Monday has officially landed, the slate is clean, and it’s time to check in with each other. Whatever you are planning for the next seven days, we want to hear about it. It doesn’t have to do with food, writing, or cooking—life happens in all directions, and this table is open for all of it. How are you focusing your energy this week? Cast your vote below! Click your focus for the week, and drop a comment letting us know what is on your plate. Let's connect and start the week together! 📊 POLL: What is on your horizon this week?

Thanks to @Karin Crawford, it's now easier to post in the specific category. The link is at the end of this post. I am opening a brand-new module in our Classroom for a project deeply close to my heart: We are going to create our cookbook, together. Connecting over a shared love of food and storytelling has been the heartbeat of this group since day one. Your voice and kitchen legacy belong in these pages! How to participate: - What to submit: Your favourite family recipes — breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, or secret sauces. Feel free to submit more than one! - The magic ingredient: Please add a description of the dish and/or your memories of it. What smells and stories come flooding back when it’s cooking? - Where to post: Share your recipe and story under the “Community Cookbook” category in our community space. The Final Masterpiece & A Special Prize 🎁 At the end of each month, your submissions and as a thank you, I am adding a little extra seasoning to the pot: the creator of the most captivating entry will win an exclusive, personal Zoom mentorship meeting with me! Let’s dive in! 👇 Head over to the Our Cookbook category and share your first recipe today to enter this month's draw. I cannot wait to read your beautiful memories and chat with our first winner on Zoom! Here's the link: https://www.skool.com/how-to-write-about-food-8335?c=afebb97b4ebf4ad28904f8d93cb4fd7c&s=newest-cm&fl=

Not a metaphorical one. A real one. Sharp and layered and impossible to mistake. I'd wake before my eyes were fully open, before the house itself had stretched awake, and I'd already know what day it was. Shoe polish. That dark, waxy smell floated through the hallway before sunrise every Sunday morning of my childhood. My father sat at the kitchen table with yesterday's newspaper spread beneath his shoes, working the polish into the leather with slow circles of an old cloth rag. My grandfather had done the same thing. And eventually, so did I. There was something sacred about the rhythm of it. The scrape of the chair legs across the linoleum. The soft cough of the AM radio in the background. My father clearing his throat while the coffee perked nearby. Nobody spoke much that early. The house communicated in sounds and smells instead. And from the oven came the biscuits. Not the canned kind. Not the kind that pop open with a cardboard sigh. These were my mother's biscuits. Flour dust still hanging in the kitchen light. Butter melting into layers before they even cooled enough to touch. You could smell the heat of them before you saw them. Warm flour. Browning butter. A faint sweetness from the coffee cake she baked almost every Sunday beside them. That smell wrapped around everything. The polished shoes by the door. The steam fogging the kitchen windows. The hiss of bacon grease snapping in the skillet. My church clothes hanging stiff and waiting on the bedroom door. Even now, decades later, if I catch the smell of shoe polish and hot biscuits in the same morning, time folds. I am sixteen again. Barefoot on cold linoleum. Rubbing sleep from my eyes. Hearing my father say, "Boy, you better get moving or your mother's gonna leave us both." And somewhere behind him, my mother laughing softly while opening the oven door, releasing a wave of heat and flour and butter into the air like a kind of blessing. Funny thing is, I don't remember many sermons from those Sundays.

"I'd love to hear how ppl are using their food writing skills…recipe development? Cookbooks? Food blogging? Restaurant critic?" This is a question posed by @Amanda Mirrlees. I'd love to hear from you!