A brief explanation

MFK Fisher, in How To Cook A Wolf, suggests that it is perfectly acceptable to eat a pile of toast for breakfast. This notion has stuck with me since I first read it. Food is one of the focal points of my life. Growing it, putting it up, eating it, studying it, talking about it, painting it. Sometimes my obsession gets tedious. When I find myself getting worked up about what the perfectly local, nutritionally appropriate, aesthetically pleasing meal might be, I remember MFK’s permission to eat a pile of toast.

Over the years, in my mind, the pile has become exactly 13 pieces of toast. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is because I have a terrible memory, and I sometimes make things up to compensate. Perhaps I like imagining MFK Fisher at the table with exactly 13 pieces of toast, slathering them one by one with a generous layer of jam over a thick slab of butter.

This blog will serve as my garden and pantry journal for the coming year. I’ll record what I’ve grown, put up and eaten. It will help me next year when I can’t remember when I planted peas, what the weather was like in March or if I overdid it with zucchini again. And, hopefully it will help me remember that while food does matter, a lot, sometimes it is okay to just eat toast, if that is all you’ve got, all you can muster the energy for, or is simply just what pleases you.