Come and eat with us…

We all hunger… for something.

Living is like cooking – both art and science –

The palette of the palate.

There is a story in every moment, in every meal,

And each one tells it differently.

These are our stories.

We hope they inspire stories of your own.

Who we are…

Gordon is an architect, developer and entrepreneur. He races for fun and builds racing engines as a hobby. He likes my cooking, but more than that, he has good taste. I trust what he says and he is always honest. He didn’t like my carrot soup and I have never forgotten it. We were dating at the time and I couldn’t believe he would be that forthright. That was the beginning of my confidence in him as a taste tester because I actually agreed with his assessment at the time, even though surprised he would share it with me. His background in architecture makes it impossible for him to like something that tastes good, but doesn’t look good. Presentation makes half the taste. Gordon is not only Scottish, but born and raised in Scotland, and Scottish through and through – from his early morning tea to his thrifty nature (both sweeping generalizations of a culture, but true of him, none-the-less). But that is his father’s side. His mother is English, bringing with her a genteel nature that imbues a Scottish son with a tender heart. When we met, I was vegetarian and he was, well, a healthy eater, but not vegetarian. He grew up (like I did) with a simple meat and potatoes diet, with a mum that can make soup taste like heaven. Over time he discovered that he was lactose intolerant and we happened upon a vegan cookbook that we both loved (Naturally Gourmet by Karen Houghton). Cashew gravy had never tasted so good! Almost every recipe in her book was perfectly delicious, so we were on our way to a more vegan lifestyle.

I am a university professor, a director of a research center – The Center for Spiritual Life and Wholeness, which studies, researches and educates around the issues of whole person care. I am also the associate director of a Wholeness Institute. As you might expect, I enjoy anything having to do with health and wholeness. My primary question is about hunger. For what do we hunger and thirst? What will make us whole – fulfill us in the deepest way? Eating is a metaphor for all of that, which makes it very important.

“I want you girls to cook supper tonight.” My sister and I were 14 and 13 when my father made this announcement. “Feel free to call mama with any questions you have.” With that he returned to work.

We just stared at each other, blinking. Us? Cook? Supper tonight? We were “helpers” in the kitchen, not the cooks! We thought long and hard and finally settled on…baked potatoes. And with only one phone call to mama, that evening we exhausted our entire repertoire of independent cooking. I had a hunger for something different – to leave home and be on my own. At 14 years old, I was grown and ready to go – anywhere. And so I did, traveling the world and taking one degree after the other. I hungered for everything, mostly knowledge. I couldn’t decide whether the answer was in physics and an overall theory of things, in a humble attitude before God, or in the daily artfulness of putting the right foods together in ways that made every meal an event. It is no wonder that I remained single longer than most of my friends. Where others were kids in candy stores, I was the nerd in the library, the hitchhiking traveler, the philosopher chef. I had the opportunity to fall in love with many things, places and people over time. I read cookbooks as voraciously as I read philosophy, theology, poetry or literature, and learned to love classical music and opera by sheer discipline. I believed it was good, but could not hear it for myself until one day, after hours of listening while stretched out on a carpet, I arose with tears in my eyes. I remember where I was, precisely, the day I first heard its beauty. The clinging and clanging of the Brandenburg Concertos suddenly grabbed me – the whole of me – through its carefully constructed precision and poetry. And opera? Through watching the film Shawshank Redemption. The prisoner, Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) plays a duet from Act 3 of the Marriage of Figaro over the loud speakers. Another prisoner, “Red” (Morgan Freeman) responds saying that, while he doesn’t know what “the two Italian ladies were singing about…it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.” [Taken from the film, Shawshank Redemption]. At that moment I fell in love with opera and the relationship continues.

And so, this blog is about hunger….Eating will have a big place in it since it is the best metaphor we have for understanding hunger. Not everyone will love opera or feel fulfilled in the same way, but everyone knows what it means to feel hungry, and everyone should know what it means to feel full after eating a meal.

Food is like people, with different temperaments that act differently in different situations. My first encounter with food personalities happened with my first cookbook on soups. All recipes worked from scratch, with vegetables cooking “down” to form the broth, rather than using “vegetable broth.” Each recipe took time to make, but it was all revolutionary to me and the soups were GREAT. It happened again around cauliflower – that “deficient” peely-wally vegetable, (“peely-wally” is a derogatory term used by my Scottish husband when his tea has too much milk in it) that means pale and ill-looking. But that was before I tasted cauliflower roasted with olive oil, garlic and lemon pepper. That did it! Where had I been? Where had cauliflower been? What else was I missing? And suddenly the larger question emerges, “What else was I missing?” In this way eating disturbs, unleashes and confronts us boldly with the larger questions of life.

Gordon and I married two years ago this weekend (05.05.13). This is our journey together. Neither of us is a follower, except of each other. Gordon is a twin, so he is naturally suited to having a constant companion. I don’t have as good a reason, but I love being with him. So, we hang out well together. Initially I wanted to create a recipe blog, but soon (about our 5th blog), we realized that food had a larger story – the locations of eating, the people encountered over food, cultural and religious conflicts over food, what we are reading and thinking – it all seemed as important as the food itself. That’s when hunger and food began to emerge as themes. Gordon’s Scottish background and my native American background tie us both to the land. We believe in hard work and tough spirits (characters, that is), living as naturally as possible, knowing what homegrown tomatoes look like and how they taste. The fact that we live on well water in Southern California means a lot to us. Food not only explains how we eat, it describes who we are and what we hunger for.

Why a blog? Well, we needed some place to work out what it means to hunger – and be filled. Recipes are the sideline. At the point of this writing, nobody is reading the blog. Tonight Gordon came into the office that he and I share and asked, “Who reads what you write?”

“Nobody.” This is where the conversation stopped, or started, or whatever happens when two people know a truth when they see it and need no further discussion.

There is something deeply connecting about hunger, food, life, travel, one’s spirit, and meaning. It is all there. We do not yet know or understand all the touch points, but we know they will emerge. And when they do, we will follow them where they lead and write about them. At the deepest level we hunger and thirst, and all of that means something. Food, with all its metaphorical possibilities, is the thread that runs through it all. As a humble Methodist preacher once said, “You will know who you are by who sits at your table.”

So, come and eat with us – and enjoy!