Ebullition: the act or process or state of bubbling up

a new name + new direction

Hello my friends,

I am still here! Though I’ve been quiet these past few months, I have not abandoned this space. But I am moving in a different direction and want to share my writerly evolution with you all.

Over the past few years, the purpose of this Substack has shifted bit by bit. Originally, I began writing to figure out what I thought about looming topics like the existence of hell and evangelical interpretations of gender roles. Like Joan Didion, “I [wrote] entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” I continue to write because I still don’t know what I’m thinking or what things mean. But as I write and unearth, I continue to shift purposes, pulling words from the depths to find beauty and sustenance and metaphor.

A few years ago, I named this space Wild + Waste, which stems from the Hebrew phrase tohu wa-bohu found in the creation story—before anything was created when whatever existed was void, without form, wild and waste.

I wrote, “In this life, we are constantly forming, taking new shape, undergoing minute transformation. Inevitably, we will find ourselves in the wilderness, sometimes for prolonged periods. I’m writing for those who have felt the pang of disbelief, whose certainties have crumbled, who are left feeling void and unformed. But even in the unforming, in the undoing of so much belief, we are being formed anew. We are wild + waste, awaiting the new birth of creation, bursting with mystery, divinely loved, with goodness radiating from our marrow. Not the goodness of perfection, but the goodness of existence.”

It feels right and poignant to move from this former name to my new one: Ebullition, which is the act or process or state of bubbling up. It implies inherent movement and growth, the chemical and metaphorical reaction of invisible things meeting and transforming with time—rising, falling, fermenting. I am intrigued by the metaphor of fermentation. I am intrigued by the literal process of it. And I am also captivated by the connection between places and ingredients, flavors and traditions.

Food is more than satiation. Place is more than inhabitation.

In her memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles quotes her friend Bill Swing, the now-retired Episcopal bishop of California, “There’s a hunger beyond food that’s expressed in food, and that’s why feeding is always a kind of miracle.” Feeding is a kind of miracle—the enduring recipes and traditions that connect people to places, that sustain and nourish and satisfy our layers of hunger. Over the past 10 months as I’ve been moving through my first year of grad school, considering a thesis project, enduring difficult but necessary workshops to grow my craft, I’ve thought frequently about my dearest memories and realized all of them center around shared meals. Whether making tattie scones with leftover Thanksgiving mashed potatoes with my Granny, sautéing accidentally-foraged mushrooms in the Redwoods with my dear friend

K.J. Ramsey

, cooking paella over a campfire beneath the Grand Tetons with my friends Lori and Josh, or slurping soba noodles at a quiet shop in Kyoto with my husband, Jordan…food and memory are intricately linked. And so, I want to write about these miracles. Partly because this theme connects to my grad school thesis project. Partly because this is what gives me joy.

Here’s what you can expect with this redirection:

• Literary food/Place writing about specific traditions in specific places (i.e. sourdough bread in San Francisco, mole + mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico).

• Reflections on my experimentation with new-to-me fermentation methods and technique (i.e. attempting to make sauerkraut and kimchi).

• Essays on food memories/experiences whether locally here in San Diego or elsewhere.

• Occasional recipes.

• Eventual guest posts/interviews.

In my research (as I am knee-deep in research mode right now), I am currently reading MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, which feels especially relevant in our current economic climate with exorbitantly priced eggs and groceries. Fisher balances rational tips for cooking and eating during lean times (in the 1940s) with stunning prose on the sacred nature of communal eating and the rich flavors that can emerge from thoughtful cooking with near-empty pantries.

She writes of her friend Sue, “[She] had neither health nor companionship to comfort and warm her, but she nourished herself and many other people for years, with the quiet assumption that man’s need for food is not a grim obsession, repulsive, disturbing, but a dignified and even enjoyable function.”

A dignified and even enjoyable function.

May we taste and remember together.