Why I’m Reclaiming My Meals
Alarm. Shower. Coffee. Commute. Email. Coffee. F̶a̶c̶e̶b̶o̶o̶k̶. Slack. Food.
My days tend to run on autopilot until lunch. I lay out tomorrow’s clothes the night before. The BART train always arrives at 8:56 (except on days that end in “y”). My email serves me a well-lit list of to-do’s before my morning meetings. “Where to lunch” is often my first proactive decision of the day.
In my mother’s home town of Bitritto, Italy, lunch is also part of the routine. At 1:15pm, my uncle boards up the windows of his perfume shop. My little cousin leaves school. My 92-year-old grandmother comes home from church. Every weekday. By 1:30, 12 family members are gathered around a table at the same home my mother returned to on the day she was born. My aunt emerges from the kitchen with a 2 gallon pot of orecchiette rabe. Then, my family eats. Together.
At my last job, I ate lunch at my desk 4 days a week. For dinner, I would grab a quick burrito between the gym and the couch. Busyness was a badge I wore proudly — a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness.
Then, two months ago I had my first Josephine meal. I walked about 6 blocks (#deadweightloss) to a stranger’s house in NOPA. I was planning to take out, but my culinarily-inclined neighbor invited me to sit down and eat in her dining room. I ate and we chatted. A few others from the hood came and went from May’s kitchen in no particular rush. We talked about the new bike lane on Fell street, the pies at Green Chile Cafe, and the Warrior’s game last night. The whole experience was lovely. I left with a full stomach and a nourished soul. My phone sat idly at home.
Three times a day we have a choice—we can choose to treat our meals as means or as ends. For millennia, meals have been an opportunity to reground ourselves in what’s important. As Michael Pollan points out, “there are lots of things in modern life we no longer do for ourselves, that we’ve outsourced to corporations…but cooking is different. There’s something that draws us to that hearth.” So, how come so many of my meals feel removed from a kitchen, a full table, or even just a thought-process? Food is so much more than fuel.
In an age of Soylent and productivity apps that manage all your other productivity apps, sometimes it’s easy to think that squeezing more time out of every day is the ultimate purpose. But to what end? Isn’t the whole point of “buying more time” to spend time doing things that I love? Like sharing food and forming real, human connection.
I needed to reclaim my meals.
In the past few month, I’ve started voting with my fork. I’m choosing to spend time and consume foods that align with both my values and my taste buds. What a privilege! I started having daily breakfast outside with my roommates, and asking waiters at restaurants a question or two that had nothing to do with the specials or gluten-free options. I bought a crockpot.
I also starting working for Josephine. I’m pretty proud of this little community-oriented food movement we’ve started in the East Bay. It makes me smile to know that I work toward a mission that The Atlantic thinks may be a little too utopian for our on-demand world. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes I crave the times that aren’t optimized for efficiency. The in-betweeness of walking to the bus stop or standing in line at the market. During constant periods of stimulus, my mind becomes a gallery wall without the requisite negative space.
Like life in any startup, my days are still busy. I still order delivery on ocassion. Sometimes, I’ll invite Aziz to have lunch with me (thanks Netflix!). There isn’t always a “human-touch” element to my meals. But I like to think that if my uncle can close up shop for two hours every day to eat lunch with his 92-year-old mother and his 9 year old niece, the least I can do is eat with some intention. Despite however busy I choose to feel, I can always stop, if only for a moment, in this whirling world, to think:
“This next bite is going to be pretty awesome.
How lucky am I.”
