Thank you for eating

Moving up country, hoarding chairs, and greasy walls. Lemony Snippets from the past few months

Hey everybody, welcome back. And hello to many new faces.

photo by Bailey Garrot

It’s been a minute. I’ve procrastinated. I bet you have too. But always make sure you’re productive in your procrastination. While I haven’t exactly been active on Substack recently, I have been quite a bit busy. You’ll have to scroll down to find out what that has meant for past me and what it means for future me.

Atlanta, I’ll love you, kinda

I recognize there will be a day that I’ll miss Atlanta. I simply love missing things. I’m nostalgia’s most annoying advocate. I drive across state lines for chicken tenders I had when I was 6 years old just to feel something. A lot of hard work goes into being sentimental. Gotta earn that yearn. But before I let my practical reasons for leaving Atlanta get in the way of my desire to leave, I’ll say that I’m really only moving because I like it. Transitioning into new spaces is a luxury I have, and I intend to exploit that luxury while I can. An unmatched benefit of modern living. But no two goodbyes mean remotely the same thing. I relish in saying goodbye to Atlanta because I stayed to my own sense of completion. So this is the first time I can truly say “I’m finished.”

I think the people, places, and spaces I’ve left in years’ past came with a heavier goodbye because there was lack of fulfillment, and with it a lack of meaning as to why I was there. Hindsight has since put into perceptive my decisions and however regretful my actions and decisions were to myself, I see them as the necessary ingredients what adds up to whoever is writing this post.

Remember, “It’s okay to not feel sad sometimes” - Mr. Rogers in another life. Often a canned response to saying I’m moving is “How do you feel?” or “Will you miss it” or “Are you sad to be leaving?” And I’m pretty roundly none of those things right now. The expectation of sadness when making a leap to leave is often so put upon that it leads one to question what you’re feeling sad about in the first place. But it also overshadows how happy you could be should you embrace the shift. I just worship at the altar of restlessness. While I relish geographical fluidity, I look forward to being emotionally distinct in where I am.

I live in Philadelphia now. Often the conversation of where to move included the larger Northeast cities, as is often the case for my generation. While I don’t necessarily see Philly as my forever home, I’m really happy to be here. There’s good people here. Come see me, we’ll eat.

‘The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things stay the same only by changing.’ - Heraclitus

A new, great career

6 years in the wine industry came to a close last year. Transitioning to another yeast-based industry, I became a baker. Without fully hashing out why I didn’t start sooner, I can safely say I was really just scared of branching out into a field I had no real experience in. But funnily enough I can’t see myself in any other industry now. I’ll be continuing to bake in my new setting at a new job. I just have to give a proper thank you to Evergreen for creating an environment that expanded my skills and fed my knowledge in such a fruitful way. If you’re in Atlanta, go support them.

The structure of a bakery made my brain do backflips I was so happy. Everything comes with a learning curve filled to the brim with mistakes, but they were meaningful. I’ve found there’s a deep pleasure in the mistakes, as world-defeating as they can be in the moment, they are more than necessary. I really didn’t know for a long time why I was interested in food. But shade’s of my early desire to cook have finally come to light. I never fancied myself a cook but recognize I’ve always wanted to serve people. My family knew how to do that really well. The context of food was that it was never the star of the show, but a means to gather. While there isn’t an inciting incident as to why my life shifted to food, let’s invent one. Our memories are largely fiction anyway. I mean, it feels real, I just can’t be totally sure.

My earliest food memory:

Down in Statesboro, my father’s side of the family had largely remained, including his mother, who has since passed. Her culinary career included managing a local restaurant known for southern food, as well as managing one of the dining halls at the university for a number of years. I didn’t know this when I was younger.

Let’s say I was around age 5. I could start to remember the 4-5 hour car rides down to Statesboro. Memaw’s house was usually where we went first. I don’t ever remember being greeted by her at the door. She was always in the kitchen. We didn’t knock. We opened the door and said “knock knock.” The smell was warm. Not in a baking spice way, but the air hang with a density. It stuck to the walls. I knew something was being fried again. I was small, but not too small. At a height barely enough to peer over the island. But standing at the threshold I could see everything.

She said hey but never stopped what she was doing. Every burner was on, as was the oven, again filling the room with a warmth. The splatterguard was on the cast iron skillet as the okra fried first, as this was usually a nice welcome snack. More family would come after, but we were always first.

Fork Went Clink

I started a supper club in December, 2024. I called it Fork Goes Clink. The idea was simple, set up a place where people were forced into a 3 hour friendship with mostly strangers. Whatever happens after the dinner is out of my control but within the walls of this supper club there’s nothing one can do but succumb to bonding with those around you.

photo by Bailey Garrot

Supper Clubs™ are like “natural wine” in that no one seems to have a conclusive definition of what they mean, but you do know it when you see it. For me, supper clubs should be at one lengthy communal table. Who comes? A mixture of strangers and friends but ultimately those who delight in gestations. And the food? I love it when people take out their phones to snap a pic of my food, I’ll admit that. But food that doesn’t feel like it draws too much attention to itself is my favorite. A combination of sharable and plated dishes. Supper clubs are not food centric, they are people-forward.

With supper clubs, there does come to mind the unfortunate reality of how to get the word out. Knowing how to remain in the limelight but also maintain the unbeatable marketing tool that is word of mouth. How to make this sustainable but also keep an air of mystery around it. All things in the cocktail of cool. Blessed with an undeserved large following on Instagram, that made it a little easier to get things going and keep an central location for menu releases and RSVPs. But what I didn’t expect was for people to get the word out themselves and chat about it to their friends. I would say about over half the guests I had in 25 dinners over 8 months came to be via word of mouth.

Atlanta was a community I could never really tap into as a participant. Aspects of myself I knew I liked never came out with ease when I was there. Then I realized, when it comes to community, it is what you make. Community isn’t a passive occurrence, it’s an act of creation. And that’s why I started this supper club, the small hope of adding to a community I ultimately feel like I didn’t belong.

Such fellowships included but didn’t limit to: Couples finding and creating new dining crews. Singles snacking on some flirtato chips with other singles. Friends who didn’t know the other was coming but still sat on the opposite ends of the table. And people who now have lifelong tennis partners, just to name a few. But I really want to call out and praise those who came by themselves, single or otherwise. You are the essence of dining royalty to me. Not knowing there will be good vibes or not, maybe you left with new friends, maybe you only wanted to watch, doesn’t matter, you came and escaped for a few hours and I have so much respect for you.

There will be more dinners in the future…stay tuned.

Briefly, on chairs

There’s no greater feeling than sitting. Sitting on a nice chair that was made by hand, even better. Knowing that your chair has been living a life decades before you were born and encountered numerous butts makes you feel like you’re now a part of something greater than just a simple plop. Chairs bring with them a sense of place. How good a chair is will create the upmost of good times when executed properly. And it’s nearly universal in its contribution to global pleasantries.

Fortunately for me I come from a lineage of women with great taste in chairs. Chairs from my great grandmother’s dining room, my grandmother’s Bridge chairs, and my mother’s treasure chairs found at secondhand stores made up the majority of seats at my supper club.

And within a week of moving to Philly I went on a hike and found a handmade chair with a wooden etching, gorgissimo. And no better confirmation that I’m in the place I need to be.

A Lightly Floured Future

I will be settling into a new place, apartment, kitchen, and schedule with possibilities unknown. My freedom and time to experiment with recipes will increase substantially. As well as my energy. With that energy I’ll be shifting focus to my social medias, including Substack. I love having a platform but I’ve just lacked the time until now. I’ll continue my love for sweets here as well as progressing my breaducation. All here as a desire to learn and share that learning.

photo by Bailey Garrot

My New (other) Substack

As I fulfill ALFSs promise of pastries and bread, I will also be publishing posts on a new savory Substack, called…Fork Goes Clink. I’ll do an official launch soon but if you want to go ahead and subscribe, click here.

What I learned from my year of cooking for the supper club is that I actually quite love all aspects of dining and eating. I’ll be exploring and sharing those here. Content will include but not limited to:

The craft of dining out/in well. How to eavesdrop. Plating elaborate dishes. Cooking for people you don’t know. Cooking for people you fancy. How to treat wine like food. Inspired recipes that include probably too much butter. And many more…

I’ve also learned that my writing works best in a structured stream of consciousness. So no pay-per-view for recipes as I really can’t justify that anymore. They are works of progress and any paid content signals that this is a perfected recipe with reliability above all. If you want to support my work, there will be perks in the form of livestreams, Q&As, games, articles that have nothing to do with cooking, etc…

photo by Bailey Garrot

But ultimately I just want you support if you feel like it and can. This does take up time and resources and if you feel you benefit from this in any way, then you can support however you feel like. It’s just nice to be here with you.