What I learned in 2023
With the last baking projects of the year
For the last post of 2023, I wanted to take some time to reflect on this past year. Don’t worry, this won’t take long—I know you want to get to the baked goods (and a sneak peek!) at the end. 😉
2023 was a humbling year for me. It was the first time I thought about what practicing acceptance actually meant.
When you achieve a certain level of success, you start to assume that you can solve any problem with enough resolve, intelligence, and charisma. And I took that belief with me—that I could bend anything to my will as long as I tried hard enough—when I built out my cooking science YouTube channel and went back to the science startup world. It turns out though that life sometimes teaches you important lessons that you need to learn. For me, it was the lesson of humility, of realizing that I am fallible and that I don’t have complete control over my destiny.
This is where acceptance comes in. Acceptance is an act of surrender to allow things to happen the way they’re meant to happen, instead of forcing things to happen the way you want. The more I’ve reflected, the more I’ve realized that I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to make things happen according to my plans…which is basically the opposite of allowing things to happen.
So the first step to that journey of acceptance has been acknowledging that I don’t know everything, and that it’s ok not knowing. This reminds me of a poem I recently discovered:
The Real Work by Wendell Berry
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
After spending most of my life pursuing knowledge and making sure I had plans for every step of my life, I reached a point this year when I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. I know the earth isn’t flat, but if it were, picture me standing at the precipice, peering over the edge into nothingness. My initial response to not knowing was terror and scrambling to figure out what to do. But once I (mostly) got past the terror, I realized that traversing into the unknown is an essential part of personal growth.
Another metaphor I think of is that we typically inhabit a tiny circle. Doubt allows us to leave that circle, expanding the radius of our knowledge farther and farther out. As much as I’ve hated being outside of my circle—there may have been a lot of questioning and crying as I figuratively bumbled around in the dark—I’m slowly doing the real work of unraveling deep-seated assumptions and figuring out who I am. Giving myself the freedom to “not know” is opening myself to needed healing and transformation, and I’m learning to see all of this change as a positive thing.
Another part of acceptance has been digging deeper into what is actually meaningful to me. Here’s a quote from one of my favorite writers David Foster Wallace:
I think I had lived an incredibly American life. That, 'Boy, if I could just achieve X and Y and Z, everything would be okay.' When you yourself realize, 'Holy shit, this doesn't make every thing all right'…
And I think that the ultimate way you and I get lucky is if you have some success early in life, you get to find out early it doesn't mean anything. Which means you get to start early the work of figuring out what does mean something…
In this season of transition, I’ve been forced to put my professional life on pause and step back to see the bigger picture of my life. Not doing anything to further my career has honestly been torturous, but the more I’ve learned to rest, the more I’ve realized how much I’ve needed it. It’s amazing how easy it is to internalize so much noise from the outside world, and how much better you can hear yourself in silence. As I’ve started filtering out stuff, I’ve surfaced some unexpected discoveries about myself.
I’m super grateful for everything I’ve accomplished in my life thus far, but the surprising thing is that most of it—the prestige, accolades, validation from family, friends, and strangers—has felt very empty. Like somehow, the life I’ve created in public view has really little bearing with how I feel internally. On the outside, people see me as a smart person with a lot of achievements, but being smart isn’t something that particularly brings me joy. I’ve thought about what I enjoy doing the most, and it’s these three things: writing, traveling (with my husband!), and eating/living healthfully. Working in tech and creating YouTube videos propelled my personal ambitions to extraordinary heights, but I spent so much of that time tired, stressed, and/or unhappy. I don’t want to live that kind of life anymore. I want to do things that are fulfilling and good for my body at the same time, and I imagine that I’ll be spending the next year or so figuring out what that means in terms of my career.
The last baking of 2023
Holiday baking was in full swing this year, albeit a little earlier because of my vacation.
In a previous installment, I mentioned using up some extra ripe Fuyu persimmons for a persimmon chocolate bread. I decided to make it again, but this time there are more details and some pictures!
For those of you who’ve been reading my newsletter, you’ll know that I like adding my own flair to recipes I follow. David Lebovitz’s persimmon bread was no exception! To layer in complex flavors, I browned the butter instead of simply melting it for those amazing toffee notes. I didn’t have bourbon, so I replaced it with ginja, or Portuguese cherry liqueur, that I bottled in the spring with my mom’s homegrown Bing cherries. And since my husband’s not a big fan of nuts and dried fruits in bread, I subbed with half the amount of chopped dark chocolate. This was a hit at home and with friends, so if you have any persimmon puree, I’d recommend giving this recipe and/or the modifications a whirl.
Per tradition (this was year #4!), I also made a bûche de Noël, or yule log cake. My go-to recipe is Cook’s Illustrated’s caramel espresso yule log cake, and like in previous years, it never disappoints!
The cream cheese and cacao powder (my substitution for the espresso) in the whipped filling balance the sweetness of the caramel. The chiffon cake is light, soft, and moist, and the chocolate “dirt” crumbles add some nice crunchiness for contrast. This year, I tried to swirl some white chocolate and dark chocolate in the ganache bark—the swirls were sadly not successful, but the bark looked very gnarly and life-like. 😂
Sneak peek from Charleston
We just came back yesterday, so we’re still a bit jet-lagged. Here’s a sneak peek of our trip, a photo of Angel Oak (it’s the largest and one of the oldest living oak trees east of the Mississippi River). I’ll have some more highlights in the next installment!
Hope you all have a happy new year, and remember you still have today to make good on your 2023 resolutions. 😂 See you on the other side in a couple of weeks!