I don’t like thinking about time.
In any context.
I find it disorienting: amorphous, merciless, and always just out of reach.
A dimension that always moves away from us, time steals what we love — and ruins a perfectly good meal if not watched with laser precision.
I have two relationships with it, neither particularly healthy.
In one, I ignore it entirely, letting entropy do its worst.
The other, I try to outrun and outwit it — measuring my life in microseconds, wringing every last drop from the day before it dissolves into the next.
In all cases, time is the winner; I, the loser.
I’ve lost more to time than I can even begin to remember — in fairness, we all have.
People and places I’ve loved — I cling to the sounds, scents, and feelings they once stirred, even as they grow more distant by the moment.
But lately, I’ve started noticing something else.
A third relationship I have with time — not quite surrender, not quite control.
More like negotiation.
A fragile rhythm between urgency and ease, instinct and instruction.
It’s shown up in unexpected places: in kitchens and conversations, in the way places change, in the way people drift or return.
What follows are a few of those moments — fragments, really — where time made itself known.
Sometimes quietly. Sometimes all at once. And sometimes, only in hindsight.
the loneliest place.
When I first started the ‘mise’ adventure, I was in the middle of a long silence with my mom.
It was a culmination of things, really, but as one of my favorite NYU professors so poignantly puts it: in the long run, you won’t be upset about the things that happened to you, you’ll be upset about how upset you were about them.
I had lost a lot of precious time — time I will never get back — with my mom.
There was a period where I wanted to break the silence, interrupted only by a staccato of short text messages exchanged between us — but I didn’t know how.
So when I found myself in the kitchen, preparing some complicated recipe, well over my skis, it seemed fateful that the one person who it made the most sense to call was my mom.
I didn’t waste any time on ceremony: “Mama, I need your help. I’m making…”
And just like that, the clock began to tick again.
The kitchen can be a lonely place — if you let it.
There’s a lot of patient watching. A lot of touching grass, as the kids say. Repetitive, meticulous work — the kind that’s often best done alone.
It’s in this loneliest of places that time begins to blur.
Seconds blur into minutes, then hours. You drift.
On the one hand, this is quite poetic and lovely and there is an “unplug and let go” element to cooking (*insert statistic about cooking being a great stress relief*).
BUT.
I have always found balance is found somewhere in the middle of extremes. Culinary experiences shouldn’t be solitary. And they shouldn’t be only for others.
Indeed, for me, food is best when shared. For me, with others. It’s a value that was instilled in me by my mom.
And so as I got deeper and deeper into my culinary repertoire, spending hours carefully preparing vegetables, cleaning my work station — I wanted to not only share the food I was making with my friends and family, but the journey.
This is where “mise” first came to be.
And, this, is when I first called my mom — as gratitude, as counsel, but mostly, because she’s my mom.
And honestly? We should probably all call our parents more.
we’re all fermenting.
I was incredibly moved by
’s How to Lose Your Mother. For obvious reasons, if this post is any indication (and because she’s an incredible writer).There’s also this underlying premise she gets at: we’re all slowly falling apart.
It’s an unfortunate reality, but I’d like to think of this not as “oh no, we’re all decaying” but rather “we’re all fermenting” and similar to fermentation in the kitchen - some ferments are great (see: Kimchi), and others suck (see: my attempt at sourdough).
The results will always vary. No matter the tools, ingredients, or technique, randomness creeps in. You have to accept it — allow for it.
I’ve had chronic migraines for as long as I can remember.
They run in my family — my dad, my aunt, my grandfather.
I’ve seen a vast array of (great) doctors who’ve all tried a litany of treatment options. We’ve tried the usual stuff (the kind you see in commercials), the experimental stuff, and everything in between.
I used to get frustrated when a treatment didn’t work.
Once, I had a migraine that lasted 90 days.
After a late-night ER visit, my wife cried as she drove me home. Nothing was helping.
I was in near-constant pain, doing my best to function.
Then one day, out of nowhere, it broke — while we were walking through Silver Lake.
Just like that.
More recently, my doctor at UCLA seems to have found an aggressive treatment plan that is working much better.
I’m not holding my breath.
This fermentation mindset (as it were) has helped me come to terms with my reality.
I’m a work in progress. And that’s ok.
We all are.
tango with time.
Christina Tosi was recently on Simon Sinek’s A Touch of Optimism, where the two embarked on making Tosi’s iconic “Compost Cookies.” It’s a wonderful episode of a wonderful podcast with two wonderful people.
As a kid, Tosi experimented with ingredients and timing — learning which rules could be bent in baking’s otherwise rigid world.
As longtime “mise” readers know, my cooking style is… not what you’d call precise.
I rarely follow recipes (let alone write them down), and I love experimenting with different flavors and techniques.
But I had assumed that timing was sacrosanct.
Boy, was I wrong.
It’s obvious when you say it out loud, but there are so many ways to play with timing — and it’s yet another tool in my arsenal now.
Whether it’s high heat from the Gozney, tricks like instant yeast or MSG, or a well-placed splash of acid — I’m always looking for ways to manipulate time in the kitchen.
To bend it. Wrestle with it. Maybe even dance with it.
I used to think time in the kitchen was something to obey.
Now, I see it as something you can tango with.
en place.
Time is a fickle thing.
Whether we ignore it, wrestle with it, or ask it to tango, it moves forward — always — at an unrelenting pace.
It’s also a beautiful thing.
Tearing us apart.
And sometimes, it builds us back together.
It’s this entropic element. One we can’t control, no matter how much we want or need to.
But if the kitchen has taught me anything, it’s this.
We may not control time.
But, we can control how we meet it.
How we play with it, move with it, and learn its rhythm as we go.
And that, my dear reader, is where the magic is.