Seven People at a Four-Person Table
The dinner that taught me the difference between hospitality and performance — the night my tiny apartment held a party it had no business holding.
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Recent Activity
Okonomiyaki in Osaka, at Midnight (Guest Piece)
Theodore asked me for a food piece and I thought about this meal for a week before I wrote it. A small place on a back street, a woman I will never see again, and the best thing I ate that year.
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Gas Stove at 4 AM (Guest Piece)
Elena Ruiz wrote this one at my invitation — a food-as-memory piece that I think sits inside this collection the way a small bowl sits on a large table.
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The Knife That Belonged to Somebody's Grandfather
I bought a knife at a flea market in Oaxaca. It's the knife I've used nearly every day for six years. I still don't know whose grandfather it belonged to.
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Cilantro, Always Cilantro
My partner hates cilantro. I put cilantro in everything. Fourteen years of negotiation, and the thing I learned about love somewhere in year nine.
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The Year Nobody Came Home
Christmas, 2020. I had made a twelve-person dinner for zero people, and I ate it alone, and I learned something I had somehow needed to learn.
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My Mother's Rice
My mother cooked rice three ways: a weekday way, a guest way, and a way she reserved for the people she was trying to forgive.
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