Compared to a lot of people, our pandemic was not terrible.

We stayed healthy, avoided Covid, and kept ourselves busy running a free pantry and fridge, feeding our downtown Vegas community, in our front yard.

That pantry probably saved my sanity. It gave all of us community-minded jobs to keep us busy. My son, Raffi, had a job breaking down cardboard boxes that leftover grocery store food came in. David hauled those boxes out of trucks so I could sort through them. My teen daughters served people home cooked meals, packed to-go boxes. My littlest Desi took care of one unhoused woman’s dog, Princess, when she was sick. Once I walked in the house and found my husband David making eggs with an unhoused man named Stefran. They just stood together in the kitchen eating their eggs, scraping yokes, dipping toast, talking about Fabio, as if this kind of openness with strangers happened all the time.

In some ways it did that year.

Today I took a little trip to check out a new-to-me neighborhood supermarket concept. The purpose was to sing their praises a little. I had high hopes.

What I’m going to call “The Market” is a hybrid grocery store and free food pantry. I felt this could be important. I ran a pantry myself in my front yard during the pandemic, and I know a lot people who have struggled and lead complicated lives who would benefit from a concept like this. It is owned by a Christian not-for-profit and run by a pastor who was at one time, the manager of a local food bank warehouse. (I will discuss religious/evangelical/Christian pantries another time. It’s complicated). Clark County has also bought into The Market and contributed funds to get them started. There is a commercial kitchen in the space and a plan for cooking home-cooked meals for the community.

Recently my son, Raffi (12) and his friend Ethan, sold snacks outside his old elementary school, which is a few houses down the street from us. They set up a table. I got them started with cases of Bai drinks (mildly flavored anti-oxidant water), bottles of cold water and run of the mill chips from Costco. He marks up the prices on the individual pieces and gives me money from his earnings to buy more product.

The idea was to support the boys making some pocket money, keep them out of trouble, and also help them understand simple economic issues, like supply and demand and how to run your cash box, make change, pricing, and how businesses work and how money is made.

Except he stopped asking me to buy him product at Costco. Even as kept selling. Because he innately understood what his buyers wanted.

I’ve had the pleasure of reading the myth-busting “Retail Inequality: Reframing the Food Desert Debate” by Kenneth H. Kolb. I just started it and it is blowing my mind. I think it is utterly disruptive. I suspect this isn’t the last time you will hear me talk about it as I work and highlight my way through it. 

The book was nominated for a James Beard Foundation award and even though it was beaten by what I’m sure is a fantastic book, that I also want to read, I feel like this book is shaking my earth a little bit and should shake yours. Mostly, it is telling us that this thing we have believed for the longest time - that poor people who live in food deserts eat less healthy foods because they have less access to good food and simply need more grocery stores to change their diets - is a complete myth, with all kinds of weird-ass assumptions that we created. 

Essentially researchers and policy makers in the upper classes have made some conclusions about poor people without actually checking in with said poor people. 

Like we made it up!

Yesterday was a stupid day.

I mean, having a stupid day is better than not having a stupid day. And they are so human, bound to happen, part of life, etc. It was a day where nothing catastrophic happened but the day just chips away at you with one inconvenience after another, so that it disassembles your brain a little.

Then, sort of the final inconvenience of the day: I was stopped in my car at a light. And without thinking, I eased up on the brake and tapped the car in front of me. It was so slight I figured he’d wave me off and go when the light turned red. But he didn’t. He pulled over and so I did too.

I figured he just wanted to make sure no damage. Fine. I have two kids in the car. They want to go to karate but this will be quick.

Except it wasn’t.

Succession is over. So bummed.

This is a show David and I have been obsessed with to the point that we rewatched the previous seasons leading up to this last one to get the full impact. And since he has been traveling, we made a very serious pact that we are only allowed to watch the episodes on Sundays together, in bed, while the phone is on speaker. 

No one wants to be the one “who cheated.”

This devotion has fueled amazing marital bedroom discussions about class and empathy and these characters and how their relationships get played out around food and whether or not there is truth to this. There are some great pieces about food and Succession here and here. They cover a lot of the show details that reference food. I will not be that detailed here.

“If you don’t come home right now I’m going to make fucking chaos in this house,” my son shouts from the speaker phone.

I am trying to get back home but I’m the only parent on duty - David is with his show, Empire Strips Back in NYC - and I have other kids to pick up and shuttle to various places. I know what he can do. A few days before, he kicked and punched the kitchen door so hard and so many times that he mangled the dry wall around the door frame and it wouldn’t close properly. We will need a contractor to come in and fix it.

Click.

He hangs up on me.

I rush and drive too fast because I’m worried about what he means and what he intends to do.

You know what is a privilege? Recognizing that you’re dysregulated.

This weekend I was a mess.

I worked on the second pass edits on the book, David was out of town, the kids needed my attention, friends pitched in and invited Desi to their pool (bless them), I worked my way through the end of the book, second guessing, obsessing. My chest….oof, my chest was leaden, caved in. I picked up teens from jobs and left small children alone at home on iPads and hoped they didn’t kill each other or invite strangers in, while I picked up groceries, and did errands.

I thought about the dinner on the stove, the pork belly chunks that I doused in oil and sugar and browned and then threw the chunks into my donabe with water, chicken bones, duck feet, light and dark soy sauces, Shaoxing wine, garlic, scallions and star anise. I let it all simmer, and made quick pickles (salt and sugar over cuke slices and into the fridge) and steamed some lotus buns. Nice.

The story I’m going to tell you happened around 2007 when I first started blogging. David and I had been married a short while. Lucy was 3 (now 18) Edie was 2 (now 16). We lived in NYC on 145th Street. Raffi (now 11) and Desi (now 7) weren't born yet.

This story is about us trying for baby number 3, which we thought would happen magically like the first 2 times. Uh, no. Having sex with 2 kids under 2 meant becoming stunt people, dreamers, people who were super frustrated by the antics we had to go through to have alone time.

Well, actually this story isn’t about us at all because I would never discuss our sex, or attempts at sex, here. Embarrassing!

No, this story is about another couple…. Pim and um, Ravid.

That’s right. Pim and Ravid Boster. And how they tried to have sex while also having 2 kids under 2. Please enjoy….

I have never been at ease with travel.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of travel. I like having traveled. I have traveled a lot actually. I like having met people and having had experiences in the world. (In the past tense.) It’s always good to see how other people live, to not feel like you are the center of the universe, to feel less alone, to feel the connections, the human vibrations, all of it. Travel can be life-changing, affirming and inspiring.

But still, there is unease.

I like cooking when I travel. I like browsing the markets for things I’ve never used in the kitchen and making a meal out of it. I like figuring out the flavors of other places, and buying cookbooks that offer a taste of local cuisines.

I like cooking, I think, more than I like eating.