02 / Seeking Enough

We watched Spirited Away with the family recently, and I found myself stuck on No-Face, the ‘hungry ghost’ spirit—the creature who devours everything set before him, grotesque and insatiable, never full.

We're in the wake of Christmas, heading into New Year's, surrounded by too much stuff: new gifts seeking space on shelves slowly cluttered over the year, so many iPhone photos to sort, mystery jars crowding the fridge.

One of the hardest feelings to access, I think, is the sense that there is enough. But what does plenty actually look like when it's not excess?

Last fall we made a short profile of Sandor Katz delighting in late-season peppers and grapes, fermenting them to extend the harvest and ideally deepen it. The experience kick-started a fermentation practice I'm going deeper with every season. Jars of ginger garlic kraut line the counter now, patient and alive (labeled to reduce mystery, Purple Rain v3, for example).

Two different Vittles projects on the horizon follow foragers finding plenty on the forest floor. Meanwhile, the landscape of grocery aisles is food chaos: perceived abundance that's actually mostly empty, over-processed, engineered to juice our sense of want (one reason to wear headphones while shopping).

Vittles at its core is a practice in noticing the plenty that surrounds us—seeing the abundance we can revive and access together. I renamed this newsletter with that in mind.

My family now mimics the hungry ghost gesture and sound to indicate when we're sliding into excess—a little joke that helps us notice.

Design Note: The new masthead comes from a 1940s cornmeal bag produced by the Francis Wholesale Company of Prestonsburg, Kentucky, pulled from the WKU archives. A good image for what I'm after here.

In late November, we brought German Soul to Cucalorus Film Festival. This work-in-progress performance expanded in significant ways thanks to Justin “Demeanor” Harrington, who grew our live music cues from 2 to 10, incorporating drum breaks that opened up new emotional terrain. We're excited to announce that Demeanor will be joining us for our next WIP at the Fort Worth African American Roots Music Festival in March.

Chef Ade Carrena designed three "food cues" that deepened the experience. Guests were welcomed with Warm Besesankun Tea, traditionally served in Benin after childbirth. As Chef Ade put it: "it felt right to me to take us through this experience with that."

During Justin's recollection of his first trip to Nigeria, audiences tasted Okra Stew Crisps—a remixed single bite of one of the only dishes Justin recognized while abroad. We’ll work on our live timing, but the response to this note was big.

And at the close of the performance, Hot Milk Cake: a dish Justin discovered in Germany that his mother immediately identified over FaceTime as something she'd made for him his whole life. “I don’t know if we’re stealing from them or they’re stealing from us,” she joked.

The audience feedback was insightful and encouraging. One guest said, "I was completely surprised...it shows that you never know where you're from. You never know the connection." A soul food restaurant owner from Wilmington was moved enough to say he planned to share the project's findings with his staff.

These responses remind us why we do this work—food is deeply personal, and shifting perspective takes care. Thank you to the staff at Cucalorus for offering the opportunity and all our soul supporters who helped to make our Fall fund drive a success.

Take care of yourself and one another as we head into a new year.

Hit reply and let me know—I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for reading, and mind the hungry ghosts.

— DLA