Miriam Padilla almost went to law school. Now she teaches kids to cook in Olympia, on her days off from an actual restaurant job.

Oftentimes, doing work for one client puts me happily in the path of other people creating something special, which is what happened recently when I stopped into HOTBABE-HOTSAUCE’s production facility at the Agricultural Innovation Park in Tenino.

As I enter month sixth of being self-employed full time, I’m beginning to notice a pattern in the producers and growers I write about, and I’d like to get it down on “paper” before I decide it’s all in my head.

Call it “six degrees of separation” or the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon”, but on any given day, the work I’m doing for one client almost inevitably creates an opportunity for me to create an outcome for a quasi-connected client.

Chicory’s not gone - it’s evolving. When Elise Landry and Adam Wagner opened Chicory in Olympia in the summer of 2020, they stepped into a storm.

At Sofie’s Scoops Gelateria in Olympia, every scoop tells a story. Sophie Landis begins every day by setting the vibe—whether it’s Frank Ocean, The Flaming Lips or Ella Fitzgerald—she chooses music as unique and joyful as her gelato. 

At a time when things have never felt more divisive, I hopped in the car on a beautiful spring Sunday morning, heading north from our little farm in Lewis County up to Chimacum, Washington, for a tasting tour at Finnriver Farm and Cidery, a grassroots organization hell-bent on reconnecting with the land and growing community.

It was when I started seeing her bagels pop up in her IG feed that I knew I needed to discover just where Michelle was headed because I knew wherever it was, I wanted to follow – potentially eating bagels along the way.

This is not the first time I’ve written about Muhammad Ayub and what he’s doing at Dancing Goats and Singing Chickens Organic Farm. It’s not the second time, either. It’s the third.

In the past three years, I’ve written more and been published more (even if it is “just” our work website) than I have since I started writing. This is a good thing because writing every day keeps me limber, but it also comes with some emotional and mental hiccups I’ve had to navigate. I don’t know if I’m like other writers or unlike other writers, but writing takes a lot out of me, especially when it’s a lot of short-form content about a wide variety of topics.

It felt like my heart stopped beating when I learned that one of my culinary icons, Naomi Pomeroy, died suddenly this past weekend. Naomi cared so deeply about food and her industry and how it brings people together and strengthens a community. It changed me. Her impact on food culture in Portland certainly influenced my love for the city and kept bringing me back to BEAST over and over.