There’s still no better description of how I want to spend my life than what Anthony Bourdain says in the opening credits of No Reservations: “I write. I travel. I eat. And I’m hungry for more.” I put the show on while I was on a flight from New York to San Juan last month, preparing to talk about his piece “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” with my food essay students, wanting to remind them that the most famous food writer of our time talked about shit, vomit, and drunkenness, and that their work didn’t have to always be pretty either. 

Watching the show reminded me that when his cookbook Appetites came out in 2016, I was so envious: not of the publication of the cookbook, but of the easy use of this word—appetite. I’m not sure whether I really knew then how badly I wanted to write about the subject, the hunger that’s not hunger but a greedy voraciousness. I’ve never known hunger, thank God, but I’ve intimately known my appetite. 

This envy is what I was thinking about when I gave my next book On Eating the subtitle The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, but I didn’t necessarily think it would stick. I didn’t think any of it would stick, because I’d sold my first book on a totally different title (Meatless) and then they decided it would be No Meat Required to sell better. (It was a bestseller, so I can’t argue.) 

I’d called this proposal On Eating simply because my agent, Jenny, had told me while I was losing faith in my whole authorial project that I’d write On Eating one day, and I figured I’d plop that grandiose moniker onto this one while I wrote it in a furious burst on a flight from Calgary to New York. On the flight, not two months after the publication of No Meat Required, I knew I’d imminently collapse into burnout and needed to get the proposal done, or I never would and the momentum of the first book’s success would be lost; I gave it the title and subtitle that suited my ambitions out of a sense of depletion. I was too tired to lie to myself and make something else up. 

The book weaves together the foods, places, and people who’ve defined and constrained my appetites; chronicles the eating, cooking, baking, reporting, and research that have sunk into my bones; examines the tensions between how we define luxury versus commodity; and tries to untangle the dichotomies and traps that are set for the woman who cooks. It’s a far less polemical book than No Meat Required, if you’re wondering. It’s my heart on a platter, constructed out of a beautiful, ethically sourced chocolate confection ideally produced by Lagusta’s Luscious. Perhaps it’s been piped full of sweet plantain caramel.

And so, in writing it and soon publishing it, I’ve claimed “my appetites” for myself. When you publish a book, though, you’re never just publishing it for yourself. You’re publishing it for your colleagues, present and future: you want it to bring attention to other good work, and you want it to be successful because it can pave the way for others to sell their books on similar subject matter. (Or these are my high-minded, noble concerns right now, because my ugly-petty side is reserved for group chats and martini hangs.)

But this is definitely a book for young people, too, who might feel lost, who might be grieving, who might be worried that their curiosity and appetites are meaningless in the face of all the world is not offering them. It’s a book about making meaning as we make ourselves, and how even in food writing, that’s not always pretty.

Anyway, I’m not going to wait for more writing on the subject. I’ll be publishing a podcast over the next few weeks leading up to On Eating’s launch where I talk to some writers I admire about their own appetites. Though these are only eight conversations, they run an interesting gamut—from Paris to London to Tuscany, from Massachusetts to Montreal to New York City to Austin; women who are feeding kids and those who are not; academics who write for the public, writers whose focus is food, and others who have found their way into it by following their curiosity, their appetites. Featured in this series will be:

These will come out in my Monday newsletters starting next week but will not replace them, and there will be both audio and video available. The conversations will be free, but of course, members keep the lights on here. My Monday pieces have returned to being accessible to all, always reader rather than ad supported, and members pay for everyone: Thank you!

I also know that I am talking about my forthcoming book quite a bit—I want folks to read it, I worked extremely hard on it, and I want to keep my job! Preorders really determine the trajectory of the book in its very precious early life, and I am deeply grateful for any and all support.