What's food writing for?

Part two: Shut up, brain! We're making granola.

Early on in pandemic lockdown I suffered a nasty bout of insomnia. While I find all forms of sleeplessness cruel, this insidious version had the nerve to first lull me into the false security of drifting off moments after getting in bed before shaking me wide awake a few hours later. I unsuccessfully tried all the old standbys—moving to a new location, reading then watching (then back to reading) something boring—for days on end. Then one night, mind still racing at 4am, I’d had enough.

I clamored out of bed with dramatic enough flourish to briefly awaken my peacefully sleeping husband, who turned over and fell back asleep within seconds. Then I padded downstairs heartened by a single thought: I had all the ingredients to bake granola from scratch, so that’s what I was going to do. At least I’d have a delicious homemade breakfast to thank my insomnia for this time.

I preheated the oven and measured and assembled the ingredients in between mindlessly scrolling on my phone, past videos of singing dogs, a cat punching its owner while she tried to apply foundation and—ooh, do I need a garish fast food-themed pajama set? Probably yes. I tipped the honey-slicked oats onto a lined baking sheet and slid it into the oven, after which I self-diagnosed a brain tumor (or was it just stress?) on WebMD. But before I could verify this through a second, equally reliable healthcare source (“like that Cleveland clinic that’s always putting out health research,” I reasoned) the magnetic aroma of cinnamon and sweet toasty pecans was already wafting into my nostrils.

Shut up about your so-called tumor! We’re making granola.

No matter what banal or absurd distraction I cooked up over that hour, the simple, tactile act of baking kept jolting me right back to the present—to the quiet predawn in a house smelling like granola. Like an intermittent meditation practice to free me from my sleepless, pandemic-induced mind prison.

When I wrote about insomniac granola for Food52 later that year, I received an overwhelming number of replies in the comments and via emails and DMs from people who also found solace in the wee hours through cooking and baking, or who simply appreciated hearing from a fellow human shitshow who was barely clinging to sanity.

Which brings me to part two of why I love long-form food writing and believe it matters. Vulnerable, food-centric storytelling is relatable; its universality has power as a form of solace. For a handful of people, reading “Insomniac Granola” was like a cathartic, collective shoulder drop in a frightening time, and validated cooking as a kind of meditation for the meditation-averse. You’re not alone in this struggle to wield control over your overstimulated, occasionally sadistic brain as we endure crisis after crisis. Hell, it might even help to cook or bake something. Measure, chop, season, bake, taste, season again, tip into bowl, eat while warm, sigh.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that I tried and failed at guided meditation when I became too painfully aware of the sound of my own heartbeat and spiraled into a near existential crisis about the fragility of personhood. Shortly thereafter, I failed at yoga nidra (guided mental imagery in Shavasana or corpse pose), because the soothing patter of actual rain outside was punctuated by a persistent drip-drip-drip on a pipe somewhere, which entered my brain like a worm, causing me to fidget out of corpse pose and think about death for the ensuing 20 minutes.

So yeah, I cook to meditate. I also walk in the woods and fields, mountains, deserts and along shores whenever the opportunity arises. However, living in the decidedly flat Upper Midwest in the third-largest U.S. city means such chances are scarcer than I’d like.

The thing of it is, I fail pretty often at cooking, too, which occasionally negates its soothing properties. Fortunately, kitchen disasters, like meditation fails, make for hilarious writing fodder, though it’s generally easier to appreciate their comedic genius after a little time has passed.

Read part one on restaurant criticism here.