Our Kind Kitchen is where I write about my continually unfolding process of understanding what it means to be fully alive.
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I am hungry to feel fully alive.
You might have read the words WRITE IT OUT and immediately thought:
"Oh, but I'm not a writer."
You're telling yourself a story that isn't true.
You may not feel like you deserve to call yourself a writer until you have published a book or have a byline in a magazine or have a daily writing practice.
That's just waiting for someday, an addiction that far too many of us have.
Even though I'm known as a writer, I don't call myself a writer anymore.
I’m an impassioned weirdo who loves to write. My body and brain feel creaky and screechy if I don’t push my pen against plain paper and play with language until I understand what I’m experiencing. And how I can write my way out.
I have learned to say yes to myself and let go of most of my limiting stories.
That wasn't always true. I've always been an impassioned weirdo, but I haven't always trusted myself enough to write on a regular basis.
Learning to write words and sentences, play with sounds, let go of sense, and do the work, even if what I write falls flat in my mind, and keep my pen moving forward on the page?
That's why I became a published writer.
I write.
your stories matter.
"Think Katie's work is just for women? Think again. I'm a man (obviously), and my business tripled, too!"
Joshua
Made six figures:
I keep my mind open for glimmers — the moments where I feel engaged in a moment and stop worrying about anything else for a beat.
I feel compelled to share what helped me to find that light.
I love how paying attention to the food we’re eating — a ripe nectarine, a slice of gluten-free chocolate and caramel cake, or a medium-rare steak with flecks of sea salt on top — can stop our thoughts.
And for a moment, we are here. Fully alive.
I love feeding people with joyful stories, with wildly specific details, and with insights I realized, early in the morning, while I wrote at the kitchen table in my $1.49 green composition book.
Whenever I share something here, I’m engaged in an ongoing conversation with you — a conversation about feeding myself and others with joy, with moments of presence, and stories about times I felt confused or filled with sorrow.
I move forward by unraveling my thoughts.
This is how I feed myself.
And I’d like to feed you too.
Read more.
You might have read the words WRITE IT OUT and immediately thought:
"Oh, but I'm not a writer."
You're telling yourself a story that isn't true.
You may not feel like you deserve to call yourself a writer until you have published a book or have a byline in a magazine or have a daily writing practice.
That's just waiting for someday, an addiction that far too many of us have.
Even though I'm known as a writer, I don't call myself a writer anymore.
I’m an impassioned weirdo who loves to write. My body and brain feel creaky and screechy if I don’t push my pen against plain paper and play with language until I understand what I’m experiencing. And how I can write my way out.
I have learned to say yes to myself and let go of most of my limiting stories.
That wasn't always true. I've always been an impassioned weirdo, but I haven't always trusted myself enough to write on a regular basis.
Learning to write words and sentences, play with sounds, let go of sense, and do the work, even if what I write falls flat in my mind, and keep my pen moving forward on the page?
That's why I became a published writer.
I write.
your stories matter.
"Think Katie's work is just for women? Think again. I'm a man (obviously), and my business tripled, too!"
Joshua
Made six figures:
If you become a free subscriber, you will
receive every letter
I send.
Sometimes, when my life grows particularly complicated (even more so than ever), or I decide to give myself some time off, I’ll send out 1 letter that week.
(Or, 4, since my ADHD mind needs to process things rapid-fire through writing.)
These letters are going to be loose and conversational.
Think of them as letters from a friend.
Sometimes, I might only have the energy to send you a postcard, but it will contain a tiny story that might stay in your mind for a while.
I’m going to mention food in every letter, because food and feeding and hunger and that moment of feeling fully alive in the smell or taste of something matters to me. Deeply.
But this is not a recipe newsletter.
To be honest, it’s my favorite way to earn my living.
I’m an impassioned weirdo who loves to write.
My body and brain feel creaky and screechy if I don’t push my pen against plain paper and play with language until I understand what I’m experiencing. And how I can write my way out.
I write every day because I need to write. That’s how my brain works. Whatever words and phrases make the most sense to me at the end of the day? I fold them into pieces I share here.
After all, as Joan Didion wrote about living a life:
“I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it.”
So, if you asked me what I do in the world, I would say that.
I live my life.
And I would love for writing Our Kind Kitchen to become my full-time living, eventually.
And, writing Our Kind Kitchen
is part of how I earn my living.
Subscribe now.
Once you have read and enjoyed 3 letters, consider becoming a paid subscriber, at $5 a month, or $50 for the year. Your paid subscription will help me pay my bills by doing the work I love.
Paid subscribers receive these benefits:
- Photos and brief descriptions of food I created with my husband in the Substack app. These are meant to inspire you in the moment.
- Access to all the letters I have written here in the past 5 years.
- Recipe index to the recipes my husband and I did create for the newsletter, as well as recipes from our old food blog, Gluten-Free Girl, as we share them. (Coming soon.)
- A monthly conversation with me and Danny on Zoom, called The Two of Us Talking about Food, Together, with You.
- My deepest gratitude for supporting my writing and my work.
So, if you have enjoyed 3 letters from me here, and you feel a small shift in your mindset, then consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Thank you.
But wait! There's more!
Think of this newsletter as an invitation to sit with me in our kind kitchen.
If we invited you into our home — my husband Danny and me — we’d feed you butternut squash soup with a walnut gremolata topping, a radicchio salad with pickled red onions, feta, and a sour cherry vinaigrette, and almond muffins with freeze-dried blueberries I found at Trader Joe’s.
We’d talk about Ted Lasso, bell hooks, stories about my kids as they grow, and weird little moments of joy. I would spontaneously share poems with you. I’d be super geeky excited about the research I’m doing about the ADHD mind, or autism, and other neurotypes, since all 4 of us in our family — my husband and I, plus our 2 kids — are neurospicy.
Nothing in our home is typical.
Always, always, I would share my joy about the books I’ve read recently by the authors whose stories of being human move me the most.
We’d laugh together. Maybe we’d sit on the front porch and share stories of randomly meeting celebrities. Maybe I’d ask to hear your latest song. Maybe we’d end up crying about something that moved us.
And then we’d laugh again. And lose our minds, for a moment, about the taste of ripe watermelon, with little bits of feta cheese pressed into each slice, that we popped into our mouths. And then we’d marvel at the red sunset over the water we can see between the apartment buildings across the street from our apartment.
That’s what this newsletter is about. All of this.
I would love to meet you here.
