Life can be a warm gooey oatmeal raisin cookie or a bitter grape. Like the ones withered at the bottom of the clear plastic bag, sometimes covered in white fuzzy mold. I usually wash it off, only to bite into a rancid ball of foul taste. When will I learn…

Presently my life is neither. It is unfamiliar. It took a shift recently and my life has become more like the grapevine. I am back in growth. That awkward stage where one minute I am reaching my vines and guiding my leaves toward the sunlight, and another minute I am slithering down the wooden stake into the ground, wanting to hide in shade.

Food is life. It mirrors our individual self, our families and friends, our communities. Food brings people together or can cause them to drift apart. Sharing food is a sensual and personal experience. It is vulnerable. Cooking for someone is vulnerable. It is giving a piece of you to them, hoping they will take a bite and approve the food, in essence, you.

We all enjoy a cookie every now and then. We all are also served a bitter grape every now and then. But either way, the ingredients came from the ground, a vine, a tree. In theory, we are the ones who put judgement on a cookie or a bitter grape. Not nature. Just let it be. Stop judging life and experience the tastes of all.