The United Kingdom – London, York, Harrogate

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

“What’s the purpose of your stay?”

“I’m on a food tour of the U.K.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, I have a food blog.”

“I was thinking of starting me one of those too. Me ‘n my partner, we had a name for it, ‘The Wobbly Table’. That’s the worst part of a restaurant experience isn’t it? The wobbly table. The name was taken though. What’s the name of yours?”

“Feed Me Dearly.”

“You got a card on ya?”

I rooted around my 20-year old blue canvas passport wallet, the one that still carries a yellowed love note from my husband, and passed him my information in pseudo-laminate form: website name, email address, social details.

The passport control agent looked at it, smiled at the three mischievous toeheads staring up from his palm, and let me through.

“Welcome to London.”

London

The Knightsbridge Hotel

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

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Travel

Feast Portland

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

It was Monday September 19, 2016 and I’d flown back from Portland, Oregon the previous day, exhausted, sick of food, happy.

I’d just spent 4 days drinking and eating my way through the Feast Portland food festival, stopping for a breather on Saturday because my body, I’d realized, could no longer handle mass volumes of pork belly and Oregon pinot.

Still a fan of Snapchat at the time, I’d video scanned my itinerary into the app as I walked through my plans for each of my 4 days in Portland. Sandwich Invitational, drink tank, another drink tank, Grand Tasting, Night Market, yet another drink tank, Smoked, Brunch Village. It was paradise for the lush and the lover of food.

After touching down at New York’s JFK airport, I filed a mental note to return to Feast the following year.

By winter I was feeling a stronger Portland itch and started to look into plans for Feast Portland 2017. I sketched out a list of Airbnb properties where I could stay and live more locally, outside of the downtown area known for its shopping, restaurants and high rise hotels. I was struck by a number of consistencies: craftsman houses, white furnishings, modern lighting, Pendleton blankets, houseplants. I could get behind this for a few days.

Fast forward a few more months and I received an email from Feast Portland’s organizers – would I be interested in cooking at Feast this year?

If there’s ever been a “hallelujah, I’ve arrived” moment in my stop-and-go food career, this would be it. Although I’ll never cop to jumping and fist pumping, a fly on the wall might have seen it.

I’d be cooking alongside three other women whom I’d long admired – Eva Kosmas Flores from Adventures in Cooking, Ashley Alexander from Gather and Feast, and Joy the Baker. The plan was to host a dinner for 60 on Sauvie Island, outdoors in the elements with a fleet of volunteers ready to help us plate, serve, and help make our evening spectacular.

Gilding the Feast Portland lily even further, Travel Oregon invited me to join several other media professionals on a pre-Feast 3-day trip down the Oregon Coast for a tour of Oregon’s notable hotels and restaurants and while in transit, stop to catch sight of the state’s rugged coastline and wildlife.

On September 11, 2017, after a hasty airport terminal re-packing of my entire suitcase to make sure that I didn’t exceed Delta’s second overage fee for bags over 70 lbs, I headed west, touching down in Portland just after noon. First stop, the Dossier hotel located in downtown Portland.

My itinerary for the week was mighty – a quick unpack at the Dossier, then off to transport my kitchen gear to the newly renovated cooking studio and event space “Tendue” from the team at Secret Supper.

From there I’d hit up Jacobsen Salt Co. for some kosher and finishing salts for our event. Somehow my buddy Ben suckered me into running a 6K Healthyish fun run on Friday morning, the night after our first Feast event. (Post mortem analysis of the fun run would later indicate that 1. Hangover runs are not fun, and 2. I’m possibly the most competitive person north of the equator, turning our group jog into a single-person Olympic time trial, also not fun.)

Next I’d meet up with my friend Zeph from Proletariat Butchery for barrel-aged negronis mixed by fellow Traeger Grills pro team member Jeffrey Morgenthaler at Clyde Common; drive to dinner for shaved ham, handmade pasta & meatballs and the infamous cavolo nero salad at local Portland favorite Ava Gene’s. We’d finish the night with beer and coconut ice cream on the rooftop bar at Departure Lounge run by Top Chef runner up Gregory Gourdet.

And this was just Monday. None of this comprised even a single sentence in the knee-deep itinerary sent to me, in app form no less!, by my friends at Travel Oregon.

I figured that in order to fit this trip into a digestible single-serve blog post that it might be prudent to create a photo journal of sorts. Yes there were stories. Of whales and wolves, and of chefs in Harry Potter outfits. There were friendships formed, hazelnut beers consumed, sunrises watched, forests hiked. I might have used my Feast media pass to sneak into a country music concert. I’m quite certain that I ate my weight in gluten. I definitely chugged a full glass of champagne from a chambong at the Bon Appétit after party, which caused me to (classily of course) lose my footing and topple off a 4-foot wall into a crowd of horrified bystanders. (Note, I’m still not sure if I’m invited back next year or if I earned MVP status that night, Feast Portland organizers, please weigh in.)

But perhaps these details are better conserved as the lore of Feast. That dreamy destination where no set of words can accurately describe the sprightly conversations, the extended bellies and unbuttoned jeans, the whiskey-inflected off-kilter balance and in some cases, the majestic set of purple thigh bruises that result when food and drink and friendship are combined in awe-inspiring doses.

It’s an experience. One that I hope that I’ll be a part of again and again.

And now friends, some photographs.

The Dossier Hotel, downtown Portland

Wolves & People farmhouse brewery, Willamette Valley wine country

Lunch at Valley Commissary, McMinnville

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Savory

Where there’s salmon there’s sunshine

Saturday, August 5, 2017

So now for that awkward re-introduction…The kind where you’ve been gone a while and tiptoe back, ready to re-embrace old traditions, a blank Word doc, images shot and edited, a storyline, some fumbling with basic code, thoughts of the next post already on my mind. I missed it.

It’s been a hectic year. 18 months in fact between the moment when I decided, after watching a set of green business owners stumble their way through an episode of Shark Tank that, hey, now’s my time to do this.

To build a business. To fulfill a dream that had been burning inside of me like a well-concealed flame.

From the moment when I realized over 15 years ago that you could buy a domain name and set up shop on the Internet, I’d been consumed with the idea. My GoDaddy account was a graveyard for ideas come and gone. BoxTheParty.com, HubandSpokeBranding.com; BuildingBrandMe; the ever-essential JessicaFiorillo.com.

“What about starting a fruit molasses business?” I’d asked Rodney while we brushed our teeth and jostled for space at our one-person sink. Forrest Gump-like, I forged on. “You know, gluten free, vegan, refined sugar free. Cherry molasses, berry molasses, how about blueberry molasses?”

And so, several weeks into my remission from cancer, with a bowl of salted almonds and a bedtime glass of red at my side, I settled into a nightly routine of Shark Tank and daydreams. My mind raced, thoughts formed, notes were scribbled into a neon yellow notebook whose sales label I’d removed unsuccessfully, leaving a 2-inch square of goo. Copies of entrepreneurship books started showing up at our doorstep: “The Lean Startup”, “Zero to One”, “ReWork”, every book by Steve Blank.

It felt mission-driven, even if it was one woman’s mission to fulfill her life’s true calling rather than the altruistic kind that saves the lives of tiny babies in faraway countries. My eventual plan was to develop an e-commerce marketplace that would give a voice and commerce opportunities to emerging kitchenware designers (think ceramicists, metalworkers, textile makers).

I got an office, hired some freelance staff, and after much deliberation, landed on the name Propped, a nod to the term “food props” that cooks (and especially cooks who photograph their food) use to refer to the artillery that lines their kitchen shelves. I bought yet another domain, Propped.com, and we were off to the races.

36 comments

Family

Naked glory

Monday, November 2, 2015

A neighbor was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

This kind of news always comes as a shock. Certainly for me, but more for her; there are so many changes ahead. Whether she likes it or not, she’ll be thrust into a world where the landscape stays the same but everything looks, feels, and even tastes different. She’ll visit waiting rooms painted every shade of tan; flip through the office copy of “Prevention” magazine. Mostly, she’ll find it hard to focus so she’ll revert to her strange new habit of staring at the wall, emotionless, wondering what will become of her life.

There are many lessons that I’d like to share but don’t. She’ll learn these things as she goes, I suppose. She’ll question every one of her past behaviors, wondering if she’s somehow at fault. She’ll ask “why me?” and then move on, self-pity isn’t good for the soul.

And she will move forward, that I know. One baby step at a time.

But often for every step forward there are two steps back. Cancer is thorny like that. It can morph and change, give you false hope, slip through the safety nets that you’ve so doggedly put in place.

It’s like fighting an army where every soldier is armed with a different weapon. You fight back with whatever tools are at your disposal, never knowing when the arsenal will run dry.

The age-old battle analogy…but, does it help or does it hinder? Catherine Poole, who runs the Melanoma International Foundation, talks about “fighting” words in a recent blog post. She refers to the unnecessary pressure that it puts on the patient. Do you lose the battle if you haven’t fought hard enough?

There is evidence that suggests that rather than adopting a “fighting spirit”, patients should cultivate a “will to live”. It keeps your body off the defensive and focuses your energy on the positive outcome – life itself – not the negative distractions: the enemies, mutations, and malignancies that are as much a part of your body as your own hands.

Reflecting on my own experience with cancer, it’s been deeply internal; more mental than physical. While you endure physical pain as part of the healing process, you’d be surprised by how comfortable you become with the endless battery of hospital gowns, IV drips, fevers and barium milkshakes.

But mentally – that’s where cancer really thrives. It stretches its legs and buries itself in the sanctuary of your pliable mind, teasing you with one new challenge after the next. It delights in your uncertainty and sits back to watch you squirm. Sometimes you’re tearful, morose even, but often you’re enthusiastic, filled with energy, pen and paper in hand.

You try to hold on to these good moments; in fact you feel guilty for thinking otherwise. The guilt is enhanced by the emails and texts that reassure that “you’ll be fine! I know it!”

Which should empower you further, but the truth is, these encouragements feel permeable, like the softest, most buoyant cloud which lets the sun shine through but doesn’t make each day, each baby step, any easier.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who can, with any accuracy, predict the future. So while it’s nice for friends and family to say that in their heart of hearts things will be fine, the comfort in that phrase is often more for their benefit than it is for mine.

As the patient, you know the statistics, you can recite them backwards with one eye closed. You’re both dreamer and realist; hopeful for long-term remission, but cognizant that your future is anything but certain.

This “will to live” though, is powerful. You can choose to fall prey to the numbers and live in fear. Or, you can choose to ignore them and live your life with hope, squeezing as many droplets of happiness as you can from each stone.

50 comments

Family

Happy places

Monday, October 19, 2015

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“It might make sense if I read my intro first, and then respond to your questions.”

“15 years ago I was diagnosed with cancer…” I continued with a condensed version of the last 15 years: cancer, food, cancer. Life distilled into 200 words or less.

“Now to answer your questions….my writing experience outside the blog is limited. Goals for this class? I need to get back to being me, but I can’t seem to do it on my own. I need help. I need someone to give me an assignment.”

I searched my teacher’s eyes for an acknowledgement of my situation. That at the very least, even if I couldn’t produce a level of work that I would be proud of, she would understand what it meant for me to be there. In this class, sharing my story with a group of strangers. Trying when trying is complicated.

I’d signed up for the class on a whim. A 10-week course on nonfiction writing that would help me communicate my feelings to the outside world. “Outside” meaning anyone who doesn’t live within the four walls of our home. The people – parents, siblings, friends – from whom I’ve slowly distanced myself.

I have a primal urge to be alone right now. Preferably in nature, where the blue sky yawns, the trees don’t pity, and you’re not required to talk about murky things. Heavy things. Things that exhaust. Life, death, fear, uncertainty.

The summer was a challenge. The ongoing recovery from surgery, immunotherapy, colitis, steroids, a white bread diet that would make low-carb disciples weak in the knees.

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“The summer from hell” as my family has dubbed it.

But, I remind Rodney, what if these are still the good days?

Occasional escapes to the lake have been my salvation despite my guilt about leaving the family. My therapist, who runs the Callanish cancer retreat near Vancouver, BC reframed things for me:

“You’re running towards the lake, not from the city. This isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. You know how to make yourself happy in spite of everything. Keep doing it. This is your medicine too.”