I didn’t find out until later that Sufjan apparently publicly pledged to make an album inspired by each state in the U.S., then proceeded to quit after the third one.

The Sufjan comparison happened a few times in rapid succession, and then not again for a long time. Maybe because I didn’t quit after the third dinner, or maybe because it’s is a lesser-known tidbit about a medium-known artist.

And even though hosting 50 dinner parties is arguably much easier than making 50 musical albums, it’s still a prolonged and complicated endeavor with milestones worth celebrating along the way.

That’s why this summer I hosted a reunion of sorts to honor the 1/3 point of the project, a total of 18 completed dinners for the states A-L.

Plus, previous guests had said how meaningful their respective dinners were, and how they hoped to attend again and/or meet others who had come to other dinners and/or continue their engagement with the project in ways beyond subscribing to this here newsletter.

I didn’t realize until I sent the invite that 75 people have sat at our dinner table so far—so many that Harsh and I worried briefly about the standing room capacity on our roof deck. We reprised a few recipes that would work well as grazing snacks: lady pea salad (Alabama), pimiento cheese (Georgia), and haupia (Hawaii), paired with Southern sweet tea (Arkansas) that guests could spike or not. Howe generously brought butter mochi, a shared favorite that we had served at the Hawaii dinner and that he makes regularly for Tang’s Bakery. And we invited folks to share a “toast or roast” about something silly or serious about the U.S.

Michael talked about the longstanding fight between Minnesota and Virginia over a Confederate flag that the former took from the latter during the Civil War. Virginia has begged for its return (and attempted to trick Minnesota into doing so!), but Minnesota stands by the fact that the Union won and thus will be keeping the flag and if Virginia has a problem with that, that’s on them and a big yikes regardless. Amen!

Anya brought back our wildest discussion topic from the Illinois dinner: the Dave Matthews Band Poopgate incident, a cautionary tale of why you don’t dump your RV’s sewage tank into a river where people may or may not be on a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture directly below.

Howe shared an in-depth history of Chinatowns, both ours in Philly and further afield. I learned a ton, from the fact that the first Chinatown was established in the Philippines in 1594 (what!!) to additional perspective on our local struggle in recent years to keep the 76ers arena out of the neighborhood. Turns out, that fight isn’t unique, and our neighbors down in Washington D.C. had their Chinatown essentially destroyed by the construction of their own basketball arena 20 years ago.

Rachel informed us that on Ohio’s 150th birthday, the state realized that they’d never formally ratified the state constitution and thus had never officially entered the Union. In 1953, they voted to do so retroactively, but if you’re ever at bar trivia and they ask which state could be considered either the 17th or the 48th entrant to the country…there’s your answer.

My favorite part about the toasts and roasts—beyond the fact that all of them were fantastic and 100% what I was hoping for when I requested volunteers to bravely share something with the group—was that all of them were part toast and part roast. Honestly, a perfect encapsulation of our silly and stupid and wonderful and weird country, and very on brand for the type of conversations we’ve been having at the table for every gathering of 50 States, 50 Dinners along the way.

I was so happy to bring everyone together, intermingle even more of my friends and acquaintances who’ve joined me on this journey so far, and honor the 1/3 point of the project as we embark on the next 16 dinners through all the M and N states.

I gave a speech at the reunion but didn’t record it, so you’ll just have to imagine it in my voice as you read:

At the Alabama dinner, the very first one that kicked off this series, our friend Abbu, who couldn’t be here today, asked everyone at the table to share their life dream.

In that moment, I knew that we were onto something really special, firstly because this table full of basically strangers indulged the question and vulnerably shared their deepest hopes without reservation, and secondly because my own answer was “this.”

This was and still is my dream: gathering people, for a meaningful reason, in a way that shapes perspectives and brings them closer to themselves, each other, and the world around them.

50 States, 50 Dinners has done that 18 times over the last 2 years. And today, you’re bringing my more surface level dream to life, for all my friends to be friends with all my other friends. I’m so excited that you’re here.

This project very much relies on co-creation, so I have a few thank yous to share.

Thank you, of course, to every single one of you for showing up at my table and being present and invested in this unusual project. It literally could not exist without you. A special shoutout to those who bravely brought along a +1 that required vulnerability to invite—those have been some of my absolutely favorite gatherings to be part of.

My friend Anna said it perfectly, that so many of you have really matched my freak, especially those of you who went extra hard on the prompt and did things like writing themed short stories, performing original raps, and hand-beading themed friendship bracelets. Big bonus points to those doing a toast or roast today.

Thank you to those who have been day-savers, like Gigi and Kyle who showed up for the Iowa dinner with less than two hours’ notice after half the guests flaked, my former work wife Amanda who stopped by the grocery store on her way to the Connecticut dinner to buy butternut squash when I cut into mine and discovered it was completely rotten, and Howe who made this reunion much easier to host by contributing tons of butter mochi even though he’s hosting a pop-up for Tang’s Bakery tomorrow.

Finally, obviously, thank you to Harsh, for paying half for the food and doing whatever I assign him to do, which is mostly fighting with gluten free dough, deep frying, cleaning the house, and doing anything else I find stressful or unpleasant. He has been an unflappable and enthusiastic co-host, encouraged me at every turn, and taught many of us a lot of cool things about geology.

Cheers!

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I was asked this question during the speaker Q&A after my talk last month at CreativeMornings Philadelphia.

I had just delivered a 20-minute presentation on resilience, generosity, and rooted creativity in connection to the theme of Nakhlah, the Arabic word for palm tree—a theme that ties beautifully into the origin and vision for 50 States, 50 Dinners, which of course I highlighted in the talk.

“I certainly run into people more often, simply because I know more people around the city,” I said. “And I’ve found it to be a great next step towards friendship when I meet someone new. Asking a stranger to coffee one-on-one can be kind of intimidating for both parties, but asking someone to join you for a group gathering lessens the pressure for them. It’s an easier yes.”

I’m sharing this interaction with you for three reasons:

1. I’d love for you to go watch my talk!

2. If you’re on the fence about becoming a host/gatherer yourself, this is propaganda to convince you.

3. This exact scenario is how my wonderful new friend Helen made her way to the Louisiana dinner table.

Trisha, who attended the Idaho dinner, hosted a going-away party this summer before moving to New York. When her friends asked how we knew each other, of course the dinner came up. Immediately, mere moments after saying hello, Helen bravely pitched herself as a guest for Louisiana as a native of the state with deep family roots going back for generations.

And I’m so glad she did.

The menu

Is anyone surprised that Louisiana has been a popular request when I ask people if there are any particular states they’d love to attend?

Its food reputation absolutely precedes it, with iconic dishes like jambalaya, gumbo, po’boys, and muffuletta sandwiches that are inextricably tied to their bayou origins. I wanted to root the menu in that sense of place—our dessert of bananas foster and pecan pralines certainly played into that—but also offer slightly deeper cuts and perhaps even some novelty at the table, thanks to America: The Cookbook.

The appetizer, Natchitoches meat pies, came with a pronunciation lesson (NA-kuh-tish). The main involved the less widely famous dishes of Hoppin’ John and shrimp etoufée, plus a new-to-most-of-us green gumbo, a vegetarian dish originally eaten at Lent and/or when money was tight and/or when protein pickings were slim. I’m proud to say my many hours of de-ribbing and chopping several pounds of collards and other greens paid off when Dave exclaimed “I usually don’t like vegetables, but this is amazing!”

Around the table

The sense of place inherent to Louisiana cuisine is no accident, as Helen described to us alongside sharing the Encyclopedia of Creole and Cajun Cooking. Traditional food here comes from a blend of indigenous roots, French and Spanish colonization, and Black/African influences. The terrain is also a crucial factor, with rice, certain vegetables, and shellfish are all easily cultivated in the bayou. Techniques, like starting each dish with a roux, were “anti-starvation” methods to add calories cheaply during tough times. And she was taught at a young age that “being Cajun means refusing to starve,” a literal and figurative lesson about resilience that permeated through the incredible family stories she peppered throughout the meal. Ask her about Big Daddy sometime; you won’t regret it.

Harsh dibsed talking about two of our NOLA faves—the Sazerac and the Pharmacy Museum. The Venn diagram between them centers on curing what ails you, I suppose, given the strength of the cocktail and the bitters that were often sold as medicine by apothecaries. Of course we know better now (and importantly, someday future generations will look back and hopefully find our current day treatments to be as wackadoo as we see antiquated remedies), but back then, pharmacy practices were…horrifying. Leeches were everywhere! Your doctor being covered in other people’s blood was seen as a sign of his expertise! I’m so grateful to live in an era where we know about germs!!

Voodoo is another healing tradition connected to Louisiana—and yes, I said healing, as Dave shared with the table how Caribbean lore firmly establishes it as a medicinal practice while the Europeans created the now-common association between voodoo and conjuring harm. Zombies also come from this tradition as Black bodies ensnared by white wizards. Dave told us that the first zombie movie dates back to the 1930s and essentially showcases enslaved people in a white-induced trance. The more you know!

Tagging onto the mention of slavery, I shared some of the research I’d done on Angola, an enormous prison/plantation in Louisiana that continues to perpetuate slave labor in our modern day. Because it’s so massive and so isolated from other towns and resources, it has its own micro-economy of food establishments, golf courses, housing complexes for correctional officers and their families, a post office, a radio station, and more. Inmates essentially work as either “field slaves” or “house slaves,” depending on tenure and behavior, to keep the facility running, and it’s known to be one of the most physically brutal places to be incarcerated. Incredibly heavy stuff, but important to know about.

Ready to transition to something lighter (PHEW), Claudio swooped in to enlighten us about arguably the state’s largest cultural touchpoint: LSU football. Y’all, I had no idea how outrageous this fan base is. They have a live tiger mascot, who, by the way, is cared for by the vet school students. The football arrives to the field by parachute. They renamed their stadium to Death Valley after crushing Clemson in defeat, stealing the name from their own stadium to add insult to injury. All wild, but really I’m gonna be thinking about that tiger for the rest of eternity.

Amanda managed to somehow incorporate several of our previous themes (namely vampires, ties to Chicago, and race relations, though I realize I only really mentioned the latter in this recap…guess you just had to be there!) into a professional-level rundown of The Vampire Diaries series, which was filmed partially in New Orleans’s French Quarter and Garden District. We were all on the edge of our seats learning the lore—with the exception of fellow devoted fan Claudio, who joined in as an equal commentator along the way. One of my notes says the vampires can “turn into bats, but only briefly because bats aren’t sexy.” And I’ve always said that!

Look for the helpers stirrers

One thing you should know, if you ever throw a Louisiana-themed dinner party, is to plan ahead for your roux-making. I, for one, did not plan well for the fact that every dish was a “stove dish,” meaning that every burner would be full and I’d need to be fully dedicated to every pan simultaneously.

Lucky for me, Amanda is not only an absolutely captivating television summarizer, but also top notch at following a “just stand there and stir this please” direction. Sometimes a literal extra hand makes the difference between dinner on the table or not, and she’s the unsung hero of the meal. Everyone say “thank you, Amanda!”

Thank you, Amanda.

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“This is so cool. I want to do something like it.”

Which would almost immediately be followed by:

“But I don’t know how. I’d have to do something different. I couldn’t host 50 dinner parties.”

Which is honestly a good take. This exact project is a massive commitment, and it requires both tangible resources and a specific disposition that wouldn’t work for a lot of people. “Something different” is what you should aim to do, even in the face of clear inspiration.

I never set out to evangelize a single right way of hosting and gathering. I never said this is the only valid expression of creativity or community.

But I do believe in the transformative power of a project—especially one that is deliberately shaped to catalyze the change you want to see in your self, your creative practice, or your world.

When I set out to host 50 dinner parties themed for the 50 states, I had a very clear problem that I wanted to solve through the project. After a year of intense grief post-celiac diagnosis, my previous aspirations to see the world and to build community felt extremely out of reach.

How could I do those things safely, now that food was so fraught? Airports are now impossible. A language barrier with a server is dangerous. Potluck-style events—or even just a small gathering where someone else is cooking—are risky.

50 States, 50 Dinners is rooted in the challenges of celiac disease which has enabled me to achieve my aspirations through them, not despite them.

This is how I believe people can do “something like it” while also doing “something different.” With some deliberate vision, you can also transform your personal storm into a salve that actually changes its path.

Introducing Un.fold

I first mentioned developing a methodology to help others with this when I announced the 50 States, 50 Dinners website, and now it’s here.

Un.fold: Shaping your creative life is a reflection-meets-ideation workshop that uncovers what’s next for your creativity. I’ve been saying it’s half brainstorming session and half origami vibes, creating space for you to develop ideas that are as formative as they are fun, no matter your background, medium, or skill level.

Don’t know where to put your creative energy? Not sure how to shape a project to go beyond exploration and expression into transformation of your practice, your self, or your world? This is the gathering for you.

You’ll leave with a clearer direction for what you’ll create, plus a repeatable framework you can use any time you find yourself seeking a path forward in the future.

I’ll be hosting Un.fold as a virtual session on September 23 and in-person at Indy Hall in Philadelphia on October 8. I’d love to see you there—plus a creative friend or two, perhaps?

Neither of those dates work? You can put your name down to get notified about future workshops.

For Kentucky night:

• Can you cook with prosecco? (Preparing for leftover prosecco in case we didn’t finish the massive 1.5L bottle from our basement, which was irrelevant because we obviously did drink it all, and also yes, you can)

• What is a julep cup? (A small metal or copper cup perfectly sized for mint juleps; we served ours in a mule cup instead to evoke a similar vibe even with drastically different proportions)

• What is a siphon? (One of those bougie canister things for making whipped cream)

• Sheet of gelatin to powder conversion (Our dessert called for “two sheets” of gelatin, but the store only had powder)

• Kentucky state flag (A thing I often search while getting dressed for dinner, unless I already have a themed item planned to wear)

• Do bears eat the whole salmon? (Nothing to do with Kentucky, but Harsh and I have been watching the Katmai brown bear livestream religiously)

The menu

I have a hot take about the hot brown sandwich: it might be the best sandwich of all time. Open-faced, so not overwhelmed by bread. Sliced turkey, arguably the most elite deli meat. Mornay sauce, which is basically cream and butter, so what’s not to like? Topped with a juicy tomato slice and crispy bacon, balancing acidic sweetness and salty umami. Are you convinced yet?

Our main, burgoo, was a classic hunter’s stew that is traditionally made with whatever had been caught—think venison, rabbit, squirrel…the latter of which the table agreed we were happy excluding in favor of our stew’s beef, pork, and chicken combo. 1.5x-ing the recipe meant my Dutch oven was nearly overflowing, even with me forgetting to add tomatoes and having a flash of memory three days later about it. Next time!

The sneakily confounding dish of the night was bourbon aficionado, a liquor-soaked fruit and nut cake with a butterscotch sauce. Seems standard, until you read the recipe and discover that the guest chef who contributed the recipe to America: The Cookbook wants you to cut the cake into cubes, layer them into a smoked glass, siphon the sauce on top, and garnish with dehydrated corn. I ignored nearly all of these directions but did track down a siphon from my friend Natalie. I regret to inform you it had nearly no effect on the sauce, though I’m willing to admit potential user error. The cake was a hit anyway, so take that, strangely complicated recipe better suited for a restaurant than a dinner party!

Around the table

In the spirit of my search history intro, please enjoy this conversation summary as if they were search queries.

• How to take a selfie with a camel (Rob specifically requested to attend the Kentucky dinner to tell about his obsession with a camel that lived along his commute in Louisville with whom he finally got a selfie just before moving away, which he described as “the best thing I ever did as a Deloitte consultant.”)

• What is that tiny circular piece of land on the far west of the Kentucky map? (A thing I never noticed until making the dinner menus! A series of earthquakes in the early 1800s carved out “Bubbleland,” an area about the size of Hartford, CT which is now home to 9 residents who officially receive mail 10 miles away in Tennessee.)

• What does live cover mean? (While most horses are bred through insemination, the gene pool for thoroughbred racehorses is kept “pure and diverse” by turning champion stallions into sex workers to the tune of $50k-$200k per session, as shared by Jill.)

• Why does Kentucky smell so sweet? (We already know Delaware has more chickens and corporations than people, but Max discovered Kentucky has the same situation with barrels—about 4 million of them, causing bourbon to perfume the air by evaporating into the state’s heat and humidity.)

• Does circadian rhythm change when not exposed to sun? (A question two scientists aimed to solve through an early sleep study hosted in Mammoth Cave, which Harsh explained and showed creepy photos of. Some of the study’s findings now inform the sleep tracking methods on your smart phone, watch, or ring, which is wild. But we were all left asking: why do this in an objectively spooky cave? Or, in Max’s words, “what about just a dark room?”)

• Andy Bashear vs. Mitch McConnell (What a time to gather to discuss Kentucky when Mitch McConnell is even more in the news than usual! Ellie gave us the lowdown on progressive governor Bashear’s “Galapagos tortoise energy” and how it compares to McConnell’s “what if we elected a villain from Scooby-Doo” vibe, both of which I wrote down verbatim.)

• How do you pronounce Versailles in Kentucky? (Like Cairo in Illinois, Versailles, KY isn’t said the same way as its namesake, instead anglicizing to “Ver-Sales.” Camille shared this lore alongside that of a Vanderpump Rules cast member nicknamed “Kentucky Muffin” who got married at an admittedly stunning medieval castle venue there. I googled the event and discovered that Lance Bass was the officiant, which makes this feel like a page from Mad Libs.)

• Where to get the best bourbon (According to James, our KY resident, the best is at New Riff Distilling, which happens to be in his neighborhood. And he brought samples for everyone, so I can confirm it’s smooooooth.)

Mic drop

After the dinner I posted on Instagram: “This was the fourth dinner where Abraham Lincoln was mentioned but the first one discussing horses fucking.” And I think I’ll leave you with that.

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We had so much fun at the Kansas dinner that I already know my “Around the table” section is going to be long, so in the spirit of my past concise self, I’m sparing you an extensive preamble today. Onward!

The menu

Kansas is the quickest-turn dinner so far—guests only had 15 days notice before arriving at my doorstep—and it was scheduled for just a week after Iowa thanks to my hectic spring schedule. For some folks, this might be hellish, but I’ve gotten good at seeing the efficiency benefits of clustered hosting for similar cuisines. Sturdy ingredients shared across meals (potatoes, cabbage, herbs, plus everything shelf-stable or freezable) mean less shopping and stress. Aspiring hosts take note!

Despite the many shared elements, Kansas took on a unique flair. The deconstructed salad appetizer was a crowd favorite—fresh, bright, herbaceous, creamy…basically all the yummy adjectives—and the bierock was a big hit too, both with our Kansas native and with everyone trying it for the first time. Both of those dishes I would happily make again!

The rest I would describe as “fine”—I committed some user error on the already-conceptually-unappetizing ham loaf, I probably should’ve rewarmed the pineapple upside down cake before serving, and potato salad is potato salad. So be it.

Around the table

As you might know, I take notes during each dinner, for three reasons: 1) I don’t have a great memory, so recapping is hard without notes, 2) I’d rather focus on the conversation itself rather than on remembering specific quips or details, 3) it’s really fun to look back on the path of our discussion, especially its tangents.

Tonight’s winding path started with the border politics between Kansas and Missouri, especially over the Kansas City divide. Alaina’s topic of the impending World Cup coming to KC and its impact on the local hospitality industry was the perfect backdrop for an exploration of this drama.

The path curved to Shelly sharing her ongoing list of Hallmark Christmas movie tropes—you know, small town enemies-to-lovers day-is-saved isn’t-Christmas-magical?—before I shared the biographical research I did on multi-hyphenate genius and Kansas native Janelle Monae. Though she left KCK (that’s Kansas City, Kansas, as opposed to KCMO on the Missouri side) many years ago, she prominently shares her experience with the poverty, drugs, and violence she grew up around and how it’s influenced the dystopia and Afrofuturism themes in her writing and music.

Another curve: crab theory, in which apparently everything is evolving into a crab? Also, mantis shrimp are cool as hell. You can thank Rachel for this tangent, and I’m sure she will happily grace you with a full personal explanation of both.

If anyone’s gonna talk about the ground at a dinner, it’ll be Harsh. Strataca Underground is a Kansan salt cave immune to flooding and other decay, enabling the conservation of items like famous costumes (including perhaps one of the original Dorothy costumes, which Rachel literally wore one time), government documents, and other oddities 650 feet underground. It was discovered by “lots of dudes digging for oil” (Harsh’s words) and is the world’s largest hand-dug well.

I must tell you I mistook “hand-dug” to mean they literally scooped the dirt with their hands like a dog scruffing up the yard, and I was immediately told that duh, that’s not what it means, they obviously used shovels and picks and such. Yes, I am embarrassed by this assumption. Objects in mirror are sometimes dumber than they appear!

Because of that stop on our path, we ended up with the night’s inside jokes about “men love to dig” and “the children yearn for the mines,” which we delighted in through so. many. callbacks. Thank goodness we didn’t make it a drinking game, or I probably wouldn’t be alive to publish this recap. The same is true for our other inside joke of the evening—the lore of Abraham Lincoln likely being gay, making this the third dinner where we’ve mentioned ya boy Abe (preceded by Illinois and Indiana).

Shelly, our Kansan native, brought one of the coolest show & tell items ever at the table: an original Life magazine from February 14, 1944 featuring Kansas with the headline “Kansas raises fine families.” One of the fine families in question? Hers! The magazine has a portrait of several of her aunts and uncles with her grandparents, including her grandmother pregnant with Shelly’s mom. Her family is Mennonite, and the photo highlights their relative humility and groundedness, especially juxtaposed with the opposing page of hated local politician Alf Landon playing croquet in front of his mansion. A perfect two-page snapshot of America!

Though Rachel had already educated us so much about crab theory, gingham dresses, and “Kids Back Down the Mines,” she had even more to offer in the form of a rap she wrote with fun facts about Kansas. These included, among many others, that it’s illegal to shoot whales, to shoot rabbits from a motorboat, and to put ice cream on cherry pie in Kansas. One of these things is not like the others! And the entire three minute performance will go down as an iconic moment in this whole project.

Last but certainly not least, Mani schooled us on the surprising role Kansas has played in the fashion world, including the prevalence of feed sack dresses and the invention of Lee jeans, which are more influential on today’s widespread denim adoption than I knew.

Paper plate awards for all

Every single dinner of this series has surprised, delighted, and educated me, so I don’t play favorites when people ask which dinner has been the best one. But sometimes guests truly wow me, and each of the ones for Kansas fell into that distinction. So here are their paper plate awards:

• Rachel: Committing to the Bit Award, for writing and performing an original rap, and for bringing sunflowers to hit the theme even harder

• Alaina: Down for Whatever Award, for serving as our pinch-hitter plus-one with just an hour of notice, joining in as fully as those who’d had more time to prepare

• Shelly: Heart and Soul Award, for her sharing her Kansas enthusiasm, knowledge, and full multi-generational family history, and for gifting everyone gorgeous cards with her mom’s watercolor art

• Mani: Defying the Odds Award, for sneaking a 15-hour trip from New York to Philly into his extremely packed schedule mere weeks before moving across the country—peak “your presence is a present” vibes for sure

A toast to all of them, and to Kansas too.

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As a bonus, when there’s some distance between hosting a dinner and writing its recap, I basically get to live the evening twice (or three times, if I fail to post photos on Instagram directly after and instead share them a few days later). I get to remind myself of how exquisite the appetizer was or the way someone locked in to give an oral history of an obscure event.

I recently learned that this has massive benefits. It’s called Savoring, a fairly self-explanatory name for a proven powerful effect.

And if a scientist wants to reframe one of my habits not as a symptom of procrastination or overcommitment but as a boon to my creative life, I’ll take it.

The menu

Sometimes I need Savoring to come to my rescue. When things go wrong at any given dinner, the recap is often where I’m able to mention them and move on to what I want to remember, what I want to feel inspired by.

At the Iowa dinner, this came in the form of what my sister-in-law deemed Lettucegate—after quartering and plating one head of iceberg for the wedge salad appetizer, I discovered that the second head of iceberg not only came home mostly rotten, but also half of it had frozen from being stored in a colder area of the fridge. All the wedges returned from their salad plates, where I shaved them down to create six plates that were mostly equal in lettuce quantity but with two that were more “chopped” than “wedge” salads.

So here we go, Savoring! As I rationed out our limited lettuce, I got to feel grateful for the one silver lining of our dinner’s bigger fiasco—not one but two day-of cancellations, one a mere 45 minutes before start time—and told myself that at least I wasn’t trying to serve a full table with just the single head. Let the resilience pour in, please!

Once I was able to move on from Lettucegate, I’d call the rest of the food “good enough.” The stuffing inside the pork chops was great, I got to enjoy my grown-up acclimation to lima beans, and we all learned “cabbage cooked in milk” is a disgusting name for a rather tasty vegetable dish. Plus, our resident Iowan, Holly, nearly squealed in delight about the sour cream raisin pie, which I learned is a very classic dessert, especially in the winter when fresh fruit isn’t abundant.

Around the table

With two cancellations, we were nearly just four at the table, which would’ve been a record—and not one I’m trying to establish! Luckily our neighborhood friends Gigi and Kyle were able to swoop in at the eleventh hour, and they even managed to do a bit of Iowa research on the way.

Kyle led us off with some trivia: Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed almost entirely by rivers. This got us talking about the lore of the Mississippi River and how it’s become a full character in so much American storytelling and imagery.

Diane, who I met in the fall at Walk Around Philadelphia, continues to amaze me with her endurance to navigate new places in unconventional ways. In 1988, she bicycled across Iowa, inspired by RAGBRAI but not part of the official event. “Every town is ten miles apart,” she said, meaning that she could take a break roughly once per hour. She especially remembers both that it was beautiful and that the smell of pigs was constant, plus the discovery that it was “more hilly than you’d imagine.”

Even though I believe Diane about the hills, Holly immediately told us about visiting the highest point in Iowa and laughing at its sign’s enthusiasm given how underwhelming the altitude was. Having looked it up, I can absolutely see why: the highest point is 1,670 feet, similar to the height of Cadillac Mountain at Acadia National Park…which is tall, but not that tall.

For her prepared topic, Holly described the shift from small farms to factory farming over time, especially witnessing how industrialized agriculture has changed the landscape. A large highway shoulder, for instance, is considered wasted space, so farmland often goes right up to the edge of the road. I can attest to that, having driven along I-80 and noticing you could practically touch sunflowers, corn, and other crops from your window. I assumed it had always been like that, but Holly noted that it’s evolved for the worse in her lifetime; even natural features like creeks have been altered to be covered by land that can be tilled.

Harsh, who often is prepared to talk about geology and topography, went with his other common theme: inventions. Y’all, it turns out that computers are more Iowan than they are Californian. Created by an Iowa State professor and his graduate student, the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) is considered the first automatic electronic digital computer. Silicon Valley who??

I had one of my own special interests on full display too. One of my high school activities was competing on the constitutional law team (yes, really, and my dad coached), so I’ve known since scheduling the Iowa dinner that I’d give a primer on Tinker v. Des Moines, a landmark free speech and students’ rights case. I even read my favorite passages from Justice Fortas’s majority opinion and Justice Black’s dissent out loud at the table. Nerd alert.

Schools were also top of mind for Gigi, who found in her research that Iowa is known for having a high literacy rate. “I thought it was endearing,” she said, “And sad that I thought it was endearing.” And while the numbers do seem to check out, Holly noted the greater trend of “brain drain” as people leave small communities for better career opportunities, contributing to disparities like lack of access to medical care for rural populations.

Nowhere is truly boring, even flyover states

I wrote in my Indiana dinner recap that the Midwest gets a bad rap. I especially meant it for food, but even for our table topics, the default assumption is that there’s nothing to talk about for the “flyover states.”

Yet our conversation was full of important ideas, from the beauty of the landscape, the advancements that come from the most unexpected places, and the challenges that come with economic and climate changes.

We discovered that there’s so much to discover, and we’re only limited by the time we have at each of these gatherings.

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Instead, I’ll tell you the big news first, and then you can read the blah-blah after if you like an origin story.

50 States, 50 Dinners now has its own website!

It’s pretty dang cool, if I do say so myself. You can explore a map of the dinners that have been hosted, peek at their menus, and see highlights from their recap newsletters.

Absolutely massive shoutout to Harsh—husband, pastry chef/fry cook/co-mixologist, and software engineer extraordinaire—who listened to my vision, built it for me basically overnight, and then handed me the keys to the dreamhouse so I could paint the walls (i.e., write all the content).

Explore the 50 States, 50 Dinners site

Okay, here’s your origin story

I spent all of last month working towards Release Day, a global celebration of creativity through CreativeMornings. Together, over 2000 people, myself included, pledged to create something and release it on May 29.

My original Release Day project wasn’t this site at all, though unsurprisingly it was inspired by 50 States, 50 Dinners.

During our gatherings, I regularly hear from guests that they want to come up with a similar creative project, but don’t know how. My original Release Day idea was to create a framework & workshop session to guide them (and others!) through answering that question.

I’m 90% there—I pretty much just need to name the thing, which is the bane of my existence1—but as I built it out, I decided that I needed a better way to tell the story of this project in order to connect with others who want to run in a similar direction but with a different idea…or perhaps in a different direction but with a similar idea.

But while I put the finishing touches on that, I didn’t want to continue keeping 50states50dinners.com a secret.

I’m thrilled that 50 States, 50 Dinners finally has a true home, one that can orient newcomers and longstanding fans alike, and I hope you enjoy clicking around the map and the menus as much as I do.

Visit the 50 States, 50 Dinners site

The next night, the finished dish—thinly sliced tomato, avocado, and soy-marinated watermelon chunks sitting on a bed of cottage cheese—did finally yield the surprise that I expected and delight that I didn’t. The rest of the menu (curated from America: The Cookbook, of course) was pretty classic Midwestern, white American fare: swiss steak, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, beets in sour cream. The star of the show was absolutely the sticky date pudding, apparently a staple in Indiana’s Amish community. During dessert, Harsh said he thought this was one of his top five favorite menus of the project so far. Though the others at the table didn’t have a comparison point, they echoed his enthusiasm.2

What a feather in Indiana’s cap—especially when a mere two hours before, Cat had texted her mom about attending a dinner themed for their native state and her mom wrote back a version of “What are you even going to eat? Indiana’s not exactly known for its food.”

She’s right, of course. When I talk to people about 50 States, 50 Dinners, the Midwest as a whole has been perceived as boring, bland, nothing to look forward to. Flyover states in terrain, culture, and cuisine. The fact that I haven’t had to special order a single ingredient since entering the “I” states is perhaps telling (and also a nice break!), yet the food has received just as many rave reviews from guests as the ones with alligator meat and highly specific sea salt and legume varieties nobody’s heard of before.

I’ve long been of the mind that the meal itself is more hook, more mood setter, less primary focus. The conversations and the energy that people bring to the table is really what makes or breaks a gathering, which is why these newsletters are 80% about the table discussion and only 20% about the meal. So without further ado:

Around the table

Even if a dinner attendee has never been to their state, their chosen conversation topic tends to reveal a lot about their own origin stories or special interests.

Though he has indeed been to Indiana, Kyle perfectly exemplified how one’s talking point says as much about the person sharing it as it does about its actual topic. An alumnus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he told us he considered doing a bit where he pretended to not know this event was about Indiana the state, not Indiana the university—and even went so far as to order IUP merch to wear, though it didn’t arrive in time for him to fully commit. Instead, he brought his massive knowledge of sports to the table, giving us a background on beloved Phillies baseball player and Indiana native Kyle Schwarber. Plus, he noted that last year’s historic win for the Hoosiers college football team came at the hands of a former IUP coach. Looks like there isn’t just an Arkansas to Philly pipeline, but also a two-way Indiana-Pennsylvania connection!

Harsh started his share by acknowledging he often represents his interests in geology/topography and human inventions at these dinners, and that tonight he’d be sharing about the latter.

“Ooh, I’m nervous now,” Pari said, “You might be about to take mine!”

“I looked into ‘panic bars’ on emergency exits,” he said, followed by Pari’s relieved “phew.” (Perhaps it’s worth noting that I experience this same fear before and during every single dinner, even though only once in 14 occasions has there ever been an overlap and we shared drastically different angles on the topic. There’s a lot to say about the circus!)

Turns out that the history of “panic bars” is pretty interesting, by the way. Their inventor was supposed to attend a show at the Iroquois Theater but missed it, hearing the news the next day of how a devastating fire broke out and killed dozens of attendees who were locked in to prevent unticketed entrants. Haunted by this preventable tragedy, he invented the emergency exit mechanism that today is still produced by his once-company, nearly 120 years later.

Pari’s share was about a very different but nearly equally ubiquitous theater feature: popcorn. The state is known as the “popcorn capital” of the US, hosting a yearly festival and honoring it as the state snack, thanks to local legend Orville Redenbacher. Indiana recently overtook Nebraska in national popcorn production too! If only I’d known this beforehand, we could’ve served popcorn as pre-appetizer munchies to go with our Hoosier Heritage cocktails.

Speaking of pop culture (forgive me), Brandon noted the Indiana-Jackson 5 connection, since Michael was from Gary. And speaking of cocktails, he also brought along a blackberry-flavored bourbon from Indiana brand Starlight along with the ingredients for a tasty blackberry lemonade, which obviously we had to shake up to accompany the main course.

The remaining three of us shared our experiences of Indiana across several time scales. Rachel was on the briefest end, visiting somewhat recently for a short work trip, which included a chaotic 30-person dinner and a wild karaoke outing.3 Cat was our evening’s born-and-raised Hoosier, and she recounted spending beach days at Indiana Dunes National Park and visiting her grandparents where she and her sisters caught frogs to keep in a box—though Cat’s frog met a tragic fate when her sister’s catch ate hers! My own experience was somewhere in the middle, two weeks at a program held by Earlham College where I came down with a serious case of Ohio River Valley Fever that sent me to the emergency room. The ER doctor told me that, even though I had decided for other reasons I would probably take Earlham off my college list, he recommended against spending any extended time in the Ohio River Valley lest its evil fungal spores take root in my lungs again.

A bonus track, since I didn’t bury the lede like I planned

On the morning of the dinner, Harsh and I were at brunch with his sister when I asked, “Have I ever told you about the time I almost died in Indiana?” and apparently I hadn’t.

I was planning for the Earlham/valley fever story to be the bonus track to my real share. Of course, he encouraged me to lead with the salacious tale—the one in which I was 15, being driven late at night to the tiny local ER, repeatedly declining offers to call my parents who were in Scotland at the time and who I kept insisting couldn’t do anything for me anyway, so why worry them? (This is painfully on brand for me.)

So here you go, my originally planned conversation topic that became a bonus tale after sharing my romp through an emergency room in rural Indiana:

Starting in 1904, seniors at Purdue University began wearing yellow corduroy pants to signify their seniority, which by the 1940s evolved into transforming “senior cords” into one-of-a-kind wearable yearbooks. The tradition lasted into the 1970s and are now having a resurgence through Bode, a brand that produces completely custom, hand-painted pieces that emulate the originals. Notably, Harry Styles wore them during his 2020 Vogue spread, which earned a lot of attention as he was the first male to grace the magazine’s cover.

Hilariously, the next day, when I caught up with my dear friend Amanda, she told me she’d been asking her friends where each member of One Direction would be from if they were American. Of course, I told her Harry would have to be from Indiana, given his senior cords. She said she feels he’s very Los Angeles, so we settled in the middle: clearly, Harry would have grown up in Indiana but was too gender-nonconforming for his high school, so he transplanted to LA as an adult to truly be himself after years of feeling stunted in small town USA. There is simply no other answer to this generationally important question.

*freeze frame*

Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.

You know. Measuring pickle brine into pineapple juice, stirring it with celery salt and freshly carbonated seltzer, writing down the ratios. In the middle of the workday. As one does.

The Illinois recipes in America: The Cookbook include Chicago-style Italian beef sandwiches, hot dogs, and deep dish pizza—and boy howdy, I considered going all in and serving them as a trifecta. But even after axing the Chicago dog, it stayed on my mind.

As I started designing the printed dinner menu and realized I forgot to plan a mocktail option, my brain kept screaming CHICAGO DOG! PICKLE!! CELERY SALT!!!

After a brief internet rabbit hole about how I might emulate those flavors, I headed to the kitchen to do some lunchtime mixology. Turns out, my new custom pineapple + pickle + celery salt + seltzer mocktail is actually really damn good. My only regret is not going fully unhinged and rimming the glass with poppyseeds in honor of the Chicago dog’s classic roll.

The menu

Spoiler alert: Like the hot dog, the Italian beef sandwich didn’t make the cut either. Instead, Chicago’s heavy Polish immigration inspired the rest of the meal after our deep dish appetizer.

After the success of having guests assemble their own spam musubis at the Hawaii dinner, I figured our Illinois folks might enjoy stuffing pierogis together. Some were naturals, even with the fragility of gluten-free dough rounds, and the rest were having fun regardless. The recipe called for wildly more filling than could’ve possibly fit in the wrappers, so we ended up with bonus side dish of cheesy, corny mashed potatoes—not that anyone was complaining.

For me, the paczki were the big hit of the night, despite pivoting the form factor from jelly-filled to jelly-dipped (again, who’s complaining?) after discovering we didn’t have a piping bag. It’s been weeks, and I’m still thinking about how good they were.

Around the table

Not only did we have a born-and-raised Illinoisan in attendance, but also a very recent transplant from Chicago to Philly, so the general excitement was through the roof.

Sonia, our new resident, showed us her Illinois license—which she plans to keep as long as possible—and shared the lore of the Chicago dog, including that it’s traditional to add blue food dye to the relish to make it electric green.

Ben, also on the “eating through Chicago” theme, talked about eating Italian beef sandwiches and the massive chocolate cake at Portillo’s—the latter of which has mayonnaise as its not-so-secret ingredient. Our local, Anya, told us that a rite of passage growing up was having their famous chocolate cake shake (a whole slice spun with ice cream) after getting your braces on, since it’s the perfect blend of soft and cold to soothe your aching mouth. Way more fun than my approach of gumming canned green beans for three consecutive weeks when I STILL couldn’t chew!

Anya’s trip down memory lane didn’t stop there. Inspired by the 2016 to 2026 social media trend, she walked us through a highlight reel of her life ten years ago: seeing Chicago native Chance the Rapper in concert, attending homecoming, coaching youth soccer, celebrating the Cubs World Series win, and so much more.

James took a more scientific approach to his share, explaining the physics and geography of how the city reversed the direction of the Chicago river so sewage would flow out instead of in (talk about quality of life upgrade back in the day…). Several of us also learned for the first time about the 2004 Dave Matthews Band “Poopgate” incident, which, no, autocorrect, I don’t want to change to “Propagate”!

Harsh carried on the innovation theme to highlight the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, which happens to be the origin story of the Wanamaker Organ, one of our most famous transplants to Philadelphia. Other big inventions showcased at the fair included the Ferris wheel (much bigger than today’s standard size), zippers, and Wrigley’s spearmint and Juicy Fruit gums.

Another World’s Fair debut: ragtime music, courtesy of Scott Joplin. This was my tie-in to tell everyone about a unique poetry collection, Olio by Tyehimba Jess, which contains interviews by Cairo, IL native Julius Monroe Trotter. Trotter traveled the country as a railroad porter in the 1920s interviewing Joplin’s peers about his musical and societal impact, only for his interview archives to be lost to time until they were found in 2012.

Except when I went to research more background about Trotter to prepare for dinner, I learned that he isn’t real and the interviews were fictional without any indication of such! I had been duped! Swindled! Bamboozled! I must say, the satisfaction I got when everyone underwent the same shock at my unfolding of this deceit as I’d experienced discovering it...priceless.

As we started to round out the evening, our last two discussion leaders served as fantastic “gap fillers.” Nate told us some facts from Illinois beyond Chicago to balance the city-heavy conversation. In Peoria, “Moldy Mary” Hunt discovered a moldy cantaloupe that enabled mass production of penicillin. Shelbyville was home to Josephine Garis Cochran, who invented one of the first mechanical dishwashers (also later featured at the World’s Fair!). The Southern Illinois “Little Egypt” region is home to towns like Cairo, Thebes, Karnak, and Goshen, potentially due to the Mississippi River reminding settlers of the Nile and the Cahokia Mounds resembling the Pyramids.

Bonus points to Chris for pivoting after Sonia told him his talking point shouldn’t just be “I don’t like deep dish pizza” (she was right, and he said our pizza was an exception). Instead, he prepared printed handouts about a range of Chicago- and Illinois-related topics, from house music, the Haymarket affair and fight for labor rights, the 1871 Chicago fire, and nearby nuclear research at Fermilab.

Is somebody gonna match my freak?

My friend (and California dinner attendee) Anna interviewed me about the 50 States Dinner Series for her YouTube channel, and during our conversation she beautifully summarized why these dinners are often so special—because the guests are willing to come in and “match my freak.”

That phrase played on repeat the next day while I stirred together pickle brine and pineapple juice and celery salt in the middle of the workday. It came to mind again when Sonia said she invited Chris after only meeting him once during a chance run-in on the street—while accompanied by the same mutual friend who’d introduced us to each other.

And it rang in my ears a third time when Anya said her dad (who was very excited about her attending the dinner!) might have the answer to one of the group’s questions about Fermilab after Chris brought up nuclear research.

“Call him!” I encouraged. “Phone-a-friend is allowed!” I’d made the same offer to one of the guests at the Georgia dinner to no avail, but on this occasion, Anya accepted.

“Dad? You’re on speaker at the dinner,” she said into the phone. “Why are there bison outside Fermilab?”

“Do you know what a Potemkin is?” he asked in response.

“No,” she said.

“I thought you read,” he said, sarcastically, before explaining how the bison that live on top of the underground particle accelerator (okay, America…) create a facade of safety, implying that if the bison are fine, then the nuclear energy lab must be good too. Meanwhile, her mom is muttering in the background and texting Anya that her dad’s explanation is conspiracy-adjacent, and that the bison are just there to symbolize the frontier and hope for the future.

I’m sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Either way, we were all cracking up about how wholeheartedly they joined in on this whole silly yet sincere gathering with as much enthusiasm as the people physically around the table. Even from afar, they mirrored our spirit. And it was a riot.

Passion and curiosity and authenticity are contagious. Anya’s parents were as excited for her to participate as she was. Chris said as he was leaving that he’s now thinking about how to gather people in a similar way (but not 50 times!). I closed out the evening even more energized than I began, simply because people showed up with genuine candor, unfeigned interest, and extraordinary openness. What a beautiful thing when people match our freak.

New here? Learn more about 50 States, 50 Dinners.

Luckily the guests I invited for the Idaho dinner were three of the people who had been wildly enthusiastic about attending since long before we had a specific date or even necessarily a specific state—a very forgiving “audience” to transition back into this little routine.

Even better? Very simple ingredient sourcing—thank you, middle America—with the exception of choosing a salmon recipe over the one for trout since I couldn’t find the latter (only to have tracked it down since!*).

Phew. I could ease in.

The menu

You might expect for an Idaho menu that we’d have potatoes fifteen ways, or at least so the stereotype goes. And I could’ve leaned into that for sure, since America: The Cookbook has Idaho-specific recipes for French fries, trout with fingerling potatoes, a potato-enriched bread called zwieback, and a potato-enriched fried dough dessert called spudnuts.

Instead, we went a bit more diverse with the menu: classic onion rings and fries to start, followed by a more wholesome main of carrot-ginger soup with slow-roasted salmon, then a dessert experiment of sorts known as a “freezer crisp.”

Despite the menu’s simplicity, it was a really satisfying meal that kind of had it all. Fried indulgence, warm vegetal and herby sustenance, and sweet surprise. The salmon was the star and I absolutely will be making it that way again. The freezer crisp was also intriguing—it didn’t freeze all the way through so it was a bit of a mess, but I actually ended up enjoying its multi-texturedness so much that I forgave the aggressive counter cleaning it required.

Around the table

A few days before the dinner, Michael sent me a video of him walking through a pamphlet called “Why-daho?” that he made and printed for each attendee of the dinner to explain why Idaho is both “kinda screwed as a state” and “kinda like a colony within the US” (yes, I jotted these down verbatim).

Knowing that he came bearing handouts, I invited him to start the table discussion. What I didn’t know is that he also came bearing glow-in-the-dark friendship bracelets for everyone at the table with color schemes representing gems (Idaho is the Gem State), huckleberries (state fruit), syringa (state flower), and the Boise State University colors. Of course, this is an instant addition to my list of my favorite moments of the project.

Michael also brought Rachel, who he met through at a friend lunch just days after receiving his Idaho dinner invite, only to learn during their meal that she grew up there—thus the +1 invitation was extended. I’ve said before how special it is when you have someone at the table who spent a long time in that place, and Rachel was no exception.

She told us how she learned to grade potatoes in school, about her time working for the Idaho Democrats when the state superintendent of education candidate wanted to ban public education (scream), and the story of a Boise teacher whose contract was nearly not renewed for having a poster saying “everyone is welcome here” in her classroom since it was “too controversial” and “offensive to some” (again, scream).

Rachel also added a new insult to my vocabulary: saying someone is “all hat, no cattle” or “had to buy their buckle” to mean they’re full of shit. Given Alexandra’s share that Hemingway lived on and off for 20+ years around Sun Valley, where he also wrote the bulk of For Whom the Bell Tolls and other works, I’d like to imagine that dear old Ernest was out there slinging rodeo-inspired derogatory phrases before his death and burial in nearby Ketchum.

Beyond the unique relationship between people and government in Idaho, another repeated theme was rocks, which perhaps you predicted after hearing its Gem State nickname.

Harsh, as he is prone to do, investigated the volcanic formation history of Idaho and the resulting Craters of the Moon National Monument. Rumors exist that the volcanic soil is the reason for Idaho’s excellent potato yields, though Rachel suggested the low humidity and thus mold resistance may be the simpler reason. Trisha offered us a cross-cultural look into star garnets—a volcanic rock that serves as the state gem of the Gem State—and are only found in the Idaho panhandle and in South India. I’ve since looked into whether there’s a sister city relationship spurred by their shared star garnets, but no. Disappointing!!

A sister city relationship I wasn’t surprised to see, however, is the one between Boise and Gernika, Spain, better known by the Spanish spelling Guernica, thanks to the famous Picasso painting. In high school, I did a homestay in San Sebastián, where I made friends with an Idahoan girl who told us about how Boise has the densest Basque population outside of Euskada (Basque Country). In my pre-dinner research I learned that immigration has been driven by border shifts that split Euskada between Spain and France, opportunities to work as sheepherders or gold prospectors (no English required; helpful since Basque is a language isolate with no similarities to other languages), and fleeing the oppressive Franco dictatorship. The streets on Boise’s Basque Block are painted with the green, red, and white of the Euskada flag—like Philly’s Gayborhood, but with more accordions playing in the background.

I’ve safely saved the best share for last: Bhavya told us about the 1948 Beaver Project, in which beavers were relocated from northwestern to central Idaho by dropping them from airplanes in boxes attached to war-surplus parachutes. When I tell you my mouth was agape….

Turns out that given how rural the state was (and still is, but there were so many fewer roads and trails into the wilderness back then), this was proven to be more cost-effective and safer for beavers than other forms of relocation. In fact, only one of the 76 beavers died—it forced its way out of its box and fell to its death. I will never look at the brand Dropbox the same way again.

The power of local knowledge

It’s always worth reminding East Coast folks just how vast the American West is. Even though I grew up in Oregon, which shares a substantial border with Idaho, it would’ve taken 6 hours of driving just to reach the state line from my childhood home.

I’ve only been to Idaho once as an adult, when driving across the country to bring a car to college in upstate New York. I know I was there at least once more as a child, visiting Craters of the Moon, likely on the way to see my dad’s family in Montana. If I’ve visited additional times, I don’t recall.

And while there are often similarities between states that border each other—this menu could’ve just as easily been served for the Oregon dinner as the Idaho one—this is why I love having a true expert from the state we’re discussing. Despite everyone’s thorough research on their discussion topics, Rachel was almost always able to provide context for why certain events may have happened the way they did or even if the cultural lore we dug up was just as well-known “on the ground.”

As a transplant to Philadelphia, I’m often reminded that moving far away from your home is relatively unusual. Most people I know here grew up within 200 miles of the city; a large number of these are from a remarkably smaller 20-mile radius. Knowing folks from a wide variety of places is a privilege, and this project has made me incredibly grateful to share in building those relationships alongside a table full of dinner guests.

*A few weeks ago I attended a mocktail party where a guy told me his New Year’s resolution was to “eat more fish.” I followed his lead only to have him engage me in 20 straight minutes of mostly one-sided lecture about eating fish, in particular his assertion that Coho salmon is miles better than Atlantic (I disagree but will allow it) and how I’m a stupid ridiculous fool for not buying all my fish at Aldi (my paraphrase, but only barely). Despite the extreme length of the conversation, he cut me off three times when I tried to tell him about my delight at this slow-roasted salmon. Too bad. I would’ve even AirDropped him the recipe. Anyway, apparently if I want to try the book’s Idahoan trout someday, Aldi has the hookup. Thank goodness Eat More Fish Guy set me straight.

New here? Learn more about 50 States, 50 Dinners.

Turns out, the Hawaii dinner is a great case study in both.

One of my rules has been to not invite people who know each other—which means our “couple friends” aren’t technically invited together, but rather one of them gets the official invite and it’s ~up to them~ if they’ll invite the other. They nearly always do, but I’m still following my own rule. It’s out of my hands if they bring their partner, okay?!

But for Hawaii, I decided to experiment with breaking that rule. I approached David and Howe—who Harsh & I only knew through being enthusiastic regulars at the pop-up sales of their gluten-free bakery, Tang’s—and asked if they might like to come to the house of us near-strangers…and oh, by the way, bring two additional strangers.

I’ve never been nervous to extend an invite to one of the dinners before, but I’ll tell you with an ounce of embarrassment that my heart was racing a bit when I went up to them after one of their pop-ups. Sure, we’d all been friendly, but ultimately our relationship was based on sales transactions. Would this feel like an overreach?

Luckily, Howe and David accepted the invite and immediately said they knew the perfect +2 to bring: a couple they met at a similar “come meet some strangers” dinner party concept. Not only were they open to the idea, but this wasn’t even their first rodeo!

Sometimes it’s good to break our own rules.

The menu

I’m willing to have you fight me on this statement, but I’d argue Hawaii is the U.S. state with the most distinct cuisine.

In America: The Cookbook, Hawaii is classified in the “West,” which means I kept giggling at the generic “West” regional recipes included in its index entry—like sauteed mushrooms, seared bison filets,* and Rocky Mountain oysters—but it also had the longest list of state-specific recipes I’ve seen so far in this project. I could choose from three types of poke, half a dozen recipes for common elements of Hawaiian BBQ platters, and multiple dessert options.

And the sourcing wasn’t even too difficult: a sulfuric sea salt from Amazon, a nut I’d never heard of before from a small business’s site (easy enough to order but unfortunately arrived late so we couldn’t serve it!), and apparently the Acme on Girard carries taro and frozen banana leaves, in case you ever need them!

With so many options, we ended up with a truly incredible menu, and even more incredibly had one of the project’s most special moments as we invited each guest to assemble their own Spam musubi. Everyone took turns pressing their sushi rice in a custom mold that Harsh 3D printed for the occasion, selecting a slice of marinated Spam, and cutting and wrapping nori around the whole shebang.

Everyone’s musubi was uniquely them, and we all delighted in the shared challenge and victory of assembly. It was so fun that I’m now looking at future menus with an eye towards dishes that might be feasible to prepare as a group.

Around the table

There’s no way I could write these lil summaries without taking a few notes during dinner itself, and I often will write a line or two verbatim, in quotes, when someone says something truly iconic. On this evening, I wrote down a higher-than-average number of quotes, a testament to how wonderful the conversation was.

For example: Leo offered to kick us off, then sarcastically said “did you know, aloha means hello and goodbye?” before standing up from the table in mock completion. Later, Kyle did a perfect callback, starting his own share with “did you know, aloha means goodbye and hello?” Both of their actual prepared talking points centered on the absolutely massive size of the Pacific Ocean, plus Hawaii’s similarities and differences to Guam and American Samoa respectively. Kyle even earned a second verbatim quote when talking about the resource-driven inter-island exploration of yore: “People sailed…into nothing!”

Harsh, like he often does, also focused on the state’s geology/topography, explaining how Hawaii’s island chain formed at the edge of tectonic plates that extend up to Siberia. They move 3-4 inches every year, which over time yielded the state’s mountainous and volcanic landscapes as a result.

In response, Jaydee got her written quote: “Knowing this makes me uncomfortable…we’re all ants here.” Ain’t that the truth! Jaydee was born in Hawaii, making her the closest to a local we had at the table, though she moved to the mainland US before she really had any childhood island memories. Her fun fact: da kine is the Hawaiian Pidgin equivalent of Philadelphia’s jawn, in case you need more words to use when you can’t think of the actual word for something.

For more local lore and terminology, I shared Hawaii’s surprising past and present rodeo culture. We all know about luaus and hula, but I had no idea until a trip to Colorado’s rodeo museum last summer that Hawaiian cowboys, called paniolo, were a thing. They even have specific events inspired by their unique forested terrain and history. In po’o waiu, the paniolo catches and ties wild cattle to a Y-shaped tree (or in present day, a similar-looking post). In double mugging, one paniolo ropes a steer while on horseback while another, on foot, wrestles it to the ground and ties its legs together.

If you don’t make it to a rodeo on your next trip to Hawaii, you might aim to hit the Polynesian Cultural Center, which Howe told us inspired his now-lifelong love of travel. Feeling immersed in local culture and history expanded his mindset of vacation as only about relaxation and tourist attractions to a deeper goal of understanding and experiencing local cultures, cuisines, and populations.

Dre also talked about a transformative moment, sharing how important it was for her as a young Filipino girl to finally see a character who resembled her on the big screen. Lilo & Stitch, which she told us emphasized representation in the development and production of the movie, is close to her heart for its themes of sisterhood and not having to be “good girls.” Another of her favorite attributes about the movie—“no singing, just plot”—was another I couldn’t resist writing down word-for-word.

My favorite quote from the night though? “Number 1, Trump. Number 2, taxes. Number 3, love.” If only we could all be so succinct as David as he itemized his reasons for proposing to Howe, which took place on a trip to Hawaii that technically was crashing their friends’ honeymoon. Don’t worry, the friends knew the proposal was happening on the trip, and in fact they both encouraged and helped facilitate it through a series of antics that I wouldn’t do justice recounting here. You’ll just have to ask Howe and David sometime—perhaps after a Tang’s pop-up, if you can overcome your nerves like I had to.

You don’t have to go home…and you can stay here

As each dinner reaches its natural close, I always tell our guests that we’ll write or draw on our stickers and take a group photo, and that they don’t have to go home but it’s the end of our scheduled programming.

I genuinely mean it, too; I’m thrilled for guests to stay and chat as long as they like. But after several hours and a large meal together, folks are usually kinda ready to go home and get in bed.

The Hawaii dinner was an exception. After the group photo, Jaydee asked the rest of us about how we got connected to each other. Soon we were sharing funny stories from our relationships, childhoods, and college days. Before we realized it, another hour together had passed, and even as people started to yawn (especially Howe, who had been up baking for Tang’s since 5am!), we continued to revel in the conversation until finally we forced ourselves to split off.

And I loved every second of it.

*Technically there are some bison in Hawaii (on Kauai), but they’re not native and certainly not a common association.

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I knew I’d want to create a collage spread for each dinner, so I began thinking through elements to include, starting with the most basic: a copy of the printed menu, perhaps backed with fun scrap paper from my extremely large stash of collage materials. Then: a group photo would be nice too, especially since I encourage people to dress in a themed way if they want. But how could I make it “collaborative” in some way, to bring in the reflections and highlights of the folks actually at the table?

I found a pack of blank nametag stickers in my stash, and the rest is history. Now, each guest gets a pen and a sticker at their place setting, and after everyone has shared their talking points, they have the opportunity to write or draw anything that stood out to them, that they want to remember, or that they want added to the scrapbook for posterity.

It’s become one of my favorite moments of the evening—a few minutes of quiet after the meal to put your personal touch on how it gets remembered over time, to say “I was here, and that mattered.”

Now that we’ve completed 10 of the 50 States dinners, I figure it’d be fun to share the scrapbook pages I’ve collaged so far.

Plus, a bit more insight into the meal planning—my favorite part of each menu curated from America: The Cookbook, ingredients I cooked with for the first time (and in some cases, tasted and/or heard of for the first time), and dishes I considered serving but that didn’t make the final cut.

It’s sort of like a 50 States yearbook, with all the photos and quotes and superlatives that showcase the inaugural ten events of this series. Without further ado:

50 States Yearbook (Fall 2024-2025)

Alabama

Best dish: Southern skillet corn

First time using: lady peas, mustard greens (was supposed to be turnip greens, which I couldn’t find but would’ve also been new to me), sloe gin, Southern Comfort

Considered but didn’t make: Alabama fruitcake, hummingbird cake

Alaska

Best dish: tilapia bisque

First time using: sherry cooking wine, sockeye salmon (we usually buy Atlantic), Crown Royal whiskey

Considered but didn’t make: smoked fish chowder, crabmeat soup, baked Alaska (which is technically a New York invention but has been adopted by Alaskans too)

Arizona

Best dish: apple pie with Hatch green chiles

First time using: Sweet Loren’s GF pie crust, Hatch chiles, masarepa

Considered but didn’t make: goat milk caramel, sopapillas, green chile cornbread, atoo (Navajo mutton stew), wild mesquite “molasses”

Arkansas

Best dish: rice grits pudding with custard

First time using: rice grits, lima beans

Considered but didn’t make: fried pickles, smothered pork chops, rutabaga puree, lemon chess pie

California

Best dish: chicory salad with persimmons, Caesar salad

First time using: Fuyu persimmons, Just Egg, dates

Considered but didn’t make: miner’s lettuce salad, Japanese tempura, grilled figs, Meyer lemon sherbet, slow-roasted almonds with sage leaves

Colorado

Best dish: smoky chipotle pot roast

First time using: none!

Considered but didn’t make: carrot ginger soup, tortilla chips, Palisade peach and basil salad, chili Colorado, bowl of the wife of Kit Carson (I’ve since made this dish several times and it’s so good)

Connecticut

Best dish: buttered rice with corn and basil (technically not a recipe from the book, but buttered rice a serving suggestion and I drew inspiration from a CT recipe for clams with corn and basil to add those elements)

First time using: flounder, clams, GF pizza dough mix

Considered but didn’t make: salt cod cakes, macaroni and cheese, pork and cider stew, molasses cookie

Delaware

Best dish: scrapple

First time using: chicken livers

Considered but didn’t make: chicken and slippery dumplings (apparently more Delawarean but seemed less compelling and more work)

Florida

Best dish: fried alligator

First time using: ackee, alligator, guava paste, plantains, GF pastry dough

Considered but didn’t make: Cuban sandwich, piña colada, fried chicken salad, coconut cake

Georgia

Best dish: pimiento cheese

First time using: rutabaga, field peas

Considered but didn’t make: fried okra with rémoulade, chanterelle risotto, Southern-style lima beans, squash casserole

26 new ingredients + so much more

I consider myself a decently adventurous eater, but my personal meal prep tends to err on the side of habitual and un-fussy. Making food and drinks with 26 new-to-me ingredients just for this occasion has been an interesting and mostly delightful way to push my cooking comfort zone. I’ve explored how to prep some elements or full dishes in advance, and I’ve discovered that I should never endeavor to serve more than 2 signature cocktails in one evening.

Of course, I’ve also learned so much about this wild and wonderful and problematic place called the United States. We’ve discussed nature, from topography and geology to climate change and the vast animal kingdom. We’ve talked about art and celebrities and childhood memories and local legends. We’ve analyzed societal challenges like immigration and socioeconomic inequality, and we’ve traded stories of human interactions at a more micro scale, down to specific trains and campgrounds and theaters we’ve passed through.

50 States, 50 Dinners has changed the way I think about community, and I hope that by joining in or reading along it’s done the same for you.

Here’s to more gathering, more meals, and more friendship in 2026. Happy new year!

New here? Learn more about 50 States, 50 Dinners.

I could do several thinkpieces on our society’s insistence on monetization of our hobbies and projects, how the implied social contract and thus people’s behavior changes when money is involved, and my own ethos for community building, but the short answer is this:

I don’t want to, I can afford not to, and most importantly, I could never get myself to charge people to come to these dinners for which I’ve never made any of the recipes before serving them to an audience and am at extremely high risk of messing up any or all of them at any moment.

I’m not a restauranteur creating and refining a dish for days or weeks before putting it on the menu. I’m a person doing my best to prepare someone else’s recipes—which sometimes include ingredients that I’ve never tasted, let alone cooked—and then offering them to people sitting in the liminal space between my kitchen and living room.

And you know what?

Often, it goes exceedingly well. Harsh & I are decent home cooks with intermediate knowledge of how to make food taste good. Usually we are good at time management, collaborating around the kitchen, and making on-the-fly adjustments when needed.

And you know what else?

Sometimes, it goes way less well.

Sometimes I discover that either I hate rutabagas or I’m terrible at making them, but either way I’ve already procured, prepped, and pureed them and I’m sure as hell serving them when the guests arrive in 15 minutes.

Sometimes Harsh says “come look at how perfectly the marshmallows toasted” and by the time I get there they’ve burned under the broiler.

Sometimes the pastry part of the peach cobbler unfortunately “tastes gluten-free” (womp).

In those moments, when everything seems to go wrong, I tell myself, well, at least nobody is paying for this, which is surprisingly comforting. You won’t catch me giving that up in exchange for offsetting food costs.

The menu

Even though I’ve just pessimistically described how the Georgia meal was not our finest hour, I’ll concede that it got “balanced contrast” right: creamy, salty pimiento cheese against bright, acidic cucumber and onion salad, earthy rutabaga and field peas next to even-further-sweetened sweet potatoes and a ham literally glazed with Coca-Cola, and rich, cold vanilla ice cream over light, warm peach cobbler.

Plus, bless my sweet guests, people volunteered compliments about the rutabaga puree. I personally found it borderline inedible, so of course this plays into my fun little fear that everyone saying something nice is lying to me, but that’s a conversation for another time.

Around the table

Speaking of conversation, the first solid chunk of our dinnertime discussion centered on family lore, the most Georgia-related being Nick’s ex-stepmom, who is a former University of Georgia cheerleader. After I suggested (and was turned down) that we FaceTime her to demonstrate some old cheers, Erika jumped in to share more about her. My notes literally read: “Her name is Jade, she’s blonde, she’s into ghosts, and we’re on her side.” Just the essentials!

While on the topic of the University of Georgia, Emily shared about one of the most interesting landmarks in the college town of Athens—a white oak tree that local legend says is deeded to itself. Even though it’s apparently legally fuzzy, the public and the local government has come to agree that The Tree That Owns Itself (yes, that’s its full government name) does indeed, and the community stewards its care.

Harsh and I, fairly fresh off our first real trip to Georgia this summer, also had a cool local landmark to talk about: the First African Baptist Church in Savannah. Touring the church was our favorite part of our trip, as we got to hear the history of how enslaved congregants pooled $1500 from their own meager earnings to purchase the church building instead of their own freedom—a courageous case study of collectivism prevailing over individualism. Other artifacts in the building today include a quilt that covertly illustrates the path and strategy of how to escape slavery and navigate the Underground Railroad toward freedom, an original “Negro Bible” created by white people to exclude any passages or themes of equality and revolution to avoid seeding ideas in Black populations, and the still-active credit union that addressed the community’s underbanking problem.

On our road trip to Georgia, we had our first experience with the cult roadside attraction Buc-ee’s, so we were thrilled that Rose came prepared to share about her own first time at the Kennesaw, GA location. “I expected it to be a gas station,” she said of the store. “It was an amusement park.” For bonus points, her tiny hometown in Nebraska shares the Kennesaw name, only heightening the memorability and connection of the Buc-ee’s Experience™️.

Cult followings aren’t just for a cursed beaver mascot. Nicholas told us how farmers in Toombs County, GA named their onions after Vidalia, GA—a name that, thanks to excellent marketing value, has become with sweet, high-quality onions from 13 counties with low-sulfur soil. And they’re protective of the name and the distinction, Emily added as our table’s Georgia local. Another verbatim note I took: “Champagne is from Champagne, Port is from Portugal, Vidalia onions are from Vidalia.”

If you don’t want to start a cult brand or brand your vegetables, Haley’s talking point offered another income opportunity: The Augusta Rule, named after Augusta, GA, which allows you to rent your home for up to 2 weeks per year without reporting the rental income, which is most famously used by locals to cover their mortgages (or more) during the Masters golf tournament each year. I’m not saying we all bought a house in Augusta together after this dinner, but I’m also not not saying that.

The sins of your state

In these missives, I like to give a solid representation of the table discussion, both for posterity/to jog my (poor) memory and to give future guests an idea of the types of topics they might bring to chat about. Of course, we often go off on tangents or discuss adjacent idea outside of the specific topics people prepared—and the Georgia dinner was no exception.

At the end of the night, somehow we got on the topic of the “sins of your state.” For example, a Midwesterner might be shamed for saying they dislike something, so to avoid this “sin” they’ll say the offending idea is “interesting.” Since we had a wide range of home states around the table, it was a wildly fun topic, and I wanted to offer it as a great icebreaker to use with family, friends, or coworkers—and invite you to share yours with me, if you’re willing!

For what it’s worth, I think Oregon’s would be 1) eating strawberries from California, 2) not yielding the right of way…even if it’s almost certainly your turn, and 3) carrying an umbrella rather than wearing a parka, especially if it’s only drizzly.

P.S.

You likely wouldn’t have noticed, but Georgia is the 10th state alphabetically, which means that we’ve officially completed 20% of the state dinners in just over a year’s time. I’m so proud of this lil project and how it’s grown and evolved since the first dinner in October 2024, and I so deeply appreciate everyone who has let me gush about them, read these recaps, and/or joined in for a meal. The next issue of this newsletter will take a fun high-level look back at the first ten dinners, so stay tuned for that—and happy new year! See you in 2026.

New here? Learn more about 50 States, 50 Dinners.

Before I even started thinking about the menu for the Florida dinner, I knew this would be a fun one.

The menu

I’ve mentioned before that America: The Cookbook flags each recipe with the state and/or region it’s from. But the index, where I start my planning, cross-lists every recipe for the region in the section for each state in that region. Which means that the options for Florida didn’t just include Cubano sandwiches and Florida stone crab, it also listed banana pudding and jambalaya and seafood gumbo—dishes that don’t exactly scream Sunshine State. Because even though Florida is technically the South, we all know it’s really its own subculture.

The good news is that I had lots of subculture-specific options, and we managed to cram tons of them onto a single menu that involved two different fried bites, two different plantain preparations, and two different tropical fruits. But only one exotic meat: alligator.

I need you to know I almost wrote off the idea of fried alligator in anticipation of sourcing struggles, but after a quick “where to buy alligator in the Philadelphia area” Google search that led me to a Reddit thread on the same topic, I discovered a gold mine called Wild Fork just over the bridge in Cherry Hill.

You need a weird meat? This totally unassuming store in a normal strip mall next to Wegmans probably has it. And if you buy alligator like we did, the cashier might even give you some cooking tips (which, funny enough, amounted to “soak it in buttermilk for 24 hours, then fry it,” which is basically the exact recipe from the book).

Much harder to source: ackee, a Jamaican fruit that’s a cousin of the lychee, but poisonous when raw and often used in savory applications rather than sweet ones. Back to Google I went, where I found a Caribbean specialty store in West Philly that might stock it.

Picture this: We enter the store and scan the canned goods shelf to no avail, so we ask the man behind the counter who we assume is the owner. “Yes, we have it,” he says, and he gestures behind him at a shelf of valuable things that require a little more security than the rest of the store. “Which brand would you like?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve never actually had it before. Which do you prefer? Or which is more popular?”

“This one sells more,” he passed me the can over the counter. “I hear ackee is hard to get.”

I confirmed it was, and I paid fourteen dollars for a single can. No wonder it was behind the counter!

The overall Florida menu was a massive hit and one of our most memorable to date. The alligator was tender (thank you buttermilk brine), the plantain soup was rich and comforting, and you can’t ever go wrong with guava and cream cheese. And even though I’ve decided that ackee isn’t really my jam, it’s always worth trying a new food, especially one you’ve never even heard of before.

Around the table

If I had to summarize the conversation at the table, it could boil down to these three topics: water, animals, and the circus.

Colleen kicked us off with a short story she wrote for the occasion (above and beyond!) that included mermaids, an underwater discotheque, and a real woman named Ma Barker whose gang was famously involved in a 4-hour police shootout in 1935 in Oklawaha, Florida.

An incredibly tough act to follow, but Maddy jumped in to share an abridged version of the “Tail Talk” she used to deliver multiple times daily as an employee of the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. She taught us that the underside of a dolphin that controls their tail fin has an extremely fun name—peduncle—and the aquarium’s famous dolphin Winter had suffered injuries to her peduncle and tail flukes. When a specialist developed Winter’s prosthetic tail, he also developed a special gel that would make the prosthesis less irritating to her skin, and this advancement has since been used to help human amputees too. Science is cool.

Harsh was ready to continue the underwater animal theme, sharing the backstory about how lionfish became a massively invasive species in the US and Caribbean thanks to a “Florida man,” not due to Hurricane Andrew like is often reported. Mikaela shared a similar myth: the lovebug, which is rumored to have been created in a University of Florida lab to combat mosquitoes, is also an invasive species from Central America. As Mikaela described lovebugs “falling in clumps” from the sky (which I obviously wrote down verbatim), I felt pretty blessed to have never been in Florida during their mating season.

I was also feeling wildlife-blessed as Jonathan shared his story of moving from Cuba to Florida several years ago, and how during his time living in Miami he became the victim of an iguana attack. If that isn’t proof that nobody should live in Florida…

And in case you thought that was the last of the animals—definitely not. Matt shared how northern mockingbirds, the state bird of Florida (and many other southern states), were often trapped by enslaved Black people in the late 1700s and sold to whites including Thomas Jefferson as pets and status symbols. And for a final animal myth, it turns out that mockingbirds are actually not the strongest mimics of the bird world; the European starling earns that title. Matt recommended a video called “I Saved a PNG Image To a Bird” all about how starlings acquire and reproduce even the most human of sounds—something to add to your 50 States, 50 Dinners syllabus!

Finally, I offered Ben the choice of whether to be the penultimate share or the final mic drop at the table. He told me to go ahead, and I said, “great, I’m going to talk about the circus.”

“Oh, I’m also talking about the circus!” he said.

Luckily, we had prepared different circus-themed topics.

I shared how I had recently learned that clown college is a real thing, not just a threat from your parents about your future prospects if you do poorly in school. It wasn’t a multi-year degree like I pictured, but rather a Florida-based Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey training program in which you could learn clowning skills for free, but you also had to agree to join their circus if they wanted you.

Ben’s history was a mix of local (apparently the rock climbing gym at 10th & Callowhill used to be a circus that travelers coming into town via Ridge Ave would visit, and that a warehouse at Columbus & Lehigh served as the associated menagerie) and Florida-based (Gibsonton is a town where sideshow workers used to—and still often do—spend their off-seasons; because of this, it’s known to be a very accessible place, as it needs to cater to folks of many sizes, abilities, and quirks).

Allow me to be a big softie for a moment

Every time we host one of these dinners, I close the door after the final guest has departed, take a deep breath, and have a moment of gratitude for the distances people travel (which is sometimes a lot—in this case, Matt and Maddy drove about an hour and a half during Friday rush hour), the research and stories they pour themselves into, and the courage to enter a completely unknown social situation for an evening.

But that feeling is usually connected to the vulnerability and learning and connection part of the dinner—not the pre-work that goes into every meal. This time was different though: as Harsh drove us back home from the little Caribbean store at 52nd & Walnut, I reveled in sudden wave of gratitude.

Looking for alligator exposed us to a new store that had been hiding in plain sight all this time. Tracking down the ackee brought us to a neighborhood we never visit, both intentionally and not. Those were both eye-opening experiences—and technically, they were “just” grocery shopping.

Sometimes sourcing ingredients is the hardest and most stressful part of this project, but it’s often interesting too. In the car back from West Philly, I was reminded that it’s not just in the cooking itself or during the table conversation that I end up discovering new people and places and ideas, but that the opportunity to explore and learn begins in the recipe index, within the planning spreadsheet, and on the hunt for an authentic ingredient that will make all the difference in creating a sense of place for the evening of connection later.

Bonus story if you made it to the end: When I texted Matt to invite him to this dinner, I wrote, “Since you are the person I know with the most ‘Florida man’ energy (I say with love!!)—would you be interested in attending the Florida dinner?” After he accepted, he said “I’ll arrive with my full Florida man energy” and immediately followed up with “I bit open a glow stick and sucked out the juice like two days ago.” In case you were wondering, apparently they “taste really bad” and he “didn’t drink it,” he just “wanted to make his teeth glow.” Matt is not from Florida.

New here? Learn more about 50 States, 50 Dinners.

I was spending one of my precious, supposed-to-be-relaxing “funemployment” days between my last day at my previous job and my first day at my new one embarking on a 8+ mile walk along a segment of the city’s edge…among total strangers.

Relaxing? Um, not really. Especially on a particularly warm day for mid-September.

“I mean, just do your own walk if it’s too hot,” Harsh offered.

“Let’s see,” I replied. “The challenge is kinda the point.”

During the walk’s briefing, JJ, the founder of Walk Around Philadelphia, reaffirmed this as he got on the ground at the Miquon train station to show us his map of the Philly perimeter.

There wouldn’t always be great, safe walking infrastructure, he warned. We’d need to cross the river eventually, for which we had options that ranged from “traversing an abandoned rail bridge where there may be slats missing” to “doing our best to ensure cars will see us on a busy overpass”—no routes with a nice, easy sidewalk were available.

There wouldn’t always be easy access to water, or bathrooms, or designated places to rest, either, and JJ encouraged us to see this as an opportunity to consider that many community members (especially unhoused people) experience this type of insecurity on a regular basis.

We would likely come across people who were surprised, and not always pleased, to find us passing through spaces that aren’t often trodden, and we would take these interactions as they came. (One returning walker offered the tip that in those scenarios, “it’s always helpful to say Go Birds.”) JJ told a story that spurred reflection on privilege and how these types of confrontations about who belongs where might affect participants of color differently than white walkers.

So yes, the challenge of Walk Around Philadelphia is kinda the point. But it’s so much more.

Remember being in kindergarten, playing with some kid for not even 5 minutes and deciding that this was your best friend in the whole wide world?

Would you believe me that I basically had the same experience as an adult on this damn walk?

Before we’d even left the train station, I struck up a conversation with Michael, who’s a veteran of Walk Around Philadelphia. He’s even served as a trail angel—someone who meets the group later along the route to hand out snacks and water and morale boosts.

The minute Michael and I started talking, I was instantly snapped out of my funk about the heat and my feet already kind of hurting with 8 miles ahead of us and my FOMO about spending my limited funemployment more horizontal than vertical. We instantly started sharing ideas about creative projects and community building and ways to be a good person, and this continued for a lot of the walk (and has carried beyond the walk too! Hi Michael!).

As we walked along the river, I noticed a yard with the biggest windchimes I’ve ever seen, and as I pointed them out, JJ stopped the group to tell us that we could actually go explore this yard. The owner of the house was a “friend of the project,” which is to say, he had encountered the group, become intrigued, offered that JJ could take groups onto his land, and taught him how to disable the motion-sensor sprinklers that deter deer from eating the plants.

Our whole crew commenced a garden frolick, using hiking poles to hit the big windchimes to compare their songs, climbing into the hammocks, and even testing the temperature of the Schuylkill River.

After a few minutes, JJ re-enabled the sprinklers, and we continued along the street. When we saw some houses for sale, he told us about his dream to buy a few homes along the perimeter and turn them into Walk Around Philadelphia boarding houses, like the Casas Rurales along the Camino de Santiago. If anyone knows a multi-millionaire looking to invest…

The route connected us swiftly onto the Schuylkill River Trail, which of course I’ve been on dozens of times, but never in this part of town. That’s what you get for having a lot of natural borders for your city—much of the actual city line is in the river, and there isn’t (yet?) a kayaking alternative for these sections of the walk. Beyond seeing new parts of the city, I also got to see wildlife I rarely encounter: two herons and dozens of turtles, all of whom were positively thriving while sunning themselves—certainly much more than us silly warm-blooded humans, anyway.

Once we crossed through Manayunk, it was time for the somewhat-dreaded river crossing. As a group, we collectively decided to attempt to cross using the abandoned rail bridge…until we came to a full halt as one of the group members discovered that his fear of heights was not cooperating with walking across metal grates that forced him to see how very far down the river was.

To help him feel more grounded, his wife took one hand and I took the other, walking as a chain all the way to the other side as he trembled and tried to keep a brave face. After several minutes, we’d done it—we’d forged the river.

Was I thinking about forging the river in the Oregon Trail computer game during all of this? Of course I was.

We continued walking until we reached The Landing Kitchen, where we stopped for lunch and a nice rest break. Five people of our group of fifteen decided to end their walk here, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider doing the same.

The rest of the route was crossing through Laurel Hill Cemetery onto City Ave (note: you may still hear the road being called “City Line” Ave, which was its official name for many years because it is indeed the actual city line, a fact that I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t realize before doing this walk). There would be nearly no shade in the afternoon heat and the sense of adventure would be almost equally nonexistent.

Was it really worth spending another few hours on this next leg of the journey?

Turns out, it was. Another cool nature spotting came in the form of a massive wild mushroom that JJ took home to make into soup. We had a visit from a trail angel, who brought bananas and baked goods and stories about advocating to reinstate SEPTA service after the state funding cuts. And I made another friend.

Diane, who had reminded us earlier of the reliability of “Go Birds” as the Philadelphian “We come in peace,” was my walking buddy for much of City Ave. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she and I got onto the topic of dinner parties, which she has been wanting to host but is afraid her friends won’t be willing to drive into the city from the suburbs to attend. Of course I encouraged her to try anyway and to be willing to mix in new people with her existing connections, since I’ve found that to be an incredibly rewarding element of the 50 States project—and I hope she’s felt more inspired on both fronts since the walk.

As we began approaching the Overbrook station, our designated end point of the walk, JJ asked me, “so, bridge or shark tunnel?”

I didn’t know what that meant, but obviously I chose shark tunnel, which is how I learned that there’s a fun aquatic mural in the tunnel to get to the station. And when you come out the other side? There’s a statue of a cow, honoring that before there was a park & ride, the area was filled with cow pastures.

In the words of my mother, “None of this used to be here.”

Michael and I started the walk together, so it only made sense that we bookended it by sitting next to each other on the train ride back to Center City…and then texting each other links of all the recommendations for events and books and podcasts we’d talked about throughout the day…and then deciding to cowork at Indy Hall together a week later.

“I can’t believe I only met you a week ago,” he said to me in the Indy Hall skyroom. “It feels like it’s been so much longer.”

Like I said, playground best friend energy.

And get this: these playground best friends recorded a podcast episode on that coworking day too. It happens to be about 50 States, 50 Dinners, so it’s now required listening for fans of the project. Okay?

Go ahead and listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And despite all my whining about the heat, I genuinely think Walk Around Philadelphia is one of the coolest things happening in this city I love so dearly. It happens twice a year, in February and September, and you can sign up to do just one segment of the city’s edge or as many as your heart desires.

I hope to see you out there.

This is the second of my two-part deviation into some other company I’ve been keeping outside of 50 States, 50 Dinners. If this isn’t your jam, no worries, I’ll be sharing a recap of the Florida dinner very soon.

There are so many communities I contribute to, conversations I shape, and learnings I glean from connections I make—not just the ones I’m building from my dinner table. I want this lil newsletter to be a space for those experiences and takeaways, to help community building feel more tangible for those it comes less naturally to.

So whether it feels like a sidebar, a deviation, or a special edition, welcome to the other part of The Company We Keep. Let’s dive into some company I’ve been keeping.

A community I’ve been loving: audiobook craft club

A few months ago, I got a Reel in my Instagram feed of someone suggesting a new type of book club: rather than everyone reading the book separately and then coming together to discuss it, what if people gathered to listen to the audiobook together? Even better, what if they all worked on craft projects while listening? The internet responded with “please” and “yes” and “I’m in,” and a worldwide Discord community was born.

I joined, obviously, and have been delighting in the perfect balance of designated craft time and real-time gabbing in the chat about the main character’s silliness (it’s a fantasy romance with talking spider plants and merhorse riding, so there’s plenty of silliness to discuss). What’s not to love?

More specifically, it makes me nostalgic for the good parts of the early pandemic—the way in which everyone not only moved their regular workout sessions, dinner parties, and game nights onto Zoom, but also started hundreds of new communities to beat boredom and connect people in meaningful ways.

It’s both deeply engaging and extremely zen to create and consume simultaneously. My “must do many things at once” obsession loves the multitasking and my brain’s scream to “please for the love of god shut me down” is satisfied by painting on a pre-drawn canvas to keep thinking to a minimum.

Could I do this activity on my own? Sure. But the “I’m always a teeny bit lonely” part of my brain is obsessed with the chatter and emoji reactions along the way. It’s basically parallel play for adults.

We can learn a lot from the things that make us nostalgic. We don’t have to have that same odd, terrifying, and pivotal moment to take a step back to reflect or create communities of healing or indulge creativity or give ourselves grace—all things I suddenly found myself doing in March 2020. Arguably, every moment these days is odd and terrifying and pivotal. So why not create that feeling in the present, now that we know how good it feels based on the past?

What I’ve been thinking about: People still want to gather, especially for a purpose (in this case, body doubling for accountability to crafting and reading time, plus building connection). Not all purposes have to be “serious.” And even when the activity can be done alone, doing it together is often kinda the whole point.

A sidequest that made my heart full: extracurricular Mural Miles

Nowhere does “even when it can be done alone, doing it together is the whole point” ring more true for me than at a group run. Running is inherently an activity of self-reliance—all you need is shoes, a route, and your own momentum. But Philly’s thriving run club culture has turned exercise into a group activity for at least half (and sometimes all) of my monthly mileage.

Last fall, I struck up a conversation with a fellow attendee of Mural Miles, a monthly run club that I affectionately describe as “art enthusiasts who are willing to run,” as opposed to “runners looking at art.” As we admired a mural (“How We Fish” by Eric Okdeh) that had mosaics augmenting a painted scene, I mentioned that I was dying to see a mural that had been recently installed in Queen Village by a mosaic artist named Sammy Kovnat.

“We should go together!” she replied. “I’m around on Friday if that works for you.”

I hadn’t professed to need a buddy, but I recognized a few unique things about this type of invitation: it was concrete, goal-oriented, and time-specific. This wasn’t the dreaded “we should get coffee sometime” that disappears into the Purgatory of Sometime. Instead, it expanded on a known shared interest and followed a quick timeline to avoid the delays of life. Plus, her invitation had an element of doing me a favor (which can deepen connection) by offering tangible support toward my goal.

We set up plans for Friday and met at the mural, discovering that I was wrong in my assumption that it would include mosaics but reveling in its beauty anyway. We grabbed a drink, went for a walk, and talked about life for a solid two hours before splitting off to go our separate ways. We were absolutely kindred spirits, and in some ways I’m surprised our paths hadn’t crossed ways before.

You might think this lil story ends with us having periodic mural exploration dates—or even running side-by-side at future Mural Miles events—but funny enough, I haven’t seen her since then, though I think of her every time I see a mural that includes mosaics. Sometimes, you have a beautiful but standalone experience with someone. And sometimes, that’s enough.

What I’ve been thinking about: Fast-follow ideas with concrete plans, which is to say, create invitations out of opportunities. Doing a totally-could-be-solo activity together adds joy, novelty, and the satisfaction of “two birds with one stone” (see also: running errands with your friends). Plus, a standalone experience can be beautiful as is, with no pressure to turn it into something more.

A reminder to choose your own adventure: my work going-away party

Two months ago I left the job I had for nearly four years. At any job, there are always some “downs,” but the number of “ups” I had in that role was so healing to me as someone who left my previous two jobs with exponentially more frustration than fondness.

In those four years, I’d been to my fair share of going-away happy hours over Zoom. The norm looked like:

• Someone (often the person’s manager or department lead) sends the invite to their entire team plus a few cross-functional colleagues. The guests may or may not actually be the person’s closest pals at work.

• People trickle into the call and make idle chitchat for about 45 minutes. Often a few attendees jump in or drop off at the half hour based on other scheduled meetings. There are no real topics to discuss, so it’s a little awkward, and folks trip over each other a bit to fill silences. Perhaps they ask the departing teammate what they’re looking forward to at the new job or joke about what they won’t miss at the current one.

• When there’s 10 minutes left in the meeting, everyone rushes to tell the guest of honor how great they are and how much they’ll be missed. If any one person doesn’t chime in, it’s noticeable…but the whole ritual is so repetitive that they can’t be blamed for not contributing.

• In the last minute, the departing teammate also says how much they love everyone and everything, even if everyone knows they’re jaded and burnt out. Occasionally they shed a tear.

• Fin.

• Exhaustion for all.

Priya Parker, who wrote The Art of Gathering, talks about how rewriting the norms of our tired rituals can be highly beneficial. In particular, she’s a proponent of a host imposing enough structure to make the gathering feel meaningful—easy, ”anything goes” events actually leave people feeling unmoored, unfulfilled, and worn out.

So I did what may be a first for my previous company and hosted my own going away party. I invited the people who I really wanted there. I decided on the structure, then sent an email the week before asking people to indulge me and prepare both a shoulders-up accessory (hat, silly glasses, feather boa?) and a work-related two-truths-and-a-lie. During the Zoom call, my colleagues donned their accessories, shared their stories, and voted which ones they thought were the lies.

It was a blast. I smiled the whole time. Several colleagues told me how on-brand it was. The right number of people offered lovely, sincere compliments that I appreciated (and they didn’t get too tangled up in the reasons I was leaving, which is the other risk of this type of interaction). And I got to have a moment like my mini mural run: a beautiful, standalone experience that didn’t have to be anything more.

I had my favorite people in a room, getting to hear stories about each other that we wouldn’t have otherwise. I got to create and contribute to that community one last time. It was everything I could’ve hoped for.

What I’ve been thinking about: We build bridges when we ask others for small requests and they indulge them—and vice versa. Follow norms when friction isn’t helpful; subvert norms when novelty would offer more value and opportunity for change or connection. Love your people enough to create space for them and allow them to love you in the same way.

Note: I’m going to send one more of these non-dinner newsletters next week about my experience doing Walk Around Philadelphia, so if this isn’t your jam, stay tuned, I’ll be back with my next 50 States, 50 Dinners recap about Florida—which, spoiler, had a LIT menu—in a few weeks.

I have some stories about major world events, of course, but I have to tell you something wild: I remember where I was when I first heard someone say they were from Delaware.

I know it sounds incredibly silly, but I vividly remember sitting on a plane on one of my many cross-country flights from Portland to Ithaca, and the person in the row behind me told their seatmate they were from Delaware. I had long joked that I didn’t believe the state was real because I’d never met anyone from there, and now, here I was, facing a new reality. I didn’t speak to that person directly, but my mind was still blown. A Delawarean was in my midsts.

I had no idea at that point in my life that I’d move to Philadelphia and meet plenty of people who had lived or worked in Delaware—including one of the random roommates I had in my first house in South Philly, who taught me that Newark, DE is pronounced “New Ark” and not “New Erk” like its homonym in NJ—and thus Delaware natives would lose their novelty for me.

And obviously I had no idea that I’d someday be breaking (metaphorical) bread over a dinner table to honor “The First State.”

Funny how life works out.

The menu

In some ways, this dinner had the easiest menu to plan, namely because the options in America: The Cookbook are so limited that the menu was basically planned for me: cucumber salad, scrapple, chicken and dumplings (for which the book had not one but TWO variations), and potato pie. It meant, though, that for the first time, I had to tell every guest that they were expressly forbidden from bringing a vegetarian plus-one. No biggie, but I can confirm everyone got a chuckle out of it.

If you aren’t local to this area, scrapple might need some explanation. I’d describe it as a porky cousin of meatloaf, usually offered as a breakfast meat. Traditionally it’s made from all the bits and bobs of a pig that you might be sweeping from the butcher’s floor, though the recipe in the cookbook asked for primarily pork shoulder plus a bit of liver to add a bit of organ-ness.

Y’all, Big Scrapple must be using all the pork liver in Pennsylvania, because I could not find it. I started at Whole Foods, where they pointed me to the two butchers in Reading Terminal Market. The butcher at Martin’s said “oh God, why?” when I told her I was making homemade scrapple. The butcher at Giunta’s told me I should try Esposito’s in the Italian Market. But I was running out of time and the Esposito’s website wasn’t reassuring, so I ended up back at Whole Foods for chicken livers as a substitute. A multi-hour saga that could’ve been over in the first 5 minutes!

By the way, making the scrapple itself was way easier and way less gross than I thought it would be—and the end result was so incredibly tasty that I’m convinced it’s the only way to eat scrapple if you ever get a wild hair.

Putting scrapple on a menu is already perhaps controversial, so I opted to make the “chicken and dumplings” recipe in the book as opposed to the “chicken and slippery dumplings” variation—mostly so I didn’t have to present my guests with something described as “slippery.” Apparently the s-word dumpling is much more traditional to Delaware (picture a lasagna noodle, rather than a ball) but we all make choices and this one was mine. Sue me!

The potato pie was also an interesting addition. It’s made like a sweet potato pie you might find in the south, but with russet potatoes instead. The book recommended serving it with peach ice cream, which was a surprising but fantastic pairing, and I even went off-script and stewed some peaches to amp up the summer flavors.

Around the table

The coincidence wasn’t lost on our guests that Delaware is nicknamed “The First State” and was also the theme of our first state dinner after Harsh got his American citizenship! That’s kismet if I ever heard it. Plus, as he shared as he kicked off the table conversation, Delaware ratified the Constitution on December 7th, 1787, a mere few days (and many years) before his December 10 birthday. He added that Pennsylvania ratified on December 12, so he’s right at home.

Beyond being the first state, Katie shared with us that Smyrna, DE is the home of the first ambulance service—which she brought both as a fun fact and as a playful nod to her first time at a state dinner, back when she and her plus-one had to quickly exit from Arkansas night due to a minor medical event. Luckily she was happy to return for a rain check and even brought a first aid kit as a host gift.

Brittany served as our resident state expert as an alumna of University of Delaware, which she told us has a very “American college movie”-looking campus and the blue hen as a mascot. Turns out blue hens are a real animal (not just a blue-colored chicken for mascot purposes) and is Delaware’s official state bird. Though perhaps a chicken would be appropriate too, as Gouri’s table share informed all of us that Delaware has more chickens than people on a magnitude of 200 chickens for every 1 person. I suppose our main course was really just population control, then.

Rob also featured birds heavily in his talking points, mentioning that Delaware is often a stopover for species migrating south for the winter. He also made a case for replacing the grey fox with the horseshoe crab as the state animal (rationale: “they’re everywhere!”). I might argue that the state animal should be corporations, though, since Rob reminded us that Delaware has more incorporated companies than it does residents (by about 100,000, says the internet).

To add to this Delaware trivia extravaganza, I looked into the background of a question we’d gotten at bar quizzo just weeks before hosting this dinner. The question asked which state in the U.S. is the only one with a rounded border—and Delaware was the answer! The short version of the story is that when King Charles II gave William Penn control of the land north of Maryland, he had to exclude the “Twelve Mile Circle” that was held by the Duke of York, who later granted the land to Penn as well. There’s also a funny little 1-mile strip of land on the NJ side of the Delaware River because of this circular border area, and yes, of course, People Have Feelings About All This.

After a tangent about whether the Delaware-based DuPont family is a net positive or net negative on the world, we closed out with Myst telling us how Dead Poets Society was filmed in Middletown, New Castle, and other small towns in DE. This devolved into Googling which celebrities are from the state—Joe Biden is obviously the most famous, but one article also listed SZA because of her time at Delaware State, despite being born in St. Louis and raised in New Jersey. Now you know!

Committing to the bit

One of my favorite things about this dinner was how many people dressed the part. Rob paired his bird migration fact with a bird-themed shirt. Brittany wore blue and gold (University of Delaware colors) and the necklace of her sorority, and I mirrored her with the former. Gouri and Myst even coordinated outfits to resemble the soldier and the farmer figures on the state flag!*

I always include in my invites that people are encouraged, but of course not required, to dress in a way that reflects something about the state. As a host, I spend so much time thinking about the little details of the evening, starting from the combination of guests invited to planning cohesive and themed food and drinks to designing and printing a paper menu so people know what they’re having (and so they can have a souvenir, if they’d like it!). So when guests “play along” and add to the themed nature of the evening, it makes my heart really happy.

I’m grateful to everyone who has participated in this passion project, but a massive extra shoutout to those who’ve taken that extra step—it doesn’t go unnoticed.

*I’d be remiss to not include a shoutout for Katie, who was indeed cohesive with us wearing blue for Delaware, but also wore a FULL white-tailed deer onesie for the Arkansas dinner to reflect that state’s official animal. If only she had a blue hen onesie for DE!

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I didn’t—I’m mostly unfazed by dietary restrictions—though it did give me pause. See, in America: The Cookbook, every single main dish from Connecticut is fish-based, except for one with pork…which one guest also doesn’t eat.

I’ll amp up the sides then, I thought to myself. A vegetarian meal can be hefty and satisfying if you plan for it. No big deal at all!

Then: one of my butternut squashes was completely rotten when I cut into it.

Then: the flounder would not stop breaking apart in the pan.

Then: all the videos online about preparing clams kept saying you would slit your wrists and die if you didn’t have a shucking knife.

Then: the damn pizza crust would NOT cook.

Then: Harsh burned me with a 500 degree pizza pan.

Not in that exact order, but not far off.

The menu

So how does one create a fishy-but-not fishy Connecticut menu?

Choose your appetizer. Clam pizza is the most famous Connecticut food, so we had to. How do we de-ocean half of the pizza to be friendly to our two pals? I suggested just doing half regular cheese pizza vibes, but Harsh had a different idea: let’s replace the role of the clams with feta. “Feta is the clam of the cheese world,” he said, which honestly none of us at the table could really argue with.*

Great! Now your main. Will it be cod roasted with potatoes, grilled bluefish with littleneck clams (double whammy!), New English clam pie, salt cod cakes, scallop stew, or sweet and sour flatfish? I chose the last option for practicality both of obtaining the right fish (you can buy flounder, a type of flatfish, at Costco), and for the ease of reserving some of the stewed onions sans fish so our seafood haters could still sorta play along.

Then pursue three side dishes so your sea-fearing guests don’t feel too left out. Braised butternut squash (for which Amanda saved the day by stopping at the store on her way to get me a replacement for my rotten one), maple-glazed parsnips (yum, though I overcooked them a bit), and buttered rice with corn and basil, which was not a standalone recipe in the book but rather inspired by the serving suggestion for the discarded bluefish-and-clams recipe.

I have to say, simultaneously trying to manage three sides while fighting with flounder and attempting to ice pack my pizza burn? Absolutely NOT my finest hour. In my opinion, the only winner on the table was the rice, which is honestly pretty embarrassing to me.

All this to say, to my five extremely patient guests for Connecticut: I’m sorry, thank you, I swear I’m a better cook than that. Please come again, and I promise to feed you before 8pm next time.

And the blueberry cake—which I told everyone to pretend was huckleberry to match the recipe—was also pretty good.

Around the table

Somehow, and blessedly, the conversation at the table managed to redeem the evening, and then some. Everyone brought their A-game on dinner topics, and it was truly a hoot.

Wally, who was originally an deck for the California dinner but had to raincheck due to illness, talked about visiting the Mystic Aquarium, which took us into the ethics of aquariums and zoos and how Amanda once released clams back into the ocean.

Harsh covered the history of Frank Pepe and his invention of clam pizza during the Great Depression, which perfectly transitioned us to Amanda’s tale of early Connecticut industry during the American Revolution. Turns out dear old colonizer England got knocked down a few rungs when early colonialists started button factories on their own rather than paying for expensive imports. Amanda was also, by the way, dressed like Connecticut’s state bird, the American robin.

Steven had a variety of facts for us: Connecticut implemented the first speed limit, never ratified the 18th amendment (long live the Wets!) and has to pay New York State for its Metro North service. Even more importantly, though, he told us about his favorite “nutmegger” (which is somehow not a slur but rather an accepted term for a person from CT, the “Nutmeg State”). His aunt’s mother, Mimi Wolliver, was a nun married to a priest (riddle me that!) who protested the School of Americas as her primary cause.

I had to give that last paragraph THREE comedic asides, not just because I can’t help myself and this is MY newsletter, but because it so closely reflects the energy at the table throughout the entire evening. Picture all my parenthetical additions but among seven people over two hours. Voila.

I have to assume Meghan’s discussion points are the ones that all of us will remember forever, though. She grew up in Fairfield County, which has a big divide between the whiter/preppier New Canaan and the poorer/more diverse Norwalk. She attended a private all-girls school on the New Canaan side, where she had several nepo baby classmates and the graduation tradition was to purchase and wear a wedding dress, no exaggeration. And if you ever run into Meghan, ask her to tell you the story of walking in on her commencement speaker—none other than Oprah Winfrey—in the bathroom. You won’t be sorry.

Kevin and I had a tough act to follow after the shock of Meghan’s high school culture, but he swiftly brought us back to the Revolutionary War. Next time you’re at bar trivia, you can wow your team with the knowledge that the first wartime submersible was called the Turtle, and it was built in Connecticut for use against the Royal Navy. Do yourself a favor and look up images of the Turtle—it’s wild. So wild that I had to jot down Wally’s comment about its shape: “ooh, really dangerous butt plug.”

To close us out, I pulled up a slide deck I made highlighting Connecticut’s silliest license plate styles. I had prepared my own subjective rating and full commentary in advance—spoiler: my fave style is about promoting wildlife conservation and comes in both an eagle and cougar version—but everyone got to weigh in with their own opinions on which designs were the ugliest and most unhinged of the bunch.**

Someday I’ll figure out how to succinctly write the “Around the table” section…

…but today is not that day. Luckily I know how to keep it short and sweet in this part, so I’ll leave you with this: You can’t control everything. Actually, you can’t control MOST things. Things will go wrong. You will overcook the entire main course while nursing a burn wound, whether literally or figuratively. But also, things will often go right. You will spend two hours giggling with friends old and new. You’ll be forever changed by a twisty-turny-absolute-riot story that ends with a mic drop like “and by the way, Connecticut should have bottle deposits.” There is struggle and goodness in nearly everything. It’s okay to get a bit down about the former, but allow yourself to be lifted by the latter.

*If you have a cheese suggestion that is spiritually more similar to clams, please, for the love of god, let me know. I’m dying to hear.

**You can also email me back about your license plate opinions, if you’re so inclined!

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We had our first repeat guest.

Yes, the rumors are true, people can come to more than one dinner. In fact, I may need them to, because lord knows there are a lot of dinners and I only know so many people.*

In this case, my friend and former Colorado resident Jess had her second rodeo—and the timing was perfect to cram in another America-themed dinner as she moved to France mere weeks later. And her first words upon entering our house? “Smells like green chilies.”

The menu

Y’all. Another big moment for the project: I didn’t have to do ANY—I repeat, ANY—special ingredient sourcing for this one. It was a very nice change of pace, and I also got to pat myself on the back about it because all the Hatch chili drama I went through for Arizona paid off here. I could just retrieve a can of chilis from the shelf in the basement. PLEASE CLAP.

The chilies were a key ingredient for our appetizer, corn and green chili chowder. Another type of chili featured heavily in the main, a smoked chipotle pot roast. Nothing wildly out of the ordinary on the menu yet, so I had to do a curveball dessert—a bread pudding that mixes sweet and savory, including both a classic French toast-style custard but also making a caramel…with onions in it? And topping it with cheddar cheese? Gotta be honest, it was absolutely not my thing, but others seemed to like it, or at least were being polite about it!

Around the table

This time our party included four former residents of the honored state, not just Jess—though she did start us off by talking a bit about her hometown of Loveland. Dubbed “The Sweetheart City,” Loveland plays off its name by facilitating a Valentine re-mailing program and hosting the “Miss Loveland Valentine” pageant-style contest every year. The former has been going on since the late 1940s when people started sending their valentines to the then-postmaster, hoping to have the notes re-sent with a Loveland postmark on it. The small, festive touch has turned into an annual tradition for hundreds of lovers and/or postmark collectors. I’d never heard about this until Jess shared about it, but my home state of Oregon has a tiny town called Bridal Veil with a similar draw; couples will visit from all over just to drop their wedding invitations at the post office for the themed postmark. Cute!

Luke also talked about his youth in Colorado, though with a very different angle. His dad was a surveyor—yes, the guys out there with all the measuring equipment—so Luke used to accompany him on these adventures periodically. In classic adult fashion, all of us thought this was really cool and interesting, but Luke assured us that in classic child fashion, he didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. It’s a lot of time spent standing around, often in the hot sun! Totally fair, but I’d still like a grown-up version of “Take Your Kid to Work Day” so I can go see what surveyors are really up to.

Mel and Ray used to live in Colorado Springs (as adults, but I suppose we’re all constantly “growing up,” so let’s say they were too). Things they loved about living there: nature! Things they didn’t love: tricky family dynamics and less liberal politics. Mel shared fond memories of riding behind Ray on his motorcycle going up 14,000’ on the winding roads of Pikes Peak, and Ray told us that their now-daily habit of going on walks together started during their Colorado era. Nowadays they do art projects together weekly, so Ray also shared a watercolor he did (from memory!) of their prior life’s forest surroundings. “Smells of pine!” he joked, sniffing the paper, as we complimented how realistic and detailed it was.

Before the dinner was in full swing, I had mistakenly thought that Bella had also lived in Colorado. Alas, no, but she has spent a lot of time there and talked about what it’s like to visit mountain towns both for winter skiing and summer biking (among other activities!). She and her family have spent a lot of time in Crested Butte in the Rockies, which sounds incredibly idyllic. The town also happens to be pretty near Grand Mesa National Forest, which I wrote down as Harsh’s discussion item, but I sadly have no further notes about what he shared and he also can’t remember. I guess you just had to be there! (And maybe I should write these in a more timely manner!)

For my part, I went full current events mode, pulling a cheat sheet from my vest pocket to make sure I didn’t miss any of my talking points about the recent reintroduction of grey wolves to Colorado. Here’s the TLDR: In 2020 the proposition passed, after a successful “conflict minimization program” (there’s a joke in here somewhere about how this is what my clients actually hire me for!) to address concerns from ranchers about wolves preying on their livestock and to assuage the fears of the general public about wolf safety. In 2023 ten wolves were relocated from Oregon to Colorado, fifteen more were moved from British Columbia in 2025, and Colorado is the first US state to pass legislation to reintroduce wildlife. They’re already on track for greater biodiversity, a more harmonious food chain, and a connected population between wolf packs north and south of Colorado. HUGE.

Building community…AND trip agendas

Hosting these dinners is an amazing experience in bringing people together, learning new things about their lives and their interests, and sharing a meal that often has some odd or unique element that requires a shared sense of trusting the process. But a benefit I don’t think I’ve written much about yet is how they’ve also become a conduit to actual exploration of our weird and wonderful country.

A few weeks after this dinner, Harsh and I took a trip to Colorado. The thing that we were most excited about—and turned out to be a major hit—was the Celestial Seasonings factory tour, which came up as one of the many tangents between all the conversations mentioned above.** Without the Colorado dinner, we wouldn’t have known it existed, and thus wouldn’t be still saying “it’s Sleepytime somewhere” twice a week…or more.

I like describing the dinners as a way to travel the US from our dinner table (and in fact the subtitle of America: The Cookbook is “a culinary road trip through the 50 states”), but it regularly strikes me how it can really be the first step on a bigger journey. I have a much greater appreciation for all the states we’ve “visited” as part of this project, and now the next step is to be able to remove the quotation marks from that clause. I’d love to get to Alabama and Arkansas, I’d like to return to Alaska now that I’m an adult, and I’d love to spend more time in Arizona (even though we were there last year). I’ve spent lots of time in California, but that time has been more “deep” than “broad,” which is to say I’ve mostly hung around the Bay Area, and there is SO much more there to explore.

And the next missive is about Connecticut, which we took a road trip to visit a few weeks before hosting that dinner. Might we have gone either way? Sure. Did it add more meaning to the trip to have our senses heightened in anticipation of sharing fun facts and experiences with others shortly after our return? Absolutely.

*I only know so many people but also I do know SO many people! Probably we won’t have too many repeats but especially for folks who have lived in or have special connections to multiple places…do attend!

**Other tangents included Casa Bonita, Jolly Rancher manufacturing, Vidalia onions, and House of Mirrors. But you’ll have to do your own research on those!

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The answer is usually a mix of factors: aiming to bring together folks who will mesh well, who don’t already know each other (this one is the most challenging, actually, since I love introducing friends to each other), and bonus points if they have a connection to or requested to attend a specific state out of interest.

Sometimes the answer is pure logistics, however.

See, my pal Anna is a vegan, and when I shared about this project, she said she’d like to attend, but that she recognized that she’d have to come for whichever menu was most vegan friendly.

Enter California.

Between the sheer vastness of recipe options in America: The Cookbook and the often vegetable-forwardness (is this a term yet?) of California-inspired dishes, I fairly easily landed on a menu of “salad, four ways”—and in fact, hardly had to modify much at all to make it vegan (and gluten-free, of course).

Perhaps a salad-heavy menu feels cliche for California, and in fact I had a friend message me after I posted about it to say “we eat more than salads, you know.” Somehow the simplicity of the menu worked in its favor, though, turning out to be one of my favorite meals so far.

The menu

The first hitch in my “salad, four ways” plan actually wasn’t salad-related. My original appetizer plan was a carrot-ginger soup that the book affiliates with the entire western region, but this switched to Korean vegetable pancakes after Anna described herself as having a “deep disdain for carrots.” No big deal—and in fact, the pancakes were GREAT.

The second hitch came in the form of croutons. Store-bought gluten-free croutons are relatively hard to find, pretty expensive, and not super delicious. Homemade croutons made from a loaf of gluten-free bread, on the other hand, are absolute fire. Most GF breads, though, use dairy or eggs in their recipes, so I had to do a bit of exploring to find which one would work for our croutons. No huge deal here either.

The much bigger deal was the dang persimmons. The dinner took place a bit after persimmon season, and they were nowhere to be found either in my regular Giant, the often-reliable Wegmans in Cherry Hill, or at either of the big grocery stores in Chinatown. At Whole Foods (always a reluctant stop but often a fruitful one, pun somewhat intended), they had a spot for persimmons! Yay! But it was empty! Boo!! A helpful employee told me they just sold out but would get another shipment the next day. The ones I ended up with were a little beat up, but they did the trick, and the salad was a hit.

Around the table

For the second dinner in a row, we were a small but mighty crew of 5, which left us lots of time for tangents and side stories about our lives and our passions and this weird world we live in. All of us had been to California, but Anna kicked off the conversation first, telling us about taking the Coast Starlight Amtrak train up the coast for 36 hours to both enjoy the views and as a romanticized writing retreat to work on a zine about doing shrooms.

“People talk to you, like you’re on the Appalachian trail,” she said. I noted this down word-for-word, thinking about how a train can either be a semi-inconvenient point-A-to-point-B transit method or a liminal space where everyone has at least one thing in common and likely many, many more.

Part of that attitude depends on one’s perspective in the moment, of course. But the other part of it, as Anna explained, is that people take this specific train specifically for the experience of being on the train, seeing the full West Coast from a panoramic car where the seats face the windows, and potentially connecting with other travelers who thought sleeping upright might be fun just this once.

Any mode of transit could be approached pragmatically or romantically, I suppose, and walking is another prime example. I walk to do errands all the time, but the vibe is so different when walking for leisure or to connect socially. Felicia’s California story centered on walking, specifically jaywalking, which everyone knows is technically illegal but literally no one has ever heard of being enforced (outside of Singapore, perhaps). And yet, during a trip to Santa Monica years back, she did in fact get stopped by a cop for crossing a street outside of an intersection. Luckily no ticket, but to me this encounter is in the same spirit as something that children think will be a thing when they grow up but never turns out to be, like getting stuck in quicksand or spontaneously coughing up blood and dying or being bit by an alligator that has crawled up the pipes of the toilet while you’re sitting on it.

For my share, I took the opportunity to look up something else that has haunted me since childhood: the Yreka Bakery. My dad, who loves wordplay and doesn’t care if anyone besides him understands his jokes, loved to point out the Yreka, CA sign as we drove from Portland to the Bay Area every year as children. He would say “spell Yreka Bakery backwards and you’ll know where to get a good loaf of bread!” I never understood it then, though I learned from Wikipedia that he was actually repeating a commonly-quoted ad from 1863. During dinner, I explained that because of Yreka and the Yreka Bakery, I knew what a palindrome was much younger than any other kid, to which Anna assured me that having a palindrome as a name had the identical effect.

Harsh took to history for his discussion item too, explaining about the history of how the internet was created and how it’s governed by the WWW consortium and ICANN today. I’ll admit that I don’t have a whole lot to say on this one except that there is a fantastic video about it that I recommend everyone watches, okay?

Ann’s anecdote, to me, is also in the same world as Felicia’s ridiculous encounter. Her story was about attending a bachelorette party at Disneyland, which we all agreed wouldn’t be our own first choice. But as Ann described her experience at the Star Wars bar, I wrote down the second word-for-word quote of the night, this time from her server: “2 drink minimum, 45 minute maximum!” Absolutely iconic words to live by.

Nothing pithy to add here

For a change, I don’t have some grand takeaway about the state of humanity that I simply must share with you on account of this dinner party. It was light, it was fun, we ate a bunch of great salads. One might say this too feels cliche, since so many people think of California as primarily sun and sand and celebrity and big tech—and of course, it’s so much more. But not everything about humanity has to be big. Sometimes it can just be dressing like Stevie Nicks and being nervous that your date cake isn’t going to turn out but then it does and gossiping about Disney adults and meeting new friends. And you know what? That’s great too.

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