sesame

"Edamame Haiku" by Katie O'Connell King + Asian Panzanella

Think of haiku as today's equivalent of a tweet, in the sense that there's a fixed number of characters you must stick to in order to convey an idea. Instead of 144 characters, you have 17 syllables to make an impression.

Poetry can carry a lot of emotional weight. Its lines can wade through deep territory and cause you to ponder the very things you try to avoid thinking about on a daily basis. It can open a wound or illuminate a small experience, making you grateful for having read it in the first place. But there's also something to be said for the lighthearted, and I think we could use a little bit of that today. This haiku is about the "glossy tender bean" edamame, and describes some of the humor involved in eating them.

"Eating Alone" by Li-Young Lee + Sesame Braised Shrimp

Like young onions pulled from the ground, in our emotional lives there is often more brewing under the surface than is always visible. Some of us are good at hiding this. Others (like me), aren't. I'm not sure why this is, or what about our individual makeup makes us more or less prone to wearing our hearts on our sleeve. Regardless of where you fall on the emotional spectrum, when it comes to the past, food has its way of weaving itself through both the good and bad memories.