An Appetite for Everything

tour dates and hungry women

Hey Broiler Heads! As we get closer to the release of our fifth book we’ve got some tour dates and cooking classes to announce!!

• This Tuesday, October 24 Michelle will be cooking a recipe LIVE starting at 6 pm EST/3 pm PST with the magical Kathryn Budig and talking all about the book. Sign up HERE and join the madness.

• Saturday November 4th Michelle will be appearing at The Book Shop in Nashville, TN starting at 5:30 pm. More on that soon.

• Saturday November 18th We’ll be appearing at Stacks Bookclub in Oro Valley, Arizona (just outside Tuscon) from 6-8 pm for a very special ticketed event. We’d love to see you there. I’ve been internet friends with the couple who opened Stacks for a long time and can’t wait to support them and their brand new shop!

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been hungry. I was born with reverence for life and wanted to eat the world up with a spoon. I followed my mom through the nurseries she loved to browse asking the names of everything that was edible. I spent afternoons memorizing the shape of leaves, the smell of the blossoms, what parts I could eat and how. I’d stay in the produce section while my family shopped for groceries; stacking the fruit and veggies into perfect pyramids until I earned a free apple and a laugh from the grocery clerks for my labor. I learned family recipes from the moms of all my best friends: marinara from Jackie’s family, buckeyes from Becky’s. I wanted to fill my plate up and slurp everything down. But I was also born a girl.

crimping is gonna come back, right?

All over the world, women and girls eat last and least. This pattern is old. Grandmothers everywhere have spent their lives filling and refilling dinner plates while they saved only scraps for themselves. Denying their needs for the benefit of those they loved. Of the 345 million hungry people in the world, 60% are women and girls. War only makes those statistics worse. But you don’t have to live through the worst this planet has to offer to know what it’s like to be asked to survive on less. Women aren’t supposed to comment on their hunger. We’re supposed to be grateful that we aren’t hungrier. To smile sweetly and never point out that while yes, he is a growing boy and needs a big dinner, you are trying to grow up too. That you want to take up space. That you need energy to navigate all the bullshit piled on you since Eve first got hungry in Eden. And we all know how well that went over. What would happen if women told the world how fucking hungry we really are?

The Sweet Tooth, by Ludwig Knaus, 1897

The recipes in this new book are all about my insatiable appetite. I’m always hungry and have jeans in a bazillion different sizes to prove it. But as our cultural pendulum moves back to firmly equating value with perilously thin bodies, I want you to know there’s another way. Food doesn’t have to be an obstacle to overcome. We don’t need to inject ourselves with trendy drugs to divorce us from our hunger. It’s trying to tell us something. Improving your relationship with food and hunger provides kindling for what so much of our society tries to snuff out. There’s no right way to have a body and you should never feel humiliated by your own desires. Particularly if all you want is a second helping or *gasp* an entrée for dinner on a date. CJ Hauser wrote a line that I think of all the time: “There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs.” Babe, I want you to survive.

Midnight Chocolate Cake from Hungry as Hell

This book, our last for the foreseeable future, is special. I dreamed up these recipes on long walks with the woman who would become my wife. I cooked them at home while we got engaged, planned our wedding, and tried to make our dog and cats best buds. I tested them on my friends and family, throwing small dinner parties and picking the recipes that best suited all the tastes of our guests. I wanted to delight them and quiet their hungry bellies. Same goes for you, dear reader. These recipes are for you, for the rest of your big, wonderful, crazy as hell life. Take up all the space you can. Savor the red chilaquiles and poblano home fries during indulgent weekend brunches. Laugh at your kids as they fight over the maple pull-apart monkey bread and shout at them to wash their sticky hands. Tear apart your freezer looking for that extra batch of green enchiladas you froze. Make so many zucchini quinoa fritters that you don’t even look at the recipe anymore. Whip up the midnight chocolate cake after a long week at work when you need to be celebrated, even if it’s just for yourself. You have earned your appetite. Grab a spoon and let’s go eat the world.

Hungry as Hell is out everywhere October 31