When I give my workshop on self-editing for self-publishing, I talk about how in the beginning of writing this newsletter, I went too long and used references and quotes too often to signal my research rather than integrate the research into the thinking and analysis. The thing was, when I started to publish From the Desk in March 2020, I had too much time on my hands and was trying to figure out what kind of writer I was without an editor reining me in and with readers cheering me on—together, a recipe for disaster. I’ve been learning in real time and am always evolving my approach. I don’t want to be embarrassed of my archives.

But there are many pieces I am a bit embarrassed about—I said this in “Food Is Political 2.0,” when I tried to do a better job with a July 2020 original called “On Politics.” Some of these pieces, though, have really defined who I am as a writer and were essays I had to write to get to new ways of thinking, ways of thinking I’ve made better and more fully developed in my books. I’m always saying that this newsletter is me thinking out loud, and it really is me writing and thinking toward my next book, all the time.

Regardless, these are some of the pieces I think have defined my newsletter—I wanted to choose one from each year of publishing—and I would be happy to hear from you about your favorites. (A lot of folks still remind me about 2021’s “On Salt.”)

Below, I’m reminding everyone—members and not-yet-members—what the benefits are of supporting my work and joining our club. I hope you’ll consider the upgrade—please log in here to change your plan.

“On Luxury,” August 17, 2020
“Luxury in food and beverage works on those two levels: something prized for its fleetingness, others for their cost. Both levels are present in, say, a truffle or chanterelles. These things emerge from the earth, and that emergence is generally respected. Such cases in food, where industrialization and efficiency have been overvalued and globally enforced, are rare specimens themselves.”

“On Lionfish,” October 4, 2021
“I ate a little piece, felt sad in the soul, and simply slurped up a bit of the leche de tigre. I want to accommodate the world; I want to actively eat what needs to be eaten to maintain equilibrium in the ocean… but it’s strange and hard to do so after years without. I still feel very strongly that it’s violent while understanding why others would not feel that way. I understood why I rationally thought it made sense to eat the fish; I still could not eat it. ‘You can eat a whole piece,’ my friend said, with a light tone of mockery. ‘I can’t,’ I replied, frowning at my plate, then mumbling, ‘It was alive.’”

“On Selling a Lifestyle,” September 12, 2022
“I accept more that my presence in the digital space, which was for so long where I felt more free to be myself than in the ‘real world,’ is now a representation of what I seek to represent. I’m there somewhere, under the layers, shouting about eating more vegetables. My presence is a commercial for my brain.”

“On Culinary Tourism,” January 30, 2023
“His Italy myth doesn't match reality, manifesting most poignantly in his inability to order what he has grown up believing to be Italian food and being mocked by his companions. Our interactions in travel with food can often be the most frustrating as well as the most telling.”

“Both Joyful and Killjoy,” January 1, 2024
“The grief, my burnout, the need for life to go on despite everything culminated in a weeklong illness through which I took necessary meetings that would allow me to keep working: I was sick in bed, ice on my sinus cavities to keep the swelling down, taking the meetings I’d long dreamed to take while feeling my brother’s absence more acutely and watching a genocide unfold that I was powerless against—I signed letters; I re-committed to boycotts; I shared the work of journalists on the ground. It was a disorienting time. It was, at a very heightened state, exactly everything that life is, that the world is, all at once. The things we want most; the things we fear most: happening simultaneously.”

“On Food Media,” May 12, 2025
“Food is feminized in the home, made masculine in the workplace, but in both cases, it is not broadly thought to be pursued for intellectual reasons. The visceral nature of eating means that it can never be serious in the common imagination, and this might be key to mainstream food media’s anti-intellectualism: too necessary, too everyday. The writing, thus, isn’t finding its foundation in behavioral studies, the labor conditions of the global agriculture’s 1.3 billion workers, or climate change reporting: It’s just vibes and appetites, like a baby. I think this is why people working in other cultural spheres think they can dip in, dip out of the subject.”