idk what to title this
on handwritten notes and soup 👍 🥣
When I moved away for college, I left a hundred little handwritten notes around my house for my parents to find because a bird can’t leave an empty nest and because I feel a constant need to remind everyone that I’ve ever known that I love them I love them I love them. I left one on the fridge and one inside a Rice Crispy box and I left one buried under the thirtieth tissue in a box on my dad’s bedside table. And they said thank you and I’ll see you soon and they counted down the days and then I moved to LA and I never went back. I’ll see them next week. I lied to you again. Sorry, it just keeps happening. One was in my brother’s left shoe and one was in the dog’s leash and one was somewhere I don’t remember and maybe they’ve found it and maybe we’ve all forgotten.
This is just to say, I love a handwritten note, I love to see the way you cross your T’s, I love how a pen smudges a little because you were so excited to turn the page. I love lefties when the ink tattoos their palm. I hate being right.
I missed last month and I’m sorry. I mean it. I mean I missed last month as in life moved so fast I think I forgot everything that happened and I mean I missed it as in I didn’t send a newsletter and I’m going to pretend it’s because I decided to hand write snail mail to you instead and it got lost three turns away from your house but you can pretend it got there and you can pretend it said exactly what you needed it to say. If I wrote you a letter right now, what would you need it to say? If you wrote you a letter right now, what would you need it to say?
This month, we’re writing about food because it’s Wednesday night and it’s a little past my usual dinner time and I’m a habit creature but I wanted to say hello.
I want to be fourteen coming home from soccer practice and it’s late and I hate select soccer but mom made soup and everything will be okay. I hated being fourteen. Maybe I loved it. Who remembers fourteen? Everything will be okay. The best soup mom makes is the miso broth from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home and that cookbook has tattered pages and some perpetually sticky hoisin sauce on the cover and that’s okay. It has dogeared sections, too, and we’re always told not to fold the corners of pages, to never be dog-eared and only be dog-eyed, but isn’t that the greatest compliment of all, to want to remember something enough to make it permanent?
On annotated recipes
How do you cook soup?
Boil water until you break,
let noodles float.
Lessons learned from carrots: unexpected things will help you see.
Tell someone when they have spinach in their teeth,
you can grow up big and still not like mushrooms,
mom will always know best.
*my notes on pg. 31, “Miso Soup”
*write down the extra teaspoon mom adds, write how she laughs when the steam fogs up her glasses, write what she remembers about her mom’s cooking. write it down write it all hold it forever.
Question to ask your mom:
What is your favorite recipe?
*if this has typos I’m sorry I’m so tired lol ily