Seven Joys for July 2023
I publish Seven Joys ten to twelve times a year, so there is no rush to get through the things that bring me joy. Read, watch, listen, learn, and find some joy.
One. Analog.
Hear it. Touch it. Feel it. Listen to the sound of a ticking clock. Touch a vinyl record and hold its etched signals in your hands. Feel the resistance of a fountain pen’s nib as it moves across linen writing paper. Analog allows us to experience infinite possibilities— infinite smells, tastes, sounds, textures, and colors— only our senses are limited, but their representations (their analogies) are limitless.
Big Ben Clock, Esterbrook Fountain Pen, Hourglass, Record Grooves.
Analog brings me joy because it grounds me in the present. I sit in our parlor and listen to vinyl records as a linear presentation of the musician’s intent. I meditate using an hourglass or a wind-up Westclock Big Ben, whose sand or gears represent time and focus my attention. I write with a fountain pen or typewriter because they slow down my thoughts as I translate them into permanent ink. In contrast, I cannot say my smartphone brings me joy. It is an addiction to convenience. It removes my need to think and interact directly with the world. Pick just one analog tool that has been replaced by the digital world and become reacquainted (or acquainted). You will find that it grounds you in the present, improves your well-being, and might even make you smarter.
Two. Homemade Ice Cream.
Its summer - make ice cream! A chef-friend once told me that since ice cream has no healthy qualities, eat the best, most decadent, delicious ice cream you can. He then shared his 24 egg yolk, vanilla bean ice cream recipe with me. It is divine, and the base can be flavored with anything. We don’t make a lot of ice cream, but this 4th of July, we dug out the 6-quart White Mountain Ice Cream Maker, and Daniel made a modified version of my friend’s ice cream with an infusion of fresh yellow peaches. You can find our recipe here and drop a comment below if you make this or want to share your own ice cream recipe.
Homemade Peace Ice Cream
Three. A Cookbook Like No Other.
Seriously, a true one-of-a-kind cookbook because it was made just for me. Breaking Bread with Kevin: A Culinary Tribute was created by colleagues I worked with at UCSF and presented to me when I retired on July 1, 2023.
Cover of Breading Bread with Kevin cookbook. That’s me on the right, peeking from behind the handsome fellow in the plaid shirt.
The book contains 120 pages of recipes and commentary from friends who share dishes dear to their hearts and stories about our times together. The gift was overwhelming in the joy it brought me, and I look forward to a lifetime of cooking from it and remembering the people who made my career special.
READ: For an amazing collection of personal, handwritten cookbooks, check out the University of Iowa Library’s Szathmary Culinary Manuscripts and Cookbooks, a collection of American and European recipes from the 1600s to the 1960s.
Four: O Oysters, come and walk with us!'
The Ostreidae, the true oysters, include most mollusks consumed as oysters.
“O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,
You’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?’
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”
Eating raw oysters is a joy — flavor, texture, and ritual create a magical experience. Growing up in Tennessee, I didn’t encounter the edible oyster until on a college marine ecology trip to the Florida Panhandle. One night after “class,” a group of us went to a local beer joint—a cinderblock building with a tin roof and concert floors designed for hosing out on the mornings after. A jukebox full of country songs and bottles of cheap American beer saturated my senses, and the Gator Dance was the preferred form of entertainment. A salty seaman came into the bar carrying two large buckets of oysters. The bartender greeted him as a friend, and together they spread newspaper on the floor and dumped the oysters in a pile. “Fresh oysters, everyone, eat up!” Shucking knives, saltine crackers, and bottles of Tabasco sauce were brought out, and the shucking and slurping commenced. That night, I learned to love the oyster.
For everything you need to know about enjoying oysters, check out Dan Souza’s Why You Should Eat Oysters at Home (And How to Shuck Them!).
READ: The Spruce Eats Guide to Oysters.
READ: The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll.
WATCH: Why you Should Eat Oysters at Home by Dan Souza.
LEARN: The Wild Oyster Project is working to restore wild oysters in San Francisco Bay.
Five: Dan Souza.
Dan Souza is editor-in-chief of Cooks Illustrated magazine, a member of America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) team, and host of ATK’s What’s Eating Dan YouTube series. And no, Dan is not a relative, but it would be cool if he were. Dan brings me joy because he is the chef I would like to be. I have never aspired to be in a restaurant kitchen, though short stints for fundraisers and special events give me a killer rush of adrenalin. Like Dan, I would love to write for a magazine, spend my days focused on the science of cooking, and host entertaining videos on the foods I love. For a regular dose of Dan check out his YouTube series, What’s Eating Dan.
Dan Souza, Editor-in-Chief of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Culinary Institute of America (CIA) graduate.
WATCH: What’s Eating Dan YouTube series.
READ: Culinary Institute of American Profile on Dan.
READ: Boston Magazine profile, My Life in the Age of COVID: Dan Souza of America’s Test Kitchen.
Six: The Joy of Train Travel.
I love trains though I grew up in America’s post-train-travel era. I spent much of my childhood on a rural 365-acre farm in Hickory Point, Tennessee, and the Illinois Central Railroad ran through our property along the banks of the Cumberland River. As a kid, I would dream about where it came from and where it was going —hoping for a rare glimpse of an engineer hanging off the side of a red caboose. As a parent, I rediscovered my love of trains as our son became obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. This led to one of the most marvelous holidays I ever had when our family took an eight-day train trip on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight from Los Angeles’s Union Station to Seattle’s King Street Station and back to San Francisco. The Starlight follows the coastline in Southern California, then heads into the Central Valley, up through the Cascades and Mt Shasta to Portland and Seattle, giving the traveler access to vistas not accessible by car. I have also ridden Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Denver to San Francisco. The Zephry climbs through the heart of the Rockies and further west through the snow-capped Sierra Nevadas and was the first train to have “Vista-Dome” observation cars.
TRAVEL: Amtrak Website.
LEARN: Thomas the Tank Engine Wiki on Fandom.
WATCH: California Zephyr - 1950s Travelogue, when run by the Western Pacific, Burlington, and Rio Grande railroads. 29 minutes.
LEARN: Bulawayo to Victoria Falls by Train with photographs of the 1952 cars.
Seven: Hilma af Klint.
“Group IV, The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth,” by Hilma af Klint
“One work amid the hundreds in a flabbergasting retrospective, “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future,” at the Guggenheim Museum, is so good that it knocked my sense of the show momentarily askew. Af Klint was a Swedish artist and mystic—a mystic primarily, though a dab hand at painting—who died in 1944, at the age of eighty-two. She left instructions that none of her work be shown until twenty years after her death, including her magnum opus—a hundred and ninety-three paintings, most of them made between 1906 and 1908, and intended for display in a temple only sketchily conceived, much less built. ”
Daniel and I were there. It was a “flabbergasting” exhibition for sure. af Klint’s giant paintings haunt me to this day in a joyful way and are considered the earliest abstract paintings in the history of Western art. She predates Kandinsky, Mondrian, and the other “High-Masters” of abstractionism. Spend some time with her paintings and let the joy swell in you.
LEARN: Hilma af Klint on Wikipedia.
READ: Hilma af Klint’s Visionary Paintings by Peter Schjeldahl. 6 minutes.
WATCH: Hilma af Klint by the Guggenheim Museum. 7 minutes.
WATCH: Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, documentary. 93 minutes.
VIEW: 26 Paintings by Hilma af Klint on Wikiart.
Well, that’s all for July, folks. Yes, there was no June publication, and I barely made July. I retired on July 1, and Daniel and I are enjoying gardening and the great city of San Francisco. I hope this brought you a few minutes of joy, hours if you watch the af Klint documentary. I would love to hear from you in the comment section below. Be grateful, live in the moment, and seek joy. - Kevin