When I started this blog the goal was to write recipes, share food facts and help people learn to cook.
I bought the domain and built out the website in early 2020. In March of 2020, I moved to Berlin for an 18-month leadership rotational program for my day-job.
Less than 2 weeks after arriving, the city shut down. One of the world’s most vibrant, rambunctious party cities was silent.
For three months, I slept on an air mattress in an empty apartment, working from a camping chair. Every day I went on walks. It was my goal to walk on every street in Berlin on a tourist map. Spoiler #1: I didn’t make it all, but I did walk a considerable amount of Berlin.
The first time I came back to the USA to visit my, then, Girlfriend, I flew through Frankfut Airport. And it was empty. There were a handful of people. My first time going to meet friends on a patio for lunch, I cried in the shower for 30 minutes.
What going to to be a a year and a half of some of the best times of my life – turned into a dark hole of trying to exist every day. Fast forward to December 2020: My, then, Fiancee was finally able to visit. When the highlight of my day was getting the mail, she insisted we get a second dog. Fuck the logistics of being able to bring it home – her famous saying “we will figure it out.” Spoiler #2: Elphie is now a happy 4-legged resident of the USA.
Which gets me back to cooking.
For Christmas, she had planned 4 days of us cooking together. We would go to the market, get fresh ingredients and she would be sous chef. In normal times, this would have been an amazing gift.
It was a disaster.
An absolute disaster. I cried a lot.
I moved to Berlin as an optimistic, positive, vibrant person and exited as a anxiety-ridden shell of myself.
What had happened? Cooking brought me so much joy.
It was the bane of my existence and my greatest self-care tool.
Food is funny. One of the things I hated growing up was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. While deep in depression, all I wanted every day was a PB&J. Peanut butter is not common (or cheap) in Germany so I ordered it online. Eating that PB&J every day became a hug from my mom. She never made me PB&J, but it was a hug from her all the same.
This blog started with grand ambitions – to teach the masses the joy of cooking and the history of food.
Today it’s different. It’s about figuring how to write again and share it with people. It’s about falling in love again with cooking and creating.
If you’ve been waiting on the edge of your seats for another recipe (hi mom!), that will come. For today, I wanted to level set with you and myself about what Cooking With Sage is about. There will be recipes. There will be blog posts about the history of food. And, now, there will be posts about my health (mental and phsysical) and about my life in general.
The recipes may not be perfect, the blog posts may not always be insightful, and the grammar may be incorrect, but I am here (and so are you) doing it. One of my favorite quote is “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is today.”
So today, I am planting my tree.
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