A Circle of Peas.

This photo was taken in the mid-1970s. The hands shelling peas belong to Jerri Fifer and David Carpenter and possibly Rusty Fifer. It was taken at The Frog & Owl Café on Buck Creek Road, Highlands, North Carolina. Jerri, her brother Rusty, and I opened the restaurant in the summer of 1972. Jerri was 18, Rusty was 21 or 22, I was 20 that summer.

I usually do not comment on a picture I’ve taken, as they are supposed to be worth a thousand words. It is for the viewer to fill in their own story. I break my rule for reasons I hope become apparent. My “suicide mission” gains momentum. I have a heightened sense of anxiety and urgency. I must write my food life story.

When I snapped this photograph I was cognizant of what I was seeing. Should you have asked me to explain this picture then, what I write today is close to what I would have said at the time.

Many hands make light work. Cooking with raw ingredients is tedious. In traditional cultures, feeding the community is, well, a community process. I saw this in the viewfinder. In the second week of the restaurant’s opening, we were slammed, at least by our standards. 20 people arrived for dinner. We did not know how to prep or serve so many at one time. Sitting on the floor, the kitchen team, frantically shelled peas to use as a vegetable. A lesson was learned. The activity in this picture was a few years later. For the all the remaining years of my restaurant work, the practice of completing tedious tasks in small groups has been de rigeur.

Fresh and seasonal. This is a spring time image. English peas are some of the first vegetables to come out of the garden. These peas came from Glenda Zahner’s garden on Billy Cabin Mountain. At the outset, we used fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients. Every morning, I drove to 3 different gardens for our produce. Once a week, I drove to Atlanta for bulk purchases, ones not available locally, such as lemons or jumbo yellow onions. I would drive 6 hours roundtrip + market time, to buy from Little Joe Cerniglia. (Little Joe passed away in December of 2014).

Tranquility. It was early afternoon. Jerri, David, and Rusty were sitting outside, underneath the outside deck.. The sun would not have been westerly, they are working in the shade to the babbling sounds of Little Buck Creek, not more than 12 feet away. The rhythm in the kitchen upstairs would have been mellow, as I had time to grab my camera and come down to talk with the group.

Rooted in the earth. Cuisines of world sprout from the soil, the wind, the exposure of the sun, and the time of season, what wine makers referred to as terroir, make the food just as they make the wine. All the things that make a place a place, marry themselves into a unified whole. This marriage produces unique offspring. Food must taste of life, the hand that prepares and serves it must bow to that birthright.

Simple, direct, and honest. I understood the heritage of technique, the importance of mastering the basics. I knew this then, I was not competent yet. It would lake a life time of practice to master. Food of the soul is never complicated.

Tradition and sustainability. Oh, I was aware of the past, a cook’s day starts in the garden, certain foods go well together, I was studying the classics of France. I was not thinking of the future, but this image predicts it. To sustain, we must do all of the above—work together, eat fresh, local, and seasonal foods, be tranquil in our practice, stay close to the earth and honor Her, be simple, humble, honest, and direct in the way you cook, invent but do not stray too far from the past.

The Circle. This image is predominated by circles, spheres, globes, clusters of green stars, points of light condensed into vegetable matter by photosynthesis. In the abstract, the circle is a perfect shape—stable, equanimous, without end. This photo is a static image, if the circle were in motion, projected into the four dimensions of space-time, it would be sinusoidal, tracing out a helix. Put two counter rotating circles together and the path generated is the double helix of DNA. This image is a symbol of Life.

A Mandala. A few years after this picture was taken, I was introduced to mandalas. Looking back through notebooks dating from that period of design school, coming forward to this day, making mandalas is a central practice of mine. My subconscious mandala pressed the shutter - to await this awakening. It will keep me from going over the edge. I will survive the “suicidal job of writing books.”