The slow art of nurturing food (and myself)

It was while peeling a knotty hunk of ginger in a soupy kitchen that I first began to appreciate the fine art of slowing down. A few weeks prior, I’d found myself sobbing in an airport bathroom next to the B Terminal Chili’s after a Christmas trip home crystallized an uncomfortable truth: you can love someone but not necessarily like them. It’s especially cruel when you realize it extends to mothers and daughters. And when the frays in a fundamental relationship begin showing like that, you start taking stock of the rest of your life, too.

Don’t get me wrong. My life was, and is, a good one. I mean, I write about food for a living from a sun-dappled apartment in a city I love. But that falling out — what was said, what had been simmering between us for years — destabilized me. I’d always known I was an anxious kid, but that day in the airport bathroom, something shifted. I started having panic attacks. Real ones. The kind that punch you in the gut and convince you, with absolute certainty, that you’re dying.

Without much recourse (half-assed mirror affirmations and yoga flows only get you so far), I started therapy again. This time in earnest, I told myself. Though really, I was more than eager to breeze through the hard stuff, “win” a few sessions by making my therapist crack a smile at my mental binder of self-critical jokes and then graduate onto the next thing.

That is, until Tony, a warm, but no-nonsense psychiatrist who spent his free time perfecting bolognese and had no real patience for my jokes, asked me a seemingly simple question: “When was the last time you slowed down? Like really slowed down.” I told him I’d think about it and for the next week, I did, realizing I actually spent most of my life rushing.

Some rushing made sense — deadlines, the Red Line train barrelling toward the platform — but other times, it was just habit. Some days, rushing felt like a glitch in my brain’s autopilot, a way to fast-forward through the boring parts. Didn’t feel like being at the grocery store? Fine. I’ll be in and out in 10 minutes (then kick myself when I get home and, inevitably, forget something important for the week like coffee or butter or pasta — you know, the things that make life worth living).

That weekend, I noticed myself impatiently tugging at Otto’s leash on his morning walk despite the fact that it was the first nice Saturday we’d had in weeks and we had nowhere else to be. Once I caught myself, I felt a quick sting of shame, like I’d wasted something fleeting. I began to feel that way a lot. I was striving for more, for better, for faster. But at what cost?

“I realized I’ve lived most of my life like the anti-Max Fischer,” I told Tony in our next session. “Instead of just clinging to one ‘Rushmore,’ I’ve been obsessed with finding the one.”

Tony nodded, then leaned forward, his hands clasped, eyes intent on me, as though preparing to drop a bomb of life-altering truth.

“I’ve never seen the movie.”

I blinked and we sat in silence for a moment.

“But I can appreciate what you’re saying,” he continued, before handing me a printout of an article titled “Slowing Down as the World Speeds Up.” “You know, research shows that slowing down—just little things, like how you walk, how you get dressed, how you take a shower—can really impact how you feel. It’s like giving your whole body a deep breath.”

“Where do you want to start?” he asked.

Even on tough days, I tend to think with my stomach. “Soup, I think.”

Soup rewards patience but doesn’t demand constant attention, making it perfect for someone like me just getting comfortable with the idea of slowing down. Sure, you could throw some vegetables, meat, salt, and water into a pot, crank up the heat, and technically call it soup — but not the kind anyone actually wants to eat.

I started to relish the quiet alchemy of heat and time, watching them transform simple ingredients into something deeper, richer. Take tomato soup, for example. A basic version is always good. But when you caramelize tomato paste, roast fresh cherry tomatoes and onion, and let it all simmer for hours on a snow day before adding a final finish of cream? That’s transcendent.

I started stretching my soup-making skills, making everything from a comforting chicken and rice soup that required at least a few perfectly-peeled hunks of ginger; to a baked potato with bacon and a secret splash of spicy dill pickle juice; to stew-y chili with slow-roasted beef tips. Each batch felt like a small victory. Luxuriating in the undemanding comfort of soup made space for a new challenge. I wanted something to baby, something a little more hands-on — and since nothing goes better with soup than crusty bread, sourdough seemed like the natural next step. The pairing feels inevitable, but making bread yourself is a different kind of commitment. Soup is a one-day project; sourdough demands ongoing care. It requires a different rhythm as well. Where soup rewards patience in a passive way, sourdough requires you to show up repeatedly.

I think this is part of what had put me off sourdough in the past. It wasn’t the effort itself that intimidated me, but the fear of showing up again and again only to watch it fail—a common refrain among us honor students turned anxious adults, I suppose. (There’s that one line from the Nico song, the big needle-drop moment in another Wes Anderson film, “The Royal Tenenbaums”: “Don’t remind me of my failures, I have not forgotten them.” When I heard that for the first time, I felt seen in a way I couldn’t ignore.) So, while everyone else spent the early days of the pandemic enamored with their Mason jars of creamy, bubbling starter, I was busy with other hobbies (doomscrolling, cheese mongering, etc.).

But eventually, after steeping in the patience of soup-making, I found myself ready for something with a bit more commitment. A challenge, really. And that’s when sourdough called to me. I gathered my ingredients, Bryan Ford’s “New World Sourdough,” and a glass jar of my own. I dutifully combined the flour and water — Chicago tap, boiled and cooled at the recommendation of r/Sourdough to neutralize any lingering chlorine — and put my jar, loosely covered with a linen towel, in the back corner of my kitchen where, hopefully, it would be coaxed to maturity by ambient radiator heat.

As I turned off the lights that first night, I thought of my grandfather. His West Virginia home bordered a cattle farm, the backyard and back pasture separated by a fence of loosely coiled barbed wire. When I was about seven years old, I sat by that fence, counting the cows in the distance. “What are their names?” I asked, to which he dryly responded that you don’t typically name something that won’t be around long.

I didn’t name my starter.

The next morning, I awoke to bubbles.

Heartened by the fact that my starter hadn’t become putrid wallpaper paste overnight, I began keeping a journal to monitor its progress. This isn’t uncommon in the world of sourdough. Since it’s a finicky enough art, there are a variety of both digital spreadsheets and physical log books—some slim enough to fit in an apron pocket, others hardbound to keep in better shape amid the flour-and-water hazards of a kitchen—meant to help bakers keep track of feedings with more precision.

I kept mine simple. I found a small knockoff Moleskine in my desk and after tearing out a few pages of bland meeting notes from last year (mostly doodles), I sketched out a few columns: Feeding Date/Time, Feeding Details, and Starter’s Mood.

Now, I’ve personally kept mood journals in the past, once at the recommendation of a therapist, and once or twice after I’ve been blindsided by a tearful breakdown about something relatively inconsequential—breaking a dish, missing my train—only to realize it likely coincided with predictable hormonal fluctuations underscored by days of mounting personal stress. However, I have not historically been great about keeping up with them. On a few mornings subsequent to my decision to pay more attention to my feelings, I’d jot down a line or two. Woke up a little mournful about the fact that Otto will die someday, despite the fact that he still plays like a puppy.

These quickly became less detailed with time. Slept okay, feel rested.

I don’t think this came from a place of not wanting to “do the work,” one of my favorite phrases from modern therapy parlance. Maybe it's because keeping track of my own emotions has always felt like an exercise in self-indulgence. And if there's one thing I was trained to avoid as a female writer in male-dominated MFA workshops, it's the cardinal sin of memoir: excessive navel-gazing. Put another way, a few years ago, I saw a tweet about how “nothing is more silly than the urgency of restaurant work.”

“Oh, table 6 needs a lobster right now?” the tweet continued. “Grow up.”

The punchline made me absolutely cackle. Quickly, “Table 6 needs a lobster? Grow up” became my internal response to anything where the situation seemed more outsized than reality, including my emotions. Oh, you’re sad your dog is going to die someday? There are people who are dying, Ashlie. Grow up.

That worked until it didn’t.

Maybe this is why my starter journal stuck. It wasn’t about me. At least, not exactly. But in a way, it was. It taught me that small changes are still changes, that subtle shifts become clearer when you pay attention. And like emotions, fermentation isn’t static. As I tracked my starter’s mood (really a mix of texture, activity, and odor), I began to notice just how much nuance lived within the word “sour”—a vinegary yeastiness on day three, a nutty, ripe cheesiness by day five, before finally settling into something mellow and yogurt-like by day seven.

Eventually, I started noticing little changes in myself, too. My life feels slower, more present, less about rushing and more about savoring. My sourdough bread is still a work in progress, but I’m proud of the steps I’ve taken, and yes, I’ve started a journal for it, too. People tell you life is better when you stop and smell the roses, and I’m beginning to believe them. But for now, stopping and smelling the freshly-peeled ginger works just fine.

As spring approaches, I’m looking forward to starting a small kitchen garden with herbs and edible flowers, ready to nurture something new. A little like my sourdough — an endeavor that blooms slowly, one patient step at a time.