Today’s letter is a musing on the past 2 years (as if anyone needs another one of those). In March of 2020, I left school and moved back into my mom’s house. I left my partner in California and had zero idea when I’d see them again. I lost my own kitchen, my own room, my own routine, my own interests. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I am afraid: afraid of losing my stability again, of change. As I prepare to move to Berlin in three short months, I felt it was a good time to dig into why I’m so afraid, to remind myself that change is natural and it was always terrifying – even before that was clarified by a sudden, global shift.
This musing comes with no recipe, but maybe just a gentle reminder that none of us are prepared, because none of us know what’s next and it’s okay to risk an empty pantry, to go after something new and exciting, even if you’ll be uncertain what you will eat for dinner.
Rock-hard chickpeas rattle as they fall into a glass jar. The sound rattles me, I look over my shoulder – did anyone notice?
I screw the cap on, turn my attention to the pinto beans. Hitting against each other and the glass walls of the jar with little pings of resistance. Inevitably, they rattle to the concrete floor. I sweep it up and move coldly over to the farro, with the same hope of invisibility– nutty brown grains, rehoming them to the deli container. I feel guilty. The sun pours into the window and hits the yellow countertop. I turn my face back into the cupboard and find bread flour, inches away from the top of its home. Too much room, air, space. A poof of powder around me as the flour’s forced migration lands it in a comfortable new 4-quart cube, the crayola green lid hardly fitting over the flecks.
Room to breathe, rattle – things I don’t have. Downsizing creates certainty. I have 4 cups of rice. 1 cup of flour. Write it on the list. 1/4 cup of honey. A couple spoonfuls of chia seeds. Where can I go from here?
I move through the spices sniffing and checking dates, sneezing and covering my nose and mouth. Creating clouds of powder as I tip and pour and sweep and toss. Things without flavor have no home here. The potatoes are sprouting, the garlic turning green at the tips. The bananas are brown.
Pantries are full of rot. Rot has to be accounted for. One must constantly be checking the back shelves, taking note and planning for a future. I close the cupboards and turn to the house, maybe it's rotting too. It’s getting hard to breathe, I think there may be spores in my lungs. I cough. Dust here and there, shuffling on my tired feet from room to room.
Stopping, standing, rattling against glass windows.
Too much air and space. There isn’t enough here to fill it. I fold up my limbs like I do the edges of the saran wrap around the last rind of parmesan and lay my rigid limbs against the hard slopes of the porcelain tub. I am afraid of rotting, too.
I rest here in the plastic wrap, careful not to breathe too deeply, trying not to oxidize, trying not to turn mushy and discolored. I lie in wait until someone comes home and I frantically unwrap myself, afraid they will find that I have been sitting on the shelf all day, like the chickpeas. Stale like the bread we didn’t eat quickly enough. I lie about what I’ve been up to, some nonsense about going for a walk, journaling, something like that. Something that asks for movement, or thoughtfulness – in short, something that a jar of beans couldn’t do.
Obsession with the pantry, it’s how I'd characterize my last year and the last year around me. Everyone wants to know what they have with certainty. They want to secure what they will need. We’re all afraid of chaos, of losing things we thought we could rely on. Pantry pasta. Pantry beans. Pantry chocolate cake. Pantry. Pantry. Pantry. It echoes, becomes meaningless.
I’ve begun to long for shelves stocked full of preserves, pickles, stocks and stews. I want to cook down chicken bones for hours and seal away nourishment. I want to can produce and cure meat. I don’t want to cook tonight’s dinner. That’s a problem for a later date. What I want to do NOW, is plan for what’s NEXT, but I’m hitting up against the reality that it is always now.
In the pantry I find reassurance that a future is possible, but somehow no matter how much food I stack on its shelves: I must eat away at it. Day after day, my stock whittles and grows. I can’t get to that future where I am perfectly stocked. I have to continue replenishing, managing, and accounting for. Discarding, cooking, inhaling spices.
It’s getting hard to live with the pantry. It’s becoming a full-time job to think about and imagine what all might be possible with what I have in stock. The things I will need to acquire in order to truly be independent of the outside world are beginning to haunt me. I can’t sleep at night repeating my grocery list to myself. To open the cupboard one day and be able to cook whatever I feel, that’s the dream. But it’s an illusion and in the meantime I’m surrounded by dry goods, starving myself to death.