38% of all new product launches.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes or things that help you do the work)

As I spent the past 2 years diving into the history and legacy of sake, I came across this beautiful Japanese proverb that really transformed how I think about sake and food pairings…

…most often translated as “sake doesn’t fight with food,” though the more accurate read is that sake isn’t fussy about food.

That sentiment has really opened my eyes (& my kitchen) to seeing just how beautifully sake pairs with different varieties of food and cuisines...way beyond the traditional pairing of Asian cuisine.

Sake has about a fifth of the acidity of wine, no tannins, and a naturally high umami content, which is why it handles so particularly well with ingredients ranging from cheese, eggs, asparagus, artichokes, bitter greens, caviar…even grits (heyoooo!).

The magic of pairing sake with food is to match weight to weight. Crisp honjozo with lighter dishes, something like a kimoto or yamahai or aged junmai... richer, rounder, higher in umami...for heavier or fattier foods. In my own kitchen, it might look like a dry ginjo with fried green tomatoes, a kimoto with collards that have been melting into themselves for the better part of an afternoon, or even a dry-hopped sake with fried catfish cooked in some real fat.

Yas and I are both so freakin’ excited about sake and truly love talking to anyone and everyone about it, especially when it comes to pairing sake with different food varieties…and definitely with those who haven’t tried yet or haven’t even considered it outside of the world of Asian cuisine.

In all my pairing experiments so far, I’ve figured out something really special…a beautiful translation and connection between the rich Japanese craft of sake with the soulful, communal history of the South…and hell yes, they all make sense…incredible sense, really.

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

I’ve got two deep dives, two stories to share with you this week: the Brooklyn Kura origin story, and the larger American craft sake story that it sits inside.

• Brooklyn Kura: Brian Polen and Brandon Doughan met at a friend’s wedding in Tokyo in 2013…spent a week touring breweries together and then started homebrewing soon after…Brian worked with a $120 chest freezer in his Brooklyn apartment, and Brandon worked from a Portland basement.
  
  Brandon, who had twenty years of beer homebrewing behind him, eventually quit his job as a biochemist at the Knight Cardiovascular Institute to become head brewer. Fourteen recipe iterations later, they had their flagship, a junmai ginjo they named Number Fourteen, and in 2018, they opened Brooklyn Kura as the first sake brewery in New York State.
  
  Seven years after that, last year in March 2025, Brooklyn Kura became the first American craft sake brewery to export back to Japan, through a partnership with Hakkaisan, a Niigata brewery that’s been making sake since 1922. It was a huge accomplishment. They aren’t just making sake; Brooklyn Kura is leading in a North American market that is projected to grow to $2.37 billion by 2034.
  
  Sake consumption in Japan has actually been declining for decades, while global demand elsewhere is climbing. There are now roughly 30 emerging sake breweries in the U.S. today, more than any other country outside Japan.
  
  Beyond the bottles, BK also launched its Sake Studies Center. It’s the only sake school in the country attached to a working brewery, run by Sake Samurai Timothy Sullivan (um…what a badass title?!). The Center offers weekly intro tastings all the way up to the two-day Advanced Sake Studies Certification for hospitality pros. Totally on my wish list for this year!

• The other read I wanted to share for a little more perspective is this National Geographic feature on the American craft sake boom…it zooms out from Brooklyn to Oregon to Arkansas to the Hudson Valley. It’s a great place to start and see where this whole movement is headed.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

Three Brooklyn Kura bottles to know, in the order I’d introduce them to someone new to sake:

• Number Fourteen (Junmai Ginjo Nama) — the flagship. A blend of Yamada Nishiki and Calrose, light-bodied, soft floral and apple on the nose, notes of tropical fruit. Start here.

• Grand Prairie (Junmai Ginjo) — the one I can’t stop thinking about. 100% Arkansas-grown Yamada Nishiki, fermented slow and cold, dry and restrained, with a honeysuckle hint. It pairs beautifully with scallop crudo, crab cake, tuna tartare. More on this one below.

• Occidental (Dry-Hopped Junmai) — a junmai infused with dry hops that gives it grapefruit zest on the nose, a citrus-rind finish, and a rose hue the longer it sits in the bottle. The one I’d pour for anyone who has ever told me they don’t like sake.

THE NAPKIN

(for wiping away the week’s mess, the reset)

The permission slip this week is that proverb again:

sake isn’t fussy about food.

If you’ve been standing in the wine aisle on a Tuesday night trying to decide whether a Chenin or a light red “goes” with whatever you’re making…put the bottle down, walk a couple aisles over, and pick up a junmai. Sake’s whole posture at the table is to let the food be what it is.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

• The “Grand Prairie” sake is named for a region in central Arkansas where the Isbell family became the first Americans to successfully grow Yamada Nishiki, the gold standard for sake rice.
  

  Arkansas isn’t just a “rice state”…it’s the powerhouse. As of 2026, Arkansas holds a staggering 53% of all rough rice stocks in the US. For this heritage grain to grow in Arkansas soil, then be fermented in Brooklyn, and now cross back over to be featured in Japanese bars is pretty dang remarkable.
  

  Oh, and the tasting notes include honeysuckle…so naturally, for this Southern girl, it’s about as downright familiar as it gets. I am SO excited to keep exploring, keep tasting and to keep experimenting.

Thinking About This Week…

What does it mean to build something new from a tradition that isn’t yours, carefully, in partnership with the people whose tradition it is?

I believe if there’s a commitment and a dedication of respect and honor throughout the process and the evolution of the craft, no matter where it is or who is crafting it, it can be one of the greatest acts of celebration, kindness, and appreciation there is.

Bottoms Up!

xo, Jess

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I’ve been in marketing and design since 2005...brand strategy, content calendars, social playbooks. I’ve also been a chef...went from line cook to Executive Chef in under two years, opened restaurants, and now run the culinary arm of our studio. I’m a multi-hyphenate, and I’ve stopped pretending those identities don’t live in the same person. I’ve talked about authenticity with clients across various industries, and I’ve encouraged and consulted friends and colleagues on how to show up with intention, lead with values, and build trust over time.

And for fifteen years, I had almost no idea how the systems I was navigating actually worked behind the scenes. It all felt like a game, and I never had an owner’s manual or the cheat codes.

My husband Yas has changed that for me. He’s our Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at The Freckled Fork Collective (more on this later), but before that, he spent over fifteen years in the digital marketing world...most recently as Head of SEO/AEO at Omnicom Media Group, the largest publicly traded marketing company in the world, where he worked with some of the biggest brands in the world such as Proctor & Gamble, Warner Bros. and more. Edward Sturm was a former employee of Yas’ in the agency world who is now an SEO/ marketing influencer with over 700k followers across his socials. Yas cringes every time, but Edward continues to refer to Yas as the King of SEO on his podcasts…and honestly, the title fits. He came to this world through film studies and photography, which means he sees the architecture underneath the feed the way a director sees a frame: as something deliberately composed, with specific intent, serving someone’s vision.

When we started working on The Freckled Fork together, Yas started walking me through the digital world’s true mechanics and how it all actually works. Like a slow, patient, and occasionally maddening education that I kept resisting because part of me didn’t want to know.

Because knowing changes things.

Today I wanted to kick off part 1 of a 3-part series sharing what I’ve learned...about the machine, about what it’s costing us, and about why, even knowing all of this, we’re still in it...and what we think that means.

The Push and the Pull

Every major digital platform you use...Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify...run on algorithms. Often referenced as one big old singular monster (“the algorithm”), it’s not actually just one. There are SO many algorithms, different ones for each platform, all layered and all constantly learning. While the specifics differ by platform, they actually share a single organizing principle: the goal is to keep you on their platform longer. It’s not because they care about you…quite the contrary! Your time on their platforms is what they sell to advertisers. Guys, we are not the customer; we are the freaking product.

There are two fundamental ways content reaches you through these systems, these algorithms, and Yas was the first person who helped to make this distinction land for me. It’s all about the push and pull.

Pull is what you seek out...you Google (or sometimes YouTube) something, you search for a recipe, you type a question into a search bar. You are the agent...you have a need, and you’re reaching and asking for information to fulfill that need. At its best, pull media is here to serve you.

Push is what finds you…Instagram’s feeds/reels/explore, TikTok’s for you/feed, and Facebook’s newsfeed and reels. You didn’t ask for any of it. The platform decided...based on your behavior, based on your friends, your scroll patterns, your dwell time, your past engagement. Daily, these platforms decide…FOR YOU…what to throw in front of your face.

The shift from a pull internet to a push internet happened gradually enough that most of us never even noticed. I remember in the 90s when my family got our first desktop computer and the internet became a publicly available service. That particular dial-up tune is one I’ll never forget (and yes, I know I’m showing my age now, but whatevs). Those were the days of seeking information, exploring web pages and chat rooms like explorers in a new land. We literally learned how to build websites, edit HTML because of Myspace and customize CSS pages from scratch. We were searching and searching for information, for reach and for access versus being fed it. There was a choice…an agency to it where we could choose what to search and how to find information.

These days, we are more like herded cattle…the PUSH functionality of social media and these platforms doesn’t exist to inform us, or even to connect us, and certainly not to improve our lives. Their primary goal is to keep you engaged long enough to show you another ad. Why do you think these platforms and services are “free” to sign up for? The old adage rings true here as well…nothing is for free.

Understanding this one thing can begin to change how you see or what it means every hour you actually spend online.

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The Dopamine Loop

Social media platforms are engineered around the same neurological principles as slot machines. And that’s not even a cute little metaphor I came up with, that’s the dang design…the original intent.

Variable reward schedules...the unpredictability of what you’ll find the next time you open the app…these things all trigger a dopamine release in the brain’s reward system. Likes, comments, shares, and follower counts…all of these function as social validation signals, activating the same neural pathways as physical human connection and approval. The scroll, the pause, the reward, the scroll again.

These things are designed to feel like connection...but they aren’t REALLY connection, are they? It’s a simulation of connection, an illusion of reach that’s optimized for retention.

An estimated 210 million people worldwide meet clinical criteria for internet and social media addiction, with possibly up to 34 million Americans at risk. These are not weak-willed people failing at discipline. These are people being pulled by systems specifically designed to be difficult to resist...designed by some of the smartest engineers in the world, with access to more behavioral data than any previous generation of manipulators has ever had.

Johns Hopkins researchers have been direct about this: social media algorithms are developed by tech experts whose goal is to maximize user engagement and time spent online...not to promote positive mental health. The average American now spends over two hours every day on social media alone. Across a lifetime, that’s more than six years.

6. Years.

There’s emerging research on what all this scrolling is doing to our actual brains, and it’s finally catching up to what we’ve been feeling. I watched a video recently that did a deep dive into the peer-reviewed science of “brain rot” dissecting the real cognitive effects of short-form video on our attention, our analytical thinking, and our ability to hold a thought long enough to act on it. Researchers are finding that TikTok-style content doesn’t just distract us...it actively degrades our capacity to think critically and remember what we intended to do. Context-switching between fifteen-second clips erodes prospective memory...the memory that helps you follow through on plans, hold intentions, stay present with the people in front of you. More than a dozen state attorneys general have sued TikTok over it. Internal documents show executives knew what the app was doing to teens and kept going anyway. The science is exposing it all, and it’s beginning to confirm what a lot of us have been feeling in our bones.

Predictive Programming and the Machinery of Normal

Yas and I exchange articles almost every day about these things (in addition to various cat memes and posts with tips for navigating our AuDHD + ADHD marriage with grace), and he recently introduced me to a concept that I hadn’t heard of.

It’s called Predictive Programming...it’s the idea, often filed and buried under conspiracy theories, that cultural elites use popular media to condition the public, making future events seem familiar, inevitable, or natural before they actually happen. Things like the Simpsons predicted Trump’s presidency, Contagion and COVID-19 or
The Hunger Games and surveillance states. The theory suggests that repeated fictional exposure to an idea reduces public resistance when the idea arrives in reality. (Insert a certain president’s casual comments and mutterings to completely alter our voting system even as soon as this upcoming fall…just sayin’.)

So maybe you don’t have to completely buy in or believe these coordinated elite conspiracies to at the very least…on some basic level…find the mechanism interesting (or terrifying). Because the mechanism itself...that repeated exposure to something actually does make it feel normal, inevitable, acceptable...is not entirely a fringe theory. It’s actually basic psychology; it’s the basic principles the advertising industry was built on, and it’s certainly how the almighty algorithm was designed.

Every time a platform decides what you see...what body types appear in your feed, what relationship structures are presented as aspirational, what success looks like, what counts as a beautiful kitchen or a good mother or a fulfilled life...it is conditioning you. Gradually, cumulatively, without your explicit consent.

Whether or not there’s a coordinated hand behind it almost doesn’t matter. The effect is the same: our sense of what’s normal, possible, and desirable is being quietly, continuously shaped by a system whose incentives have nothing to do with our actual well-being.

Nope, not a conspiracy…that’s the dang reality that feeds us.

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The Infinity Ladder

Before the internet, we compared ourselves to the people we actually knew...your classmates, your neighbors, your family members, people at church, the parents at school pickup, co-workers we saw every day. Psychologists call this your “reference group,” and research consistently shows that the respect you earn within it...the regard of people who actually know you...is one of the strongest predictors of lasting wellbeing.

The digital age collapsed the reference group.

Now we compare ourselves to millions...algorithmically curated millions, filtered to surface the highest-performing, most aspirational, most engagement-generating content available. The images in your feed have nothing to do with what human life actually looks like...they’re the cream of the algorithmic crop, specifically optimized to provoke a response from you. And inadequacy, it turns out, is a very reliable response…and one that they can profit from.

Your local ladder got replaced by an infinite one where you can never see the top...because the top doesn’t exist. Status used to be something you could get and hold...the house, the car, the corner office. Now it’s knowledge, taste, follower count, and aesthetic. And these things are radically unstable, constantly shifting, and always requiring endless maintenance.

This is the engine fueling a significant chunk of consumer debt…it’s what’s lurking beneath the overwhelming exhaustion that women are feeling (disproportionately, I might add) and it’s infecting us all in this epidemic of body dissatisfaction (nearly half of all US teens say social media made them feel worse about their body image). Women who spend more than three hours a day on social media are twice as likely to experience poor mental health outcomes, and for all of us, 40% of American adults say social media makes them feel lonely or isolated.

The algorithm was never neutral; it was never meant to be. It was optimized...measurably and demonstrably...at our expense.

The Loneliness Business

In 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a national epidemic. The World Health Organization has named it a global health crisis...and in our post-pandemic world, one in six people worldwide experiences persistent loneliness. Social isolation carries health risks equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day...it increases the risk of dementia by 50%, heart disease by 29%, stroke by 32%. Nearly three in five Americans say no one truly knows them.

I’ve talked for years about the human need to belong, to be seen and known. I posted about it on my Instagram and Facebook feeds, on my very first blog, The Lovely Huckleberry, and it’s resonated with me throughout my time in the kitchen. And yet, at the same time, these platforms I’ve posted to are the ones most associated with our diminished connection, and continue to grow. Irony, much?

Maybe it’s not ironic, not a coincidence. The platforms have capitalized on this from the beginning because loneliness is profitable. Lonely people seek connection, and these platforms offer a simulation of it; the simulation isn’t satisfying or doesn’t quite fix the loneliness we feel, so we return for more. Every time we return, it generates more data, more targeted ads, more revenue.

The loneliness epidemic isn’t happening despite our economic and digital systems...it’s being actively produced by them. And the freaking point that makes me want to flip a table...at the heart of it all, we are actually being told that the problem is us. We are being convinced that we chose this, that we could easily just put our phones down if we really wanted to. We are starting to actually believe that the loneliness we are feeling is a personal failing.

But it’s not.

And, here’s where I’ve noticed in my writing, and especially in my daily life, I tend to only sit with uncomfortable information or negative feelings for a short *moment* before my innate positivity, and Virgo-ness kicks in and immediately wants to find a solution. For so long, I’ve believed that’s so very proactive of me; it’s what helped me get things done. But lately I’ve been wondering if my moving past those feelings so quickly actually diminishes the impact. We can’t hurry pain or grieve or growth. Sometimes, we need to sit with those things and allow them space to do the work. Maybe we need to sit with the feelings of failure and sadness from a 17-yr marriage that didn’t work out, or we need allow the feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy of not being able to make single-motherhood work seamlessly with the 80-hr weeks of the restaurant life, or we actually do the work and take a deeper look at the situations of our past that may have cultivated and contributed to our ingrained people-pleaserness and the reactions of defense that keep our walls of protection locked and loaded. Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay not to present the problem and then immediately provide the 3-step solution to it all in the same piece. Maybe for today, we need to sit with the ick, the lifting of the veil, and wrap our heads around the stats…the peek behind the curtain, and start thinking about what it actually makes us feel.

The algorithm…the infinity loop…the possible predictive programming…the motivation and the profit model of social media platforms…the drinking from the proverbial firehose of all the information being PUSHED to us daily…Does it freak you out? Does it make you angry? Does it make you question your reality? Does it make you think twice about why you feel the way you do? Does it make you wonder what else they might not be showing you and why?

Every time you open Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or any of these other platforms and feel...overwhelmingly...like your life is less than someone else’s…know now that that feeling didn’t come from nowhere. That feeling you have, that you feel, was designed and produced by a system that is optimized and engineered to make us feel that way…and they are profiting on that feeling…every. single. day.

Start with that..let that reality sink in, and let’s start the conversation about what it all means.

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This is Part One of The Feed, a three-part series on algorithms, authenticity, and building something real. Part Two is about community, loneliness, and why none of this is your fault. Part Three is about what we’re actually doing about it.

Jess Haque is the Co-Founder of The Freckled Fork Collective, a culinary and creative agency in New York City. She and her husband, Yas Haque, Co-Founder and CSO, are helping build brands rooted in the values of hospitality. Story and strategy, served with intention.

Happy Thursday, friends!

I’m writing this from the kitchen, still buzzing from last weekend in Chicago with my girl Sals...a proper city guide is coming soon, I promise. For now, just know: we ate well, we laughed hard, and I also managed to sneak in a fun interview for Between Bowls in between bites of deep dish pizza and a Michelin gem. More on all of that soon.

In the meantime…I officially hit 100 subscribers this week!! One hundred of you dear souls said yes to a Sunday essay and a Thursday list of things I’m loving. I genuinely did not expect to feel as moved by that number as I did. You guys are awesome, and I love you!

Pull up a chair.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• The IFDPA Print Fair opens tonight at the Park Armory & Yas and I will be there for VIP night, champagne in hand, and the first looks at some of the most beautiful printed work being made right now. If you're a New Yorker and you haven't been to this fair before...it's one of those events that reminds you that you live in one of the greatest cities in the world. The whole weekend is stacked with events and tours, but the one I'm most excited about is Saturday morning's studio tour at LES Printshop. Breakfast bites by yours truly. If that's not reason enough to show up, I don't know what to tell you. All the details are right here.

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes, the things that help you do the work)

• Why I Cook I published this on Sunday, and it's the most honest thing I've written about this second life I'm living. What drove me out of a career I was good at. What pulled me into a kitchen. What I'm still reaching for. If you're new here and want to understand what this whole thing is actually about — start here.

• Mornings with Jess — I've been posting a new reel series on Instagram. Thirty seconds or less. Early mornings, mise en place, the dance before service…before most of New York is even awake. Little glimpses into my world as a private chef. Come find me @thefreckledfork.

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• Spring Equinox: A Playlist — this is what's been playing in my kitchen at 7am while I'm dancing between the stove and the prep table before the rest of the world has even opened its eyes. Olivia Dean to ease in, SZA and Yaya Bey to find the groove, Tyler and Tame Impala for when the burners are all going, and then Q-Tip, Nas, Ciara and Missy to remind you that you are THAT girl. Hit play. Open a window. Move your body. Spring is here whether you're ready or not.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

• Your Clout is a Depreciating Asset: Hanna Horvath (I know, right!?) over at Your Brain on Money wrote something I keep returning to. She argues that status has become its own asset class …something you build, invest in, leverage, and watch depreciate in real time. And the kind that actually makes us happy? Being known and respected by the people right in front of us. That’s the one our current system is worst at delivering. As someone actively building in public, this one hit close.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

• The Invention of Summer — The latest from Cake Zine and it made me want to throw every window open…except for the fact that it’s still freakin’ 40-degrees this week. It is exactly the antidote to this almost-spring, almost-not energy we're all living in right now. I am literally counting the days until the freakin’ temps are over 65. Come on, big mama!

ONE LAST THING

You are what you love…and more times than not, it’s directly correlated with your WHY. So what’s your why?

See you at the Armory tonight.

xo, Jess

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Before the jewelry company wakes up, before the burners catch and the steam starts rising, I turn on music...these days it’s Lee Moses’ Bad Girl or Lola Young’s Messy on repeat…might give a glimpse to where my head’s at these days, but they’re songs with dirty grit and feeling that move through my bones like sunshine...and then I dance. Right there in the kitchen, alone, apron not even fully tied yet, knife still on the wall, the city still mostly dark outside the window. No one is there, no one needs anything from me. It’s just me and the music and the beautiful quiet of New York mornings before the city wakes up.

And then at the end of it, when the last dish is done and the burners are off, and I’ve handed over the last plate of food, I walk home...forty-sixth street all the way up to seventy-first, twenty-five blocks, music still in my ears, the city moving around me…hurried and alive and completely indifferent to whatever I’m carrying. I just exhale. I breathe and take it all in. One foot in front of the other, moving forward, not performing for anyone, not being anyone’s chef or mother or wife or content creator or brand...just a woman walking through New York, letting the city hold her for a little while.

These are two of the truest moments in my day, and everything in between is negotiated.

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I spent fifteen years in marketing and design before I ever set foot in a professional kitchen...fifteen years of making things look right, sound good, land correctly for someone else’s vision, someone else’s deadline, someone else’s idea of what success looked like on the page. And I was good at it, genuinely good, promoted and trusted and asked over and over to take on more until one day I looked up and realized I had built an entire career out of being useful to other people’s dreams. I couldn’t quite remember the last time I had let myself have one of my own. And I was ready.

I don’t say that with bitterness, I truly learned everything in those years...how to read a room, how to translate chaos into something clear and beautiful, how to make a complicated thing feel simple and a simple thing feel worthy of attention. Those skills live in my hands now when I plate a dish or write an essay or sit down to design something for a client or create a label for a pantry box. None of it was wasted.

But if I’m honest, most of it was performed. That’s just where I was in my journey…still figuring out who I was so I wore mask after mask to be what people wanted or needed. I was deep in the grind of aesthetic labor…the exhausting work of managing my appearance, my tone, and my 'vibe' to fit a corporate brand. I didn’t know how tired I was by the performance of it all until I walked into a professional kitchen for the first time and performance was the last thing they needed. Nobody in that kitchen cared what I looked like or how I presented myself or whether my aesthetic was cohesive. The kitchen crew and my chefs only cared if I could move, if I could do the work, if I could taste, if I could feel the heat of a pan and respond to it before the food suffered. It was the most embodied I had felt in years...maybe ever...and I fell in love with it so fast, so hard.

The first time I cooked for strangers during the pandemic, in borrowed apartments all over while the city held its breath…I cooked in silence, in masks, and with the anonymity of someone who hadn’t earned a reputation quite yet. It was the first time I wasn’t performing…I felt completely, uncomplicatedly myself...it was just me, with my hands and the heat and whatever was in their fridge, trying to make something that would make someone feel taken care of.

There’s a moment I think about a lot...back when I was a sous chef on the rise, still early in my kitchen life, still learning how to carry authority without feeling like I was faking it, and our head chef Eyal Shani came to New York to run a culinary workshop. Chefs flew in from Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Singapore...all with pedigrees and credentials and reputations much greater than my own. And at some point, after the farmers market haul and the cooking demos, Eyal asked us all, one by one, the question...why do you cook?

They each answered with craft, with discipline, with lineage and legacy, with answers that had been ingrained in them from years of interviews, press dinners, or panels.

When my turn came, I didn’t reach for anything crafted or polished...with my limited experience and short time in professional kitchens, I nervously said the only thing on my mind…the only thing I knew for certain: I cook so people feel seen. I cook so people feel known, even just for a moment…so they belong somewhere, even if it’s only for the length of a meal.

I didn’t plan that answer. It wasn’t a brand statement or a mission I’d workshopped or a line I’d been saving for the right moment...it just came out, plain and simple, because I was still trying to figure out what I was even doing in these kitchens. When the room went quiet, I could feel the heat rise to my face, shit…was that the wrong answer?!

My answer was followed by that long silence…and then three small smirks joined by the accepting nods from the chef owners at the front of the room...Eyal, Shahar, Nir. And, from that moment forward, they knew me, they saw me & they knew my name.

I knew, then, in that moment, that’s my why…that’s why I cook. And for the first time, I felt like I belonged there, in those kitchens and in this industry.

That answer is still the spine of everything I’m building today...the Freckled Fork, my Substack, the seasonal pantry boxes…even the morning reels I started making out of boredom…the ones I keep making because there’s something special about standing alone in a kitchen, music on and silliness overflowing that feels more like me than anything else...and then there’s Between Bowls, the interview series I’m currently developing that features simple, real conversations with other female chefs and restaurateurs over bowls of cereal.

The older I get, the more important it is to know your why and to remind yourself of and reference it often as if it were a moral compass or North Star…and as I stretch and throw those proverbial noodles at the wall, I’m realizing more and more that my why is stretching and growing. Beyond just a meal I make for someone, I want people to feel seen, to feel a sense of belonging & inclusivity, also in these substacks, my posts, the interviews, and beyond. I want to do my part to lift the veil and shatter the boxes we all may be inhibited by. I want to interact, in whatever medium, from a place of say-it-like-it-is…I’m afraid of reaching down into the hard and painful parts that are too scary to say out loud…my why? I want anyone I come in contact with, IRL or virtually, to feel seen, known, and that they belong at THIS table.

That’s the table I’m trying to build…everything else is just me figuring out how.

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I think about performance a lot still…especially lately…about how much of what we consume and create and hold ourselves up against is a constructed version of a life rather than the actual life itself.

I want to be careful here because this is exactly where things almost went sideways a few weeks ago when I was about to publish something WAY too judgey about content creators, especially with women, and the social media machine. I’m glad I paused in the draft…in my judgment…because the piece was misguidedly aiming outward, but in reality, I was feeling an overwhelming inward discomfort…about myself.

The ick I felt wasn’t about them; it was the recognition. I’ve been fed a particular kind of post from various content creators, and what I saw wasn’t necessarily wrong or bad…but I felt discomfort…I recognized the performance act I had, too, had participated in for most of my adult life…in different clothes, in different seasons, for different audiences, for different reasons.

And we all fall into this performance trap, male and female alike; we all perform roles we think we should or to meet expectations placed on us from the outside world, from society.

Social psychologists have recently pointed to this phenomenon called Role Congruity Strain. Research shows that we don't just perform our jobs; we perform the identity we think the world requires of us. For women, this typically looks like the empathy trap, and for men, it looks like the stoic provider. Studies show that this constant conformity to external expectations drains our cognitive and emotional resources...meaning we are literally burning out from the performance before we even begin the actual work.

I played and performed so many roles in my life…the good, content wife…the steady one…the marketing director who had it all together…the chef who didn’t crack under pressure…the single mom who showed up even when she was running on three hours of sleep…the woman who was building something beautiful and purposeful…the woman who projected an outward mask of someone who had absolutely, most definitely, had it all figured out already.

They weren’t complete fabrications…there was some truth in each of them, but none were ever quite fully…not wholly…me.

I realize the whole truth of me is the one dancing in the kitchen before anyone arrives. The whole truth walks twenty-five blocks home because she needs the air and movement and twenty minutes of no one needing her to be anything more. The whole truth comes alive every single time she feeds people.

The whole truth of me is filled with complexities and contradictions…fulfilled and exhausted in the same hour, proud and not enough in the same breath, completely certain of my purpose and utterly unsure of my footing or next steps, who completely loves being a mother and also needs space from time to time, a fiercely independent woman who also loves having a partner to share the load with, secure in myself and also anxiously attached and fearful that love will leave me if I don’t keep doing…these things, all at once, always. I’m working on finally, slowly, and reluctantly accepting that it’s okay, I’m okay and I’m not a burden or problem to solve…I’m complex, with many layers, and this is what it actually looks like to be a woman living fully inside her own life…contradictions and all.

And, the guilt…the one that surfaces for me in the quiet moments away…the small, sharp cramp I feel the second I exhale, the second I feel something that might be relief or freedom or just plain rest, and my brain immediately serves up reasons why I shouldn’t be allowed to have it...that guilt is part of it, too. It’s a lie, of course, but it’s one we’ve been taught so thoroughly from the beginning…that women’s value lives in our constant availability and ability to do it all, and to do it with a smile…that even a twenty-five block walk home with music in our ears can feel like something we have to earn or explain or apologize for.

But we have to have those moments…for our sanity, and honestly for the sanity of those around us. There’s nothing wrong with needing a moment that belongs only to us. Accepting that it’s necessary to finally be honest with ourselves and those around us about what it takes to keep showing up.

This is where the thought of Between Bowls came to be.

I didn’t just want to celebrate successful women, though God knows, I do celebrate them...but I selfishly wanted to meet them, share stories, and sit across from these amazing women who are holding all of it at once. I wanted to sit with them and ask them the real questions. Not what’s your concept or your five-year plan. I wanted to dive deeper into what this life actually costs you...what do you do on the days you drop the ball...what do you put on when nobody’s watching and you just need to feel like yourself again.

No pretense, no performance, no highlight reel…just the conversation we all should be having. There’s a release and a freedom felt when women share their struggles, when we remove our armor and show what success actually requires, what it takes, and what we give.

From the women I’ve been so lucky to talk to so far, from the chefs… the leaders…the mothers building businesses out of pure grit...we are all holding so much more complexity than we ever show. We are fulfilled and falling apart. We are confident and also desperate for someone to tell us we’re doing it right. We love our children so ferociously, and also feel guilty for the moments of rest or the feeling of relief we might feel when we have some space. We are proud of what we’ve built and terrified it’s not enough…we are showing up fully and also disappointing someone we love…and we get back up the next morning and try again. We hold all of it, all the time, simultaneously, without even a moment to resolve it all into something neat or manageable or postable.

We don’t need to be fixed or optimized or coached into a cleaner version of ourselves. We need to be witnessed...to be seen, known…even just for the length of a meal or in a conversation or over a bowl of cereal with someone who is also just trying to figure it out.

The why… it’s why I cook, why I write, it’s why I push to find more spaces and places to share the gifts I’ve been given.

It’s why…every single morning, before the city needs a single thing from me, I turn on Lee Moses or Lola Young, or Florence and the Machine, and I dance…and it’s enough.

And today, I’m finally starting to believe it.

I’m writing this from my plane at LGA, boarding pass in hand, coffee in the other, with that distinct giddiness when you’re about to spend an entire weekend with someone who has known you through multiple versions of yourself and loves you anyway.

I’m going to Chicago for the next few days.

It doesn’t happen too often, so I forget…but then quickly remember every time I travel alone. The calming quiet of it…moving through an airport without having to narrate the experience to anyone…just watching…existing inside the noise without being required to respond to it. I sat at my gate for twenty minutes this morning just people-watching and it felt almost indulgent, this small act of being completely anonymous and completely present at the same time. Nobody needed me…nobody asking me anything…I was just a woman at a gate with her coffee, watching the world move by.

My phone has buzzed three times already. Millie, FaceTiming from home, where she and Yas have apparently declared it an official day of movies, video games and playdates. She looked so happy it made my heart warm over in the best way. She doesn’t need me today, neither does he…and that specific freedom…that knowing and confidence that the people you love the most are completely fine, better than fine, and that you can disappear for a weekend while the whole thing holds together without you.

I’m still smiling about it somewhere over Ohio.

My friend Sal has been my ride or die since my Charlotte days…it’s one of my cherished friendships that doesn’t require maintenance or explanation. Despite the amount of time in between our visits, we just pick right back up where we left off. We’re heading to Chicago to explore a city neither of us is familiar…together, and honestly, weather be damned, we are going to have the best time!

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

What I’m reading on the plane:

These have been living in my tabs this week & feel just right for a weekend of unplugging and thinking…

• You’re Not Lazy, You’re Overwhelmed by Meg Josephson. I needed someone to say this out loud…saving it for the flight.

• Who Are You When You’re Not Performing? from Shit You Should Care About. This question has been following me around for weeks and apparently it’s following a lot of us around. Good.

• The Invention of Summer from Cake Zine. Because it’s April and I’m already dreaming about warmth and long evenings.

• The Quiet Self-Sabotage of Thoughtful People from Quiet Growth Chronicles. This one hit a little close to home. Read it and report back.

• Chair Time with Eric Trine from Wrong House. A conversation about making things slowly and intentionally in a world that rewards fast. Exactly what I needed to read before a weekend of doing absolutely nothing productive.

• And Ina Garten dropped a new playlist for summer on her Substack…I will be listening to it while I walk around a city I barely know with my one of my best friends and it will be perfect.

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THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

Here’s a little of what’s on our agenda for the long weekend:

• The architecture river cruise is already booked for Friday tomorrow morning, which I’ve been told by approximately EVERYONE is the thing you absolutely cannot skip.

• Second City on Friday night.

• Wrigley Field tour because it’s on Sals’ bucket list and honestly, I’m not mad about it.

• Skyline views from Sears/Willis Tower (if the clouds don’t block it all)

• The Music Box Theatre for the Beyond Chicago film series if we can snag a seat…

And in the moments between it all, a serious amount of eating.

We’re staying at the Millennium Knickerbocker…a 1920s hotel that Al Capone’s brother literally ran, which feels appropriately dramatic for a girls trip. The Martini Bar in the basement has speakeasy energy and we intend to find out for ourselves.

The food list is long and I have feelings about all of it.

Dove’s Luncheonette for the fried chicken and gravy under the Blue Line tracks. Pequod’s for the caramelized crust deep dish that I’ve been told will ruin all other pizza for me. Milly’s Pizza in the Pan if we plan ahead, which they say is one of the best pizzas in the world and only makes 45 pies a day. Ghareeb Nawaz on Devon Ave for late night Pakistani food at $6 a plate. And so much more…

Also very possibly…some vintage shopping in Wicker Park and Pilsen, and a wander through the Bridgeport Art Center which has creative-building-full-of-artists energy that I’m craving.

I’ll soak in as much as I can, trying to unplug and barely check my phone. I’ll be back Sunday night with a full heart, sore face from smiling & laughing way too much, probably some new vintage finds, and hopefully some fun stories to share.

And…we just got a 15min weather delay on the tarmac…so, before I takeoff…

Sunday’s essay is something I’ve been sitting with & rewriting for a hot minute. It started as a piece about women and the algorithm that I almost published and then didn’t, because reading it back I could hear the judgment undertones that wasn’t my intent, nor was it wha I wanted to put out in the world…we have enough judgement, amiright?!

What it became instead is something more honest and thoughful…about the price of admission and content creation, about what my husband Yas teaching me the art of SEO vs. the science of it and why it all sounds exactly like hospitality to me. It’s about what we are slowly, stubbornly trying to build and why.

Stay tuned, turkeys. See you Sunday!

What are you setting out for your weekend?

Much love,

Jess

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Rebecca Branham made candy at Christmas.

Peppermint patties, butterscotch haystacks, chocolate fudge, chocolate peanut butter balls…the kind of cooking that takes all day and leaves the kitchen smelling like butter and sugar and everything good. She’d set up at her kitchen table in Ridgeway, South Carolina, her hands moving through the same motions they’d been doing since before my own mom was little, and we’d all find our way in through her screened door eventually. Drawn by the smell, by the ritual, by her. Nanny Sis, we called her. Everyone did.

She was a seamstress for years, fingers precise and patient, and then she cooked in a school cafeteria, feeding other people’s children the way she fed everyone who sat on her porch swing or walked through her door. She was a devout church-going Southern woman who showed up early and stayed late and always brought something to share. She built community the way other people breathe…automatically, constantly, without making a fuss about it. When my grandfather was alive, that house in Ridgeway was the center of everything. She was the center of everything. Every Sunday, we gathered there.

And then my Papa Grady died in 2006, and we discovered what his generation had quietly done to the women they loved...everything was in his name. The house, the cars, the bank accounts, the utilities. My Nanny Sis had lived a full and devoted life inside that marriage and had absolutely nothing on paper to show she’d even existed in it. She had no credit; her name on none of the accounts. She had been so thoroughly taken care of that she had never been given the chance to take care of herself. This wasn't unusual for their generation. Until 1974, a married woman couldn't even open a line of credit without her husband's signature. The law had spent the better part of a century ensuring that women like my Nanny Sis simply didn't exist on paper, and most of them never knew to question it.

My parents spent months helping her untangle it all, helping her learn, at 75 years old, how to exist in the world on her own. And she did just that. She figured it out and kept going.

And then, slowly, she didn’t.

It started small in the slow way it does...keys lost in a parking lot, a trip to the grocery store where she forgot why she was there. Then came the sleepwalking, the waking up on the back porch in the dark with no memory of how she got there. Days passing without remembering her last shower. The ordinary mechanics of daily life started coming apart at the seams. We tried to make light of it at first, the way families do when something is too heavy to look at directly. I have a photo from Christmas 2016, the two of us making candy together, and I wrote “before this old timers sets in and hides all her recipes from us.” We said it with love…laughing was the only way through.

But eventually, even the laughing couldn’t heal.

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My parents did what all people do when they love someone, and the world hands them no good options. They moved her into their home, they hired a day nurse, and came home every evening after work to take over. My dad helped her out of bed each morning, patient and unhurried, and lowered her into her recliner like she was the most important thing in the room...because to him, she was. He made her a cup of coffee every single day while she waited for her nurse. My mom would dress her mom each morning, and would help her with the bathroom, the deeply intimate and unglamorous parts of caregiving that nobody wants to write about, and eventually, we all may face. They talked to her like she was fully present, because she deserved that, because love doesn’t stop showing up when it stops being recognized or remembered.

My mom and dad were in their late fifties at that time…still working full-time, still showing up for their grandkids, still the ones everyone called when something went wrong. And quietly, without complaint, they were doing all of this for my Nanny Sis as well. My sweet parents haven’t yet had the chance to exhale between chapters in life. They haven’t had a season of just being Sam and Myra without someone needing something from them. They haven’t traveled the way they’ve always wanted to. They haven’t yet had the empty nest they’ve more than earned. They went from raising us to being grandparents to now parenting their own parents, one generation flowing directly into the next with no break, no pause, no moment of just being free.

I watched all of this firsthand during the seven weeks we quarantined with my parents in the spring of 2020, all tucked into their house while the world outside came apart.

Even beyond the caretaking duties of my Nanny Sis, my dad would also drive across town almost every day to pick up his own mother and bring her to his house so she wouldn’t be alone during that terrifying and isolating time. He’d get her settled, drive her back home later, go back the next day, and do it again. Their relationship has never been simple or easy. She wasn’t always there when he needed her, left him to figure out a lot of things on his own when he was far too young to have to. And still, every day, without ceremony, without making her feel the weight of what she’d cost him, he showed up for her. To this day, he still shows up for her.

He gives her the kind of steady, patient care that she hadn’t always given him…not out of obligation and not to prove a point, but because that’s the man he became in spite of everything. Some people, when the time comes to parent their own parents, they choose to do it and show their parents what it should have looked like all along. A demonstration, not punishment…but to show that this is how it should’ve been done…this is who we could have been to each other.

My generation is starting to live this right now. Those of us in our late thirties and forties are watching our parents get older, slower, and with more questionable ailments. They’re getting heartbreaking diagnoses, starting to need more than they’re willing to admit, and most are too stubborn to give the full picture out of protection to us…their children. We are watching the people who built our whole foundation start to need that very same foundation held up for them, but that need is met with the avoidant “oh, it’s nothing” or “it’s no big deal.” Our parents are still working, some are still taking care of their own parents’ declining health, and they shield the whole truth. We are their children, after all…they’ve been protecting us our whole lives.

And all the while, we are here raising our own kids, building or pivoting our careers, and still trying to figure out who we are. It’s now that we start fielding the “we need to talk” phone calls, the “I have news” FaceTimes, conversations about procedures, questionable scans, and what comes next.

Underneath all of that practical stuff is something softer and harder to admit...we find ourselves grieving. Not just our grandparents saying goodbye, but the harsh reality that our parents soon will, too. I can’t even bring myself to that place. My dad and I rarely talk on the phone, he’ll text me or send me Instagram memes…so when I see his name come across my phone, my heart stops for a moment…someone’s died or someone is going to. I have to take a breath before I answer. Most of the time, it ends up being nothing serious…but in the back of my head and now literally every time I talk to my parents or spend time with them, I’m plagued with the reality that as they get older, our time together is less certain.

Because there are still days, if I’m honest, when I need my mom or dad to just be my mom or dad. When something hard happens, I want to call them and have them be fully present and available the way they were when I was younger. And they try…they always try. But, they’re both so exhausted already…and stretched thin…and carrying more than any person should have to carry. Balancing their own long goodbyes with their parents at the same time that they start their own long goodbyes with us. I know that, and I love them for it, and I also grieve the version of my parents that had more left to give.

I think a lot of people my age are sitting with that same quiet grief and not saying it out loud because it sounds ungrateful, because we are adults and we should be past needing to be taken care of. But the truth is, you don’t really ever stop needing your parents to be your parents, and the moment you realize they are too consumed by their own hard seasons to fully show up for yours…there’s a specific kind of loneliness that feels ungrateful and selfish.

Our kids are becoming more independent at the same time our parents are becoming less so, and we are standing in the middle of that shift, trying to hold it all together without letting anyone see how much it hurts.

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Nanny Sis is still with us, though more gone than present. She now lives in a good facility, one that’s committed to making her as comfortable as possible in her final days. My mom FaceTimes me sometimes so I can see her, and I watch her lying in her bed, looking up at the screen with an expression that splits me open every single time. She is reaching…I can see her trying, pulling at something just out of her grasp, working so hard to place a face or find a word or feel safe with the people on the other side of the glass.

I just tell her I love her, and I tell her she’s beautiful.

And she cries. She always tears up. I don’t even know if she knows why. I think possibly the body can still feel love even when the mind has already let it go. I have to believe that, because the alternative is too much to sit with. I know each tear that flows down her face is a memory of who she is and who we are. I just know it…even if she’ll never again find the words to say it.

I find myself wondering whether lying in that bed, unreachable behind her own forgetting, counts as life in the way we mean when we say that word. I don’t have an answer, and I don’t believe there is one. What I do know is that my grandpas were both taken too soon…there was so much left unsaid, so much unresolved…so much life left to live. And now, my parents both have the gift of the long goodbye with their mothers. Exhausting and almost too much to bear…yes, and…they have the chance to do it right, to do it better.

That love leaves a mark that memory simply can’t erase. Somewhere underneath all of it, my Nanny Sis still knows she is loved. And, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what we all hope for? That at the end, whenever that may be, our parents would know that they are loved, they matter, and their lives were well lived.

My Nanny Sis is the one who taught me that a table is never just a table. You open your door, you make space, and you feed whoever shows up…not because they earned it or deserved it, but because they’re there, they need it…that’s enough of a reason. She taught me that a kitchen is where love gets made real, where you show people they matter…without words…but by the gift of a full plate in front of them. That is my inheritance, her legacy to me, and I carry it into every kitchen I’ve ever worked in.

And Sam and Myra...my mom and dad…they, too, are still teaching me something I’m learning in real time. They are showing me what it looks like to love someone all the way to the end, even when it may be exhausting and heartbreaking and thankless, and there’s no finish line in sight. To make the coffee every morning, to drive across town, to show up not because it’s easy or convenient or because anyone is keeping score, but because that is what love actually looks like…when it stops being a feeling and starts becoming a choice you make every single day.

That is the inheritance they are leaving me, right now, and I’m watching. I'm taking notes, and I'm trying to show them how loved they are, how much they matter, before it's too late.

And I’ll be honest... I worry about them. I watch my parents pour themselves out for everyone around them, for their grandkids, for my Nanny Sis, for my grandmother, for their siblings…for us, still, always for us…and all I want is to be able to pour back into them. I wonder and wait for when it’ll be my turn to show up for them the way they have shown up for everyone else…I wait for when they’ll be ready to let me.

If you’re reading this and you recognize your own parents in mine...call them. Not to ask for something, but just to ask how they are, and then actually wait for the answer. Show up in whatever small way you can before the showing up becomes urgent. Tell them what they’ve taught you while they can still hear it. Because the long goodbye starts earlier than any of us expect, and the things we wish we’d said have a way of outlasting the chance to say them.

My Nanny Sis may not remember any of it, but I will…I will remember all of it.

Millie’s home, and it’s SO nice having her back. We are in full on pre-teen mode, and I swear she grows like a weed…every time I see her after a stretch away, she’s gotten bigger…taller. She’ll be 11 next month, and I simply cannot wrap my head around it.

Spring has FINALLY sprung…70 degrees tomorrow…and I’m already prepped and ready for my Chicago trip next weekend with my girl Sals. I delivered all the equinox boxes this week, and I’m so excited to see how beautifully it all came together. Already thinking and brainstorming for my next box in June for Summer Solstice…preorders will open at the beginning of June. Stay tuned!

Pull up a chair.

THE GRAZING PLATE

(quick bites, short reads, things to nibble on)

• Surviving a World on Fire
  This piece by Jackie Summers hit me right in the chest this week. “Anxiety will have you rushing to arrive at impact before life’s had a chance to become meaning. You do not owe the fire your nervous system. Stay whole at your own speed. Refuse the tempo that wants to reorganize you.” Read that again. Then bookmark it for when you need the reminder.
  

• Why Middle-Aged Restaurants Matter Most
  You know those restaurants that opened with a bang, have been trucking along beautifully, but have fallen off the lists and algorithms because they’re older? Sure, they might have dropped in the rankings, “but in many cases are executing better versions of themselves than they did when they were first finding their place within the resy scroll.” More than 82% of restaurants survive the first year, but only half make it past 5 years. It’s our duty as diners to revisit them and keep them going. This and more in Matt Rodbard’s piece on Substack linked above.
  

THE UTENSILS

(tools, recipes, the things that help you do the work)

• Pistachio Tres Leches (Picture above, Recipe below)
  I whipped this up quickly for our family Eid celebration last Friday, and it was so dang good! White cake base with pistachio pudding mixed in, three milks spiked with cardamom, rose water and topped with pistachio whipped cream. Sweet, creamy, just the right amount of nutty.

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THE VESSELS

(what holds us, what gives our chaos shape and space)

• The Little Bookshop in Bushwick
  Woman-owned and operated, mother/daughter duo, best soup ever…and they’re hosting Poetry by Candlelight this Saturday (and more events each month). This is exactly the energy we need for 2026. Not this other side bullsh*t that’s dominating our news feeds.
  

• The Disappearing Act of Exceptional Women
  Final week of Women’s History Month, and this article about women who were erased, overshadowed, or had their work attributed to men…it’s infuriating and necessary. I had an old boyfriend that told me once that “all girl humor was just recycled boy humor” and I’ve never wanted to knock someone’s teeth out so quickly. So many exceptional women did exceptional things before men, but history forgot them. Worth the read.

THE GLASSWARE

(the bubbles, the refreshment, what quenches)

• Becca Piastrelli on Community
  "You cannot build reciprocal community while running a one-woman show." This piece on over-functioning, child consciousness vs adult consciousness, and truth-telling in community…it's the reminder I needed. "The most radical thing you can do for your community is learn to tell the truth inside the containers you're building."

• Yas on YouTube
  My brilliant husband was interviewed this week on SEO lessons he learned as the former Head of SEO at Omnicom. He was featured on Edward Sturm’s YouTube channel and was so insightful. I'm biased, obviously, but I truly listened to the whole thing more than once, and even I learned a thing or two. Totally worth a listen, and yours truly even gets a little shoutout near the end.

THE DESSERT PLATE

(the sweet stuff, pure joy, no justification needed)

• Pistachio Tres Leches for Eid
  I threw this together last Friday for Eid celebrations, and it was a hit. Not traditional, not authentic, just delicious.
  
  The Cake:
  Start with a simple white cake mix (or make from scratch if you’re feeling fancy). Add 3/4 box of pistachio pudding mix (I used Jello brand!) to the batter along with 1 cup raw pistachio (pulsed or blended until fine). Bake according to package directions in a round pan (I made two pans!). Let it cool completely.
  
  The Three Milks:
  Mix together one can evaporated milk, ¾ can of sweetened condensed milk, and about 1 cup almond milk. Add a generous amount of ground cardamom (I used around 2-3 tsp, a dash or two of Kewra or Rose Water, a handful of blended pistachios, and a few drops of green food coloring (optional, but it makes it pretty). Poke holes all over the cooled cake with a fork or skewer, then pour the milk mixture over the top slowly. Let it soak in. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours, overnight is better.
  
  The Icing:
  Whip heavy cream until soft peaks form. Add the rest of the pistachio jello mix, a generous pinch of cardamom, and a splash of vanilla. Keep whipping until stiff peaks. Spread over the soaked cake. Top with more crushed pistachios & crushed rose petals or dried edible flower petals.
  
  Serve cold. It’s sweet, it’s creamy, it’s just the right amount of awesomeness, fit for a celebration.

What are you setting out for your weekend?

Much love,

Jess

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