Seeking Stillness for the End of the World

June 16, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

“The creation of the world did not occur at the beginning of time, it occurs every day.”
– Marcel Proust

All you can do some days is keep going.

I come into the kitchen and assess the production list for the day, keenly aware of my struggles to lose weight again.

Next comes reviewing the banquets for the day and make sure I block out time to individually decorate and tray the desserts people paid for, knowing that people I called friends are agitating for my death (intentionally or not) because I’m a Jew.

I build out the list, grab ingredients, and start mixing the day’s breads, fully conscious that my government is a joke and that folks like me are continually convinced to focus their ire on each other than the higher-ups with every reason to keeps us all angry and hateful all the time.

I make my silly little pastries, bake my silly little breads, and carry on like none of it is disappointing and hurtful and frustrating and sad. I do it because I know someone out there IS disappointed, hurt, frustrated, and sad, and what I make can be the One Good Thing that they get to enjoy today.

I can grieve. I can rage and piss and moan and cry… but not when I’m baking. There’s someone else’s day at stake then, and it’s not mine to ruin.

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Learning To Be What You Need

February 11, 2024February 11, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Would you have wanted you (as you are now) in your life when you were a kid?

I know it’s not always wise to start off blogs with a question like this, especially not one that “buries the lead.” Normally I try to start off a bit more gently- a good anecdote that puts the topic in context, or generally coming at a deep topic sideways. In this case, though, I feel like any attempt to answer a loaded question like this can only be given in story form. Ultimately, it makes us check in on our own stories. Has time actually conferred wisdom and maturity? Did we become the mentors and guides we would have wanted?

I don’t know, but I hope so and I’m always trying. That’s where stories help- we use them to understand character and how we write our own every day.

*“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exists, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” –* Neil Gaiman

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Thoughts on Belonging

November 4, 2023November 4, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

We all want to belong. To something greater than ourselves, to have a community, a tribe, even just to have a family, biological or chosen.

The last few weeks have been a serious trial of my personal sense of belonging. Getting (mostly) off of social media has helped stem the tide of belabored bullshit. “You are either with us or against us,” whatever the “us” is, is a big red flag for whether you actually belong to a certain group or whether your belonging is conditional on saying and doing the “right” things.

Work in the kitchen has provided a sense of place and community. Kitchens ave historically been my “safe spaces” and sanctuaries. Everything has a place, a purpose, and my belonging in them is undeniable and absolute- by my experience and skills if not myself.

“Matt the Baker” is only part of me though, and leaning into that solely for my sense of belonging is dangerous. I am also an American, a Jewish man, more a leftist than anything else politically, and fundamentally a human being.

“Belonging” to any of those things has been intensely difficult lately, but I still feel the need to have a tribe and not be a “man without a country” when things get tough.

We have to learn to belong, first and foremost, to ourselves.

A black and white portrait of a woman with her eyes digitally smudged out — Photo by Thiago Matos

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The Kitchen Monk- Presence and Pie Crust

June 11, 2023June 12, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

What does it mean to be present? Not just physically but mentally? Spiritually? It doesn’t just mean being in a particular place, like during roll call at school. For yourself in your own life, no one’s checking off an attendance list.

We owe it to ourselves to stay present and keep ourselves aware of just who, what, and where we are if we want to live not just good lives but deliberate ones.

There’s just something soothing and beautiful about the folded flaky layers of handmade pie dough.

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Wearing the White Belt

June 4, 2023June 4, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Hello everyone! Thanks for your patience with the delays in blog posts as of late. I signed on with my new job just at the start of the busy season and it’s been more than a little exhausting the last few weeks trying to cover all my bases AND get up to speed.

It’s a new job, learning new recipes with new challenges and trying to contribute as much as I can. No time to indulge in “FNG Status” here- I need to lean into what I know to learn and improve on what I don’t.

It’s probably that newness- the “breath of fresh air” that feels more like a storm gale pounding you in the face that made something finally click for me last week about a change I need to make in my personal life.

CW for talk about weight loss, obesity, and diet.