Eateroftheroom 1

A reintroduction of sorts...

Hi friends!

I’ve missed this project so much! I thought about it constantly over the last few years, but I felt a recurring mental block around documenting my cooking and writing about it. I’ve unfortunately spent a lot of time preoccupied and consumed with what this project “would become”—I’m chronically inclined to predictive and obsessive thinking. I became increasingly anxious about maintaining some level of rigor, production, and interest from others. I started to think this project must (for some reason) connect to the greater arc or flow of what will become “my work”, rather than letting it exist simply as a creative project and extension of my beloved hobby.

What is now eateroftheroom was once karealeats--an Instagram account that was supposed to document the process of reading, researching, and cooking for my undergraduate thesis. I read and wrote a lot about food systems through the lenses of labor, urbanism, imagined kinship, and ancestral reverence— I didn’t weave these threads into this substack initially, but I’m rethinking that now. The creative part of my academic project eventually became an artist book, and the Instagram account became where I randomly posted photos of food I was cooking for fun, with friends and other cooks, too. It was relieving to have a place for another facet of my love for food, specifically cooking, that wasn’t accommodated in my studies.

Once I got enough interest from friends and friends of friends, I set up this substack and started hobby writing recipes inspired by the music and poetry I was enjoying. I loved the experience of translating music and poetry into a meal or drink by tapping into the connections between flavor and sound, texture and prose, etc., but I also felt intimidated and limited by my prompt, so I pulled away from the challenge. I was also hesitant to keep developing this project because of food media's high saturation and trendy nature. There is so much out there, but I found myself disinterested in finding my ‘niche’, or ‘place’ in it, yet I felt kind of bogged down by that very idea of having to ‘keep up’, ‘grow an audience’, and get ‘somewhere’. I also felt guilt about pay walling recipes, especially when my posting declined; I stepped away from Instagram, Substack, and abandoned the offshoot project of a self-published cookbook zine. I wasn’t producing and therefore couldn't justify asking for that kind of support. I canceled subscriptions and shut the door on the last iteration of this project.

This time of ambivalence and avoidance has been winding and frustrating, but it’s crested! I’ve worked hard to remind myself that I don’t need to impose aspirations or a trajectory for this passion/project/process. I’m interested in writing more loosely and playfully by focusing less on the exactness of a long-developed recipe and instead sharing the spontaneous combinations, silly ideas, and stories that inspire my cooking. I can’t expedite the experience of my creative process with this project and won’t try anymore. I’m happy to share recipes, musings, and experiments with you all as they come, and I hope you’ll share your thoughts with me, too.

Thanks for being here and I’ll talk to you soon!

x kareal

eateroftheroom