Writing when possibilities are infinite

When there's so much food to preserve, what do you choose to write about?

The results of a kimchi-making session several years ago

As I’ve been slowly poking away at the edits for The Essential Preserving Handbook, I’ve been thinking a lot about framing in food writing.

In this case, the actual visual metaphor of a frame has been useful, because in nearly every case, when we look at a complete landscape, we can’t fit the whole thing inside one discrete frame.

What we choose to center also means something else is being oriented to the side, or cut out completely.

So how do we make those choices with intention?

I have many opinions about this, which you can probably intuit if you’re a longtime reader (e.g. not just including the most obvious/powerful voices, allowing our narratives to be complex and scientifically and historically grounded, etc.)

The frame you choose ultimately shapes the view of your reader, and so as food writers shaping the landscape itself with out words, the frame has to be chosen with intention.

For fellow writers, this is not a groundbreaking statement, but I mention it because it’s important for me as I write to keep in mind the fact that my writing does actually shape worlds in some small (or maybe even big?) way: It informs readers, and it creates a precedent for a certain perspective or idea existing in the world and/or builds on existing precedents in various ways.

In writing The Essential Preserving Handbook, I was faced with the challenge of intentional framing while also trying to be comprehensive (or as comprehensive as you can be in a single volume).

When food preserving contains infinite possibilities, which ones do you put at the center?

My decision boiled down to two things:

-The way I cook

-The way I think readers will use this book

The way I cook is very vegetable-forward. I am an omnivore, but my meat consumption is relatively minimal, though I do eat my share of dairy and fish.

The book covers preserving every type of food, to some extent, including meat. But in my framing, I chose to put meat to the side, for various ecological reasons and because meat preserving is frankly less of a passion of mine than vegetable preserving. If I can cover the basics, point readers towards resources to dive more deeply if they want, and then focus readers on where my talents shine, then I’m doing us all a service and not trying to be an author that I’m not.

The ways my readers cook vary considerably, but from what I’ve experienced over the years many are also cooking with vegetables (though not exclusively) and many are willing to branch out and try new things (a big reason why I founded the Culinary Curiosity School).

Some of you garden, some shop from local farmers, some are local farmers. There’s an emphasis on good quality and preferably locally grown ingredients that I see again and again in my conversations with readers, and as I considered how to frame this book, the preferences you all have shared with me over the years sit front and center.

This book is meant to be used by home cooks and by culinary professionals looking for an overview of preserving and looking to preserve specific ingredients: And honestly, much of what we preserve at the home scale is vegetables (and fruit).

So my vegetable and fruit-forward framing speaks to my interests and helps me best serve my readers. It’s the best of both worlds, right?

But framing has to take something else into consideration: Not just how will the reader use the book (i.e. how to frame the subject matter itself) but how will they use the physical book: In other words, how do I organize my work so that readers can engage with it in the way that I know will serve them best?

In my case, I organized preserving methods by ingredient rather than organizing by preserving technique, cross-referencing each ingredient’s entry frequently to overviews of techniques.

So for example, corn points to freezing and canning guidelines outlined at the start of the book, but also includes recipes unique to corn (like sour corn, a personal favorite).

Now, as I edit, I’m revisiting all of this and refining: And thinking of that frame, and imagining how specifically my readers will use the book really helps. It’s always helpful, but with a many-hundreds-of-pages tome? It’s priceless.

P.S. If you’re a fellow food writer, or a writer of any subject matter who wants to write with me, I’m offering two sliding-scale, pay what you can spots in Bloom, my 8 week writing workshop happening in early 2025.

Shoot me an email (hello@root-kitchens.com) if that would help support your work!

I’d love to see as many of my fellow writers who are also readers in there, too: use the code WRITERFRIENDS for 20% off (paid subscribers, scroll down for a reminder of your 80% discount code).