I returned home with much more information than I could have shared in one quarter. This was exciting! The information and connection to Claudia Rodan had me wanting to dive into how she did it – how does she travel and experience, research and learn then share her experiences. One particular interest at this point, that I still did not think I was capable of was how did she meet the people that she learned from and had experiences with while on the road? How did she set out and end up having dinner in the home of the person who grew the artichokes, or the person who was preserving the traditions of a food culture passed down for generations that she baked with – was she just extremely gregarious? I did not feel I was. During this trip I played around with talking to strangers, asking questions and connecting with the people of the place through food. It was awkward and I fumbled through it with out any real success. I thought about this a lot after I came home, The Query not letting me alone about it.
I decided to use summer quarter 2023 to work through all I learned, experienced and gathered from my trip and write about it, I had so many more questions than answers. I decided learning how Claudia Rodan did it was the way to go so I read and cooked through her magnum opus The Food of Spain, a gigantic tome of history culture and recipes – it’s beautiful. I allowed myself to play around with discovery of how I wanted to organize myself going forward, I knew I would continue to travel that bug being firmly planted and was already planning on how to get back to Spain to learn more. The Query began to appear over and over in it’s true form, how could I make it work, how could I take these interests and research, experience, and share them? It was tangible now, instead of looking for a career path that I was supposed to take, maybe I could make one out of this, other people have, I was beginning to see this.
So, I spent the summer cooking and reading and pondering my next steps, allowing myself to think about all of this without having to have all the answers, I was beginning to have faith in myself and the power of doing something that lights you up. So I spent the summer playing around with documenting my trip and working through Rodan’s book. My friends were fed very well that summer.