The Real Role of Ritual

February 16, 2026February 17, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I spent a solid chunk of my life trying to figure out how I was going to save the world. Then I realized I couldn’t, so I decided to just do what I could.

I sometimes romanticize this in my mind as “I wanted to save the world, but I was only one person so I became an EMT so I could save people and make them happy. As an EMT I learned I couldn’t save everyone and even then I couldn’t make them happy. Then I decided to just give people more reasons to be happy and become a baker. That’s when it started working.”

That’s adorable and might make a good eulogy for me someday, but the truth is that’s what we all do. Everyone at some point fights with themselves over where they fit in the world, what they want to be, and what they want to leave behind. Some figure out, some resent the question and never do, and others just decide to let the world figure itself out and they’ll go where they fit.

I’m lucky as hell I found my way to baking and culinary. It’s not just a trade and career for me, it’s a calling and spiritual expression. I’d love if it paid more- who wouldn’t?- but it’s work that activates Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul for me and I can make something like a living doing it. That’s not nothing.

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The Temple

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

My idea of a “fancy night out” wasn’t entirely determined by period movies. A good chunk was my parents.

Growing up, my parents would occasionally fancy themselves up for special occasions and go out. My older sister was left in charge, $60 was left in the foyer for Dinos (or Michelli’s if we want pizza that night instead of subs) and my parents would head out. My father actually owned a tuxedo and one of my clearest memories of those times was my dad in a matching cummerbund and bowtie, with a chained ribbon around his neck and a smaller version on my mom’s.

As I got older and I ingested more media, visions of what one actually did in a tux and pearls clarified beyond “go off and leave me with my sisters.” Images of Thomas and Martha Wayne getting dolled up for the movies seemed old fashioned because that’s common and casual these days. Going to a concert also didn’t feel appropriate because I’d been to or seen rock and folk concerts. If there was a tuxedo in that crowd, it had to have been either a prank or a prop.

The opera or symphony, however… THAT felt like the kind of thing you dressed up for. The period pieces were definitely old-timey, but the buildings still exist and walking into one makes you feel like you ought to dress the part.

A photo of a music hall, taken looking down at the stage from the very back, highest row. — The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

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Making A Menu

April 20, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

When you work in a restaurant with enough backing and fancy enough clientele (or minimal backing and working-class clientele, but you’re the chef-owner with a shtick), menu flips make the tedious bits of the job worth it. After making the same dishes over and over again for months, sometimes beyond the season it even makes sense to keep selling them, doing a little spring cleaning on the menu feels positively invigorating.

This years dessert menu is already selling well, but the core theme of the selection isn’t just “seasonality”. Pick a menu from any restaurant- from the neighborhood diner to the latest Michelin-starred hotspot- and what goes into the menu is just as much about convenience, defensibility, economics, and business sense as any high-minded philosophy about sustainability, slow food, or “decolonizing the diet.” That’s because we don’t just sell food- we sell a night out. We sell a fantasy. We sell pleasure– so we make sure there’s something we can sell to as many people as possible.

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The Big Sick

January 26, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

When it comes to human nature and the various manifestations of it, I have the same opinion that I do about aliens- namely, “It’s a big world/universe and anything’s possible.” My cordial introductions to abnormal psychology, through my own experience and in my college years, bear this out well. The idea that anyone could enjoy being sick makes a lot more sense once it’s dressed up in words like “Munchausen syndrome,””factitious disorder,” or “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off.”

Yes, some people can enjoy being sick- but I am avowedly not one of them.

I’m at my desk with some jazz playing, a candle burning, my slippers on, and I’m feeling just about human again at (hopefully) the tail end of the worst flu I’ve had in my life. This is the first time in five days that I’ve felt the capacity to work on or do anything besides sleep, cough up green gunk, hobble around and chug liquids. The coaster on my right which would normally have a nice beer or a little whiskey on it is currently occupied by a large, sea-foam green bottle of Gatorade. Hydrating has been the priority for the last few days, and when I’m finally well enough to rejoin the world, I think I’ll be ready to throw every sports drink bottle I see into the sun.

What is it about being sick I hate so much? More than just the actual symptoms- hacking up gunk, every hole in my body leaking assorted fluids, and the various aches and pains aren’t something I think even the most ardent sympathy seeker really enjoys. It’s the loss of focus, the loss of energy, and arguably the loss of agency for me that makes being sick so miserable. The inescapable feeling of being locked in your own body, and that body being out of order.

What do you want to do? What do you feel like doing? Doesn’t matter- you aren’t calling the shots. “Sorry boss, body’s out.”

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Writer Unplugged, Part 2: Living in Micro

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“The harvest is passed, the summer is finished, yet we are not saved.”
– Jeremiah 8:20

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right/ here I am Stuck in the Middle with You.”
– Stealer’s Wheel

Surprising no one, when you make the call to leave extraneous noise behind, you are left with a lot of time alone with your thoughts. You get to piece together how and what you feel in the absence of others. You redefine who you are and who you want to be.

That redefinition happens in my rocking chair over some whiskey and a bit of knitting and a horror movie, in the car to or from work, or in my gym during cardio. More than meditation, those become my time for me. Without every randos bathroom thoughts on human rights and global macroeconomics corkscrewing their way into my brain, I come back to “What’s important to me,” “How do I feel about it,” and “What are my limits and boundaries of support for such things.”

I am, after all, a leftist Jew. If it isn’t folks in red hats hopped up on Great Replacement Theory that think making trouble for me and Emily will “make America great again,” it’s some mouthy white kids in keffiyehs who think pushing in my face will help “free Palestine.”

In about a week, though, 99% of the United States will wind up doing whatever comes next on Extra Hard Mode. Meditations and ruminations won’t be worth much. What’ll be worth more is actions on the micro-scale.