Feed Your People: Sharing Comfort and Joy
When you feed your people, you feed yourself—literally and spiritually.
In 2018 we celebrated the publication of Feed Your People with a series of gatherings; from dumpling dinners, paella parties, and soup swaps to a big night timpano workshop. The project began as a way to highlight and share recipes for generous big-batch big-hearted foods that bring us together. We curated dishes from chefs, grandmas, and cookbook writers that spanned cultural, familial and emotional traditions. Funded in part by a Kickstarter, the book grew into a creative collaboration with 18 Reasons (a beloved Bay Area non-profit) with whom we launched a series of community recipe testing dinners, panel discussions and partnerships. It remains one of the most important projects of my career.
How the world has changed since then! Now we stay at a distance and interact over screens. We yearn for the days when we can invite a group of friends over Sunday supper; share a meal at a neighborhood restaurant, or cook a festive family feast. But even at this unpredictable time, food is still a constant that has the power to bring us together.
All over the world people are connecting through food: One of my heroes, Chef José Andrés, started World Central Kitchen to create smart solutions to hunger and poverty. Now WCK serves millions of people each year in disaster zones all over the globe. Closer to home, in San Francisco, citizens are volunteering in droves to help at local community kitchens, food banks, and pop-up soup kitchens. One of our editors here, Laura, volunteers with Food Runners (a local non-profit) to produce 2,000 meals with donated food. The generosity of spirit is contagious.
On a personal note, I am finding great joy in cooking and sharing food. This summer, I made a lot of jam (from foraged plums) to give away to friends and neighbors (saving one jar to make Susan Spungen’s Buckwheat Plum bars for my family.) There is deep comfort in generosity; whether baking loaves of fresh bread for neighbors or making pots of soup for those in need. It’s true that cooking food for others is nourishing for all.
Whether you volunteer for a local non-profit, host a soup swap, or bake cookies for a friend, cooking for people will bring you love, hope and joy. Who do you want to feed? What will you cook up?