Drank all the milk and needed more for baking? Same. The grocery list above formed the opening to a story I wrote last week that deconstructed the history pie, including my own dive into the connection between pumpkin pie and Thanksgiving. I had SO MUCH FUN with this piece, and not just because my editor assigned me some delicious homework: "You have to bake pies. Live the story."

I also finished reading a book with that exact title: Delicious. An ecologist I met in my research for a story about sourdough wrote the book with his wife, an anthropologist. They dispel a few myths (nope, your tongue does not have zones of taste) and sprinkle in some more complex science. I'm totally geeked out to learn the neuron receptors for hot (TRPV1)** and cold (TRPM8).

The chapter about fermenting mastodon meat is worth the book alone. But their broader angle is a deep history of choice: we select our meals, wherever possible, based on the foods we consider tasty.

That counts if you're partial to kiwi or favor free-range fruit trees or prefer your veggies bright and colorful.

But "delicious" as an adjective does not merely refer to taste. The word implicates our other senses too.

Consider salt. There's a mesmerizing visual component, the sound of grains bouncing, and a strong influence of touch – the best way to add salt is a pinch from a cellar, not a shaker.

That variety gives "delicious" its applicability far beyond the kitchen, and it's undoubtedly embedded in poetry, particularly one of my favorite anthologies. As a shared cultural experience, "delicious" tends to pull people. They congregate ~there~ around whatever that word describes. I think often of a quote from DC chef José Andrés: build longer tables, not higher walls.

That's a lyrical philosophy and an invitation to gather, a high calling that this batch of poems also manages to accomplish.
 

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This newsletter was written on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.
**Footnote: identification of these receptors served as the basis for a Nobel Prize last month!