At the end of 2018, I left a sous-chef job in Asheville, NC, loaded up my car with all I could fit and gave away the rest of my belongings. I drove to Chicago with very little plan and about a thousand dollars in the bank. I spent the summation of a year traveling, living out of my car, staying with family, and the summer working in a national park, as a sous chef at several of their hotels. During this time I survived off of cafeteria food and lots of peanut butter. During stays with my family I would cook dinner for them in exchange for being allowed to eat dinner. 

In mid-November, I found myself in a rural college town in Missouri, visiting my sister and her new-born son. This was to be my last stop before I arrived back in Asheville for a couple of weeks. My siblings and I have a long-standing tradition of staying up late, sitting on the kitchen floor drinking and talking. The kitchen has always been a mutual place of gathering for us, whether in our childhood homes, or cramped together in tiny Atlanta or Chicago apartments. 

During my stay, my brother-in-law invited over a couple of friends of his, colleagues in the art department. As we’d been making a point to cook dinner together every night, my sister asked if I would mind cooking something to host their friends. A small caveat being that two were vegan and one was vegetarian. In this small city there is one regional grocery store operating out of an otherwise abandoned shopping center and on the other side of town, a wal-mart. Coming from Asheville, I’ve grown used to relying on Whole Foods, farmer’s markets, and asian grocery stores, especially when preparing vegetarian dishes. 

Unsure of what we would find in the local produce sections, I agreed, and suggested falafel. After a couple of cursory google searches for falafel recipes, we found that in nearly every single one, there existed an all caps clause which stated: “DO NOT USE CANNED GARBANO BEANS.” Well dinner was four hours away and I hate being told what to do, so I went to the grocery store and bought a couple cans of garbanzo beans. 

Most of my experience in the culinary world has been a bold mix of blind undeserved confidence and crushing insecurity. So while I got to work making my last minute falafel that I was certain would work, I spent about two hours explaining to my sister and brother-in-law that there was a 90% chance this wasn’t going to work and we would be having chickpea-mash for dinner. The falafel came out much better than I expected, but I was most surprised by our guests fascination with the quick pickles and home-made tzatziki. Of course, they did not know the incredibly heroic and fearless choices that had gone into making the falafel. It could have very well been frozen falafel for all they cared. 

Filled with lots of conversation and alcohol, after the guests departed at the end of the night, we of course found ourselves standing in the kitchen, picking at whatever was left of the faux-Greek spread. My friend commented that shopping in this town feels like an episode of chopped: walking through a collection of ingredients, more than we could need, but not exactly what we want, armed with a loose idea for creation, and allowing it to materialize based on what’s at hand. I took this opportunity, as I often do, to wax poetically (drunkenly), about Martha Stewart. About her ability to generate so many efficient, easy-to-follow, accessible recipes. Recipes that you can execute almost regardless of where you are. This is a profound ability, often overlooked by those operating with the blinders of the culinary vacuum. 

I’d like to use this space to present this last-minute-falafel recipe, as well as dozens of others that we have been working on in the months that followed. I returned to this small town in Missouri, where I now work as a cafeteria cook. In the evenings, we’ve cooked daily, depending on the limited availability of the local market. We’ve cooked in the style of Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler, so many of these recipes have included leftovers from the night before. Ingredients from Monday will reappear on Thursday. We’ve cooked the way that most families actually do cook, which is what makes these recipes feel special to me. This is a documented journey of our humble feasts and our time in the kitchen, drinking and cooking and talking.