Why the new edition of Jam Today: A Diary of Cooking With What You’ve Got? Well, aside from some changes in people mentioned, and a few additional thoughts about other dishes, some themes have gotten clearer for me in the years since the appearance of the first book and its sequel (Jam Today Too: The Revolution Will Not Be Catered)— the way they do when you think more about what you mean. The main one is that we are all in this together. What food and cooking and serving and eating mean to me is a stitching together of different lives, different perspectives, and even different eccentricities, into what we might call, if not a rich tapestry, then at least a rich tablecloth.
So I wanted to lay the tablecloth out again and set it for another feast. We can talk over the dinner table. That’s my favorite part.
Here’s my big question, the one I always want to bring up: What do we really need to nourish ourselves? Do we really need the admiration of others? Or do we need the companionship of others, their conviviality and different joys, all brought together in a nourishing whole?
That’s what I need, anyway. I need to think of the way I eat, and the way I feed my friends and loved ones, as one of the best ways to enjoy the moment at hand, to knit together the all too frequently frazzled ends of my world. I need to look at the moment I’m in, look at what my needs are at that moment, as well as the needs of my loved ones, and at what I might have to offer them. Right then, at that moment. And out of that rich heap of possibilities, what I both have to give and want to take, I make our meals. As a kind of meditation on how to similarly make every moment of my life richer still. If I have any ambition, it’s to have a life that’s made of such fully lived moments.
When I think about my world, and about what I can do to make it ever more satisfying, I see there is nothing I can do better than to look at what’s in front of me and set to work making that ever more nourishing. In every sense of the word.
Here is how I wish to nourish you, my dear reader: I don’t wish for you to cook like me. I don’t wish for you to think like me. I wish for you to eat, and enjoy, and live in the way most suited to you, after the cautious and joyous experimentation it takes to inquire into that end. Because that is where the joy comes in for me. All the words in the Jam Today series are written (it bears repeating) as if in hope of being invited to stand in your kitchen, glass of wine in hand, appreciatively watching you cook your meal, and chatting with you about what I like to do. One of the joys of the books for me has been the many personal connections I’ve made, most of them totally unexpected, with people who have since become friends, who have written or told me in person (con gusto) of meals that they’ve made, feasts that were particularly joyful, kitchen mistakes that were particularly hilarious. That has been a serious joy, making those connections.
Because while I don’t want anyone to think like me, or cook like me, there are certain values I believe we all share . . . we who love to cook and eat and think about what place the nourishment of ourselves and our loved ones has in the Great Chain of Being. The main value is this: Kindness over all. After that: Eating together is an act of community. Because community is, finally, the best nourishment of all.
Bon appétit.