Queer Kitchen Connection #8

Hi there, Taste Buds!

April passed too quickly, and it’s been simultaneously busy and slow. Lots of events have packed the last month, including an eclipse totality passing through Buffalo, my gaming groups succeeding at scheduling(!) and starting to meet again, the PWHL regular season wrapping up and playoffs starting this week, and I’ve finished some continuing education for when my hours are due at the end of May. So much is happening, and I only worked with 5 clients in April.

I am simultaneously excited (yay playoff hockey!) and stuck in a bottomless funk of grief and sadness (because life, the world, and everything else). In typical “me” fashion, I’m having the easiest time showing up for others, and it’s way harder to show up for myself. I’ll be leaning on my people more in the coming weeks.

I’m especially grateful for the folx joining Let’s Make Lunch!, as this has been a pretty difficult time for me to nourish myself and it’s always easier when I’m not alone. Luckily, I’m rediscovering some simple foods that I like putting together (like dried mango and colby jack cheese) for times when I can’t manage anything else. I’ll be changing the schedule from including Thursdays to doing all Tuesdays or alternating Mondays and Tuesdays in June and July, so please reach out if you’d like to join Let’s Make Lunch!

Here’s what folx are saying:

“Jex has provided a warm, welcoming, and inviting space routinely to make lunch together. Connection is important to me when sharing meals, so it's such a fun and refreshing opportunity to connect with folks virtually as they cook and eat!” ~Adryan

Be well,

Jex

A photo of Jex, a white nonbinary person with short brown hair and wearing glasses and a black chef coat.

Send Foodz

Food pictures, stories, and connection from my kitchen (and yours)!

Fifteen freshly-folded dumplings arranged on a baking tray. The tray is inside of a freezer drawer.

These dumplings were from a fun group adventure in March! We made delicious fillings and practiced folding techniques.

I decided to freeze some in hopes of sharing them with others another day (it didn’t work out–we devoured them).

Fifteen cooked dumplings piled on a round, white plate.

In this selfie, Jex and Kit grin at the camera with their heads close together while holding Drumstick ice cream cones at the bottom of the frame. Jex wears a brown zip hoodie and glasses. Kit wears black-and-white plaid.

I learned sometime in the last two months that I could use extra egg whites by making Klondike bars! That’s my kind of egg-cellent!! I did not make them (the work quantity, spoons, and timing never matched up), but we still got to enjoy ice cream novelties when we shared a variety pack of Drumsticks with friends!

These vegan steak fajitas are one of the foods that I very strongly want to share. I want to make sure others know exactly what I mean when I express how delicious they are. We’re having them again this week, and I’m trying to set up a last-minute COVID-cautious dinner party with a friend or two–it may not work out to share it in-person this time, but at least I can share it with you! What’s a food you always want to share with others because it’s so unbelievably good?

A large steel skillet on a stovetop is filled with thin slices of cooked red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, onion, and seitan steak. Bright green chopped cilantro is sprinkled over top.

Four wire cooling racks are stacked on top of one another on a gray countertop. On each rack are round chocolate waffles on the left, and plain rectangular waffles on the right. On the top rack is a marbled rectangular waffle.

This year for our friends-and-waffles anniversary (we really love enjoying waffles together), we mixed up some chocolate waffles! They were best as a dessert waffle with ice cream, but made a great-looking marbled waffle too. Do you have specific foods that you particularly enjoy eating with a specific person or group of people?

My partner Kit loves spanakopita, but it’s not a food that we have very often. So for their birthday this year, I made spinach pies (recipe here) and substituted half of the cottage cheese for crumbled feta for a little extra yum. I’m lucky that this pie is close enough to what they want, because phyllo dough isn’t very accessible for me to use. (Luckily, Mom makes great spanakopita too!)

A spinach pie in a white ceramic deep-dish pie plate. The crust is golden brown pastry folded up over the top in four points. The filling is visible: spinach, cottage cheese and feta, and some small patches of egg showing the pie has set.

Want to send foodz? Reply with a photo/story and we'll try to include it in the next Queer Kitchen Connection!

What’s Cooking?

Upcoming special events—Food Focused Nutrition-related or otherwise!

A photo of a small white and brown dog lying on a rainbow Pride flag, looking into the camera. A speech bubble includes text that reads, "Wanna PLAY?" Below is white text that reads: "Let's celebrate PRIDE with rainbow foods and community!"

PRIDE Food-Play Adventure!

Sunday, June 9
3-5pm EDT
on Google Meet

Pride Month is quickly approaching (where is the time going?), and I really love holding space to play with food and be creative in community with others.

It’s been difficult for me to feel aligned with expressing food joy (especially when playing with food) while Israeli forces starve civilians in Gaza to catastrophic levels of malnutrition.

As in all forms of activism, rest and joy are critical to our resilience and future liberation. I was reminded of this when tonight (4/24) I made a mashed potato volcano with veggie dino nuggets climbing the sides, and hummed the Jurassic Park theme song.

A scene made of food where dino nuggets climb a mashed potato volcano while gravy lava flows down the sides. A few broccoli trees are on the volcano, but the main pile-of-broccoli forest is at the foot of the mountain.

I hope you’ll consider joining me this June for a fabulous adventure that encourages playfulness and celebrates the way(s) queerness shows up in our lives and the lives of our dear ones.

Registration’s Open!

Vegan Cheese Workshop

The virtual Vegan Cheese Workshop I ran two years ago will be returning once a month for three months later this year (maybe June, July, and August)!

If you’re interested in attending, click here because you’re GRATE (it’s a cheesy GIF, but I’ll be able to count how many folx might join the workshop).

On a white background is a light tan chihuahua with its tongue sticking out. A green thought bubble to its left contains a wheel of cheese with a wedge cut out. Below is red text that reads: "Spread the CURD—invite your friends!"

Coming Soon:

Grocery Store Tours/Adventures

Grocery stores can be overwhelming, confusing, and challenging to navigate: there’s lots of data to process, decisions to make, and financial pressure too!

I’m working on a scavenger hunt-like offering to create a lower-stakes learning space for small groups to get to know their local grocery store(s) a little better (I already offer this privately to individuals).

We’ll explore together, discuss our discoveries, and find ways to make grocery shopping more accessible.

If you have connections with local grocery stores in Buffalo or ideas for how to get started engaging my local community with this, I’d love to collaborate with you!

I’ll be sure to share more info as this offering develops.

The Intersection

I'm always working on making Food Focused Nutrition more accessible with baked-in, intentional inclusion. What's the latest step in my journey?

In the last few months, I’ve been approached about speaking on a DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) panel at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ big Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) in October. Just last week, I provided my portion of the session proposal, and I’m feeling simultaneously hopeful and jaded.

For a bit more context, I divested from the Academy in 2020. I had been a constant part of my local district’s executive board since I became a dietitian in 2013, receiving awards at the local and state levels, but a mounting collection of conflicts—between the Academy, and what I value as a human providing care for other humans, and challenges in my personal life—came to a head and I left abruptly a few months before I was to step into the role of President at my local district. (The final straw was the email from the state level informing me of surprise responsibilities for district presidents that far exceeded what I had consented to in my volunteer commitments…but I digress.)

Since divesting, I participated some with a state DEI committee as a non-member, and felt frustrated by the differences between the awesome conversations we had as a committee and the lackluster response from any other part of the Academy (outside of DEI committees).

So here I am, invited to the biggest dietetics conference, where I am required to become a member of the Academy to participate as a speaker. Other panelists and the moderator have significant resumes showing how invested they are in the Academy supporting their career. The proposal description indicates that this will be a “politically unbiased” panel discussion to elevate diverse voices in our profession. I can’t help but wonder if I’m in the right room.

At the same time, the message of action needs to be heard, and if this opportunity does work out I will be in that completely uninviting room uplifting the need for action and the need for resolve to always do better when we know better. I will make sure there is no excuse to not know where to start.

I’m particularly proud of these statements from my “professional bio”, specifying that I don’t want to be a member, yet I must to participate on this panel:

“An important part of Jex's professional journey has been divesting from organizations that do not support their values, which included previously divesting from the Academy until presented with the opportunity to participate in this panel. They aspire to provide care aligned with their anti-ableist, anti-racist, gender-affirming, neurodivergent-affirming, pro-fat liberation, queer-affirming, and trauma informed values.”

Their reply 12 minutes after I sent my info: “This is perfect, thank you so much!” I’m interested to see if they still agree when they’ve actually read it.

On a green background is a red starburst "bang" shape, as in a comic book, with lines and stars emitting from it. Within the shape is text that reads, "Support the Pay It Forward fund!"

All contributions to the Pay It Forward Fund support folx in accessing low- or no-cost services with Food Focused Nutrition. Learn more or share my post about the fund on Instagram or Facebook!

That’s all for now!

Queer Kitchen Connection is an every-other-month newsletter from Food Focused Nutrition.

I want this newsletter to be an invitation for us all to foster more connection around food.

My dream is that Queer Kitchen Connection will be the start of a conversation, and I welcome you to taste, savor, and share in the creation of community with direct replies to the newsletter.

Author Jex Calvert, RDN, Food Focused Nutrition
“Edible-in-Chef” Ashley Bovin, Ease Up Consulting

Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!