Lemon Bars, a Homeless Guy, and the Big Questions (An Essay)

Hi! Today, I’m mixing things up and posting this essay that I wrote last year. (Thanks to my writing club friends for some helpful edits!) I’ve been scouring some earlier and unpublished writing since this little blogging experiment is a tad more time-consuming than I thought. I have a fresh post for Friday with one of my FAVORITE time and money-saving tips, so get excited! 

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017, 9:23pm - San Francisco

I’m biking home from working a catering event at a fancy Venture Capital fund in downtown San Francisco. The attendees were sipping wine while debating the future of Artificial Intelligence, discussing questions like: Will AI wipe out the middle class? If robots kill us all, will it be out of blood thirst, or because they think they’re doing it for the greater good? 

I work these kinds of events regularly enough that I shouldn’t be surprised, but the subtle splendor of free food and drink available at many SF offices still amazes me. Among the La Croix and San Pellegrino, there were at least thirty $10-each juices in the office fridge, not to mention beer, wine, protein bars, Philz coffee, and countless snacks filling cabinets upon cabinets.

A seemingly-innate hatred of food waste means I’m carting some leftovers home. They’re all strapped up on the rack of my bike. Tonight I restrained myself and only took a little bit - two containers of veggies, three chocolate chip cookies and six lemon bars. 

As I bike up Sutter street, taking in the surroundings of downtown San Francisco on a Tuesday night, I notice a man on my right who appears to be homeless. He’s sitting on a bench, wrapped in a blanket, and he’s rocking slightly forward and back. The look on his face can only be described as excruciating. I’m not sure if he’s cold or in pain or both or neither. 

Ahhhhh. So sad. Poor guy. I push away my first thought and keep biking. And then I remember I have food - I could actually stop and give him some. Ehhhh, do I really wanna stop? I’m exhausted and kind of just want to go home and I actually do want all the food I took tonight. 

Sometimes I take food just so it won’t get tossed and I intentionally look for homeless people to give it to, but that wasn’t the case tonight. 

Great - so you’re gonna be another one of those people who just passes by thinking “how sad” and does nothing? How many times have you done that before? 

Then comes the swift safety check - there are other people on the street, and a woman is taking out the trash at a restaurant next door to where the homeless man’s sitting. Just in case he’s crazy I wouldn’t be alone with him. 

I pull over at the corner just past him. I break into my leftovers and consider what to give him, getting my food gift ready to hand over quickly so that I can make a swift exit if needed. I walk my bike over to the man. “Hi! Do you want some food?”

He smiles at me. He has a big gap between his front teeth. He’s smiling so big he almost closes his eyes - an expression drastically different than the one I saw just moments ago in my periphery. He nods - it seems like maybe he can’t speak. 

“Veggies or lemon bars?” I ask. “Or both? How about both?!”

I hand the man a container of veggies. “Here’s your dinner…” I tell him. “And here’s your dessert!” I exclaim, handing over the bag of lemon bars. 

He opens the veggies and starts eating, looking at them lovingly. As I fumble around to strap my bag back on my bike, I notice his stench. I am simultaneously grossed out and incredibly pained for him that he lives smelling this way. I also realize that my bike headlight is shining awkwardly in his face. 

“Ok - well, enjoy!” I say, “Sorry about that light!” He looks up from the veggies, his eyes not quite focused on me, as if he’s in a bit of a daze. He’s looking in my direction but kind of gazing off in the distance. He’s still smiling as big as ever.

As I pedal home, a million thoughts pummel me: 

Well, that felt good, right? Good deed for the day?!

Yeah, or a reminder of how many other times you DIDN’T STOP and did nothing. Or of how many other homeless people are out there tonight without food.

It’s crazy that in the span of 10 minutes I went from fancy rich person office to smelly homeless guy on the street and I interacted directly with both. How can such drastically different things coexist in such proximity?

Lately I am plagued with big questions about society. There are so many problems worth caring about. How do I balance caring - and taking action to try to make things better - with living a happy life? Is it even possible to live a happy life while genuinely caring about this stuff? 

In trying to write a conclusion to this story, I realize I don’t have one. I’m sure I will always have these questions, and I will probably never have any answers. I am grateful for whatever made me pullover to give that man some food, because the encounter reminded me of three things:

1. Above all - recognize my common humanity with everyone I encounter.

2. A simple smile can make an impact.

3. Ask the big questions, always. Even if you’ll never have the answers.

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PS. You can sign up to get my blog posts in your inbox here. Usually they will be short updates that include food tips, quick recipes, etc. This essay was a special treat :).

aloha for now

The beauty of all-encompassing stillness.
A dogged hunt for that one mosquito that got in the house. 
Tasting a new fruit I didn’t know existed: every. single. day.
Feeling psychologically stripped-down (in a good way).
Waking up to real live rooster-song.
The creamiest avocados – all you can eat, all day every day.

These are just a few of the things I’ve experienced in the last week since I stepped foot on the 5-acre Hawaiian farm I’m calling home for the next three months. 

Let’s step back for a second. In my previous two posts, I wrote about how I got into food and the goals of my blog. Since then I’ve been on hiatus, and I still haven’t posted any recipes… I know – LAME!

The truth is, a few things have been holding me back:
a. I don’t have a crystal clear direction for what I want this blog to be.
b. Posting my writing publicly is scary (!) and
c. Writing recipes is harder than I thought because I never measure anything - oops!

But I'm moving past all of these. I know that I need to write about food, and I really want to share the food I make and inspire people to build confidence in the kitchen. I know I need to just do it. So I commit to doing it. Regularly. For the next three months (and hopefully well beyond).

Ok - I’m sure you’re wondering how I ended up on a farm in Hawaii. Since those initial blog posts back in June, I quit my food job in favor of the freedom to very intentionally figure out my next food/career move. I’m 90% sure I don’t want to be a chef, but I knew that I wanted to try being “closer” to food to determine whether I’d like to be some kind of artisan, farmer, or other food producer. At the very least, I knew that I wanted to experience firsthand what it’s like to work at growing food every day – for my love of food and new knowledge if nothing else.

Being single and 27 with a big case of the travel bug, I thought I should have some adventure before anything else. Hawaii was at the top of my travel list and working on a farm was at the top of my food to-do list, so marrying the two seemed like a perfect, intentional adventure. To top it off – Hawaii is the only place in the United States that grows coffee – my one true love. A little research, two emails and a phone call later, and I was accepted as an intern at the Big Island coffee farm I’m on now. The deal is – I work 30 hours a week in exchange for housing and food. I’m at an all-organic farm that grows mainly coffee and macadamia nuts to sell, as well as cacao for chocolate, and a variety of tropical fruits that get processed into jellies, jams, dried fruit and fruit leathers. Naturally, a variety of vegetables, herbs and bountiful tropical fruits are grown for our own consumption. Oh - and there are some wild chickens that occasionally leave eggs, though I’m still waiting to find one.

When I arrived last Wednesday, aside from the sheer disbelief that I was actually doing this, I was first overcome by the peaceful stillness of the farm, especially at night. We’re in a pretty remote area about 30 minutes south of Kona, at 2,000 ft elevation. The only “neighbor” sounds I’ve heard are an occasional dog bark or lawnmower. Otherwise, it’s just the crickets, birds, rain, and rustle of the wind.

Now that I’ve been here for a week, I’m realizing how utterly ideal this situation is for me at this moment in my life. For the next three months I'm embracing a simple lifestyle on the farm. From 7:30am - 1:30pm I get to work with my body (weeding, picking coffee, harvesting fruit, planting seeds, making jam, etc) and mind (trying to absorb as much information as possible from farmer & owner Una, with some food policy discussions sprinkled in among my unending questions).  And then from 1:30pm on I’m free to read, write, cook, and reflect. It’s like a food lover’s learning & writing retreat. I couldn’t be more excited and I hope you’ll follow along with me to see how this adventure unfolds!

Other than here on the blog, you can find me on my Instagram (@garlicpressjess) and SnapChat: (jslioon/garlic press jess) for the daily dirt. More on Hawaii later, and get excited for at least two recipes coming within a week. Promise!

yeah, it's pretty great here

the mission of this blog: little victories

As far as people stereotypes go, I’m your classic over-achiever, oldest child perfectionist. I like to follow the rules. I’m a people pleaser. I do like to color outside the lines, though I tend to get permission first.

But in the kitchen … I’m the opposite. I rarely use recipes, let alone follow them strictly. I buy what tickles my fancy, and I figure out what to do with it later. I take lots of risks, and mostly I experiment. Granted, I understand the basics, and I’ve practiced a lot, which means my experiments usually turn out ok (though I've had my fair share of failures). Bottom line: I'm confident when I'm in the kitchen.

After letting a number of ideas for this food blog marinate, I’ve landed on this mission: I want to help you build confidence in the kitchen. I want to inspire you to experiment. I want to help you learn how to think about cooking and be able to use your creativity and preferences to come up with new and delicious things you can create and be proud of. 

Cooking is one of the few remaining outlets where you get to make something with your hands, and not just anything, but something you NEED! Sustenance! After long days spent at the computer, there’s nothing like SMASHING your garlic clove with the side of your chef’s knife, and doing it not just because you want to smash something but because that smashing has a purpose. Plus, as Michael Pollan says (and I firmly believe) - if everyone cooked more, we would all be a lot healthier. Because if you had to make french fries, chips, or donuts every time you wanted to eat them, you'd eat them MAYBE once a year.

So, how do you build self-confidence in something? I’ve thought about this question a lot, and I believe it's all about the little victories: trying one small thing, seeing yourself succeed, and repeating until all those little somethings turn into a big something: Confidence!

PS. Little Victories is the title of a GREAT song by Matt Nathanson, which I will leave you with…

“This time, I’ll be sailin’
No more bailin’ boats for me
I’ll be out here on the sea
Just my confidence and me…

I’ll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
But I’ll learn to get by
On the little victories”

— Matt Nathanson

Listen to it here.