Pull up a crate.
We’re serving up
stories.
Stone fruit
Of our many daily rituals, I savored the post-work hunger fix the most. It was a frenzied pantry raid paired with a recap of our great or not-so-great days. It was our end-of-day recalibration. No matter what happened out in the world, we always met back and snacked. We’d stand at the counter, eating straight from bags or off the cutting board, and catch each other up. We’d swing between topics, and each change in conversation was a shift in fare. Dark chocolate and his walk in the rain at lunch. Sun-dried tomatoes and a cold call from my dad about his friend who is dying from cancer.
Pastry baby
I dropped out of culinary school the quarter before the bakery rotation. Some students called it the “bacation” because it was comically chiller than culinary. Nobody yelled, there were no ticket times, and you ate cupcakes. I could have used a good bacation. I had started resenting a lot about school: the culture, curriculum, and classmates. Seeing those happy, cupcake-filled pastry students irritated the hell out of me. So, like a balm on my burns, I started calling them pastry babies. Never to their faces, just in rage texts to the few friends I kept in touch with back home.
